Meet the Author Monday: Alexandra Vasti

It’s Meet the Author Monday! Each week we meet a new author and get to know a little about them, their writing process, publishing experience, and tips for other writers. Today we’re talking to Alexandra Vasti, author of “Earl Crush“.

About Alexandra Vasti:

Alexandra Vasti loves coffee, beignets, and books, in no particular order. She is the author of Ne’er Duke Well and the Halifax Hellions series. In between writing swoony Regency romances with hijinks and heart, she teaches British and Caribbean literature in New Orleans.

Alex comes from a long line of romance-reading Vasti women. She fell in love with historical romance at age 11 and still swoons for Laura Kinsale and Judith McNaught.

Alex lives in Louisiana, where she teaches literature at a university by day and writes USA Today bestselling romance by night. Somewhere in there she also raises three kids and two mostly feral kitties. She’s powered by guacamole and oat milk lattes, though not usually at the same time.

After finishing her PhD at Columbia University in NYC, she moved to New Orleans, where she lives with her very large and noisy family. She writes steamy, laugh-out-loud historical romance with lots of heart.

About Earl Crush:

‘‘Both a rollicking romp and the most tender of love stories… Sexy, kind, and full of adventure!’ Naina Kumar, USA Today bestselling author of Say You’ll Be My Jaan

Right girl. Wrong Earl.

Lydia Hope-Wallace’s secret life as the anonymous author of rebellious political pamphlets has led her into a correspondence with the charming Earl of Strathrannoch. When she learns he’s in dire financial straits, Lydia sets out for Scotland to offer him a marriage of convenience – to, erm, herself.

Arthur Baird, Earl of Strathrannoch is stunned when a bewitching stranger offers him her hand in marriage. But when he realizes that his traitorous brother has been writing to her under his name, he’s bloody furious.

Desperate to track down his estranged sibling, Arthur needs Lydia’s help. What he doesn’t need? The attraction that burns hotter each moment they spend together. As Lydia slips past his defences, Arthur will have to risk everything to keep her safe – even his heart…

Hot, hilarious and heartfelt, this racy Regency romp from bestselling author Alexandra Vasti is perfect for fans of Bridgerton and Lex Croucher

‘Bridgerton at its sexiest… Crush? Ha. I’m in love with the earl!’ Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author of Viscount In Love
‘Wildly delightful! … Marvelously funny and sexy’ Joanna Shupe, USA Today bestselling author of The Scandal of Rose
‘Witty banter, endearing characters, and smoking hot chemistry’ Liana De la Rosa, author of Ana Maria and The Fox

Author Interview with Alexandra Vasti:

1. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?

My community of author friends is absolutely critical to my life, career, and basic sense of joy and happiness! From my critique partners who read early drafts of my work to my group chats where we commiserate about publishing hiccups, I simply couldn’t do this job without them. My dear friend Felicity Niven is a brilliant historical romance writer, and together we run a historical romance book club on Facebook called The Ungovernables. And my bestie Colleen Kelly also writes historical romance—Colleen and I have an enormous amount in common (we’re both British literature PhDs, we both have three kids, and we even used to live a couple of minutes away from each other, before we ever met!). Felicity and Colleen always make me laugh, and they’re also always happy to flatter me extravagantly when I need a boost.

2. Does your family support your career as a writer?

Yes! When I was a child, my mother and grandmothers loved to read and were enormous fans of the romance genre. This was so important for me, I think—I never had the sense that the romance genre was shameful or inferior. I grew up secure in the knowledge that romance novels can be joyful and important and empowering. And my mother gave me my first historical romance (Whitney My Love) when I was eleven years old! Which is perhaps a bit young for that particular book, but obviously she knew what she was doing, because here we are!

Today, I’m married with three young kids, and I couldn’t do any part of my job without my incredibly supportive spouse. In fact, I wouldn’t even have started trying to publish without him! I had been writing books for years and talking about pursuing publishing, but never actually acting on it. And in 2021, for my birthday, he made me a list of literary agents who were accepting romance queries—and six months later, I finally got up the courage to give it a go.

3. Have you always wanted to be a writer?

I have! I wrote my first romance novella when I was 14: a romantic suspense about a journalist and a PI (which to be honest was probably Nora Roberts fan fiction). After college, I pursued an MFA in creative writing and then a PhD in British literature at Columbia University in New York. I shifted my career goals toward academia, but I always wanted to write novels as well. In fact, it really wasn’t until after I finished my PhD that I felt like I truly understood how to do the primary source research that I wanted to do in order to write the kind of novels I wanted to write: historical romantic comedies that are very much grounded in the political and social complexities of the period.

4. What advice would you give a new writer, someone just starting out?

I have a bit of an allergy toward giving advice, but I will say that the most important advice for me personally has been to read and read and read. I read widely—both in my own genre and outside of it—and I find that it always reminds me of the joy and delight I take in books. It helps me write more creatively and also recall why I’m writing—the pleasure and fun that I want my readers to experience when they read my books. (Some of my favorite romance writers include Laura Kinsale, Tessa Dare, Talia Hibbert, and Cat Sebastian. And I also read tons of nineteenth-century books for my academic career as a literary historian.)

5. Is writing your full-time career? Or would you like it to be?

Writing isn’t my full-time job, and I don’t want it to be! I’m also a tenured professor, and I am really passionate about my work at the university. I think that these two careers enrich each other in so many ways, and I feel so lucky to be able to do them both. Being a professor lets me indulge in my favorite thing, which is talking about books, and it also gives me the chance to think really deeply about how books are put together and what makes them work for readers. And I also spend a lot of time immersed in the 19th century! And I think being a writer makes me a better teacher of writing, and helps me relate more thoughtfully to my students—because it is scary to put your writing out there and know you’re going to get feedback on it.

6. On a typical day, how much time do you spend writing?

I spend a couple of hours writing every single day! And a couple of hours reading. And a couple of hours teaching and grading papers, and a couple of hours hanging out with my family, and there goes the day! Thank God my spouse does the laundry.

7. Do you have any new series planned?

Yes! My third and final novel in my current series comes out in September. It’s called Ladies in Hating, and it’s a sapphic Regency rom-com about a pair of rival Gothic novelists who accidentally get trapped together in a haunted mansion as they’re researching their next books (and come to find a lot more than they bargained for).

And my new Regency romance series will start in 2026! The first book is called Scheming of You, and it’s about a trio of heiresses on the lam who forge an invitation to a country house and accidentally infiltrate a band of smugglers.

To learn more about Alexandra Vasti, here’s where you can find Her: