Sherry Thomas began publishing romance novels in 2008. Her initial works were set in Victorian England, a setting frequently seen in this sub-genre of romance fiction. Thomas branched out into Young Adult fantasy romance in 2013 and self-published a Young Adult novel in 2014, as well as an adult romance novel starring the same female protagonist, with Berkley. It included a bi-racial heroine, who shared some of Thomas’s own Chinese heritage, and were partly set in late Ch’ing-era China (1883-91). She then launched the gender-flipped Lady Sherlock series with Berkley in 2016, which has a “slow-burn” romance plot but focuses on the mystery element, and published a contemporary mystery and a futuristic fantasy in 2025. This overview of her work, followed by an interview, documents her writing and publishing choices. After a round-up of her novels and novellas, the conversation records her experiences with publishing in a white-centering space and whether she has consciously negotiated with the dominant narratives it has cultivated. It is also a portrait of a Chinese American romance author whose knowledge of Chinese web novels and Chinese literature reoriented the genre’s representation of love and history for readers like me, a non-white romance reader and scholar.
---
The conversation delved into her experiences with publishing in a historically white-led and white-centering industry and explored whether she has consciously negotiated with the dominant narratives of love that it cultivated for decades. It is also a portrait of a Chinese American romance author whose familiarity with Chinese literature and media infuses her English-language story-telling and expanded the horizon of the genre’s representation of love and history for me, a South Asian romance reader and researcher. It thus speaks to this special issue’s inquiry into the genre’s tactical potential for widening its cultural lens and decolonizing affective relationships. The interview was conducted over two long sessions online in the spring and fall of 2025 and has been edited to focus on the above ideas. While most of the answers are paraphrases, with occasional direct quotes, I also inserted short clarifying remarks in box brackets and longer explanations in footnotes. (226)
---
I had had to leave Bantam because, out of my first four historical romances, NQH, even with white protagonists and publishing support, had poor sales and cost the later books Walmart distribution. NQH’s low sales suggested that books set elsewhere, even if they were about white people –never mind other people and set elsewhere – would not do well at Walmart. (232)
---
you can fault editors for asking writers to make changes, but editors pay attention to the market. And if the market is not buying, and authors want to make some money making a living doing this? They can either take a risk self-publishing or they can do what is more likely to get them a wider audience. This is what Jane of Dear Author [a romance blog] said a long time ago; she said she was hoping to see more diverse books with self-publishing, but that ended up not being the case. Because without traditional publishing as gatekeeping, there’s still the audience gatekeeping. There’s still the readership, general readership. (232)
Here's the abstract:
---
---
---