As a professional romance novelist, she publishes books at a furious pace — it’s never enough

This is a love story. But like many, it’s long and lopsided. Kathy Lyons loves writing romance novels. And the romance novel industry — which claims a sizable percentage of the fiction bought in this country — only loves Kathy Lyons when it’s convenient. You might consider this an unhealthy relationship. Or at least, a long-term codependent affair, marked by frustration and only a glimmer of the exhilaration true love promises.

Kathy Lyons, faithful scribe of Champaign, definitely would.

The romance between Kathy Lyons and the romance novel industrial complex is so complicated, fickle and undying — albeit typical for many romance novelists — she has changed her name several times. She has remade herself into what she thinks the romance novel business wants her to be. Not once. She was born Katherine Greyle and first wrote as Katherine Greyle. When she married, she became Kathy Grill, but “Grill” wasn’t especially romantic. So she wrote as Kathy Lyons. Playing off her Chinese heritage, she began writing books as Jade Lee. Last year, she eased into diversifying her resume and started writing children’s books, which meant adding Cat Chen to her aliases. She learned to rebrand: Jade Lee uses green and gold colors in her marketing; Kathy Lyons uses red and white. In a genre of vampires, unexpected babies, bodice rippers and frontier librarians, she’s even tried a few grizzly-bear paranormal romances.

She started 25 years ago, and she hasn’t stopped.

Since 1998, she’s has been on USA Today’s bestseller list for one week. That’s her high-water mark. She has written more than 80 books and sold about a million copies. She has fans and the respect of peers. In return, publishers have remained mostly indifferent. Which makes her average for this profession. Sara Reyes, who runs Fresh Fiction, a popular online gathering spot for romance readers, knows Kathy well. “She is very typical for this world. She hangs in there. She knocks out two or three books a year. Sometimes more. She does not get much notice but she’s also the backbone of a business, providing stories readers look for. How many of these writers can support families doing this — that’s another thing. But they are chasing a dream, and I hate to use that phrase churning it out, but it is true.”

Kathy Lyons, from her home in an upper-middle-class subdivision of Champaign, writes 2,000 words a day. Roughly eight pages of a novel. She does not allow herself days off.

She says, bluntly, that if it wasn’t for her husband’s salary — he’s the vice president of a large company that manages apartment complexes across the Midwest — what she makes annually on her romance writing would place her uncomfortably below the poverty line. She budgets about $15,000 a year for promotion — advertising, author appearances — all of which comes out of her pocket. Because many of her books now appear first as e-books, a typical one will sell for only about $2.99. A standard pricing scheme for a new romance series can be even queasier: The first book often goes for $.99, the next is $1.99, and so on.

And yet romance publishing, as we know it — just poke your head into an airport bookshop if you’re not familiar — is a booming $1.4 billion business that, according to NPD Group research data, is also the fastest growing category of publishing. The genre is thought now to make up about 25% of all fiction books sold.

Not that being an author in a growth industry makes it easier.

Kathy’s story will sound familiar to anyone who makes a living on their imaginations. Yet being a romance novelist is a special hell. The die is cast: No matter the story, a happy ending is required. Or some version of happy. Industry jargon distinguishes a HEA (Happily Ever After) from a HFN (Happily For Now). According to a 2021 study of 4,270 romance novelists conducted by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, 17% earn north of $100,000 a year, but the median income is closer to $10,000 a year. Major successes — such as the “Bridgerton” novels of Julia Quinn that became a smash Netflix series, and the sorta romance novels of Colleen Hoover (the biggest-selling author of 2022) — fuel hopes, but odds are long. So much so that a Tennessee romance writer made headlines last month after emerging on Facebook two years after faking her own death; the pressure drove her to it, she told the New York Times. Indeed, to stay relevant, Kathy needs to write a new book every three months.

“The thing is, (romance novelists) who take off often have nothing to do with talent and mostly to do with luck,” said Brenda Chin, a former editor at Harlequin who edited Kathy’s work at three publishing houses. “Kathy tries different things to make her stand out, she has the goods, but a publisher puts money behind a few people and if you’re not one of them? You’re in trouble. I’d say 90 percent of (romance writers) fit into that. On the other hand, ones I know who have made it are exhausted. They can’t keep up.”

The first time I heard the name Kathy Lyons was about eight years ago. I called a novelist in Champaign and said I was interested in writing about the reality of a romance novelist, but she was headed out of town. Her novels had taken off at last and she was moving. It was February and the “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchise was hot. She mentioned Kathy, who, being thrown a bone by a more successful friend, liked the idea:

“Holy (expletive)!” she shouted into the phone when I called.

Then quieter, she added: “Sorry, but holy (expletive).”

Kathy isn’t thrown enough bones. When we first met, her publisher at the time had asked her to write about shape-shifting grizzly bears who seduce bakers and accountants. Werewolves were feeling passe. Her editor said, think of it like Smokey the Bear’s hotter cousin.

Kathy was not excited. One afternoon soon after, I visited Champaign. We were in her kitchen and her husband, Dave Grill, came in wearing a short-sleeve polo and, without a word, moved toward a small mound of cat vomit and began cleaning. He asked what we were talking about. She had just decided not to be competitive, she said.

“OK,” he said, having heard some version of it before.

“And also, I have decided to stop doing this for financial gain.”

“Huh,” he said, cat puke in hand.

“From now on, I will write because I like to write.” Her voice broke a bit and she stood and walked to the front door and adjusted the American flag in front of the house then returned to the table. “Dave,” she said, “I guess I decided — sexy grizzly bears? Really?”

He nodded, he knew.

“I mean, if I’m going to continue, I’m going to have fun for once.”

Eight years later, having put her story aside several times, I realize I have heard some version of Kathy’s “I’m done, I’m doing it my way” speech four or five times. Dave has heard it more. But Kathy will not quit. She doesn’t want to quit. She turns 60 this spring. She recently signed a three-book deal to write children’s titles for an imprint of Penguin Random House. She has a multigenerational (non-romance) novel on the burner. But every time she quits the romance game, she returns. The most recent time was during the pandemic. She retired from the business entirely. That lasted six days.

“That time, I had my come-to-Jesus moment,” she said. “I hadn’t broken out at any publisher. I played in historical romance. I played in paranormal romance. I played in contemporary. I played in mystery, which I am bad at. I did a straight fantasy. But I missed romance.” She thought of leaning into Asian romance. “But what story do I tell? I’m Hoosier on my dad’s side and Chinese on my mom’s.” This was before the #OwnVoices movement swept publishing, insisting that authors from underrepresented groups write characters of their own backgrounds. Kathy, as Jade Lee, wrote historical romance set in China.

“But nobody bought them just because they were representative,” she said.

Her long-term problem was the same as nearly every writer in the genre: When every book in your section of a bookstore looks literally like every other book, how do you distinguish yourself? Since she started, she’s written sports romance, regency romance, time-travel romance. She’s written “50 Ways to Ruin a Rake” and “One Rouge at a Time,” “Lady Scot” and “Lord Scot,” “Wedded in Sin” and “Wedded in Scandal,” “Her Wicked Surrender” and “His Wicked Seduction,” “What the Bride Wore” and “What the Groom Wants.” She did, in fact, finish six grizzly bear romances, including “For the Bear’s Eyes Only” and “The Bear Who Loved Me.” When her Jade Lee persona gained some traction — especially her Tigress series — she wrote “White Tigress,” “Hungry Tigress,” “Desperate Tigress,” “Burning Tigress,” “Cornered Tigress,” “Tempted Tigress.”

Sales-wise, there’s been some smoldering, but no raging infernos.

Her husband finally said, “Honey, look, just break even.”

The cool thing, he told me, is that “Kathy has writers who look up her now as a mentor. She has author friends who aren’t even as successful as she is. But I think early on there was more optimism about this. Now I tell her: Write what you want, don’t worry.”

Easy for Dave to say.

Kathy, who took her first steps into writing romance around 1988, has been trying to write a happy ending for herself ever since. It took about a decade just to get published. She’s been doing this so long that her two daughters, now adults, are no longer easily embarrassed teenagers in high school, horrified that their mother writes erotic fiction.

If everyone in the world could meet Kathy Lyons , they would want to read Kathy Lyons. She’s optimistic and cheerful and quick, even when she recognizes things are trending downward. Her dark eyes water behind big smiles. Her hair is practical and she seems mom-like, but very hard to keep up with; before blowing her knees out, she was a pro racquetball player. The first time we met in person, she was seated in her car, outside the offices of Sourcebooks in Naperville, a large independent publisher. She was going to visit her editor. It was winter, her windows were rolled up and though we had only spoken on the phone, I knew it was her: Her car was overloaded with boxes of books and she waved her hands and laughed, presumably talking to someone on a phone. Later she said she was talking to herself, practicing arguments.

Inside the building, editors, marketing people, everyone Kathy encountered, they were polite and harried. They had given her a fair amount of promotion, but her books were selling less than 3,000 copies each. Kathy felt a chill. She wanted them to just come out and say they were done with her, but no one did. She pitched them good ideas, but she figured, at this point, any new book ideas needed to be brilliant.

A year later she was dropped by Sourcebooks.

Deb Werksman, a close friend of Kathy’s who edits fiction at Source, said she cringes at that word — “dropped.” She said her door is always open to new pitches. But she always sensed Kathy “wanted to write more deeply, in a more literary way. She’s a pretty strong writer and a natural storyteller, and there’s something more in there.” At the same time, “an author also has to think of their brand and what they are known for.”

Lyons went to the romance publisher Entangled, “but they would give me requirements on the number of sexual scenes I had to include. A 70,000-word book needed at least five. And I never could do five. The point was that any conflict would be worked out sexually. When I was starting (in the business), a typical Regency romance was all above the neck. By the time I did my first Regency, everything was super sexual. ‘Fifty Shades’ changed the math. I do know how to write sexy, but bumping and grinding gets tired.”

One Saturday afternoon she settled back in her chair with her laptop. Her husband sat on the couch reading the newspaper. She pecked at keys. Stopped, pecked, stopped.

“Dave! I don’t get it,” she shouted finally. “I don’t get spanking.”

“Honey,” he said, “I have no need to spank you.”

“I don’t mean you! I mean these books — I can’t write this (expletive).”

“Well, why do you need to?”

“Because I like money.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “we have enough money and you don’t need to write spanking?”

That’s love, right there.

They own a nice ranch home in a neighborhood that people in witness protection would consider kind of ordinary. They are doing fine. Kathy has some inherited wealth from her father, who made a fortune on real estate and shopping centers. She can afford to write broad romance fiction with nuance that doesn’t hem to the same formula book after book. She knows how to keep the door shut during sex scenes, as she puts it. But she prefers to keep it open. She is not much for the Clean-and-Wholesome niche, “the usual meet-cute, antic, antic, antic, then ‘I love you.’” She likes goofy heroines and romance that involves mutual support beyond the crisis of the moment. She doesn’t write Sugar Daddies or S&M heroines. Her typical character is an outcast who will endure a lot but eventually find her home.

But Kathy’s take on romance doesn’t sell quite as well.

Around her workspace at home, taped to walls and desk tops are reminders to post on social media, reminders of self-care, reminders of self-affirmation. For a time she tried a “spiritual experiment” and would say out loud that she is whatever she wanted to be in this life. “I knew royalty checks were coming that week, so for a while I said ‘I am successful, I am successful ...’ Then I opened one of the checks and it was for $1.82.” It was not a shock. She was picked up by Dragonblade, an independent romance publishing house that has had major success with e-books, a growth area for the genre. Except, profits for authors of e-books, generally, are significantly smaller. Advances tend to be tiny — about $1,000 a book, or more typically, nonexistent. Since she’s been a published author, her books have sold wildly different. Some have sold only 100 copies; some have sold 85,000. She used to make around $18,000 per book, particularly with Harlequin. Now it’s closer to $5,000 a book, and that’s over the lifetime of the book.

That royalty check couldn’t pay for a Starbucks latte, and yet, she had written well that week. She finished a new book. “It didn’t matter if it was $1 million. I felt successful.”

The romance genre is arguably the last genre you can be openly snobbish about. Science-fiction, horror, detective, crime novels, they all have their champions and literary cred. Romance, less so. Its writers — mostly women, writing for women — accepted this long ago. A casual sexism has stalked it from the very beginning. George Eliot herself set the tone in 1856, anonymously publishing an essay titled “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,” defining the books as “The frothy, the prosy, the pious and the pedantic.” Never mind that Jane Austen and the Brontës (or Sally Rooney now) snugly fit the contours of the genre. What we know as the romance novel today, though, really started in 1972 with Kathleen E. Woodiwiss’ “The Flame and the Flower,” which combined a Happily Ever After with graphic sex scenes. Dovetailing with the sexual revolution, the romance novel took off by word-of-mouth.

Or rather, whispers.

Kathy found romance novels as a teenager, when her older sister quietly handed down copies. It was a Champaign family of five girls, with a mother, born in Shanghai, who ran a strict home, Kathy said. “Most of us got master’s degrees, but my mother was always disappointed that we didn’t get Ph.D.s.” The second youngest works at Apple; the oldest was at Nokia Bell Labs. Kathy — who studied English at the University of Michigan — was the weak link, she said. “Until the day she died, my mother insisted I wrote ‘cheap trashy romances.’ She could never concede I could be happy if I wasn’t making millions.” Initially, Kathy planned to write TV and film scripts; she moved to Los Angeles to study screenwriting at University of Southern California. Because she wasn’t “getting anywhere with that,” she started writing romance novels as a way to ease the stress.

She had met Dave Grill as an undergraduate at UM, but after graduate school at USC, they returned to Illinois for his work. Once she sold her first book, she found herself tumbling through a strange, robust genre with its own language and pace. She took training classes with the Texas-based Romance Writers of America, which, once influential, has been roiled for years by racism accusations. Membership (like readership) was 80 percent white; the industry itself avoided Black or Asian heroines. Kathy found herself thinking in tropes and jargon. An “F2L” was friends-to-lovers. A “Regency” was romance set in 19th century England. “Dubcon” was dubious consent. “Mpreg” romances had male pregnancy. It was a world of conferences, endless marketing and, most startling, a ceaseless writing treadmill. The core fandom might buy a couple dozen books a month, and read nearly that many.

Harlequin alone publishes more than 800 books a month in 19 countries.

“I don’t like thinking of it this way, but it is an assembly line,” said Kathryn Le Veque, who parlayed her successful, independently published “Dragonblade” romance series into the successful California-based Dragonblade Publishing, which publishes Lyons.

Being considered lowbrow “hardly matters at this point,” Le Veque said. “If ‘Bridgerton’ can’t give it legitimacy, I doubt it’ll break out (of that reputation). No one reads romance, yet it’s a huge chunk of the market? As long as I pay my mortgage — and I’m talking to you from a multimillion dollar mansion — the publishing world can look down its nose.”

There’s a saying among romance novelists:

Bank before rank.

Cindy Dees likes that. She and Kathy, who were friends as undergraduates, rose through the industry together. Except Dees, a former Air Force pilot and spy, now pulls six figures from romance writing. She also recently sold a story — albeit, a thriller — to Netflix. She’s heard Kathy announce she’s quitting too many times to believe it. But she understands her frustration: “The top romance indies are making millions at this. But Kathy is more restless. She’s the vanguard, the one experimenting with new types of stories in this genre, before the rest of us get there. She’s written about the slave trade, Chinese concubines. Her gay romances are more about zany humor than sex. She’s become influential in this market, but she’s always a little ahead of the readers.”

What Kathy Lyons will not do is write a sad ending.

Or even a bittersweet one.

She doesn’t have it in her, she says. She believes the fundamental contract between a romance reader and a romance novelist is that things will work out. She’s too positive to write anything else. She admits she’s a bit jealous of Cindy. She said the first time one of her books was published only as an ebook, and the publisher told her they could only offer her what they pay a beginning writer, “it was a huge ego blow.” Friends and family used to ask her about the business and pitch her ideas for new books, but that’s years ago. They no longer ask. It’s still hard for her to talk about being dropped by publishers.

“I decided I am the equivalent of the B-list actor. I can get steady work just about anywhere, I can get a contract easily, but I have given up the dream of being popular.”

A year ago she got a call from Joyce Sweeney, an agent for children’s book authors. She needed ideas for new books. She asked Kathy to write about 50 kids books — about 200 words each — and see where that leads. “She was a natural,” Sweeney said. “A lot of writers in this area don’t take it seriously as a career but to Kathy, it’s a job.”

They landed a three-book deal; plus, advances for children’s books are about five time as large. The first title arrives next spring.

But Kathy hasn’t sworn off romance.

She wakes up daily at 6 a.m. and writes in her gratitude journal, then finishes another 2,000 words of a romance novel. She’s been talking to a spiritual guide, who suggested that she adopt a mediation. “They said I should remind myself that writing was the ‘wet stone of my soul’s refinement.’ That what’s important about my books is how they change me. And that selling my books is actually incidental. Which is so nice to hear. It helped confirm my sense all along that I should just be doing this for myself most of all.

“But then again, it also pissed me off so much I didn’t meditate for a week.”

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com