Photo courtesy of author Preslaysa Williams
Preslaysa Williams is an award-winning author who writes heartwarming romance and women’s fiction novels with an Afro-Filipina twist. Proud of her heritage, she loves sharing her culture with her readers. Williams is the author of A Sweet Lowcountry Proposal, a heartwarming story about a second-chance romance.
Tell us about the book.
It’s about a lot of things, but the main story is about a sweet romance between a wedding planner, and an archivist at a Black history museum that’s based in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s a reunion romance, and if people aren’t familiar with what reunion romances are, it’s about a couple who sometime in the past it didn’t work out between them, and then they find their way back to love with one another again. My two characters were supposed to get married prior to the beginning of the book, and that didn’t happen because a tragedy happened on the day of the wedding, so they postponed it. Then a lot of emotions and drama come up, so they just decided to call off their relationship.
What inspired you to write this?
I personally wanted to make a reunion romance, with the characters being likable, and they have emotional stuff and barriers that they need to get over. That was my original inspiration for the story. Another part of that has to deal with the history of the Black church or Black church traditions. I didn’t see a lot of contemporary romances that dealt with traditional Black churches and Black church traditions, and I wanted to talk about that a little bit in this story, and I thought this would be a good place to do that.
What intrigues you about reunion romances?
The appeal of a reunion romance is something new that they can discover about the other love interest that they didn’t know before or something that changed in that person’s love interest. I like that reunion romances give a chance for a second chance. There is a second chance of love with reunion romances, and I think that’s reflective of humanity and how we are as people. We’re not perfect. We make mistakes. We may do things that anger or upset the other person, but reunion romances say “Yeah, we’re human, we have flaws … but we can still work through whatever flaws and faults those are, and find each other again, and fall in love again.”
