Shamara Ray never wanted to be a romance novelist. But in 2004, she spent her daily journey into Manhattan on the Long Island Rail Road reading blockbuster novels by the likes of Stephen King, John Grisham, and Anne Rice. She felt her own creativity simmer and knew she had to express it before her brain boiled over.

“One day, I was commuting home,” she remembers, “and I finally said, ‘You know what? Today’s the day I’m going to start writing my book. As soon as I get home, I’m starting.’” Unfortunately, the train broke down—“not uncommon for the Long Island Rail Road”—so Ray didn’t get home until 9 p.m., and she decided to wait another day.

When she went to work the next day, her entire division was laid off. In shock, she walked down Fifth Avenue, trying to process the inconceivable: “Did I just lose my job?” Some people would have put aside the ambitious book project. Ray waited one more day, then started writing. “I would sit down at my computer every day,” she says, “and let the story take me where it was going to take me. I ended up with a romance, even though I wasn’t a romance reader myself. I like to call it contemporary relationship fiction.”

Two decades later, Ray still has a day job in “executive education,” but she is also the author of six novels and a resident of Charlotte. Sitting at a table at the Rosemont Market & Wine Bar, wearing hoop earrings and a chartreuse jacket, she takes small bites from her sandwich and carefully dabs a napkin at the corners of her mouth. She’s friendly but cautious about how much she wants to reveal in an interview. 

Usually, Ray doesn’t mention her status as a novelist to men she’s dating, or to her co-workers. One time, she got found out in the office, however, because The New York Times printed a blurb about a book signing she was doing on Long Island. She explains her reticence: “I write romance, but it’s not necessarily the lifestyle I’m living. I’ll keep that in my back pocket until I get to know someone better.” In retrospect, she wishes she had adopted a pen name for her literary career.

“I had no idea that she had a dream of being an author!” says Kelly Starling Lyons, the author of dozens of children’s books and a sorority sister of Ray when they attended Syracuse University in the 1990s. “But she’s always been creative, kind, funny, stylish—someone that people go to for advice.”

Although Ray’s novels are fueled by heterosexual courtship, it’s clear in reading them that the relationships she really cares about are the bonds among her women characters. It’s not a huge spoiler to say that her new novel, The Referral Program, ends with the sentence, “Dylan looked at her friends and thought this is true love.”

The book’s premise: Three best friends with a monthly brunch date decide to recommend men for each other, making sure to nominate only solid citizens (who they would never pursue themselves because they are family or co-workers). When the inevitable misunderstandings and foibles ensue, the emotional stakes are about the future of the brunch group more than the romances.

Inspired by her novel, some of Ray’s friends plan to implement a real-life referral program. But she reports that they are running into problems coming up with enough prime candidates: men with jobs who are serious about relationships and not philanderers. “Do you actually have three good men to refer to a friend?” she asks. “One person was like, ‘Maybe I have two.’ How do you know only two good men?”

Ray moved to Charlotte in 2018 to be closer to her parents: “They’re very independent, so sometimes, when they need help, they won’t say it. But now I’m five minutes away, so I can see for myself what they might not want to ask for.” In Charlotte, she has brunch friends of her own and loves live music (ranging from jazz pianist Robert Glasper to Beyoncé) but believes that, in this city, “it takes a little bit more planning just to be carefree.”

That quest for an unfettered existence is why Ray avoids plotting her novels before she writes them. In her day job, she plans conferences and trade shows about batteries and hybrid vehicles. When she sits down to write, she doesn’t want it to feel like another day of work: She loves the freedom of a story tumbling out of her as she creates a fictional world.

The appetite for romance is huge: By most estimates, it’s about 20% of the total market for fiction. While some Black romance novelists, including Terry McMillan and Zane, have been extremely successful, the genre’s core audience remains middle-aged white women, and many successful authors of color have been marginalized by professional organizations like the Romance Writers of America.

“I write stories with Black characters and Black culture, because you write what you know,” Ray says. “I feel the stories we tell are relatable to anybody.” Because she doesn’t read many romances herself, she doesn’t think much about the larger community of romance novelists—but she certainly has noticed the segregation still found in many bookstores. “Sometimes there’s an African American section,” she observes dryly. “They might call it ‘urban literature.’”

In Ray’s books, Black identity looms large, but it’s largely unfettered by petty racism. In her work, food is an essential expression of her identity. Her first novel, Recipe for Love, even had an appendix of her own recipes for Grand Marnier pancakes with cinnamon cream, and grilled shrimp with spiced coconut sauce. 

Spice in romance novels usually means something else. Ray doesn’t stint on the “throbbing in his pants” and the “sucked and nibbled, leaving no spot untouched,” but the one time she becomes flustered during our lunch is when I ask her about these erotic interludes. “It’s a necessary evil,” she says. “I try to write scenes that make sense for the couples and where they are in their relationships.”

Ray gets self-conscious when she writes about these intimate encounters because she knows that her friends will read the resulting paragraphs. And her parents?

“When I wrote my first book, I let my mom read it: I said, ‘OK, Mom, it’s a little spicy, just to give you a heads-up.’ ‘Oh, I used to read romances, don’t worry about me.’ I wasn’t going to let Dad read this book, but my mother said, ‘He’s going to be OK.’ I told him, ‘You can read this book, but you’re not my demographic.’ One day, he calls me on the phone and says, ‘I’m reading the book, and I’m at the scene where you’re in the park locking lips with this guy.’ I said, ‘First of all, I’m not in the book, so I’m not in the park. And I think you should stop reading there.’”

Ray takes a discreet sip of water and leans forward to share a secret: “Sometimes when I read what I’ve written, I’m thinking, Did I write that?” And then she leans back in her chair and grins.

Gavin Edwards, a contributing editor, is the author of 14 books, including the new MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios.