Story Secrets: THE SECRET LIFE OF PRINCE CHARMING by Deb Caletti

My adoration for Deb Caletti is no secret - she writes amazing books exploring difficult relationships and dark family pasts (and she said the nicest things about TELL ME A SECRET!). She is also the featured author over at readergirlz this month, so if you missed her live chat last night, go check it out!

I am honored to welcome her to talk about THE SECRET LIFE OF PRINCE CHARMING (which just got a lovely new paperback cover). Welcome, Deb!

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PRINCE is the story of a girl who sets out on a road trip with her younger sister and the step-sister they never knew to return the objects their father has stolen from the women he’s been in love with.

Deb's story behind the story:
When I was nineteen, I met a twenty-one year old young man who was dark and handsome, mysterious and moody. Three years later, after a long-distance relationship, we would marry, and that’s when he became the abusive husband I would live with for the next thirteen years. This one decision, this decision to have this particular relationship, would result in years upon years of devastation – emotional, physical, financial – complicated layers of pain and damage that would affect me, our kids, our families and friends.

As my kids approached the age when I first met their father, and as I got clearer over the ten years since I left, the need to write about relationship choices and self protection grew. Grew? Became urgent. The choice of a partner (even just a dating partner) is one decision has an impact and weight we can’t even begin to see at nineteen, and yet where is the guidance on how to make it? Where are the high school classes about healthy relationships? Even if a relationship does not evolve into a marriage with children, an unhealthy one can harm or haunt for a good long while. And… the letters I was getting from readers were telling me that many, many young women were in harmful places. I decided, then, to write a story where I could pull in everything I had learned about making good relationship choices – everything. From my own experiences, from those of many women I knew...

Read the rest!