‘DIGGING UP LOVE’ EXPLORES FOSSILS AND FOOD
Chandra Blumberg, author of “Digging Up Love,” a romance novel about a woman from a small town and a man from the big city who meet and fall in love. Photo provided by Chandra Blumberg
be a writer. She started writing at a young
age. She was writing non-fiction essays
about motherhood and when the pandemic
shutdown happened, she wanted to switch
gears. She wanted to write something that
was an escape from her daily life. She hadn’t
written fiction for some time but started
back up during the shutdown.
Up Love,” during the first shutdown. She
found it was a really good escape for her
and decided to switch her focus to writing
romance. She has always been a lover of the
romance genre. This is Blumberg’s debut
novel. She pitched the story to agents and
was offered the book deal.
as a rom com. The book follows Alisha,
a small town woman with big dreams
of moving to Chicago, and Quentin, an
academic from Chicago. They meet when
Quentin comes to Alisha’s town for work.
Blumberg likes writing about heavier
topics but approach them from a humorous
standpoint. While she moved from writing
non-fiction essays to writing romance, she
kept the humor.
growing up in rural town in Michigan
as the inspiration for the main character,
Alisha, who is a baker. “I love baking and I
love binge watching all of the baking competitions
on TV and browsing Pinterest for
recipes,” she said.
knew she wanted a character who was a
paleontologist from Chicago, because she
wanted the interplay of the city meets country
romance.
have the characters be biracial Black people.
Alisha is Black and White and Quentin is
Black and Latino. Alisha is one of the only
Black people in the small town in Illinois
where she lives. Blumberg wanted to depict
that experience for Alisha growing up like
that and living in that town.
the book. Then, came the editing process,
which she loves. It is the drafting part that
Blumberg finds more difficult, getting all
the pieces on paper. “I love going back and
sort of fine tuning the story and pulling out
the best pieces of the character,” she said.
“The editing is the part of the process I really
enjoy, getting to the heart of the story.”
Blumberg worked with what she described
as a “really awesome editor.”
series. The second book is set to come out
later in 2022 and it will focus on Alisha’s
younger sister and also have a foodie focus.
2022. To pre-order the book, visit www.
amazon.com.
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