Jen DeLuca Books In Order

Publication Order of Well Met Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Author Jen DeLuca was born and raised close to the city of Richmond, Virginia. She felt that there weren’t enough hurricanes and alligators, so she decided to get down to Florida just as quickly as she possibly could.

She has written for as long as she can remember. Her early stories were about little girls that had dogs and napped, since you write what you know. She tried writing fanfiction for some time, which she finds is a fantastic way to plot, since the settings and characters are right there.

As a writer, she is a plantser, which is a combination of pantsing and plotting. She does really need an outline, however. Jen first develops a bullet-point outline of the beats for the story, so she will have a sort of road map of what will happen. Each plot point is a landmark on the road map. Along the way, she learns about her characters while she goes, this is where pantsing comes in. sometimes she will hit point I before point H and that is the fun part. Just so long as she knows the ending, she doesn’t mind taking some weird back roads to hit it.

She also never edits while she goes, finding that if she does, she will never get it finished. Jen pushes right on through until she has finished her first draft, and then starts editing. Should something have happened in the second chapter, she makes a note of it there, then act like she has written it already and keep moving.

In the year 2016, she wound up getting into Pitch Wars with a romance book she was working on, and while she worked with Brighton Walsh, she was able to sign with Taylor Haggerty, her agent. The book she wrote for Pitch Wars never sold, but the one she wrote after that did.

“Well Met” was inspired in part by the time she spent volunteering with her local Renaissance Faire. She was a tavern wench with the Lady of the Lakes Renaissance Faire in Tavares, Florida for two seasons after she attended it for quite a few years.

She was struck with the way that she felt like a completely different person when she was in the costume, and just how the corset made her walk, sit, move, and even breathe differently. She was also doing an improv all day, interacting with those she came across. She actually was a different person, and not just acting like one. It made her start thinking about an enemies to lovers tale where two people start out not getting along, but while in costume there is suddenly an attraction to each other’s personas.

Jen claims that she writes contemporary instead of fantasy is due to the fact that she is much too lazy to world build. She does believe there is one advantage of being a contemporary author: you’re working with a basic setting that the reader knows already, rather than having to build it from scratch. She attempted to make Willow Creek, the fictional town in “Well Met”, feel like a truly lived-in place, with a local bar hangout, a bookstore, and the Renaissance faire tucked away out in the woods.

Jen thought that once she signed a book deal, she would feel a lot more confident and things would be smooth sailing. That really wasn’t what happened. There was still a ton of nervous crying and rending of garments, and waiting, particularly in that last few weeks before release when her emotions were all over the place. The highs, like getting a look at the cover of the novel that first time or getting the ARC in the mail, are just incredibly high and it makes it all worth it.

Jen’s first career was in theater, working as wardrobe master and worked backstage as an ice-show dresser. She is able to strip an ice skater down and put him into a Klingon costume in under a minute.

She lives in Florida with her husband, in a house filled to the brim with rescued pets. During the day, she picks cat hair off of her clothes and fights with at the very least one of them over her office chair. Jen loves latte-flavored lattes, the Oxford comma, and Hokies football.

Her debut novel, called “Well Met”, was released in the year 2019. The novel is a romance.

“Well Met” is Jen’s first novel and was released in the year 2019. Emily knew that there would be some strings attached when she moved to the tiny town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the entire summer to help out her sister recuperate from an accident. Who would be able to anticipate getting roped right into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire right with her teenaged niece? Or the inscrutable and irritating school teacher that is in charge of the volunteers would be incredibly annoying yet impossible to stop thinking about him?

The faire is the legacy of Simon’s family and right from the beginning he makes it crystal clear that he has no time for her infinite suggestions for new acts to shake it up. Or her odd Shakespeare conspiracies. Or her lighthearted approach to life. On the fair grounds he turns into a whole other person, as he flirts freely with Emily as she is in her revealing wench’s costume. Could this attraction actually be real, or possibly part of the characters they are playing?

This summer was just supposed to be a pit stop on the way heading somewhere else for Emily, but quickly she is unable to shake the fantasy of starting up something much more with Simon. Or maybe a more permanent home all her own in Willow Creek.

Fans found this one to be smart, sweet, swoony, cute, and it made some want to go to a Renaissance fair. It is an adorable, fun, and sweet romance with some lovable characters in it. Jen is able to conjure up the tone and setting of a Renaissance fair that it makes you feel like you are right there in the woods with everybody. Readers couldn’t stop smiling as they were reading this one, and found it was a unique gift to the world of rom-coms.