rainy days & fictional men

Dear Book Friends,

Apparently, the rain decided that since it had ignored us for most of the year, it needed to make up for lost time all at once.

Which has honestly turned this week into a very specific kind of mood.

More naps. More staying inside. More “I’ll just sit down for a minute” and then suddenly waking up two hours later under a blanket while rain hits the windows.

Not the worst thing, honestly.

I’ve also become deeply invested in Power Wash Simulator lately, which feels ridiculous to admit out loud because the entire game is just… cleaning things.

That’s it.

I put on music (K-pop, obviously), and methodically clean dirt off playgrounds and houses and weirdly grimy statues for hours. It sounds dumb. It is dumb.

And yet somehow it’s incredibly soothing.

There’s something very satisfying about slowly making chaos manageable again.

Which, now that I think about it, might also explain a lot about the stories I love.

I’ve been thinking lately about how my favorite romances are rarely about whether two people fall in love.

I like stories where they do fall in love—sometimes early—and then the real problem is everything outside of them.

The family expectations. The politics. The danger. The world trying to pull them apart.

It’s one of the reasons I love K-dramas so much.

Give me: he falls first, he falls harder, and then the two of them against the world?

Absolutely every time.

Which probably explains why the things I’ve been writing lately have involved emotionally intense people making questionable decisions while outside forces make everything infinitely worse. Funny how that keeps happening.

Also: Thornbriar Academy and Hell-Baited Wolves are both now fully in Kindle Unlimited for anyone in the mood to binge something dangerous while hiding from the weather.

As for me, I’ll be over here with rain sounds, fictional men with problems, and apparently a digital pressure washer.

Happy reading,

Cali

p.s. Do you prefer romances where they get together early and face the world together… or maximum slow-burn suffering first?

My destiny. Their ruin. A fate we can’t escape.

Dark Is My Exile is an introduction to the Wicked Realms series, and is a fast burn dark romantasy #whychoose romance with elements of forbidden love, found family, morally gray men, plot heavy romance, wicked Fae, and political conflict with enough spice to keep you reading all night long.