Hey bookworms! I'm Juniper and The Soul Feud is my first contemporary romance novel. I was inspired to write this story after watching the city of Seattle gentrify. At that time in my life, I was beyond angry. I'd be out at a bar and strike up a conversation with a stranger, only to have to bite my tongue after finding out they had moved from California to take a job at someplace like Amazon. There were so many moments where I wanted to scream, "Go back to where you came from! I grew up in the PNW and you're ruining my home!" I stewed in my anger (unlike Raven, who has no filter ;), until eventually I also had to leave the city to afford the life I wanted to live. During my time in Seattle, I met a woman who was from an inner city neighborhood on the East Coast. She had talked about the changes that were happening in her former neighborhood. I assumed she felt the way I did, that gentrification was terrible and the people participating in it were terrible and something needed to be done! Instead, she said, "I'm really happy for my parents." I was like, "huh?" She looked at me and smiled. "Yeah. The neighborhood is safer. It's cleaner. I don't have to worry about them anymore, and the violence that used to be there. And they deserve that." I took a step back. I am not from the inner city. In a lot of ways, I've led a privileged life. So who was I to tell her she was wrong about her own lived experience? I've been chewing on what she'd said ever since. I believe gentrification is an important issue. And I'll admit, I don't have the answers for how to fix it. I only know my lived experience. But the truth is, I've made friends with some of the people who have gentrified my home. I love them, and I'd be sad if they left. The Soul Feud is a steamy romantic comedy and examines gentrification on a micro-level. It is about how this far-reaching societal issue impacts two individuals and their ability to understand and communicate with one another (yes, miscommunication, the resulting fear of being vulnerable and the avoidance of hard conversations are recurring themes). It's about one woman's struggle to hold onto everything she loves, one man's journey to accept his inadvertent role in that struggle, and the steps they both must take in order to better themselves and meet in the middle. I wrote this book when my rage and my pain were at a breaking point, when the only healthy way for me to process them was to find a way to laugh again. Raven was the character I needed at that time. Her pain was my pain, and yet I didn’t want it to define her. I wanted to acknowledge it, but allow her to exist outside of it. Patrick was the character I needed to believe in at that time. I needed the hope that ignorance wasn't always evil or ill-willed, and could be changed for the better. And I knew from my own lived experience—it is possible to love the "enemy." I wanted to acknowledge his ignorance, and give him the grace to grow out of it. I don't believe that when two characters get their happy ending, all the problems in the world are fixed. But I do believe change starts at the individual level. I believe in gray areas. I believe drawing lines only leads to more division. I believe in forgiveness. And I believe that if enough people can reach the point where Raven and Patrick end this story, we might all end up with a better, more loving world.