Romance fans know Elsie Silver from her sexy Chestnut Springs series, which catapulted the author into our hearts and ears last year. With , Silver transports listeners to Rose Hill, an idyllic lake town set in the Canadian Rockies. As the world’s hottest billionaire struggles to resist his best friend’s little sister, newfound fatherhood adds a unique twist to their spicy love story. Read on as Silver discusses why she loves writing single dad romances, her small-town settings, and who’s up next in the Rose Hill series.
Margaret Hargrove: Your took the romance world by storm last year, and Heartless was named as one of Audible’s best romances of 2023. I read that you used to work as a copywriter and editor. What inspired you to start writing romance?
Elsie Silver: I was always working with words, even through college, and I have also always been a huge romance reader. But it wasn't until the pandemic hit that I had this time on my hands. I was at home, with a four-year-old, and I just needed something to do that felt like working but was an escape too. My mom pushed me to just start writing some of my ideas that I've always had. I never thought that I would write a book, but I had lots of ideas for them, so it was an experiment and it all snowballed from that first book.
I love the premise of Wild Love, which follows Ford, a successful music producer, who’s head over heels in love with Rosie, his best friend’s little sister. Fans of Heartless will appreciate the cameo from Willa, who is Ford’s sister. Can you briefly tell us about Wild Love in your own words?
Wild Love is in the same universe as Chestnut Springs, and takes place on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, in a mountain town. The entire series is going to be loosely based around four single dads, but not all in a traditional way, necessarily. They come into fatherhood or shared custody in all sorts of different ways. But every Thursday night they get together and they go bowling. It's like the dad's night out. The first one that we meet is Ford, but we get a couple of different scenes of him at the bowling alley with the other guys too.
Rosie is his best friend's little sister and they've known each other since they were young. He hasn't seen her in 10 years, but he's always carried a torch for her. She comes back into town right around the time that he finds out that he's a dad. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's unconventional. Nothing's been kept from him or anything, it's just that he never really considered fatherhood. This girl shows up on his doorstep, so they're all in this state of upheaval and their story comes together from there.
Why do you enjoy writing single dad romances?
It's just so current for me right now. Not that my husband is a single dad, but I have an eight-year-old, and a lot of my friends are in the throes of parenthood. There's just something really relatable about it for me at this stage in my life. I was talking to a friend and I said, "I wish I could just write all single dads." I just love the trope and I love the dynamic. My friend asked me, "Well, why couldn't you?" I responded, "I don't know. It just feels like the same." My friend said, "But single dad doesn't just mean that it's the one dad with no other person." There's shared custody or a guardianship or an adoption. There's just so many different ways, when blended families are hugely prevalent right now. So, once she started talking me through it, I was like, "You know what? You're right. I could totally do something like that." So, here we are.
Your romances take place in these beautifully imagined small towns in Canada. How do you come up with the settings for your novels?
All of the towns are loosely based on places that I've been, so I feel very familiar with them in a lot of ways. Rose Hill is based on the town that I grew up vacationing in the summer, so it feels really special that way. My dad grew up vacationing there too, so it's a really nostalgic place for me that I still frequent. Chestnut Springs was located just outside of Calgary. I was born in Calgary. All my family still lives there. Ruby Creek from the Gold Rush Ranch series is just outside of Vancouver, butting up against the mountains in the Agassiz area of British Columbia. They're all places that I've spent some time.
You independently produce and publish your audiobooks exclusively for Audible, and you worked with an amazing cast of narrators for your previous series. I love that each title has its own distinct set of voices. Why did you decide to cast Zachary Webber and Vanessa Edwin for Wild Love?
Vanessa Edwin I have worked with before; we did Heartless together. I actually have another book coming with her too, and I just love her. I think she's hugely talented, and I think especially for dual narration, she carries good spunk, good banter. She can be emotional, she can be funny. I've actually sent her a message saying, "Your man voice is amazing." Honestly, she does such a good job and she's just a really great human. So, that's a bonus.
This is my first time working with Zachary Webber, and it was wonderful. He's hugely professional and very supportive. He's just so talented. I knew from having listened to him in other books. When I imagined Ford and his dry delivery and slightly snippy banter, I heard Zachary in my head in that role. I'm lucky that my producer was supportive of it too, and we made it work. I think there'll be more coming from us in the future too.
What’s it like hearing your work performed in audio?
The first thing I want to say is cringe, but not because of the words. It's just hearing somebody read your own work back to you. It's not even the steamy scenes, I can handle all of that, or even talking about it. It's just listening to someone read it back to you. I love listening to the opening parts, and then the joke is, I can't sit still when I get to the more spicy scenes. I will pace my house, I'll walk a circle, or I will go out on a walk. I was listening to the spicy scenes in Wild Love while I was on a plane and I had to stop. I thought to myself, "No, no. People are looking at me," and I'm putting my hands over my face. But it's cool to hear it come to life. There's something thrilling about it to have other people act it out and bring so much emotion to it.
Since your books are now so popular in audio, do you write with the audio in mind?
Yes and no. Yes, because there's things that you start to notice, and part of it is just becoming a better writer too. Hearing it out loud, you start to notice things like when a word is echoed a little too recently. When you're eyeball reading, it doesn't seem repetitive, but when you're listening, because the words seem to come at you faster, it's easier to pick up on the repetition. I've learned there are certain words narrators don't love saying. And because I'm doing dual narration, I try to think of whose perspective it is, who will be reading this chapter, what do I want to happen in it, and would it be better served in another perspective to swap the voice.
Can you share which character will be featured in the next installment of the Rose Hill series?
Book 2 is called Wild Eyes, and it is Weston Belmont's book. You meet him in Wild Love. He's Ford's best friend and Rosie's big brother. He's a rough-around-the-edges, small-town horse trainer with a heart of gold and a great sense of humor. He's just a lot of fun. The heroine is Skyler Stone, a troubled pop star mentioned in Wild Love. You know she's coming to town. They meet right smack-dab in the first chapter. The first chapter is exciting, let's put it that way. So, she comes to town and meets her match.
What are your favorite romance tropes to write and listen to?
I love enemies-to-lovers, or even in Wild Love's case, frenemies-to-lovers, where they don't truly hate each other but dislike each other enough that there's some good banter or bickering or tension, where they know they're not supposed to like each other, but their internal monologue tells us that they do. I love that sort of internal conflict. I also love, on the other side of that spectrum, friends-to-lovers. People who have that deeper connection and know each other really well, and maybe their story unfolds a little more slowly or a little more softly. To me, there's something really, really romantic about those stories too.