We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sloan Harlow. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sloan below.

Sloan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Growing up, being a writer never felt like a viable career option. It was the thing I heard most about writing: “It’s a good hobby, but no one really makes money writing.” And that’s honestly fair.

I wrote anyway. I inflicted it on my teachers by writing tiny stories about puppies in the margins of my homework. I inflicted it on my parents, writing a forty-page novella (I remember saying that word over and over) for my mom and dad for Christmas when I was thirteen years old. I got mad that they never read it all the way through, but years later I stumbled upon my novella’s clip-arted cover and couldn’t even make it past the first paragraph.

But never mind all that, because I was going to be a doctor. All the AP classes and dedication to school and a decade of extracurriculars were only ever to get me into a Good College, and a Good College was only ever to get me a Good Job. A Good Job meant doctor, and being a doctor meant I would be enough. I labored studiously under this credo for eighteen years.

But then I got to college, and it kicked my ass.

Which sucked.

Because nothing academic had ever kicked my ass. Furthermore, I’d come in on some prestigious scholarships, and all my cohorts appeared to be quantifiable, actual geniuses.

They couldn’t wait to be doctors or astronauts or senators. They were good at it. They loved it.

I was not good at it, but more importantly, I hated it. All of it: the classes, the labs, the way the path to MD stretched before me, not so much a yellow-brick-road as a jaundice-tiled alley lit with fluorescent lights.

I floundered, searching desperately for something that felt like it fit me, something I didn’t hate, something that counted as a Good Job but maybe wasn’t doctor.

I graduated with a faint inkling I might want to go into videography, and from there spent a lot of my twenties and early thirties in and out of floundering states.

I did many things: none of which were writing.

I worked for a company making books accessible to blind students. When a dream videography job brutally slipped through my fingers, I got so depressed I spent half a year on my parents’ couch, trying to fill out the entire plant and animal compendium in Red Dead Redemption on my Xbox 360.

I became a delivery driver at the Domino’s one minute from where I grew up, the one we’d been getting pizzas from since I was a kid.

I worked a season at the Renaissance Festival as a cast member, and being a peasant, it was literally my job to splash in puddles on rainy days and shout, “Ah, me monthly bath!” (Best job ever.)

I got a job as a data entry clerk. My office was the break room. My monitor was on top of the microwave. When people came to heat up their lunch, I had to move my keyboard.

I worked as a vet assistant for six years, working first at a small, country animal hospital and then a large, corporate pet hospital.

I helped open and manage a cat cafe right when the pandemic began.

If, during the many desultory points during this decade, you had asked me the question: If you could go back in time, what would you do differently?

I would have told you: Everything.

So many nights I lay curled in bed and beat myself up. “I should have just sucked it up and clawed through med or vet school when I was twenty. Is it too late for law school? Should I study for the GRE??” These thoughts were the hamster in the wheel of my brain, spinning and spinning as I lay wide-eyed in the dark.

I longed for letters before and after my name.

Dr. Harlow.

Dr. Harlow, Esq.

Dr. Harlow, MD, PhD, MA, DSc, Esq.

I wanted my name sloshed and soggy in a bucket of alphabet soup. I was certain that if I was Dr. Harlow, then twenty-seven year-old me would finally be enough. Maybe I’d start liking myself again. Maybe my old teachers wouldn’t look at me like I was a once-glorious villa, now abandoned to rot.

Obviously, this hole in my chest, the one that I was sure a PhD could fill, was never going to be solved by anything other than buttloads of therapy and a lot of work on my end. (That hole has gotten smaller, I’m happy to report!)

I’m still working on internalizing that my worth as a person is inherent, but I now know that no number of letters before or after my name will add or detract from my value as a human being.

But I couldn’t believe that at the time. Shame was a voice in my head that spoke with godlike authority, and the dogma was simple: Thou art nothing until thy job title evokes a sense of awe and wonder in thy tenth grade Latin teacher when thou dost bump into him at Trader Joes.

In my late twenties, I fell into a deep depression between jobs once more. I didn’t have John Marston and Yarrow plants on my Xbox 360 to get me through it.

I. Had. Fanfiction.

Some days I didn’t get out of bed. I’d pull up Fanfiction.net on my phone when I woke up, emerging from under my comforter only to take a pee break and pilfer a family-sized bag of Doritos from the kitchen. And I’d read until I passed out in the AM hours.

I tell you all this to say: during this period of my life, I did not like myself very much. I felt like a waste of space, a waste of scholarships, of resources, of time.

I called myself the Bad Bet.

The scholarships I’d won were supposed to be given to future leaders, future captains of industry. My fellow scholarshippers are actual rocket scientists. They’re fighting for change in D.C. I was falling asleep on Dorito crumbs and spilling Ragu on the shirt I’d had on for nine days straight.

My parents and teachers and coaches and professors had poured so much into me – and for what? So I could spend approximately twenty hours a day in bed, seven days a week, reading a hundred different versions of Draco falling in love with Hermione?

I was horribly embarrassed by that period of my life for the longest time.

But I wouldn’t be here, where I am, four days away from my debut novel being published by Penguin Random House, if it wasn’t for the fanfiction community.

I wouldn’t be living my dream if I hadn’t spent those hours, no, days in bed, reading on my phone.

I wouldn’t be living my dream if I hadn’t delivered pizza in my hometown. Or if I hadn’t learned how to express canine anal glands, learned how to wrangle a ninety-pound German Shepherd for a nail trim, or learned that no matter how many times you do it, helping someone say goodbye to their eighteen-year-old cat is still so unbelievably heartbreaking.

So how did I get here?

It was the second year of the pandemic, and I had just quit what I had been sure was the right dream job: helping run a cat cafe. The cats were incredible – but the realities of running a brick-and-mortar during a pandemic were not.

My desire to write had begun to balloon in my chest over the years, demanding to be heard.

I desperately wanted to write. But writing is hard. Like, just sitting down and doing it is hard and scary. I need a deadline, a proverbial gun-to-my-head, to force myself to do the thing I love to do more than anything.

During this time, someone posted about a small fanfiction contest online – the due date was in three months.

“Oh, what the heck,” I thought, at some ungodly hour on a January night years ago. “Maybe the deadline will outweigh the terror.” And I signed up for the contest.

Months went by, and when the deadline approached, I considered not turning something in. I’d never written fanfiction, and, to be honest, had never put my work out there quite like this.

But I did it anyway. I wrote a fanfic.

And people…liked it.

So I wrote another one. And this time, I had fun with it. I poured my heart out, choosing my current ship of choice to star in this sweeping love story. I gave the main character a lot of my insecurities and struggles – specifically that familiar Shame Monster, the one who said, “You are not good enough.”

And I was flabbergasted that people connected with my writing. People related to my main character. They cried reading the parts where I had cried while writing. I wrote stuff I wanted to read, and as it turned out, other people wanted to read it too.

I wrote a couple more fanfictions before I thought…why not give this a go?

One night I found a job post for a romance ghostwriter.

For almost a decade and a half, anytime I browsed Indeed, I would get horribly depressed. Every time I found a job I desperately wanted, I never met the qualifications. They wanted more or different schooling or experience or…I don’t need to go into the Trough of Sorrow that is looking at job postings.

When I found that job post for a romance ghostwriter, everything in me ached immediately: I had never wanted a job so badly in my life.

And…I qualified. Every point they listed, I realized, “I can do that.” And the only reason why was because of all those hours, days, weeks, lying in bed reading fanfiction. All those hours I was sure I was wasting my life had become actual research. I had inadvertently become a romance connoisseur, getting to know tropes, developing a specific taste for romance stories that, luckily, a lot of people seemed to share. I was scooping rum raisin ice cream at my job at a snack shop when my phone buzzed.

It was an email saying I’d gotten the job as a ghostwriter.

That’s when I would say I crossed a threshold. I’d never been sure if people would pay to read what I wrote. But this was an actual job that paid money for writing.

Since then, my writing career has been a surreal whirlwind, and I have to pinch myself as I type here that my debut novel comes out in four days. I have been lucky beyond my wildest dreams to meet the people I’ve met, and I wouldn’t be here without the help of some incredible humans.

Though writing can be solitary, I’ve been blessed with so many kind, talented people helping me along the way, and I couldn’t have done it without them. My genius editor, the team at PRH, my friends and family, I’m so thankful everyday for everything they always do for me.

And, to answer your question:

I would never be where I am if I had started any sooner.

I fantasize about it, still, sometimes. I wonder what would have happened if I had put my writing out there like this when I was younger.

But I couldn’t do what I do if I hadn’t lived these experiences or met the people I have over the past decade and a half. The best I can tell you is: I wasn’t ready to start any sooner than I did, and none of that time was a waste. In fact, it was necessary.

I’m still at the beginning of my author journey – I have a lot to learn. Infinite bucketloads. And I’m excited about that. I’m eager to improve my craft, to learn how to better connect with readers, how to find and hone my voice. There’s so much I don’t know yet.

But this, at least, I do know: I started my career at exactly the time I needed to.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Sloan Harlow, and I write YA dark romance thrillers. My first book is called Everything We Never Said, and it’s coming out on May 28th, 2024. It’s a dream come true. I’m learning (hoo boy am I learning) and growing as an author, and I would not be here without an incredible team – my friends, my family, my editor, the team that helped make this book as amazing as it is.

If you’re curious and want to learn right alongside me, come on in. I’d love a hiking buddy.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There is SO MUCH to unlearn. This is something I’m working on with my therapist, so this might not work for everybody.

I’m trying to unlearn my preconceived notions about failure and success. The goal is to untether the definition of both those words from outcomes or results.

As in, the definition of success trying. It’s getting on stage. It’s releasing the book. It’s doing that scary thing. It has nothing to do with if people clapped or booed, or if people love my book or millions give it a one star on Goodreads (Omg but then millions of people thought long enough about my book to go and log in and leave a rating!!).

If you do the scary thing (and let’s be honest, any creative endeavor is scary), *that* is the success.

And failure is the same: untethered to outcome. It is not a failure to get my manuscript rejected over and over. But it would be a failure if I quit after the first rejection.

My brain is not terribly kind to me, and rejection is already brutal. I’ve learned that in order to do good, I need to feel good: beating myself up over an outcome I did not like or want does not serve me. I can’t learn to ride better if I leave when I’m thrown from the horse. (And sometimes it’s *really* hard not to leave.)

This is one of the ways I am working on being brave enough to keep getting back on that horse.

While I may have stared at the saddle a lot longer than I would have liked, I’ve still managed to (eventually) jump back on that horse.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of my work is easily, easily connecting with readers. The idea that anyone has read the words I’ve written still blows me away. It feels like there’s an invisible thread connecting my past self to a reader – from the moment I typed a sentence to that moment years later when their eyes move over those words. If someone has read anything I’ve written, that already feels like a connection.

But when a reader feels what I felt writing it? When they love a character or have questions or feel seen by something I’ve written?

Well, that’s everything.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sloanharlowauthor/

Image Credits

Felicity Vallence, PRH