Laurie Batzel is an author of romantic fiction who lives in the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania with her husband, their four children, and two dogs; a corgi named Stuart and the Marvelous Mrs. Batzel aka Midge the rescue pup. When she’s not writing or chauffeuring her kids to one of their five thousand activities, she is relentlessly continuing her quest to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. Her first book, With My Soul, was published in 2019. Her short fiction and personal essays have been featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul, McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies and Harvard College’s Tuesday Magazine.
Harlequin: Tell us about yourself. Our readers want to know!
Laurie Batzel: I grew up in Virginia, moved to Pennsylvania for college and lived in Colorado for a little while when my husband and I were first married. Besides writing, my passions in life include dance and musical theater-I trained as a pre-professional ballet dancer and even majored in dance in college-and history. I have worked as a seasonal park ranger for the National Park Service, as a bridal alterations customer service rep, a dance teacher and a physical therapist assistant in orthopedic outpatient, hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. All of those experiences have provided a rich source of materials for the characters I write!
H: Why did you want to become a romance writer?
LB: Growing up, I loved the Sunfire Romance novels, a series of historical romances where the title was always the main female character’s name. There was something so satisfying to me about escaping to a world where the happy ending was guaranteed no matter what obstacles the characters faced along the way. That certainty allowed me as a reader to relax and enjoy the journey along with my fictional friends.
H: What were the big steps in your journey to becoming a published author?
LB: Although I’ve loved writing as long as I can remember, it didn’t occur to me that I could actually sit down and write a whole book until 2017 when I started writing Downton Abbey fanfiction online. I intended to jot down a few pages of a plot line I wished the show had explored and ended up writing a fifty thousand word novella!
Once I realized this was something I could really do, I wrote my first book, With My Soul. It’s historical romantic fiction inspired by my grandmother’s journey as a single mother in the years immediately following WWII. It was published by a small press in 2019 and it was so gratifying to share that story with readers. It took a few years of writing multiple books, literally hundreds of rejections, making friends in the writing community and learning the craft of storytelling before I signed with my incredible agent, Stacey at Three Seas Literary. This path requires a lot of persistence and patience, but I’m so grateful for the encouragement from my friends and family that has kept me going.
H: What advice would you offer aspiring writers?
LB: Writing has always been an outlet for me and if you love to write, then carving out time for yourself to put words on the page is always worth it even if no one else sees them. But if your goal is to become a traditionally published author, then my advice is this: find motivation that is both meaningful and achievable. So much of this process will be out of your control, you need to have a reason to keep going that matters to you.
I lost a dear friend to breast cancer in 2014. At her funeral, her family called on all of us present to “pass on the joy” she left behind. For me, romance novels are the most concentrated source of joy in the world (except, perhaps, for warm chocolate chip cookies). So my motivation is to make one reader smile, to give just one person an escape from their stress or worries through my books. If I can pass a little bit of joy to one person I’ve never met, then I feel like I’m honoring the promise I made to my friend.
H: What did you do when you got the call from Harlequin?
LB: My agent called me on a Monday morning. Usually my husband is in the office on Mondays, but that day he happened to be working from home. So after I finished squealing at decibels that made the dogs go wild, my husband poked his head around the corner and said, “does this mean we have something to celebrate?” He has been nothing, but supportive from the moment I said, “I think I want to try making a career out of this,” all those years ago. It was so wonderful to share that moment with him.
Now let’s hear from the editor, Johanna Raisanen:
I received Laurie’s manuscript from her agent, Stacey Graham, with an enthusiastic note attached. I started reading, and right away Laurie’s voice stood out because she’s so darn funny! I was laughing out loud a lot, but she also managed to hit the right emotional notes as well. I passed it over to Kathleen Scheibling, the senior editor of Heartwarming, and I think I gushed about how much I liked Laurie’s book. Happily, Kathleen agreed!
