Workplace Romance: Ick or Aw Yeah?
An interview with author & director Bri Castellini from Forced Proximity
Before we dive into today’s interview, a quick announcement: Paperback preorders of Love Apptually are now available on my new Etsy shop.
It’s the only place where you can order a signed copy of my debut novel, with special tie-in goodies you can’t get anywhere else. All purchases come with an adorable bookmark and stickers, but items are limited, so don’t miss out!
And now on to the main attraction—I’m so excited to introduce you to Bri Castellini. She’s a fellow 2024 debut author, film director, and creator of Forced Proximity, one of my favorite romance newsletters.
Every week, she shares three book recommendations on a particular romance subgenre or trope, but this week, we’re switching things up to discuss workplace romances specifically.
I sat down with Bri to chat about why workplace romances are so appealing, and on Friday, I’ll pop by Forced Proximity to reveal the books I recommend most.
Come get hot & bothered at the office with us!
An Interview with Author & Director Bri Castellini
1. Hi Bri, tell us about yourself! How would you describe who you are and what you do?
Hello! I’m Bri Castellini, a freelance independent film educator and consultant by day, indie film writer/director, and a soon-to-debut romance author by night and on the weekends. I also review and recommend romance novels weekly on my newsletter, Forced Proximity.
I’ve been a writer since I was a kid, got my BA in Creative Writing while I was still in my YA phase (my college thesis was an epistolary YA novel written in emails, blogs, and social media posts). Then, I shifted gears to get my MFA in Writing and Producing for Television, which has been my professional focus since 2014.
I’ve spent the last eight years in screenwriting and indie production, working for a variety of traditional media companies (MTV, Paramount), a few graduate film school programs, and digital media startups. Now, I’m a freelancer who teaches classes about creative crowdfunding and indie film production and offers consultations for filmmakers on the same subjects.
But I’ve found my way back to prose by way of adult romance the past two years, and I’m excited to incorporate the genre into my professional and creative future!
2. What got you into the romance genre, and what were the first books that made an impact on you?
In early 2022, filmmaker (and now debut romance author) Yulin Kuang, whom I knew somewhat from when we were both making web series around the same time, posted a bunch of stories on Instagram about romance novels she’d read and loved recently.
A few of them sounded good, and I hadn’t read much other than a handful of memoirs and sci-fi since college, so I bought a couple as ebooks. I finished every book she recommended, plus any books in the series they came from (including Kate Clayborn’s Chance of a Lifetime series and Evie Dunmore’s League of Extraordinary Women), in less than a week.
Two years and change later, I’ve read nearly 800 romance novels. I’m a very momentum-based person, so once I had it, there was no stopping me. I got recommendations first from one of those “if I liked this, I should try…” websites, then my new favorite authors’ social media and newsletters, and now my TBR list is almost as long as my recently read list.
I realized eventually that though I’d never been an official “romance reader” before a couple of years ago, some of my favorite books from before were absolutely romances.
Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series was foundational for me as both a writer and a young woman, and the first book in that series was part of my critical intro for my college thesis. It’s a romance!
I also devoured Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series in high school after borrowing the first one from my mom. Romance! Plus spies!
As a writer, I always prioritized including a romantic subplot for my characters, even if the genre of whatever I was doing was different. Basically, I’ve been orbiting the romance world for years, and now that I’m solidly within it, it feels completely inevitable.
3. What are your favorite romance subgenres and tropes, and why?
I’m a sucker for enemies to lovers, especially if whatever the inciting enemies incident seems unforgivable. Make them suffer! Make them work for their happy ending!
I also love any kind of forced proximity situation, with road trips being my absolute fave and workplace romances right after. I prefer when the characters are literally stuck with each other, whether or not they want to be, and have to spend most of the book on the page together.
Pressure cookers like that, especially when you layer in either suspense (They’re on the run! They’re in hiding! Someone’s trying to kill one or both of them! etc.) or the fact that they don’t like each other, create the most fun situations in my opinion. There’s nothing hotter than an argument.
I’m also partial to marriages of convenience, fake dating, and anything with a mystery solved by non-police characters (especially for the latter… anyone got recommendations? 🙂)
4. Let’s talk workplace romance. What about the subgenre appeals to you?
For one thing, the forced proximity! No matter how the characters feel about each other, no matter what happens between them, they cannot escape one another.
There’s also the added pressure of ethical and professional boundaries; presumably, there’s a strong reason why the characters can’t quit and find another workplace or can’t afford to get fired. So there’s a level of having to be super careful and discreet despite all the various emotions and charged situations coming at them.
Also, I’m a sucker for career specificity. I love it when a character has a job that’s central to their character arc and to the plot as a whole because work is such a major part of our lives, and what you choose to do for it (or are forced into doing) reveals so much about who you are.
I just feel like a character’s career being a major plot consideration anchors the story in reality; they can’t just prance around and get to know each other at their leisure. They have to go to a meeting! They have to think about paying rent! They have to not ruin their chances for their dream career!
5. What about the power dynamics between boss/employee or employer/client: ick or aw yeah?
I think it depends a lot on the author. We’re all adults here, so I hope it’s not controversial to say that what readers tend to look for in fiction is extremely far from what we want in real life. My real-life husband and I’s love story would be super boring to read—thank goodness! If a real friend of mine were dating their employee or their boss, my answer to this question would look really different.
But in fiction, there’s an implicit consent to the situation, whether or not the setup is icky. Canonically, the less powerful character in the pairing (or threesome, or…) consents to the relationship and finds happiness from it by the end, so I think arguing about whether or not the dynamic is appropriate or not is kind of pointless. Especially if the author takes pains to ensure the less powerful character gets their turn in the driver’s seat and is an equal in the relationship one way or another.
I definitely appreciate when the power dynamic is made explicit on the page, especially if it’s one the characters themselves grapple with as they fall for each other. There’s a lot of fun to be had with taboo, and it can lead to good conversations that deepen the on-page character development without having to be annoying exposition dumps about how everything about this is HR-compliant or whatever.
When an author doesn’t mention it, though, that’s what gives me the ick. The power dynamic matters, and it’s an inescapable element in any boss/employee set-up. Ignoring it just means, to me, that the author isn’t thoughtful about the reality of the situation, which means I’m far less interested in reading what they have to say.
6. What are your favorite workplace romances you recommend?
Would you consider Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey to be a workplace romance? I finished it (and loved it!), so it’s on my mind. Technically, Josephine is Wells’ employee (his caddy), and technically, the golf tournaments they go to together are their shared workplace!
But to shift to a more traditional understanding of workplace romances, my favorites include:
Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez
The Billionaire's Wake-Up-Call Girl by Annika Martin
The Wake-Up Call by Beth O'Leary
The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan
A Deal with the Devil by Elizabeth O'Roark
The Worst Guy by Kate Canterbary
Say Yes to the Boss by Olivia Hayle
And the forever fave of toxic pairings, Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren, of COURSE.
7. What types of workplaces do you think are underrepresented in romance?
It’s hard to say since I still consider myself a newbie to the genre, and my process for reading tends to be to explore an author I enjoy’s backlist as fully as I can before moving to a new one, which means my experience is limited to the specific authors I found first.
So while I’d love to read more medical, media startup, journalist, and academic workplace romances, it could just be that the authors I’m currently familiar with aren’t who I should turn to.
I’d also love more construction/house-flip workplace romances, basically romances that don’t take place in a generic corporate office but rather out in the world, the workplace changing as the gig does. What about coworking space workplace romances, where they wouldn’t need to be coworkers but instead both work out of the same cafe, or WeWork, or whatever?
Now, I’m just brainstorming workplaces I want to read about or possibly write about. For me, though, the more specific, the better. Get nitty-gritty! That’s what I always love about Ali Hazelwood’s universes; what the heroines are working on/towards is extremely specific, and you can tell she knows what she’s talking about.
8. On this Substack, we like to get grumpy and share our hottest takes. What’s making you grumpy in Romancelandia right now?
The influx of books being labeled enemies to lovers that are extremely mild in both inciting incidents and resulting hostilities. You had one weird conversation ten years ago, and you refer to him as your nemesis, but less than an eighth of the way into the book, he clears it up, and now everything is fine? Grow up.
When you say your book is enemies to lovers, I am expecting Top Tier Drama. I’m expecting underhanded office pranks, spreading nasty rumors, trying to get each other fired, a murder attempt, or talking constant shit.
I’m expecting them both to keep a weapon within reach at all times. Give me heat! Give me angst! Give me a genuine reason for these two people to hate each other’s guts! Otherwise, what are we overcoming?
A bit of light banter and low-stakes arguing in the first scene does not mortal enemies make. I need to genuinely wonder how the heck these two people will ever put their swords (literal or metaphorical) down long enough to fall in love.
I need to doubt they’ll make it work even three-quarters of the way through the story because their differences or circumstances are so irreconcilable, even if they’ve personally found common ground.
Anything less than that is misleading marketing, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m certainly unsatisfied as a reader.
9. Now, let’s end with your moment of sunshine: what have you loved reading, watching, or doing lately?
My five-star books from 2024 (so far) are:
The Exception To The Rule by Christina Lauren (Amazon-exclusive novella)
Proof By Seduction and The Marquis Who Musn't by Courtney Milan
The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley
At First Spite by Olivia Dade
Outside of books, I’ve been loving The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix, Fantasy High Junior Year on DropoutTV, the podcast Behind the Bastards by Cool Zone Media, the latest Stardew Valley update (Animal Farm!!), the video game Wildermyth, and the miso ramen with homemade chili crisp my husband just reverse-engineered from our favorite local spot so we can make it for cheap whenever we want.
10. What’s next for you? How can people keep in touch with you?
Next for me is releasing my own self-published romance debut, Romancing the Billionaire, an anticapitalist boss/assistant marriage of convenience story set in the world of physical therapy, on August 1st!
In the meantime, I’ll still be recommending romances I love every Friday on my newsletter, I’ll be sharing indie film and creative career tips on my new professional Instagram, I’ll be learning Bluesky now that Twitter is dead, I’ll be recommending debut author Alyssa Jarrett’s first book Love Apptually, I’ll be producing a friend of mine’s new horror short film, I’ll be co-writing a romcom feature with two other friends that I’ll hopefully direct as my feature film debut, and I’ll be preparing for NaNoWriMo 2024!
Keep Up With Bri
After learning more about Bri, I feel like we have way more in common than a love for workplace romances. I cannot wait for Rehabbing the Billionaire and, of course, all her spot-on romance recommendations.
If you’d like to follow Bri’s journey, subscribe to Forced Proximity, and stay tuned for my guest recs this Friday!
Are there other romance authors or reviewers you’d love me to feature in a future interview? Drop your suggestions in the comments below, and share your favorite workplace romance recommendations!