Stacey Damiano: EVERY bit of feedback is helpful, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time
Stacey Damiano is, by day, a massage therapist, esthetician, Reiki practitioner, and meditation teacher. She has always loved to write––fantastical stories as a child and angsty poetry as a teen and young adult. Currently, she has a professional blog that she faithfully neglects. She is a member of exactly zero professional writing guilds, clubs, associations, or groups.
Stacey lives in Wisconsin with her husband, two sons, a chocolate lab, and a rotating number of cats. She enjoys reading, hiking, traveling, and general merriment of all sorts.
Blitz:
Name: Stacey Damiano
Book title: Shell Shocked: A Gen X Love Story
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release date: August 16, 2024
Blurb: Twenty-five years after his face papered the walls of her bedroom, Shelby Ristow is about to meet her celebrity teenage crush. And as soon as 80s soap opera star turned reality TV host Jake Ford walks into her salon, she discovers he is still perfectly capable of making the butterflies in her stomach perform advanced flight maneuvers. It's not long, though, before Shelby finds her nostalgia and nervousness taking a backseat to the undeniable chemistry sparking between them.
When an audition video from a vivacious pinup style esthetician vying to be featured on his show “Dare Me To Do It” catches his attention, Jake Ford can’t deny his immediate interest in Shelby Ristow. Now meeting her in person, looking every bit the technicolor temptress her video promised, he is thrown off his game in the best possible way. There is only one problem. She is married.
Months later Jake learns that a tragedy has left Shelby single, and he jumps at the chance to reconnect with her. Drawn together by an intense physical attraction and something else– something undefinable, the two begin a scorching affair. Almost immediately, however, the aftershocks of past trauma have Shelby falling apart at all kinds of inopportune moments. Meanwhile, Jake, grappling with his own history in his own way, is more than happy to pick up her pieces.
When the path forward requires honesty from Jake and trust from Shelby, can they each reconcile events from the past and find their way? Or are they just providing what the other needs in a fated connection not meant to last?
Please tell our readers about yourself.
I am a 52-year-old massage therapist, esthetician and meditation teacher, wife and mother. I’m an avid reader and enjoy the occasional streaming TV show binge. I love music and dancing, inclusion, hiking, kayaking and paddleboarding, traveling, building bridges, going out with friends to restaurants, cafes, or beer gardens. I dislike black licorice, raw onions, misogyny, unceasing negativity, snap judgment, and finger-pointing without considering someone’s life circumstances.
What inspired you to be a writer?
I’ve loved to write since I was little–being an only child blessed me with a spectacularly vivid imagination. I’d write fantastical stories in grade school, feeling like the characters were my friends. In my late teens and early twenties I pivoted to angsty poetry, pouring all my unrequited love, heartbreak and pain out onto paper. Once I met my then boyfriend, now husband, an epically green flag, golden retriever of a main character man, the well of pain went dry. I tried a professional blog for a hot minute, but I wasn’t consistent.
Tell us about your writing journey so far.
I began writing this book in 2012, before that, I hadn’t written anything really in nearly 20 years. My preferred reading genre had always been more suspense, psychological thriller, or mystery, so the inspiration to write romance seemed to come out of nowhere. Since then, I have become a VORACIOUS romance reader, and my next five books that have spawned in my brain are all romance, including one paranormal (with vampires!)
What is your writing process—from idea to final draft?
Like I said, I began writing in 2012, but I only finished the book early this year. An eleven-year hiatus. The basic plotline was there back then, as were rough versions of the characters. Bits and pieces and random inspiration would come to me now and again, and I’d jot them down in my organized binder, but I honestly never saw myself finishing this book. Cut to summer of last year. I did some major soul-cleansing work and lo and behold the space for writing the book was created. I revamped my outline, spewed forth a handwritten brain dump of the book out onto several notebook pages, and began my first draft. I wrote every day, and I found using time as a guide instead of a word count served me better. I also have a writing ritual (light a candle, use a scent, play a song) all to trick my brain into recognizing “writing time” and hopefully successfully summon that persnickety muse. (I also did cool and weird things like meditate to “interview” my characters and get into a theta brain wave state to coax “downloads” when I hit a roadblock.) I was able to crank out my first draft in less than two months and then began the second draft while everything was fresh in my mind. I set it aside for a month before the third draft and then sent it off to beta and sensitivity readers. Made a few changes, hired an editor (love you, Nevvie), and a final draft was achieved.
You’ve recently published Shell Shocked: A Gen X Love Story. What inspired you to write this book?
Honestly, it was born from a dream. I continued to daydream using the same premise, and the story just developed from there. At the heart of it, I think I was frustrated by the few romance books I had read up to that point where the female main characters had low self-esteem, were pretty one-dimensional, and had nothing of substance to them until the love interest came along to sweep them off their feet (or bring them into their supernatural world and put their life at risk. Or lure them into a questionable power play relationship and...put their life at risk.) Also, I was interested in reading about characters who were my age. Characters who had some good years under their belt, some love experiences that may not have gone well, and now they’d be coming into this new relationship with some real-life emotional baggage to unpack.
What were your biggest challenges?
Time. I have a day job and a family and household to manage. Thankfully, my family was overwhelmingly supportive of me on this journey, and the fact that my boys were older and could often fend for themselves was helpful as well. I’d have a significant amount of imposter syndrome creeping in from time to time as well–I knew the story was good, but I was unsure as to whether or not I would be able to do it justice with my writing. The more I wrote, the more confidence I gained.
What are you most proud of regarding this specific title?
Honestly everything. I am proud that I finished it. At first, it was just to get it done to a level that I felt good about with no real plans of publishing. The more I worked on it, the more I realized it’s a story that needed to be told and needs to be shared. It became a story of healing. My main character ends up finding her way on her own, the story doesn’t revolve solely around her relationship with the main male character, and that to me is so significant. I have had such affirming feedback from women who’d gone through things similar to Shelby, and my soul is filled to overflowing.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The downloads! Sometimes I would just be inundated with an entire scene or solution to a sticky plot point (often at very inconvenient times). My entire prologue came to me all at once, and I spent an hour and a half after work one day furiously typing it all out. Also, I didn’t mean to write it as spicy as it ended up, but my characters insisted on sharing all the delicious details.
How do you create your characters?
My characters introduce themselves to me. And so far, it’s been the case for all the books I’m planning as well, that they come before the plot. They show up with a rough outline and become more and more nuanced the more I think about them and the more the plot forms. I’ve only used inspiration from people I’ve seen or met in passing for very peripheral side characters. None based on anyone I know (yet.)
What is the current (or next) project you are working on?
My next book will be the first in the Explorium Resort series. They’ll be highly erotically charged novellas all taking place in a resort like a Hedonism. The first book will be about guests Gigi and Seth, characters also around my age. I have ideas for an owner/employee (age gap), and a guest and employee (reverse age gap). In between the Explorium books, I have a small-town friends to enemies to lovers (with a twist… there will always be a twist.) Finally a paranormal throuple (a human woman, a vampire woman, and a vampire man.) A good mix of lore and STEM included.
Many of our readers are fellow independent writers, some of them at the very beginning of their journey. What advice would you give them?
The best advice I ever got was describing the first draft as you shoveling the sand to be able to build sand castles later. So many good nuggets in regard to a first draft. You can’t edit an empty page. Anne Lamott says “don’t look at what your feet are doing, just dance.”
The HARDEST part was sending my book to beta readers. The first time someone else lays eyes on it and has something to say. EVERY bit of feedback is helpful, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. Even a rude comment serves to thicken your thin baby author skin. The first time someone you don’t know tells you your book moved them, inspired them, or truly meant something to them, it is unlike any feeling in this world.
To learn more about Stacey and her book, follow her on Instagram.
