Please introduce yourself and your book(s)
Hi there! I’m Emily S Hurricane, author and freelancer. I’m an east coast Canadian work-at-home mom of two humans and a furbaby. I write in many genres, but heavy on the erotica and romance, so I’m constantly weaving relationships, throwing wrenches in them, and stitching them back together.
Tell us about the characters and relationships in your stories
My most popular romance is Wrong Number, a slow-burn angsty forbidden love story. It centers around two people who are unhappy in their marriages and form a friendship that eventually leads into something more once their current relationships dissolve.
Carson is a forty-something doctor, and he’s married to a thirtysomething artist and philanthropist, Gina. They have two teenage daughters together. They haven’t even been in the same room together in years, their relationship completely null and void at this point. He’s still in love with her and misses her, but he also knows that she’s having an affair and clearly doesn’t feel the same. He’s resigned himself to supporting her until the girls are old enough to move out, keeping up appearances that they have this happy life.
Jolie is in her early twenties and miserable, as her and her husband John got married right out of high school and she never did anything with her life. He comes from a rich family, so Jolie never had any ambition or never had to lift a finger, and while he works long hours, she toils away each day drinking, eating, and smoking too much. To complicate things, her best friend Alicia is John’s sister, so Jolie’s entire social circle is her absentee husband’s sister and the barista at the local coffee shop where she nurses her hangovers. John isn’t cheating on Jolie, but they are just different people as adults than they were in their teens and even when they first got married, and neither knows what to do about it.
Jolie and Carson meet by accident via Jolie texting a wrong number thinking it’s Alicia, and begin an unlikely friendship. With both of the turmoil in their relationships, it feels easy to speak to a stranger because they can’t confide in anyone in their lives without unraveling those relationships completely.
What lessons could readers learn about real-world relationships from your novel(s)?
The biggest themes in Wrong Number are the importance of healthy communication and self-love. Through all of the angsty difficult experiences these two characters go through, they learn that they need to take care of themselves and communicate their needs properly with the people around them–especially their spouses.
This takes a lot of time and self-destruction and waffling and bad decisions, but eventually they each figure out that they need to be honest with their families and themselves, and eventually each other.
I think that these two things are super important in real life relationships. I don’t recommend going on alcohol benders any of the rocky stuff that Carson and Jolie go through on their journeys. Taking a step back and trying to identify exactly why one is avoiding confrontation in a relationship is key to moving forward. And self-care is so so important, because we need to believe that we’re worth the happiness that comes with having a healthy relationship.
(If you or someone you’re in a relationship with is struggling with substance abuse please please get help: https://drugabuse.com/alcohol/hotlines)
What real-life relationship experiences, observations or insights have influenced your writing?
I have definitely had some rock-bottom times in my early relationships. I also definitely partied too hard in my early twenties to deal with those difficult times. A lot of my life experiences worm their way into my writing, sometimes more directly than others.
I think it can be so cathartic to really delve into personal issues through fiction. Having a character feel all of the things that you feel and seeing how they react and what they do to get themselves out of it–that’s my self care. And it also helps me to let things go, in a way, because I’ve exhausted every avenue of examining a life experience and also immortalized it in a story.
Are there any relationship themes or topics you want to cover in future releases?
Not specifically, but I tend to gravitate towards writing just hot mess characters. They’ve got nothing figured out and are generally stuck in situations that they have to figure out how to claw themselves out of, tooth and nail. This brings along all kinds of different opportunities for relationships (romantic or friendly) to grow and help and make them learn about themselves–and maybe even the reader to examine themselves, as well.
A comment I get a lot from readers is that they can relate to my characters because they’ve had a similar experience and don’t often see it portrayed realistically in fiction. This makes me feel seen, and also gives me the warm and fuzzies that someone else felt that way too.