Rebecca Yarros’ real-life romance impacts how she brings it to the page too.

The bestselling author, 43, spoke with Jenna Bush Hager on her Open Book with Jenna podcast on March 13, where she discussed her cataclysmic writing career. Yarros, one of today’s buzziest writers, is widely known for her Empyrean fantasy series, including novels Fourth Wing, Iron Flame and Onyx Storm.

The author shared with Bush Hager how her husband, Jason, who Yarros has been with since she was 19, also impacted her writing journey. The two met at a karaoke bar (“He wanted to sing ‘Wild is the Wind’ by Garth Brooks,” Yarros said), and Yarros delivered ice cream to him the next day when she found out he had his wisdom teeth removed.

“He’s beautiful, and it was amazing,” Yarros told Bush Hager. “I was smitten. That was it.”

As a military spouse, Yarros turned to books while her husband was deployed, even more so after he was injured during his first appointment.

“I would buy an author’s entire backlist, and would keep all the books in shoe boxes under my bed,” Yarros said. “I would just lean over and grab the next book, and I would read it after I got home, got the kids to bed. It was the only thing that would allow me to escape the anxiety and have a place to go where I felt like everything was gonna be okay.”

It was through reading, Yarros explained, that she first realized she wanted to be an author. She wrote a page a day and had her first novel finished once Jason returned home from his third deployment.

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“I’ve loved the same man since I was 19, and so it’s a feeling of falling in love over and over and over again,” Yarros said. “But I love writing it because I get to have that feeling of falling in love over and over again.”

Yarros has written over 20 books, including the Flight & Glory romance series and standalone novels like Variation, In The Likely Event and Great and Precious Things. Once Yarros became a full-time author, she shared that Jason pitched in to help her search for literary agents and take care of the couple’s children.

She brings their enduring love story to her books too.

“There’s always an element of my hero that comes from my husband, always,” she said. “He just sneaks in there every single time.” As for her fans’ reactions, Yarros shared that they’ve generally been positive.

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“I think they like it,” she said. “They like the male characters I write, which I have to laugh because, of course, my husband leaks into them.”

“But I think romance is a beautiful place where women can go to fall in love over and over again and see themselves represented and see their own self-worth actualized and learn how to voice what they want,” Yarros added. “It can help them set standards in their real life relationships, like, ‘Hey, this kind of stuff is out there, and it exists. This is what I’m worth.’”