'Uptown Love' with S.M. Love

I would like to welcome back amazing author SM Love. How are you? I am doing well. How are you? I'm doing pretty good. So you have a new book under your belt. But before we kind of take a look at that, tell us for anybody who does not remember you from before, a little bit about who you are and what really sparked your interest into becoming an author. Yes. So, I am a DMV, Washington, D.C., based author, born and raised. I write women's fiction with all types of sub-genres. So, it could be romance, urban fiction, historical, like, whatever. But my main focus is that my main characters will be women and it will just, you know, showcase like us and our eternal struggles. And I what got me into writing was I have been an avid reader since I was since my teenage years. um so this has been it basically been part of my life reading and writing um so I decided to just go ahead and jump out you know take a leap with faith and here I am on this journey and you're doing great so your latest release is Uptown Love which is um a love story that's based in New York and it follows Keisha and Malik and Keisha is like this independent woman you know she's built her fashion career and like that's her focus and malik has been her best friend since middle school and it's secretly like you know they secretly love each other but they don't really know you know like how to say it because her guard is up and he's like i'm just waiting for you to stop playing games and so tell us a little bit about what kind of went into creating their love story yeah so uptown love was a collaboration for pages in the city it was a event back in july um so when the founder of the event came to us with this idea i immediately was like yes i wanted to sign off for it you got me we had to pick a borough in New York um so i pick Harlem because I love Harlem, like in my mind I was like, I'm a Harlem girl, okay? Like it was just a given, um, when I started brainstorming I wanted to do a friends to lovers, that was my main trope it was just immediately I was like, this is gonna be a friends to lovers and I wanted to do a set setting where it was a summertime, a weekend, um, a fake date so all these ideas just came to me and I wanted to create you know my my FMC Keisha to be someone who was guarded I I knew I wanted her to be a fashion designer, don't ask me why, I just I I just knew I I knew that's what I wanted her career to be, um, and I knew I wanted my MMC, um, to be someone who was her rock, um, I wanted to do a best friends, I wanted Malik to be that patient person that had been there with her whole life like I I just wanted to write a story where I wanted the readers to be like, Keisha, come on you don't see it? This man is in love with you, like I just wanted the readers to feel all those feelings and how we, like, something could be right in front of us but we're so used to this person being there, um, and also we have this doubt that we don't want to mess anything up that we kind of start self-sabotaging when it comes to it, so I just I do assume when I did the outline and the brainstorming for it I just do those things I wanted to include in this story and with Keisha I loved her, like how she was like her clothes like looking the best was like her guard, that was another form of, like you know, having her guard up because as long as she looked good like that was her main focus not really how she felt, you know, like on the inside, and I remember I tagged you in my story when I read like the one line and it was like aren't you tired of working so much and pushing people away i was like miss girl you did not have to read me like listen and i was reading myself yes but i loved it and she made me so mad with that little and i gonna give it away with that little incident at the wedding i'm like girl okay now i wouldn't be that slow it's like you what are we doing yes yes i wanted like oh i wanted keisha to like make people's blood boil like this man you you you telling us how this man been there like he was the one carrying your fabrics he was the one showing up in your fashion shows he was the one that would sit up there when you had your first heartbreak like girl get it together this man is telling you if i come as this date i'm not doing no playing i'm coming and i'm coming for real and you still even when you start feeling the feelings and once you start feeling the feelings like okay this feeling more than our friendship it's feeling like more she immediately self-sabotaged with the wedding scene like she you know she got scared and for the readers they feel it like she's getting scared and she's like okay i'm about to ruin this yep and i loved how like her best friend was like yo like you better quit playing before you lose him you know like and i get where she was coming from because you know like her last heartbreak it it made her feel like she was too much everything that she had going on it was like you're not worthy you know enough to be loved you got too much going on you're not worth it and malik always showed up he stood ten toes down when it came to her like he didn't care middle of the night call he's there and i kind of get where she was coming from because of what she went through before she had her guard up and then she was also scared like okay what if we try this and it don't work then that mess up our friend like how could we go back you know to being best friends or you always being there for me so I kind of get she didn't want to mess up her support system especially after everything that she went through but it's like if you don't try it you know you put you like just lay it out on the table and I think a lot of times communication is like a big thing where people don't communicate and they don't know how to communicate and if she could just say hey I do like you I do have feelings for you I have since middle school but these are these are my flags of what I'm scared about don't let him pay for somebody else's mistakes yes yes and we like i know what for me personal experience because when i write these um stories every female character is like a piece of me in the story is the experience i went through um and i had a habit of that like a habit of you know one waiting for the other shoe to drop like i just knew it's coming i'm bracing myself for it i'm not even living in a moment and enjoying this because i'm so busy waiting for the other shoe to drop and also basically holding like what people did to me in the past you know holding that against this person like oh you saying that but i done heard that 50,000 times yeah you start timeline like all right let me see i'll give you another week yes listen like me and my friends we saying three months yep that's what you see if like three months is the make it break if it make it past three months then yeah this person might be good to go yeah we just counting down counting down so i just wanted like and it's real life like that's how we all do male or female like we had to have especially when we um and that's not more so like we know with life you're to have heartbreak and stuff not going to go right but i think it's us having the expectations and us you know holding on to the potential like we saw this type of future with this person and it don't pan out um and then this person like her ex you know him telling her you're too much um and him being intimidated by her career um we take that as a personal and not think of it as it's that person's problem we gotta start thinking about it like that's the you problem next for you in this literary world like is there are you currently working on another book are you kind of on a hiatus right now and then maybe there'll be a book that comes down the line yeah so right now i have one more release for 2026 which would be my holiday um collection and it's coming with three stories so i have a thanksgiving story a christmas story and a new year's um story so it's the holiday collection that will be dropping in november um november the 20th i want to do it right around thanksgiving um and then after that i'll be on a little break yeah which is always good to have those like moments to breathe yes yes i'll be on a little break is not that long a little short break because i really learned that i can't take a long break because my mind start what like my mind be going a hundred miles i'm like okay i'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs and i need to be outlining something i could be working on a chapter so my break never that long but i'm gonna try to give me a month but we're gonna see how that work usually i only last like two weeks and then it's like yeah yeah out and about then you like get ideas and stuff especially about like the holiday season you see so many different examples and you'd be like oh yeah okay that could be a book this could be a book you know you just start writing down notes and the next thing you know you got a whole a whole thing yes yes and then you know the holiday season like you get with your friends like i get with my friends and stuff and we do catch up and I'm hearing stories like hold on I'm gonna have to put this in a book now hold on let me get my phone out to write this in the notes to give you a voice memo you saying what happened he did what well as always it is great taking the time to come and chat with you and I can't wait to see your next releases come out and then hopefully I'll have you back before you go on your break so thank you so much for coming to chat with me and book lovers we greatly appreciate it Thank you so much for having me. It is always a pleasure.