Get Ready to Ride With Simone Soltani in Her Latest Formula 1 Romance Novel
Move over, hockey romance. We have a hotter, steamier sports romance genre rising with Formula 1 drivers, and the honorary leader of this wave has to be Simone Soltani, author of the Lights Out series.
Almost one year ago exactly, Simone made her debut with the first installment, Cross the Line. This book introduces Dev Anderson, a promising Formula 1 driver who is in the midst of a social media scandal. There is no one better to help scrub his image than his best friend's little sister and internet (and sweet treat) aficionado, Willow Williams.
The next book, Ride With Me, is out today, May 20. Head to your local bookstore to uncover the next romance between Dev's peer Thomas Maxwell-Brown and Stella Baldwin, the owner of Willow's favorite dessert shop. These two are stars in their own right, but how will their egos fare when they decide to get married on a whim in Las Vegas?
We have to admit—we ate the book up in one sitting. It's empowering, it's fun and it's confident.
Ahead of the release, we were lucky enough to sit down with Simone to talk more about her journey to become traditionally published, her personal connection to Formula 1 and why it's important to include diverse voices as a biracial woman.
Sweety High: Your original plan was to self-publish your debut series, Lights Out, before you received the call from Berkley. How did your work catch their eye? Was your goal always to eventually traditionally publish?
Simone Soltani: It's a little mind-blowing to look back on how all of this happened.
I've been a writer for most of my life—I started out writing fan fiction on a now-defunct website before making the switch to original fiction. This eventually led me to become a ghostwriter for several years, working for a serialized fiction platform that specialized in keeping romance books going for thousands of chapters. When I was laid off from that job in mid-2022, I started writing my own books again and had a goal to self-publish. Traditional publishing was always a reach goal, something I wanted to work toward one day by pursuing it via the typical channels (querying agents, going out on submission, etc.). I never expected it would happen in a very different way.
I started posting on social media in March 2023, beginning with teasers for Cross the Line, which I planned to self-publish in September. My marketing started to gain attention from potential readers not long after, which I can absolutely credit to the cover reveal. Leni Kauffman, my cover designer, did a fantastic job bringing my ideas and the characters to life, and I know a lot of people were interested in the book simply because of the cover.
By August, there were a few editors from publishing houses in my inbox asking to read the manuscript because they saw my social media marketing and were interested. I sent it off to them and didn't think much of it—I wasn't convinced that my low-angst Formula 1 romance starring characters of color would be what they were looking for. But to my surprise, just a few days before I was set to self-publish, an editor at Pan Macmillan in the U.K. made an offer and bought world rights for the first two books in the series. Cross the Line was then shopped to U.S. publishers, and when Berkley made an offer, I knew I absolutely wanted to work with them.
I'm very lucky to say that they'll also be publishing the next three books in the series as well!
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SH: How did your writing process for Ride With Me differ from Cross the Line? Was there any added pressure knowing you already had a major publishing house in your corner?
SS: Surprisingly, my writing process wasn't very different, minus some extra input from my editors throughout drafting and a few more rounds of edits. I wrote Cross the Line knowing there would be eyes on it because I planned to self-publish and had built a small following already. It wasn't something I thought would just sit on my hard drive, only to be seen by me. Having a publishing house in my corner only changed the stage on which I'd be writing because I knew the book was going to have a wider reach, thanks to them. But ultimately, it was the same amount of pressure. To me, a reader is a reader, no matter how they found my book, whether it be because I self-published or a big five publisher picked it up. I will always want to give them the best story I possibly can.
I do think coming from a background of ghostwriting prepared me for how to process feedback, plus how to handle the pressure of writing on a deadline. Definitely a perk!
SH: Both Willow Williams and Stella Baldwin have Black ancestry. Why is it important to you to write BIPOC female main characters in your series? How has your life experience as a biracial woman informed the characterization of your protagonists?
SS: I'm not ashamed to admit that it spawned from selfish reasons—I wanted to see characters who look like me and the women in my family. I wanted to be able to incorporate elements of my culture, my upbringing and the way I move through the world. And I especially wanted to see all of that within a romance niche (Formula 1 romance) that is still relatively small and very white.
The bottom line is that I wanted more representation, and I knew if I wanted to see it, I had to write it. I think there's something special about writing characters that are informed by your own background, especially when others who rarely get to see those experiences on the page see it and say, "Hey, this is something I've experienced too." But I also just wanted to show these female characters existing, thriving and being loved out loud. That's incredibly important to me.
As a biracial woman (I'm Black and Persian), there's a particular way I view the world and the world views me in return. I wanted some of that to show on the page, but I also didn't want it to be the whole story. It's an element, part of what makes the characters who they are and shapes their world views.
SH: Ride With Me is only your second published novel. What other relationship tropes and dynamics are you excited to try in future releases?
SS: Oh my goodness, there are so many! There are very few tropes I don't like or couldn't bring myself to like if I wrote them in a particular way. I'm the kind of writer who's always open to trying something new and twisting or combining tropes in ways that make me step out of my comfort zone.
I can't say too much about what's coming next, but there's a pretty polarizing trope in my next book, and I hope those who aren't big fans of it will still give the book a chance!
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SH: Although some people are not personally invested in the subject matter of their books, you are a fan of Formula 1 in real life. What is your history with the sport, and when was the moment you decided to write a romance series inspired by it?
SS: I've been an F1 fan for over a decade now, starting back when I was in college. I remember sitting in a friend's apartment as they watched an episode of Top Gear, where an F1 driver was the guest on that episode, which pushed me into looking this person up. Well, I fell down the F1 rabbit hole that day and I've yet to climb out.
While I can't remember which driver it was in that episode, I can 100% credit Lewis Hamilton for getting me into (and keeping me in) the sport. Hearing his stories about being the first and only Black driver in F1 blew me away, and then watching him win championship after championship felt like a privilege. Even if he never wins another title (I'm very much hoping he will!) he's already in the history books as one of the—if not the—greatest of all time.
As for sports romance, it's a genre I've been interested in for a long time thanks to my own background as an athlete and love for various sports, so I knew I wanted to write something [in the sub-genre] eventually. However, it seemed the majority of sports romance on the market were hockey-centric. And while I do enjoy hockey… I couldn't see myself writing hockey romance.
I understand that F1 is a relatively niche sport, though it has certainly grown in popularity thanks to the wide reach of Drive to Survive. Despite F1 not being the most popular sport, it's definitely my favorite, and if I was going to write a sports romance it would have to be about something I loved. I wanted my passion to come across on the page—I didn't want it to be a sports romance that lacked the actual sporting element.
The Lights Out series has been bouncing around in my head since at least 2018, if not earlier. But it wasn't until early 2023 that I really said, "Right, let's do this." And now here we are!
SH: What are some of your long-term goals as an author?
SS: Is it cliché to simply say I hope I can continue writing books that people enjoy for as long as possible? (Probably, so I'll get a little more specific.)
While I love F1 romance and have plenty of ideas for more books, I would love to branch out into different sub-genres of romance. Romantic suspense, general contemporary, maybe even romantasy. I wouldn't even rule out YA. So, I guess my goal is to have a long, varied writing career.
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SH: What were you doing before you became an author? Have you previously held any jobs prior to becoming published that shaped your writing?
SS: I was a ghostwriter most recently before becoming a full-time writer (of my own books), but I actually studied geography and geographic information systems in college. I was a geospatial analyst for a while, which I really enjoyed, and I wrote for fun on the side.
It might be a little surprising to some, but I definitely use my degree in geography quite a bit in my writing, both for world-building (yes, contemporary books do involve world building!) and character creation. While a lot of people think geography is mainly just physical geography (like bodies of water and land masses), there's also human geography (think culture, politics, economics, how people interact with the land around them, etc.), which was my favorite part.
Considering F1 is a pretty global sport, my degree comes in handy often. It's also what drew me to the sport. I love the idea of every race being in a different country around the world with different cultures and customs being represented each time. Hoping for a race in Africa one of these days!
SH: How did your life change after receiving a book deal? Are you writing full-time now?
SS: Truthfully, I've been writing full-time since I left my ghostwriting job—although you could probably argue that I was also writing full-time then, just in a different capacity.
When I look back on the past few years, it's been a really big time of change in my life. It started when I moved to London for a few months, then one of my moms suddenly passed away, and then I was unexpectedly laid off from my job. All of those things spurred me to write Cross the Line as a bit of an escape, and it pushed me to take the publishing plunge.
Thankfully, things have settled down quite a bit since that tumultuous time, and I'm settling into a new "normal" for myself. I feel so incredibly privileged that writing full-time is part of that new normal, and I'm excited to keep going. Can't wait to see what comes next—hopefully good things!
SH: Is there anything else you would like to add?
SS: Just want to say that I appreciate these incredibly thoughtful questions! Thanks again for chatting with me! And after Ride with Me, keep an eye out for Crash Into You, book 3 in the Lights Out series coming in 2026.
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