Sarah Chamberlain: 'The key to a really good romance is the fascination the two characters have for each other'
BY Maya Fernandes
23rd Jan 2025
Sarah Chamberlain was a student on our three-month online Writing Your Novel course in 2020. We caught up to discuss her debut novel, The Slowest Burn – out now from Sphere.
Read on to discover what inspired Sarah's novel and her advice for creating authentic romantic connections between your characters.
Sarah, you studied on our three-month online Writing Your Novel course in 2020, how did your time studying with us change your writing approach?
It made me a lot better at writing openings! Before I would meander into the plot over several chapters, and the course taught me to dive headlong into the story in Chapter One instead.
The Slowest Burn features a compelling opposites-attract dynamic. How did you approach developing Ellie and Kieran’s chemistry?
The word 'compelling' does a lot of work here. The key to a really good opposites-attract romance is the fascination the two characters have for each other from page one, even as they initially drive each other up the wall. Ellie and Kieran never know what the other person is going to say or do next, and yet they’re dying to figure it out.
The novel uses dual perspectives to explore the growth of both characters. What made you choose this narrative style?
I wanted to show all the tiny internal shifts that my characters experienced as they were falling for each other, and I felt that the only way to get there was to show both Kieran and Ellie’s thoughts. Kieran’s inner world was particularly fun to write – the delight of writing a chaos muppet character who has no filter to speak of!
Food plays an important role in The Slowest Burn. How did your experience as a cookbook translator and food writer shape the culinary elements of Ellie and Kieran’s story?
Oh, hugely. Everything I know about cookbook publishing is in The Slowest Burn. But I am also an obsessive home cook and reader, and I would say food writers like M.F.K. Fisher and Ruth Reichl are just as big an influence on my writing style as romance novelists like Mhairi McFarlane and Emily Henry.
What advice would you give to writers working on their first novel, particularly in the romance genre?
Read, read, read! Then once you’ve been reading for a while, write a big list of everything you love – tropes, microtropes, moments – and put that into your novel. That’s what makes writing truly joyful for me.
As the title suggests, The Slowest Burn features the beloved trope of a slow-burn romance. What is your favourite romance trope in a story and why?
I am particularly fond of a grumpy vs grumpy romance, where one character is a jerk used to storming around and getting their way and the other character is just Not. Having. It. It leads to some very sharp banter and absolute fireworks when they finally get together.
And finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
My second book, a transatlantic culture-clash romance called Love Walked In, is coming out in September 2025. It’s set in a once-prestigious, now failing London bookshop over the course of one winter and features a brash American heroine and a buttoned-up British hero arguing about books and family and legacy as they fall in love. I had so much fun hanging out in London’s bookstores as I wrote it!
Get your hands on a copy of The Slowest Burn.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.