Julie Hammerle | 40 is the new 16

Before KNOCKED-UP CINDERELLA , I published four YA novels, three of them rom-coms. I’d always seen myself as a young adult writer, because I’d always idealized teen romance, with the heady, all- encompassing first loves and epic mistakes. Teenagers are blessed with time--time to obsess over minutiae, whether that means longing looks from a hot guy in calc class, perceived slights from a best friend, or every lyric from their favorite band’s new album.

For most of my twenties and thirties, I continued to
romanticize teen love, probably because, for me personally, those decades were not about
looking for romance and dating, but marriage and parenthood. And most of my circle of
friends were in the same place.

But now that I’m approaching forty (in a little over a month
*cough*), I’ve started to focus more on mature romances. I have friends who’ve found love
after thirty-five--after they’ve settled into careers and their single lifestyles. They’re learning
how to let a new person--with their own careers and baggage--into their already established
existences. I know people who have divorced and found themselves single for the first time in
two decades. They have to figure out the dating game in a whole new millennium.

Love at forty means having to think like a teenager again,
while having the mature brain and body of a forty-year-old. It means learning to navigate new
dating norms and rituals. It means that maybe you’re the only single person you know and no
one else can empathize what you’re going through. It means letting new people in and finding
the right person to meet you where you are. It’s about changing bodies and changing needs
and figuring out who you really are, because you’re forty now, and this is as real as your life is
ever going to get. So, in that way, it really is like the other side of the teen romance coin.

And that’s where Erin and Ian are in KNOCKED-UP CINDERELLA . They’re two career-minded people, who’ve never needed more than work. But suddenly they’re faced with having to let, not one, but two people into their full, busy lives. They’ve never had to make room for anyone, but now they have to consider the needs and feelings of their own child and their co-parent.

Teen love is about firsts, but so is finding new love at forty.