Welcome to Story Deep Dive!

In this episode, Dana and Rachel kick off their month on The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score, a steamy small-town holiday romance with no villain and plenty of conflict. They map the threads they’ll follow all month: why this is a classic contemporary romance, how a rebuilding project carries the external plot, and why Christmas has to matter to the story instead of just sitting on the calendar.

Whether you’re a romance writer, paranormal author, or story strategist, you’ll gain valuable insights on letting the relationship drive the story, positioning your leads so the plot creates conflict, and setting stakes by choosing where you point the reader’s attention.

You can also watch the video version of this podcast on YouTube!

Estimate Timestamps

0:05 – A Holiday Kickoff

Rachel opens the month on a light, festive book after Hell Bent, and spends a minute apologizing for her choice of words.

1:31 – Dana at Danja Tales: You Already Do Hard Things

Dana has been learning Spanish and feels like she’s learned nothing, but she keeps showing up. When her husband said writing a novel seemed much harder, she realized: “You do hard things all the time. And you don’t realize it’s not hard to you anymore.” Her message to writers: let the journey be what it is, and make room in your life for the thing you want.

9:05 – Rachel’s Runner Client

Rachel shares how she helped a first-time novelist who runs: nobody starts at five miles a day, and some runs just suck. Her tool is the analogy itself, “finding something analogous so that your mind can kind of wrap around the experience.” Dana adds that grown-grown writers already carry transferable skills.

13:58 – Rachel at StoryCypher: A Gothic Reading List

Rachel leans into her side-quest genre with The Hacienda, The Reformatory, and Interview with the Vampire. Gothic fiction, she says, is so good at atmosphere and prose.

17:46 – Gothic Romance and Dark Romance Roots

Dana explains that early dark romance was shelved as gothic romance or romantic suspense. Rachel breaks down the classic gothic setup and why it lends itself to romance, while Dana backs slowly toward the door.

24:49 – The Agenda

Dana brings classic contemporary romance, romance as a dual protagonist genre, making Christmas count, and “it’s not about perfection, but impact.” Rachel brings the plot archetype, character design, and the fact that this is early Lucy Score.

27:32 – Walking Into Book Two

Rachel felt like she’d walked into the middle of something. Learning that the book follows Mr. Fixer Upper in a series that never continued cleared up her confusion about the big cast.

28:57 – A Classic Contemporary Romance

Dana’s frame: the relationship drives the front half, and the physical relationship isn’t consummated until around the middle, “a good old, old school romance.” For anyone writing a romantic subplot: “Same rules apply. It’s just the scale.” Rachel notices the early language isn’t steamy either, and Dana explains what that signals to a reader.

33:00 – A Group Project Plot

Rachel names the external plot archetype: a group project. Nature starts the conflict, nobody plays the villain, and the job is to rebuild the town. They compare it to Tempt Me at Twilight and Before I Let Go.

36:44 – Why the External Thread Still Matters

Rachel says the rebuild gives the story something to do when the lovers aren’t together. Dana says the Christmas Eve deadline makes it concrete, where Before I Let Go stayed open-ended. Her Pride and Prejudice example shows how an external thread keeps the story moving while each lead changes at their own pace.

41:53 – Romance Is a Dual Protagonist Genre

Dana explains why most craft books miss that romance has two protagonists, and both have to change. “When the two of them bump into each other’s worlds, that’s where the good stuff happens.”

44:56 – The Bulldozer and the Immovable Object

Rachel shows how each lead’s position on the plot creates conflict: Cat comes in as construction plus reality TV, and Noah is the town manager guarding the budget. Dana adds that the reason each says no is “the epitome of what the other represents.” It’s low stakes, but high conflict.

48:30 – Making Christmas Count

Dana lays out how Score layers Christmas into the deadline and into what the season means to Noah and Cat. Rachel: “This story almost could only happen at Christmas.”

52:47 – Stakes Live Where You Point the Reader

Rachel notes that Score could have made the stakes financial ruin, but she drew attention to the internal stakes instead. Dana’s frame: “There is a Noah-sized hole in her life that only Noah can fit,” and the “more” beyond chemistry is what builds the small moments.

56:27 – Early Lucy Score

Rachel compares this 2017 book with Things We Never Got Over (2023): you can see it’s early, and her humor, town, and banter are all already here. Dana closes on “it’s not about perfection, but impact.”

1:00:55 – Wrap

Both recommend the audiobook, and Rachel praises how the narration works the dialogue cues into the dialogue itself.

Book Selection:

Title: The Christmas Fix

Author: Lucy Score

She’ll save Christmas just to spite him…

There’s only one thing standing in the way of Cat King saving a small town’s Christmas festival: Grumpy town manager Noah Yates.

Single dad Noah takes his responsibilities seriously. When a late season hurricane turns Merry, Connecticut, into a disaster, he’s left scrambling to pick up the pieces of the town he loves.

At least, until home renovation expert and smoking hot reality TV star Catalina King arrives with a camera crew and a budget big enough to put the town back together again. But Noah doesn’t want a celebrity diva capitalizing on their tragedy or filling his daughter’s head with visions of glitz and glam.

Blonde bombshell Cat is used to being underestimated, but Noah has an uncanny knack for getting under her skin. They can’t be in a room together without rubbing each other the wrong way…except that time in the dark alley where the rubbing was just right. Can these enemies work together to pull off a Christmas miracle or will their fighting leave them both on the naughty list?

Where to Find the Book

The Christmas Fix by Lucy Score is available in several formats. It’s also widely available in libraries and online retailers. Details on her website.

Next Episode:

In the next episode, Dana and Rachel dig into the plot of The Christmas Fix: the classic contemporary romance flow, the love interest as antagonist, and how Score moves time across a whole-town rebuild.

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