“I almost said no,” the former Bachelorette reveals.
“I was looking for nos.”
What ifRachel Lindsayhad never acceptedABC’srose?
Rachel Lindsay, author of ‘Real Love’.Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images; Dell
“I almost said no,” Lindsay tells EW of her choice.
“I was looking for nos, and all I kept getting were yes-es.
I always think what my life would have been like had I said no toThe Bachelor.”
Now that supposition becomes a reality in Lindsay’s debut novel,Real Love,hitting shelves March 7.
Pretty much ever since I said yes to doingThe Bachelorbecause my life changed so much, so quickly.
But thinking of the place that I was in I was in a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere.
My career was plateauing, and it wasn’t fulfilling to me, and I felt very empty.
Even though I was doing all the things that I was going to do.
I was with the person that checked all the boxes on my list.
I didn’t feel fulfilled.
Because don’t we all do that?
We do that so often in our heads.
And I’ve always wanted to do a novel.
I’ve always wanted to do fiction.
I used to do creative writing in high school.
Even as much as I love being a lawyer, I feel like it was stifling my creativity.
This was an opportunity to be able to do that.
Writing this, was there any part of you in exploring this other path that then wished youhadsaid no?
No, definitely not.
Saying yes was the best decision ever.
And not even because of everything that came after.
I’m building the life I feel like I always wanted.
Saying yes was also a way for me to step outside of the box that I was living in.
That yes was powerful in so many other ways, not just the material thing.
It was a big moment for me.
I am so glad I said yes.
And that’s what Maya as a protagonist in the book goes through as well.
She stays in the box where in real life, I stepped outside of it.
But so often fear holds us back.
And so we stay where we’re comfortable, what’s easy, with what we know.
You see her explore that throughout this book.
Delilah, who does say yes toReal Loveis not Black.
Did you think about whether that was something you wanted to include?
It was definitely a thought, but I didn’t want to make it too much like that.
Because I wanted it to be a little bit lighter.
And Maya was the one who we were focusing on.
These are Easter eggs of my life in the book.
But the reality show is enough.
I’ve spoken about this before, but they need to do more of that.
There are plenty of other ethnicities to explore when it comes to having a lead of a reality show.
You have two sisters.
How much did that shape how you portray Maya and Ella’s relationship?
How much have your own relationships with your sisters shaped your life?
I have two sisters.
I’m a middle child, very proud of that.
We decided on Ella.
Ella is a mixture of all of us, me and my sisters.
But I would say maybe more me and my younger sister more than the older.
The relationship between sisters is so important.
You see Maya think that she resents Ella for certain things, but it’s a jealousy.
I’ve seen that in my relationships with my own sisters as well.
I still go through my ups and downs with my own sisters.
Well, you are too, so what do you think the through line is there?
Why do so many lawyers end up writing romance fiction?
That’s what I would say from my own personal experience.
But I put my career before everything.
Tell me more about your writing process.
You have done podcasts, you’ve been on camera.
I’m sure as a lawyer you had to do lots of different types of writing.
I’ve always very upfront that I had help.
Shout out to Alexa Martin, the ghost writer who’s not really a ghost.
Cause I always name them.
I don’t want to make people think that I can do it all.
Cause they’re like, “How did you have time to do all this?”
The writing process is really great.
When we were sitting down and talking and I was meeting her, we had a lot in common.
She got the vision, she understood where I wanted to go with the characters.
We really went back and forth in developing the story.
As I told you, there were two sisters at first.
We toyed with the career that Maya was going to have, where she was going to live.
There were actually more friends in the friend group, and we cut that back as well.
It was a lot of working together, back and forth, to ensure that we captured the vision.
It was very collaborative, but it was also very fun.
I can’t stress how fun it is to explore characters in a fictionalized way.
It was a quick process too, quicker than I thought.
How did you two decide the mechanics ofReal Love?
Was there back and forth over what to nod to and what to reinvent?
It was actually more difficult than I thought because it’s a fictionalized version of if.
But I wanted to keep parts that were important.
So it’s a nod to the show, but then we’re not giving out roses.
Also, I have no more roses left to burn.
We all remember that article.
So, I didn’t want to do flowers or a nod in that way.
Reality Stacy was Alexa’s idea.
That’s such a big part of reality television now.
So I thought that that was cool to incorporate.
Delilah starts to have some uncertainty about her choices based on feedback from her friends.
Was that something you personally experienced?
No, because all my friends loved Bryan.
I wasn’t telling them who it was, but I’ll never forget this.
And they loved watching Bryan on the show cause Bryan was no drama.
People who knew me weren’t questioning.
Actually, I take that back my friends weren’t questioning me.
My family was questioning me.
You actually do see that on the show when Bryan comes and meets my family.
She had all these questions about Bryan and was like, “Are you sure?”
She was so tough.
But I didn’t even think about that as we were writing.
Who inspired your hero, Kai?
Does he have a lot of Bryan in him?
We wanted him to be dreamy.
We wanted him to be charming, but also in a very quiet, sexy way.
We didn’t want him to be loud.
We wanted his charm and his appeal to speak for himself without him having to do it.
To the point where I was actually scared of it.
And you see Momoa.
I wanted him to be opposite from Vaughn.
That’s the theme of the book with her career, with her family, with love.
And that’s exactly what I went through in real life too.
Were you a big romance reader before embarking on this project?
Once you start becoming a lawyer, you have to read so much.
You’re just reading case law all the time and you don’t really have time.
So no, I really wasn’t.
This really was that opportunity to do something new and to fulfill a desire that I always had.
Now that you’ve done it, do you want to do it again?
I don’t have the idea yet, but this was such a fun process.
I would totally want to do it again.
Now I want to see these characters out in real life.
I’ve just got to think of the idea.
