What Happened to Lauren Layne?
If you’ve stumbled upon this from the Internet Wilds, let me introduce myself. My name is Lauren Layne, and I’m a romance author. All are welcome to linger here, but what follows is a long, rambling letter specifically written to my long-time readers, followers, or to six humans who’ve wondered:
“Um, what happened to Lauren Layne?”
It’s long. We’re going to go deep. So grab a drink and buckle-up.
Dear readers and fellow writers,
I won’t play coy. It’s been … a while. We’re talking years since I’ve written a book, published a book, or really shown up at all in the world as Lauren Layne.
(Not counting the 20,000 or so words I have on random paranormal story I started about a grad student and her poetry professor who’s also a vampire … there’s a drafty library, a prophecy about the moon, and a lot of fog 😳)
But anyway, back to my disappearing act.
To be honest, I haven’t ever felt the need to explain. Not in a snotty “it’s nobody’s business” kind of way, it just … didn’t really occur to me. There was no decisive “I’m done with this, I quit!” moment, just a bunch of little things, until one day I realized that I was very much living my life outside the world of being a romance author.
But I think I’d like to explain now, because something happened the other day that made me look at this whole perspective from readers’ view.
Some context: with the exception of Susan Elizabeth Phillips, all of my very favorite romance authors—the ones who made me want to write in the first place—are no longer romance authors. A couple have pivoted genres (Kristan Higgins and Nora Roberts), but most just … fell away. I’m not going to name them, because I don’t want to draw unwelcome scrutiny if they just want their privacy.
But I must confess that I found myself pining for a new release from one of these authors, and stooped to googling “What “happened to [redacted]?” which led me down a Reddit thread with plenty of speculation, zero answers, and one startling epiphany.
Waaaay down on this particular Reddit thread, I found my own name. As in, a commenter saying something to the effect of, “Same thing happened with Lauren Layne; she’s always gone through periods of disappearing [fair], but she seems to have permanently vanished this time…”
It was like that cliché record scratch moment.
It hadn’t really occurred to me that I’d become one of “The Disappeared,” albeit on a much smaller scale than the big names that I was lowkey online stalking. 👀
So while I want to be clear that I don’t think any of my favorite Disappeared authors owe anyone explanations, I don’t mind offering mine.
Where I Went
All is well
First, let me reassure the concerned out there: nothing has been amiss physically or mentally these past couple of years.
Actually, kind of the opposite!
Now, I’m not going to say I didn’t have Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” on repeat for a month or so there, while wondering who the heck I am if not a romance author …
But overall, I’ve felt myself … brace yourself for some flowery language … blooming over the past couple of years. In fact, as Mr. Layne and I were doing our annual reflection at the end of last year (2025), I found myself saying, “It was the best year of my life.”
And it really was.
I’m not sure it’s just the natural process of entering my 40s (I’m a few weeks shy of 43 as I write this), but it felt like the first year that I really sort of gave myself permission to be me. I know that sounds like a bad self-help book intro, and a lot more on that later; this post was getting too long, so I decided to divide it into two parts, and keep this one all about…
Why I Went Away
It was an accident.
I never meant to quit writing. I never remember making a clear, conscious decision of, “I’m done writing books.” I’m not sure I am done writing books (more on that later), but obviously I’ve fallen a long way away from the days when I was releasing 4-6 books a year.
So what happened?
For a while now, I’ve been brightly quipping to friends and family that “I don’t really know what happened, I just sort of lost interest!” But I think I do know what happened, it’s just that it’s a lot of little stuff, not one big thing.
Some of this, I’ve mentioned before, talked about before, and then claimed to bounce back from. I thought I did bounce back from it. Only apparently, I didn’t. It kept piling up behind the scenes.
Industry Changes
For a few years in the 2010s, it really helped my career to produce a bunch of books in a flurry. That momentum is what launched my career far more than any one book. I never had a big breakout book, just a lot of books coming out all at once that allowed me to be a relatively constant fixture on the New Releases radar.
But when the “ebook boom” started to fizzle, and preference swept towards trade paperbacks, “more books fast” was a less effective strategy than it had been in the past.
So I thought, “Well, this is nice, I did my time cranking out books, now I can slow down a bit while still giving the industry what it wants …”
Only, it wasn’t quite that dreamy.
Midlist Moping
I’m just going to say this, and probably get in trouble for it, but here we go. A lot of authors really broke out during this TikTok boom and the shift to the trade paperback (and hardcover) focus. I was not one of them.
I’m not sour grapes about it, truly. Why some books/authors break out and others don’t has been and will always be one of publishing’s great mysteries.
But I can’t say it wasn’t discouraging, mostly because my favorite book I’ve ever written, To Sir With Love (okay, fine, it’s tied with The Prenup), came out during that time period and despite early critical acclaim, mostly fizzled from a sales perspective and reader enthusiasm.
Trapped in my Head
I let myself start thinking that all anyone wanted was from me was more books in the Stiletto/Oxford and 21 Wall Streetvein.
I don’t know if that’s all the way true, but I also know it wasn’t totally my imagination. 90% of my messages from readers are about Stiletto and Oxford or Wall Street.
Now let be clear, I am not blaming anyone for loving those books! I love those books. I wish I could write more.
But I wrote them more than a decade ago—I wrote After the Kiss in my 20s, just a couple months after moving to NYC when the city was brand new and I still wore high heels every chance I could get.
It was an amazing time in my life, but I don’t feel like the same person, much less remember how to write like that person. Every time I try, I feel like I’m just trying to capture Stiletto’s magic, and it feels like a pale imitation.
I also wanted to try writing other stuff. I wrote a book about twin sisters that’s probably closer to women’s fiction than romance, and an editor shat all over it, and it made me question if I should ever even dare to step out of my lane.
I have a bunch of YA ideas floating around, that I don’t think anyone wants. I feel like I could write short, fluffy, sweet Hallmark-esque stories all day if I thought they could sell. And see above about vampires and freaking fog.
But when I thought about putting those stories out there, all I could picture was readers going, “Huh? This isn’t LL!”
On Eggshells
In addition to feeling a little hemmed in by the very well-established brand of my own making, there was some stuff going on in the industry (as there always is) that left me feeling sort of cramped.
As one tiny example, there was a very respectful disagreement over a scene where Kennedy grabs Kate’s arm in that “boat” scene. It was red-flagged and strongly suggested it be edited out for being too … I can’t remember their word. I guess it was just too forceful and grabby? I can’t remember if I “won” that one or not, but those types of notes became a lot more common (not just for me, my author friends all experienced this same shift).
And there was just all the other stuff about the types of books and characters and tone we’re supposed to take. None of it bad, but I did begin to feel like I was having to be oh-so-careful, and I’m not even a particularly edgy author.
I never felt explicitly censored, but there was a paranoid, over-thinking caution every time I sat down to write that made me feel less like … me.
A Wound
In the midst of this, I had a really negative experience while working on Jarod’s book a few years ago. I let it mess me up way more than I should have. It killed almost all joy I had in writing process, as well as my faith in the industry and loyalty, but mostly, it completely shattered my confidence. It wasn’t the only reason I stepped back, but it was the main one. I don’t think I’ve ever really been able to shake it off and “come back” in the way I was before. That’s on me. I’m still working on how to fully put it behind me, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
So. Many. Books.
My two most recent books are Emergency Contact and Miranda in Retrograde. On the respective release days of both, I eagerly headed to Barnes & Noble to see my hard work on the shelf.
For context, there are five Barnes & Nobles in Manhattan alone, and nine in all of NYC. Only one of those nine stores had any Emergency Contact and Miranda in Retrograde in stock. And not on the main floor, not even in the romance new release section, just 3 copies tucked into a bottom shelf.
It was discouraging, but I tried to focus on the very exciting fact that I had a book on a shelf! In NYC!
But now I found myself surrounded by miles of rainbow-colored rom-coms. Which is a great thing for the genre. But I found myself thinking:
“The world does not need another candy-colored romance novel. There are plenty.”
No Sweet Tooth
And also.
I’m just going to blurt this out…
I don’t like the current cutesy candy-colored illustrated cover trend that’s been dominating the industry for years now. I know that’s so superficial and silly, but I can’t muster any interest in them as a reader (I haven’t read a romance novel in years that I wasn’t asked to quote for).
And though I do know this is even more absurd, I have a hard time getting excited about writing a romance, knowing the type of cover it would likely need in order to sell. It just doesn’t feel like me.
I almost wish I had a romantasy idea in me, because those covers I do love. All those dark and moody vibes. 🤩
Or, I’d love to release a book whose cover looked like this or this. If I could get away with publishing a romance novel with those covers without everyone asking me when the “real” cover was being released, I’d probably never have quit. Maybe kidding, but … also kind of not!
Is that stupid? Yes. Was it always on my mind? Also yes.
The Thing I’m Probably Not Supposed to Talk About
Speaking of covers.
I’ve mentioned many times before that the publisher holds all the rights to many of my most popular books, and that remains true, even though the imprint has been defunct for years and there’s no dedicated team devoted to the books. I don’t have the option to give them fresh covers. I don’t have the option to release print versions. I don’t have control over pricing. I don’t have any control whatsoever over of 2/3 of my backlist, which kind of led to me feeling like I had very little control over my career in general, especially, as mentioned, those books continue to be the Lauren Layne gold standard for many of my readers.
It’s not like I folded up my lemonade stand and stomped home over it, I think it just started to get to me after a while, like a nagging “why even bother” albatross.
Social Stress
If you’ve been following my career at all over the past 13 years, you know that I have a hate-hate relationship with social media, save for a a very brief little Golden Age when Instagram success was all about having an aesthetic/pretty grid, and I both enjoyed and was good at that.
But the tide shifted, as it always does, and increasingly Instagram went the same way as Facebook before it, starting to show organic posts to only 1-3% of followers, and then quickly on the heels of that, there was a massive shift to short form video (TikTok and Reels), which I just don’t enjoy consuming or creating.
Publishing feels increasingly performative. I believe that social media can sell books, but I also believe that it’s readers talking about books that sell books, not authors talking about their own books.
I’ve done my own year-long analyses of ROI on this and the data is rather damning, and yet to this day, publishers still pressure me to show up on social media, even when I cite privacy on social media concerns. My agent has gently nudged that if I want to get more book deals I’ll have to “get back out there.”
Show me the data that it will sell more books, and I might.
Might.
Feedback
All of this above stuff, individually? I could have bounced back.
The problem was, I think it started to glom together so that I felt like I was constantly surrounded by feedback. And by that I mean that horrible screeching noise that happens at concerts, when audio input gets too close to audio output.
There were so many opinions and ideas and sales numbers and reviews and industry pressures and metrics and trends coming in, that I could no longer hear what was supposed to come out.
I would sit down to write, and all I could hear is that screeching noise.
At Odds
I guess what I’m saying is that a lot of what it means to be a successful romance author these days started to feel a bit at odds with the kind of the life I’ve learned I want for myself. One that’s quiet, peaceful, and fully authentic to who I am as a person and a creator.
There’s a lot of talk about authenticity in the social media/creator space, but I feel like that always gets translated to being real.
And that’s great. Unless your version of being real is peaceful solitude with your stories and the Bridgerton soundtrack, and writing about vampires in the fog.
I’m not alone in this, I know that. I think most authors wish they could just be left alone to write and not touch the other stuff. Most of them have decided the other stuff is worth it. Some have decided it’s not.
I think I’ve been taking some time to figure out where I fall in all of this…
Which leads me to….
An Update
I really have missed you guys. I know so many of you have been out there re-reading my books, wishing the best for me. This sounds weird (I’m into the woo now, that’s another post), but I’ve felt it. I’ve felt the support and just … kindness and patience and understanding.
And appreciated it.
And I’m back, just with baby steps as I figure out how to do this again, and what it looks like.
