Ever since she can remember, Sofia T. Romero wanted to be a writer. However, achieving publication took so long that the point came when she realized it might never happen.
“As I got older, I realized I wasn’t going to be a twenty-something overnight sensation,” she remembers. “I had to face the possibility that I might never publish anything at all. In thinking about that, I realized that even though publishing was a goal of mine, it wasn’t why I wrote. I wrote because I couldn’t not write. It was something that was just fundamentally important to me.”
Romero shifted her focus from publication to what she cared most about: the writing. “I leaned into getting to know myself as a writer — to try to understand what I really wanted to write about or what I wanted to accomplish,” she says.
That was when Romero dedicated herself to mastering the short story format by reading as many short stories as she could and trying her own hand at the art. “It really felt as though I had found my identity as a writer,” she says.
She also started setting smaller goals. “I worked on getting just one story published,” Romero recalls. “When that happened, I focused on getting another story published, and so on. After I published a few short stories, I finally allowed myself to dream of publishing a collection.”
Romero’s devotion to the short story has paid off, and that collection is now a reality. Blackstone Publishing released Romero’s debut book, “We Have Always Been Who We Are,” in October 2023.
Romero’s collection “We Have Always Been Who We Are”
“We Have Always Been Who We Are” features speculative and often scary stories set in New England. In one, a creepy cat infiltrates a young woman’s home while she attempts to make sense of a breakup with her boyfriend of many years. In another, tragedy ensues when a fiancée receives unsolicited advice about how to be a good wife from her deceased future mother-in-law.
Romero lists many influences on her work, from Edgar Allan Poe and Flannery O’Connor to Shirley Jackson and Gabriel García Márquez. “Reading them was like getting a permission slip to travel in this world where writing exists as a way to explore the mysterious and the magical,” she says.
While writing the stories in “We Have Always Been Who We Are,” Romero read works by Haruki Murakami, NK Jemison, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Octavia Butler. “In the last few years, I’ve also read a lot of incredible books by Latina authors, including Carmen Maria Machado and Mariana Enriquez, both of whom have written some really great, creepy short stories,” she says.
For Romero, the short story format deserves to be recognized as a beautiful art form in its own right. “There’s this idea that short stories are somehow less than novels, and there isn’t a market for them,” she says. “I’ve heard people say writing short stories is somehow easier or an intermediate step toward doing some ‘real’ writing. It’s not — they are their own craft.”
Indeed, short stories appeal to many readers precisely due to their brevity. “I was at my very first book signing event, and a woman came up to me and told me how, during COVID, she found her attention span getting shorter and shorter,” Romero says. “There were a lot of reasons for that, but one of them was the stress of what we were all going through at that time. She told me, ‘I love short stories. They saved my life,’ and I feel the same way.”
Romero’s collection has earned a spot on the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards longlist, and she has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her writing has also appeared in prestigious literary magazines like “Necessary Fiction,” “Chestnut Review,” and “Electric Literature.”
While Romero’s writing has attained lofty heights, she began writing these stories during a low point in her life.
Writing herself through difficult times
For most of her adult life, Romero prioritized other responsibilities over writing, including nurturing her marriage, raising two kids, and working full-time. “I always had this nagging sense that I needed to be writing In the back of my mind,” she remembers, “but it was easier just to tell myself I was too busy.”
A few decades later, Romero went through a series of unexpected and difficult transitions. “I turned to writing as a means of processing, grieving, healing, and moving into the next chapter of my life,” she says. “That’s when the seeds of many of these stories were planted.”
She also started taking her writing more seriously. “I pushed myself out of my comfort zone — not only as a writer but also as a person,” Romero says. “For the first time in many years, I signed up for a writing class. Actually, several of the stories in the collection started as writing exercises for that class. I joined a critique group, which gave me community and accountability, and I just wrote.”
Building community in this way has enabled Romero to join in the larger conversation about writing, which is one of her favorite things about being an author. Another thing she loves about being a writer is connecting with readers.
“It’s fascinating to hear the different things readers take away from something I’ve written,” she says. “I love talking to readers, hearing their theories, and answering their questions. I always hear something surprising—in a good way!”
In particular, many readers have asked Romero what the creepy cat symbolizes. “I’m always happy to share my own interpretation, but I’m also really interested to hear the different things that readers think it might symbolize,” she says. “To me, the narrator and the cat have a toxic relationship. The cat symbolizes the toxic partner in that relationship, engaging in abusive behaviors like being controlling, isolating the narrator from others, and so forth.”
Uniquely eerie and meaningful short stories
While it took Romero a long time and a lot of hard work before she finally held her own first published book in her hands, she wouldn’t change anything about her journey.
“Even though I was frustrated or disappointed by how things were going for many years, I also know I couldn’t have written the book I did without living through those times,” she says.
Because of her persistence and dedication, “We Have Always Been Who We Are” provides readers with a collection of uniquely eerie and poignant short stories from a master of the form.
