One Year on Bookstagram

One year ago, today, I decided on a whim to start a Bookstagram— A book-themed Instagram for those uninitiated. I was feeling remarkably lonely in the throes of mothering two kids two and under. I was uninspired and asking myself what I even did anymore that was just for me. The answer was not much. I had quit my day job as a high school English teacher on the tail end of the COVID pandemic so I could stay home with my kid, which turned into kids plural shortly before my firstborn’s second birthday.

So, there I was, at home with a two-year-old and a seven-month-old baby. My days were filled with diaper changes, peeling bananas, nursing, making bottles, taming tantrums, and all together trying to keep two small people alive and well. Oh, and I was reading. A LOT. Like, about as much as I did in middle school where I was putting away a book a day. I wanted to talk to someone about the books I was reading. I wanted to connect and feel less alone. My husband isn’t much of a reader, and certainly not a romance or romantasy reader, so he was out. My friends read, but they also had, ya know, jobs. So, I couldn’t bug them whenever I wanted about the books I was reading. And my extended family views my reading habits the way one views a benign growth. Interesting, but also kind of strange.

Enter Bookstagram. I had come across a few booksta accounts on my own private Instagram, and I thought “Hey, I could do that!” And then I spiraled with anxiety over what anyone who knows me would think about it. Would it be embarrassing? Did I care if it was? I finally decided that no, I didn’t care if it was embarrassing (it isn’t) because I deserved to do something that could bring me joy. So, I pushed past the uncomfortable feeling of creating a public account for something that had, until then, been so deeply personal and private.

I started my account as @reading.and.ruminating— An homage to my diagnosed anxiety disorder and my preferred method of coping. Almost immediately, I made friends. It felt a little like my first day at school as the new kid, but everyone was so welcoming and kind. Here were people who talked about romance and fantasy among other genres openly! Who gushed about books and loved them as much as I did. Who geeked out over their favorite authors, and swooned over their favorite couples.

I quickly fell in love with this space. I posted five to six times a week about the books I was reading, relatable reels about being a reader, and eventually, my journey to being a published indie author. I never got burned out because if I was ever feeling it, I would step back for a day or two until my creativity was back. The entire time, and I mean ENTIRE time, I had a community of people cheering me on. I answered DMs daily, chatting about books and life. Gushing over MMCs or railing against injustices done to the plot. Along the way, I’ve made some truly amazing, long-term friends who I know I can count on for both book recommendations and a listening ear, or a shoulder to cry on.

During my first year on bookstagram, I also started my journey as an indie author. I was so anxious about making the slow switch from being someone who hyped up others’ books to being someone who hypes up my own. I made the switch to @author.megan.bowen soon after finishing the first draft of my debut, Like Home. I was worried about it (even though I knew it was a silly thing to worry about), but it turned out to be an unnecessary concern. The people who had found me and enjoyed my content stuck around for the most part, and cheered me on doubly as I started talking about my first book. I truly found the best cheerleaders and friends on bookstagram.

During my first year, I had a couple reels go semi-viral (about stickers on books of all things), and learned that it’s not all people make it out to be. Not only does the net reach beyond your typical audience (meaning you get some really rude people engaging with your content), but you also don’t get many followers out of it like one would assume. I’ve had a few videos reach hundreds of thousands of people each, and I’m ending my first year at 2,000 followers. Which isn’t a bad thing! But it just goes to show that trying to “go viral” doesn’t always do what you think it will.

I’m happy to say that I’ve had slow and steady growth, and I’ve been enjoying reaching potential readers and connecting with people in a new way. Bookstagram has given so much back to me, filled my cup that was near empty, and allowed me to meet some truly amazing friends (If that’s you, hi and thank you). I am so thankful to past me who took a leap of faith, and I can’t wait to see what year two will bring.

What Coloring My Hair Taught Me About Myself

Just this week, I dyed my hair back to (or at least an approximation of) my natural hair color. Ground-breaking stuff, I know. I’ll get there.

Growing up in the early two-thousands meant I had ALL KINDS of unkind terms to apply to myself and my appearance at my fingertips with the internet and tween magazines at the ready. My natural hair color (a cool-toned dark blonde/ light brunette) has been called everything from mousy to the color of dirty dishwater.

As an impressionable tween, it was made pretty clear that my natural color was at best undesirable and at worst ugly. So, like any self-respecting seventh grader, I begged my mom to take me to the beauty store and get some box dye. The success of said dye job will be left up for interpretation, but let’s just say that what was supposed to be brown turned inexplicably swamp green. Yikes.

Nearly two decades go by and at this point, I’ve had my hair red, brown, and blonde for many years. Before this current dye job, I had been bright, icy, balayaged blonde for almost eight years in total. I was getting sick of it and wanted a change.

It might sound sort of ridiculous, but I was also scared of that change. When you go blonde, everyone tells you how good it looks and that you should keep it. It is, after all, the societal standard of beauty and the most desired color (despite all the dumb blonde jokes, but we can talk about THAT another time). It felt scary to give up the thing that so many people had complimented me on and that I honestly did like on myself.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I came across a TikTok of someone talking about how so many blondes were dying their hair “old money brunette” (the internet has a name for everything, I’ll tell ya) and that anyone who was telling these newly minted brunettes that they looked good was lying. Now, I was curious. WTF is old money brunette, and why are so many blondes going that route?

I clicked on the little blue search term and found quite a few videos of hair transformations in which blondes were dying their hair a light brown/dark blonde. A few of the videos looked remarkably like my exact natural color. And to my even greater surprise, I found myself looking at the color with envy and longing. I thought it was so pretty! Even more shocking was that the comments agreed with me. So many people remarked on how nice the color was.

What really struck me were the comments from people saying, “This is my natural hair color! I love that it’s getting upgraded to old money brunette rather than dirty dishwater blonde.” It brought me back to the days when I used to look at my natural hair with despair and think about how much I hated it.

I was now able to look at the color with new eyes, though. Over the years, I have done my best to practice radical self-acceptance. It is freeing to look upon my body (one that is not the societal standard for beauty by any means) and say, “So what?” With this practice, I have tried my best to do away with looking at my body negatively. In keeping with this practice, I saw my natural hair color and thought, “Huh, maybe I should try it again.”

So, off to the stylist I went. When the cut and color were finally done, I felt myself actually close to tears. Because here was the color I used to have such disdain for, and instead of feeling that way, I felt pretty. As I’ve lived with it for the last several days, I love it more and more each time I look in the mirror. It’s a reminder that what I was born with isn’t so bad, and that I just have to look with kind eyes to see the beauty.

Okay, so how does this relate to Summer in Like Home? Well, I set out to write a book about a plus-sized female lead where the book wasn’t about her size (you can read the blog post all about that here). In order to do that, however, I had to make sure that Summer wasn’t going through any sort of body acceptance journey. She accepts herself as she is and makes no apologies for her size.

As mentioned above, I aim for the same sort of self-acceptance, but it’s challenging to maintain sometimes. Especially when we are constantly bombarded with ideas about what is and isn’t beautiful and what we should or shouldn’t be ashamed of by social media and the media in general. So, writing about Summer was very healing for me. To write from the perspective of a woman who looked like me and didn’t feel the urge to think about her weight constantly rewired my brain a bit.

By dyeing my hair back to its natural glory and feeling beautiful when in the past I would have felt the opposite, I feel that I embodied my character a little bit. There was power in going back to a color I had previously disliked but now found beauty.

While I know “old money brunette” will fade like any trend, I am so thankful it brought me back to my natural color and reminded me that what I am born with is worthy of being called beautiful. I’m not saying I’ll never go blonde again, but I’m definitely going to hang with this color for a while and indulge in the healing of my inner child. Little seventh-grade me is happy to find herself beautiful, no matter what the rest of the world says.

The Plus-Sized Problem

Plus-sized, mid-sized, chunky, curvy, robust, overweight, fat. All terms used to describe people over a size 10-12. No matter what you call it, being plus-sized is a fact of life for roughly 67% of U.S. women. That’s right, over HALF of the country’s women are considered plus-sized (though there are about a million different ways to categorize them). So, why then are there so few books written about and for them?

As a plus-sized woman myself, this is a question I’m constantly asking. Despite the fact that there are millions of us, we are chronically underrepresented in media, and when we are, it’s a capital “s” Statement. If there is a plus-sized actress in a starring role or a plus-sized female lead in a book, it’s shocking. It’s radical. It’s noteworthy.

Which, can we be real for a sec? It’s ridiculous.

In real life, plenty of plus-sized people are just living their lives. Some are dramatic and intense, others are mundane. Some have had an adventurous life while others haven’t left their home town. The point is — Plus-sized people: they’re just like you.

Which brings me back to the question: Why are there so few stories told about us? When I started reading contemporary romance regularly, it wasn’t something I noticed right away. Throughout my lifetime, I have been conditioned that thin, small, and delicate is the ideal for a female romantic lead. So, inevitably, when those were the women presented in my romance novels, I didn’t bat an eye. At first.

Then, I went down the rabbit hole of “plus-sized” romances (they needed their own category because OBVIOUSLY they couldn’t be grouped into mainstream romances). Not surprisingly, there are very few romances written about plus-size people in comparison to the gazillion written about straight-sized women. And when they are, most of them come with a sort of tagline like “curvy girl romance,” or “plus-sized romance.” Because, you know, they need to come with a warning: HALT, FAT GIRL FINDS LOVE. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

I can acknowledge that these tags are also there so people like me can find books about people who look like the person they see in the mirror. I get that. It also has to do with SEO words and the like to make the books more visible.

However, I noticed that most of these books have a few things in common. Either the FMC is on a journey of self-acceptance (because she’s fat), already accepts herself loudly (because she can’t just like her body like normal, it has to be a Statement), or has to deal with some really awful people in her life (whose main issue is that she’s gasp, fat).

Or, on the flip side, there are a lot of plus-sized romances that fall in the smut category. In fact, I’d argue that MOST of the plus-sized romances available fit into this category. Which, don’t get me wrong, I love a good smutty romance. But, in some ways having the “plus-sized romance” catalogue dominated by smut is its own sort of problem. In some ways, it feels like the only way a plus-size lead can have her own romance is if it’s in a “taboo” genre. Because being plus-sized is “outside the norm” even though it’s really not. Again, the number of plus-sized women in the US is in the hundreds of millions.

In short, the plus-sized FMC has to cope in some way with her size. Her body is a plot device. An obstacle. A thing to be “gotten over.” Because it can never just be a romance where they fall in love and have a happily ever after AND she just happens to be plus-sized.

Over time, this started to get to me. Why can’t there be a romance where the woman’s size isn’t an additional character? Where her size isn’t something to be overcome, but is just a part of her characterization like the color of her eyes?

Lots of books with plus-size female characters have her deal with: an overly diet-focused parent, a rude past relationship, struggles with weight gain/weight loss, thoughts about how fat she is, thoughts about how everyone ELSE must be thinking of how fat she is, massive insecurity around her body, and characters openly fat-shaming her.

Listen, I’m not saying these struggles don’t happen in real life. I know they do. But just like they don’t happen to every fat person, they don’t need to be in every romance about fat people. It positions her romantic partner as a sort of savior for wanting her in spite of her size. It makes it seem like it’s impossible for a plus-sized person to find love without first having to reckon with what they look like. And that’s a gross narrative. There is nothing inherently wrong with being plus-sized (despite what the media or your mother tells you).

I wanted a romance where a plus-sized woman finds love. And it isn’t shocking. It isn’t a Statement. It just is. On my Instagram, I asked my followers in my stories to share any recommendations of romances with plus-sized leads where the story isn’t ABOUT them being plus-sized. I got one single reply out of the over 1500 people who follow me. And to be honest, even that one centered around the fact that the lead was a plus-sized person.

Cue, Like Home, my debut novel. Summer, our lead character, is a plus-sized woman. Does she deal with some minor insecurities here and there? Yes, because she’s human. We all deal with insecurities whether we’re plus-sized or petite. Does her weight contribute in any way to the plot and how it moves forward? No. Because her being plus-sized isn’t a plot device. It just is.

Summer Evans is the character I wish I could have read about growing up. She is kind, loving, a good mother, an avid reader, courageous, and completely content with her appearance. I intentionally made her journey with finding love and navigating co-parenting not about her size. There is no diet talk, no “he won’t want me because I’m fat,” and no fetishizing her.

Again, I don’t want to come across like I’m bashing any authors who have written characters who struggle with their weight. I think those are important stories too. I just want a little diversity in the way stories about plus-sized women are told. I wanted my book to feel like any romance novel you would pull off the shelf from Barnes and Noble or Target. I wanted it to be romantic and hopeful without the constant barrage of body shaming (internal and external) that seems so prevalent in books about women who aren’t a size two. I wanted other plus-sized women to read my book and see themselves in Summer— a woman who is not defined by her weight but by her character, perseverance, and kindness.

So, if that sounds like something you’ve been missing from your shelf, stay tuned. Like Home will be in your hands before you know it.

-Megan

The Spark

What better thing to write about for my inaugural blog post than the spark that got me started with my debut novel releasing in the Spring of 2025, Like Home?

If you were to ask my family or friends what I do in my spare time, they would, without a doubt, mention that I am a voracious reader (they probably wouldn’t say voracious because they lovingly laugh at my pretentious vocabulary). I have always been obsessed with stories. My mom constantly talks about how I would ask her to read to me over and over until I learned how to do it myself.

My interests and preferred genres have evolved over the years, but one thing has always remained: I love a good love story. Even in my horror novels, I love it when there’s a romance subplot. I feel that to love and be loved is one of life’s greatest joys, so I delight in exploring that through books.

In 2021, I had recently started my career teaching high school English to freshman and sophomore students. As we can all recall 2020-2021 wasn’t exactly a great time to be a teacher (or any profession for that matter), so when I got pregnant with my son in January of 2021, it felt serendipitous. My husband and I had decided that I would stay home with our kids when they were little to avoid the daycare costs and because it was something I always wanted to do.

So, summer of 2021, I packed up my classroom and drove off campus for the last time. For the past twenty-five years, I was in a constant state of motion. Suddenly, with a baby due in September (he came in October, but that’s a story for another day), I was looking at about four months of time where I had no direct obligations. No school, no work, just free time. I hadn’t had a summer off in years, and with pregnancy growing more and more uncomfortable by the hour, what better way to pass the time than to read?

While pregnant with my first child, I was extremely anxious over, well, everything. From how my life would change in ways I could only imagine to all the infinite ways things could go wrong. I was in desperate need of some happy, fun reads to distract me from my doom spiral. Enter Kindle Unlimited and the infinite number of romance and romantasy books in its catalogue. I binged those books at an almost alarming pace. I could not get enough of people finding the loves of their lives and living happily ever after (even if it was with a blue alien).

There was something so cathartic about these stories. How above all, love persists. Worlds can end, and lives can change, but love is indomitable. In a time of my life when I was experiencing a huge, unpredictable change, romance novels offered me a safe place to escape. I was literally reading a Lucy Score book while I was being induced!

Fast forward to early motherhood— Sleepless nights, endless feedings, and losing yourself in a way you never thought possible (you find yourself later, but again different story for a different day). I was still reading to pass the time, boost my mood, and feel less alone. But after my son hit his half-birthday, I started to get an idea.

What if a romance reader realizes she deserves more than what her current relationship is giving her? While my husband is indeed a swoon-worthy hero in our love story, what about the women who read romance as a way to get what they are currently missing?

I tossed this idea around for a few months, and then I started to write it down. I had never done creative writing in this capacity before. I had always dabbled, but the things I wrote tended to be short stories or poetry, not full-length novels with complex characters and individual motivations. I am not someone who meticulously plans out what I write, so I tackled the book scene by scene. I knew where I wanted Summer, my FMC, to end up, but I had no idea how I was going to get her there, or even if her story was going to be readable in the end.

All I knew was that I had to get this story out of my head. I wrote parts of it on my phone, sitting on the floor with my baby. I wrote parts of it on my laptop during naptime or after bedtime. And then, just after my son turned one, I got pregnant with my second child.

Pregnancy? Exhausting. Pregnancy while chasing around a rambunctious one year old and battling morning sickness? There are no words for the level of exhaustion I felt (turns out having pregnancies only a year apart can lead to anemia, who knew?). I could hardly make it to eight p.m. most nights, let alone write, so Summer and Ryan were relegated to the dark musty corners of my saved files, story unfinished. In other words, they went where stories go to die.

When I finally had my second baby and made it through the first six months of her life, I felt some energy return (note: I say some because two under two is not for the weak.) I started thinking about Summer and Ryan again, and wondering if I would ever get around to finishing their story.

In early 2024, I found myself desperately seeking community. I was feeling extremely lonely and uninspired in the daily grind of parenting two small children. Make no mistake, I LOVE my kids, and being home with them is a privilege and joy that I am thankful for every day. AND, it is often an exhausting, thankless job where you are constantly the last to get your needs met. I am a creative and social person, so the change from teaching students every day to spending my day with a toddler and a baby was stark.

I had always been hesitant to have a public-facing profile, especially one that discussed my interest in books. I had it in my head that no one would care, or that I wasn’t creative or interesting enough to take up space on an already oversaturated platform. However, I found myself wanting to talk to someone about the books I was reading. So, I finally took the plunge and created my bookstagram, @reading.and.ruminating.

This community of wonderful people connected me with readers and writers from around the world. Suddenly, finishing and indie publishing my first book didn’t seem quite so unreachable because here were hundreds of other people doing it and thousands of readers willing to read and promote indie authors.

So, with the support of my little community, I decided to dust off Summer and Ryan’s story. I read through and revised the 40,000 or so words that I had written two years prior (cringed a little bit) and started writing new ones. Like before, the story poured out of me quickly. It was all I could think about and I spent every spare moment (of which there were few) shaping Summer’s HEA.

Like I could only hope they would, my little community rallied around me. They cheered me on while I finished the first draft and cried with me when I typed The End for the very first time. To this day, they continue to cheer me on and offer a helping hand while I figure out the next steps for getting this book of mine out there.

So, what was the spark for my first novel? I guess it was really more of a slow burn— a lifetime of reading love stories, the mental space to write it all down, a community of supportive people, and the amorphous, indefinable place where all ideas come from.

Like Home will be coming to a Kindle or Paperback near you in the Spring of 2025! Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on Like Home and all future books.

May your book be five stars, and your beverage perfectly made.

— Megan