For Lucy Score, books have always been a family affair. Growing up, her family spent weekends prowling used book stands at flea markets, and her parents had bookshelves in the laundry room because they’d already filled up the ones in the living room. When she was 13, she lifted a romance novel from her mom — herself a librarian, aka professional book fairy — and never looked back. 

And today, the bestselling romance author — whose latest book, Story of My Life, the first in the new Story Lake series released on March 11 — has brought her “emotional support husband” Tim and her brother Dan on board to start her own indie publishing company, That’s What She Said Publishing, Inc. She even convinced her younger (and self-proclaimed “weirder” sister) Madison to write her own mystery romance series. 

Because that’s just the kind of person Lucy Score is: When she’s not writing the kind of romances you can’t help but dish over with a friend, she’s uplifting other authors or forming community both at home and with her legions of fans across the globe.

That hunger for community (and Taco Bell, we’ll get there) is how she got started writing in the first place, and the one she’s formed around her books is what keeps her going.

“I’ve always wanted to feel like I belonged and I never did. And somehow finding my way in the world through these books, I found my place and I found my people,” she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “I have a really active and lovely reader group on Facebook that, despite the fact that it lives on the internet, is one of the friendliest, safest, most delightful places.”

And connecting with readers in person, whether it’s in the airport, at a small-town restaurant or one of her full-to-bursting events, is one of her favorite parts of the gig.

“I have the ability to kind of bury my head in the sand when I’m writing. So I forget that there’s an audience out there, or that there’s an end game for the book that I’m writing,” she says, laughing.

“So to be reminded of that is so crazy. And so exciting because when I get to meet these readers, it’s often multi-generational. There’s been people who come to the signing that it’s grandmother, mother, daughter. And I just think it’s so amazing that you can share [these books] with your loved ones and that I can be a part of their family that way.”

Score’s first novel, Undercover Love, found modest success in 2015 after two indie publishers picked it up. She was working in marketing at the time, and crafted a five-year plan that would allow her to write full-time. But that plan was abruptly accelerated when she got fired from her marketing job the same week her second book came out and skyrocketed to No. 1 in the Amazon Kindle Store. 

“I was devastated for about 24 hours,” she says, with a laugh. “The fear that I was gonna have to go get another real job if writing didn’t work out really fueled me for a few years,” she laughs. “But here I am, 10 years on, and it worked out for the best for everybody ’cause they got a much better marketer and I got to live my dream.”

She wrote three more books over the next year and decided to make a go of it as an indie author. In 2022, she signed on to a print-only deal with Bloom Books in the U.S. and a UK deal with Hodder & Stoughton. Things We Never Got Over became the first of her titles to hit the New York Times bestseller list and the next two books in the Knockemout series made her an instant No. 1 New York Times bestseller. 

Today, Score is sharing that dream with fans across the globe — and the man she affectionately calls Mr. Lucy who has been by her side and helping to inspire her fictional love stories for almost 16 years. 

“We just have such a good, solid, content, happy relationship that I love helping characters find something similar. It’s the level of support and acceptance that really helped me grow as a person and as an author,” she explains. “And that’s what I want for everybody who reads the books. I want them to find that person who helps them find themself.”

And as she travels the country talking to readers about her most personal book to date, she thinks that’s a big part of why so many gravitate toward the genre the same way she gravitates toward Taco Bell (she’s currently on a Doritos Locos taco kick, for the curious). 

“It’s that honeymoon period when you’re falling in love and everything is so exciting and such a whirlwind. But I also love to include couples in these stories who have been through that and they’re in the settled stable. Like, the ‘this is the life we’ve built together’ phase. Because to me, that’s where the real beauty of love is.”

Probing the beauty of love on the page, and helping other writers do the same, isn’t stopping anytime soon. “I’m just so proud that we can do this together and my real family is also my found family,” she says. “It’s just amazing that all of this started from a romance novel.” 

Story of My Life is available now, wherever books are sold.