People ask why I keep setting my stories on the docks instead of in a ballroom. The honest answer is that I love a place where everything has a price — and where the people who survive are the ones who learn to read the fine print.
A harbor town is a perfect pressure cooker. Reputations are bought and sold like cargo. The law and the lawless drink in the same tavern. A single signature on the wrong document can sink a family, and a single act of trust can save one. That's the air my characters breathe, and it makes every choice they make about love feel like it costs something.
Competence is romantic
I write heroines who are good at things — keeping books, running houses, noticing the seam where a story doesn't quite hold. And I write heroes who are not quite respectable, who've done gray work to keep their crews fed. The slow burn between them isn't about manners. It's about watching each other be capable, and deciding that's worth the risk.
"The slowest, surest way to fall in love is to watch someone be good at the thing that could ruin you."
Why "secrets"
Every book in the Harbor of Secrets turns on something kept hidden — a ledger, a past, a name. A secret is just intimacy that hasn't been chosen yet. The moment a character decides to hand theirs over is, to me, the most romantic moment there is. More than a kiss. A kiss is easy. Trust is the cliff.
So that's the harbor. Six couples, one fog-bound port, and the small, dangerous bravery of letting someone in. Thank you for reading them with me.
— Remy