Author Spotlight: Melissa Ferguson

It’s so lovely to meet you, Melissa! And thank you so much for stopping by. Let’s dive in…

What can fans expect from your new novel, The Perfect Rom-Com?

The Perfect Rom-Com is the funny, warm rom-com I’ve been meaning to write about for nine years—since that very first time I walked through the doors of my first writer’s conference trying to sell my story. Of all of my novels, this one captures in chapter one the totally ridiculous and yet totally real moment I and so many authors experienced trying to get our foot in the door of publishing. When I went to my first pitch session, I looked around and thought to myself, “This whole experience is just so wild people have to know about it. It’s just so, so, so ridiculous and emotion-filled and scary and fun and hilarious. I mean, look at us. We are all absolute wrecks.” This is my booklovers’ twist on Two Weeks Notice with the adventures of one ghostwriter author and her agent and the publishing world and I think fans can expect to laugh and cheer on two people falling happily in love along the ride!

Who would you cast if The Perfect Rom-Com became a movie or series?

I would absolutely cast Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant at the age they were when Two Weeks Notice came out. Their humor and energy and witty banter are just perfect for one another, and I pictured their voices in my head as I wrote this one.

Can you tell us a little bit about your farmhouse lifestyle?

Sure! We are a suburban family who stumbled into this farm life after my husband was cycling out to the mountains one day and saw an auction sign for a beautiful piece of land. It was a romanticized dream of ours to move out of our steady and known neighborhood world, with the threat of turning sour once we actually made the risky leap, but thankfully, the threat turned out to be nothing and we have had the best time learning as a family to grow into our farmhouse lifestyle. Slowly we’ve added chickens, cats, ducks, sheep, and gardens into our lives, and it’s been a learning curve every time but very fun! I love writing my novels in my greenhouse overlooking the sheep and chickens and with sunflowers and mountains all around. I certainly hope people can feel that peace and happiness infused into the novels I write.

Who are some of your favorite authors and why?

I homeschool my four children and consequently, my reading material tends to be hashing out my own rom-coms alongside reading books with the kids. We just finished Peter Pan’s only authorized sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet, and love all kinds of books like The Wind in the Willows, Tumtum and Nutmeg, Brambley Hedge and a million picture books. My own children’s book with some beautiful hand-painted illustrations is coming out in July of 2025, actually. It’s called Our Friendly Farmhouse and I couldn’t be more excited to share our story with the world.

And advice you’d like to give to aspiring authors today?

I always tell aspiring writers to get to a quality writer’s conference as soon as they can–this is where they will meet editors at publishing houses and agents of literary agencies and get to pitch them their stories (as I wrote in The Perfect Rom-Com). This is where aspiring writers learn in classes about proposals and marketing and publicity and commercial rules of writing for traditional publication and network with other writers that are all handy as well.