NBCUniversal Author Meet & Greet
Curated by Kennedy Ryan and Black Romance Book Fest
This experience brings together a curated group of Black romance authors whose stories have captured readers, built loyal audiences, and created worlds with strong potential for film and television adaptation. Selected in collaboration with Kennedy Ryan and Black Romance Book Fest, these authors represent a range of voices, genres, and storytelling perspectives across romance with elements of fantasy, women’s fiction, suspense, and more.
Meet the Authors
Finding My Bodyguard
A contemporary romance with a mafia-adjacent backdrop about a plus-size woman pressured to change her body for marriage and the surgeon with a dangerous past who sees her worth exactly as she is.
Unexpected Pass
A sports romance about a star athlete who falls for a pregnant woman and unexpectedly steps into her life, creating a heartfelt story centered on chosen family and love.
Book Boyfriend’s Bad Decisions
A contemporary romantic comedy about a book influencer who brings her male best friend as her fake boyfriend on a couples-only brand trip, forcing them to confront long-hidden feelings.
Finding My Bodyguard
Logline: When a celebrity plastic surgeon with ties to a criminal empire refuses to perform a body-altering surgery on a young woman being groomed for an arranged marriage, he offers her a way out. Setting off a chain of events that threatens powerful families, hidden alliances, and the future they were both expected to accept.
Pretty Little Bird
Logline: A wheelchair-using woman living with lupus and a Multi-platinum former rapper struggling to rebuild his life after incarceration form an unexpected connection through art that forces them both to confront grief, identity, and what it truly means to start over.
Unexpected Pass
Best suited for a feature film due to its contained emotional arc and cinematic romance.
Finding My Bodyguard
Best suited for television because of its layered backstory, evolving character dynamics, and multiple-book storyline.
Book Boyfriend’s Bad Decisions
Works well as a romantic comedy feature film thanks to its modern influencer backdrop and friends-to-lovers premise.
Award-winning indie romance author with recognition and nominations within the indie romance community. Accomplishments include a Top 100 Amazon ranking and books with thousands of reader ratings. The stories are known for emotional depth, relatability, and authentic portrayals of Black love.
@acarthurbooks on Instagram, Threads & TikTok
Wrapped In A Donovan
Leave It To Us
Happy Is On Hiatus
The After Party
Defying Desire, Falling For A Donovan, The After Party, and Leave It To Us are among the most popular fan-favorites in the catalog.
Which books or series are most suited for adaptation?
The Donovan Series (23 books)
Logline: When three overlooked coworkers—Venus, Draya, and Jackie—jokingly imagine life without their toxic boss, they wake to find him murdered, forcing them into a high stakes pact that pulls them through suspicion, danger, and unexpected empowerment as their fragile alliance transforms into an unbreakable sisterhood.
Happy On Hiatus
Logline: When cousins Rita and Sharae hit simultaneous breaking points—one reeling from a husband’s betrayal, the other from a father’s death and an unwanted inheritance—they’re thrust into a storm of secrets, scandal, and second chances, forcing them to rely on the fierce sisterhood that has always saved them as they fight to rebuild their lives and reclaim their joy.
The Donovan Series
Best suited for television because it follows an affluent Black family with layered storylines and drama reminiscent of Dynasty or The Haves and The Have Nots.
Leave It To Us
Would work well as either a television series or feature film due to its family drama elements similar to Soul Food.
The After Party
Written as a modern Black-led rendition of the classic film 9 to 5, making it especially suited for adaptation as a feature film or streaming project.
Yes. Rights are not available for:
• The Shadow Shifters Series
• The Royal Wedding Series
• The Fabulous Golds
• Wolf Mates
• The Legion Series
Commissioned by Alloy Entertainment to adapt Within The Shadows into a duology inspired by the tone and audience of Pretty Little Liars. The resulting books, Rumors and Revealed, became adult-oriented versions of the hit series.
Commissioned by Hallmark Publishing, under the pen name Lacey Baker, to write the novelizations for the Hallmark Christmas films:
• A Gingerbread Romance
• Christmas In Evergreen: Bells Are Ringing
Snow Place Like Home, co-written as Lacey Baker, was specifically developed with Hallmark adaptation potential in mind before the publishing division closed.
The After Party and Leave It To Us have also attracted attention from film agents and a notable producer for possible adaptation.
Adaptation
A Worthy Love
Logline: After an affair with a married man, a humiliated and heartbroken young woman seeks solace in a one night stand in Vegas that unexpectedly blossoms into more.
Colliding with Fate
Logline:
A millionaire playboy trying to forget his troubled past engages in a casual friends with benefits relationship that turns complicated as the past and present collide.
Recipient of multiple awards at literary and reader events.
Achieved bestseller status in the Amazon store.
In 2024, featured as an author at Essence Fest.Colliding with Fate
Where There’s Smoke…, Down South Bayou & Sweet Like Honey
@msalexhouse on Instagram, Threads, and TikTok
McClain Brothers Series
• Let Me Love You
• Let Me Hold You
• Let Me Show You
• Let Me Free You
• Let Me Please You
Let Me Love You
Goal
Lilith
• Creator of 4 Audible Originals
• Three-time Audie Award Finalist
• Participant in Audible’s Indie Romance Campaign
Instagram & TikTok: @authorbaileywest
Loving MAN
Blue’s Beauty
Epiphany
Adaptation
Logline:
A career-driven chef experiences one reckless night at a culinary conference, receiving news months later: he’s going to be a father. A life-changing call drives a gifted chocolatier into a job as his nanny, where she inevitably falls for the Type A chef and his sunny, pint-sized version.
Blue’s Beauty
Logline:
After losing his first wife and rebuilding his faith from the wreckage of grief, a pastor settles into a celibate life of ministry, until a quiet force with wounds of her own, enters his church and challenges him to believe that love after loss is not a betrayal, but a blessing.
@BriAnnDanae
Keep You To Myself
Heat Of The Moment
From The Hood With Love
@chenciachiggins across all platforms.
D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding
An Illicit Seduction, Janine: His True Alpha
To Buy a Vow, A Little Kissing
D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding
Logline:
When a charming butch fitness influencer and a closeted fashionista school teacher join forces for a wedding-themed reality show, their families and friends become front row witnesses as they stumble through a series of challenges that put their greatest fears on display, give them opportunities to shine, and help them fall in love.
A Little Kissing Between Friends
Logline:
When an exotic dancer and her music producer bestie accidentally sleep together, they embark on a messy and hilarious journey of denial, sex, and self-discovery that tests the bounds of their friendship and helps them redefine what love could look like.
@beingmrsjones across all platforms.
Hostile Takeover
Behind The Scenes
Equivalent Exchange
Getting Schooled
Ante Up
Love Notes
@Ciana.Smoak on Instagram
Single & Crochet
Shoot for the Stars
Shoot for the Starts
Logline:
After a disturbing incident with her former track coach forces her to transfer to an elite prep school, a young track star focuses on two things, winning championships and leaving her past behind. But when she reconnects with her childhood friend and football phenom, unexpected romance threatens to change the course of both their championship dreams.
Single & Crochet
Logline:
When a last minute crisis jeopardizes her runway debut in the Virgin Islands, a crochet fashion designer seeks the help of her ex. Only to discover that keeping her career and her heart separate maybe impossible.
@authordanielleallen (TikTok, IG, and Threads)
The Curve Series (Curvy Girl Summer, Plus Size Player, and Big Girl Blitz)
Broken Clocks
Truth or Dare
Tell Tale
InstaLove
Logline:
With two months left until reaching a milestone birthday, Aaliyah navigates searching for “the one” with the help of her best friends and the local bartender. Between her meddling family and the disaster dates from a dating app, her plan to have the perfect birthday party is making her summer eventful (in the worst way).
V is for Villainous (The Women of V, 1 of 3)
Logline:
An elusive secret society on the campus of Hamilton University invites five senior women to join in order to get money, access and opportunities. But had Michaela known the things she’d have to do, the people she’d have to hurt, the lies she’d have to tell, the hearts she’d have to break, she would’ve declined—or at least that’s what she tells herself so she can sleep at night.
Instagram: @Author_DLWhite
Brunch at Ruby’s
Demon’s Dream
The Beauty of This Street Love
Logline:
To save her brother’s life, Dream Castle — the Yale-polished fixer holding her family’s Houston gun empire together — becomes the price of peace. That price is thirty days with Demon, the one man this city uses to scare grown men. He survived on three rules — no caring, no closeness, no love. She breaks all three by day seven, without even trying — igniting a love neither of them planned and a war neither family can stop. The daughter they priced, was never for sale.
The Beauty of This Street Love series -Television
To The Moon & The 19th Hole
Logline:
When a headline-making fight forces a rising Black golf star out of the spotlight, he retreats to Juniper Falls and meets the daughter of a beloved driving-range owner struggling to hold her family together. What starts as friction on the green turns into a love neither of them saw coming.
Watercolors
Logline:
After inheriting the lake house where her childhood was forever altered, a guarded artist must learn to face the water, her past, and the retired swimming legend next door who refuses to let her settle for a life lived in gray.
The Boyfriend Project Series
Logline:
Three women become fast friends when the confrontation with the man who has been catfishing them goes viral. The trio agrees to a no-dating rule for six months, but one-by-one love finds them.
A Forever Kind of Love
Logline:
The prodigal daughter of a small, predominately Black Louisiana town returns to find it on the brink of despair. In the midst of reconnecting with her high school sweetheart, she discovers a stop on the Underground Railroad in an old building in the center of town and breathes new life into the push to make the town relevant again.
Logline:
Twenty years after their secret college relationship, two Black queer men meet again at a college reunion event which stirs up feelings that never really faded and offers them a second chance at love.
One and Done
Logline:
A goal-driven university administrator, determined to get his university successfully through an accreditation process, fights an attraction for the project manager leading the review of his university… and ultimately gives in to the feelings.
I’m a higher education professional who writes romance novels. Originally from Detroit, and now based in San Francisco, I grew up reading the novels of the late E. Lynn Harris, who I write in the tradition of and see as a literary role model. I have been on numerous podcasts.
My 2007 novel, Right Side of the Wrong Bed, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, Gay Romance category. I would be happy to discuss the storyline possibilities for any of my novels, but specifically, One and Done. Thank you for the opportunity.
Tiktok: @writtenbygranger
The Secret World of Maggie Grey Series
Logline:
When Maggie Grey enrolls at a hidden HBCU for witches, vampires, and other mythical beings beneath Atlanta, she becomes the prime suspect in a murder that threatens to unravel the magical world. As she forms powerful friendships with a group of young women navigating love, identity, and adulthood, Maggie uncovers a conspiracy rooted in centuries of political corruption and supernatural power struggles. Together, they must expose the truth before their secret society destroys itself from within.
The Prototype Series
TikTok:IamJah
Delgato Series / Lennox Hills Series/ Caselli Series
I’m Fine … Thanks
Logline:
A marriage therapist whose own marriage is falling apart finds herself emotionally entangled with a client’s husband, forcing both women to confront the painful truth that sometimes the person helping save your marriage is the reason it falls apart.
Yeah…Thanks
Logline:
A successful influencer secretly battling an eating disorder finds her loyalty tested when a billionaire hotel heir enters her life, forcing her to choose between the comfort of her past and the possibility of a healthier future.
The Accidents Happen Series
Logline:
After a lonely woman jokingly performs a love spell from her favorite fantasy novel, she accidentally summons a dangerously attractive demon into her world. Now magically bound to the supernatural stranger she can’t get rid of, she must find a way to break the spell before their growing attraction unleashes chaos in both their lives.
Siren’s Call (book 1 of the Siren Series)
Logline:
After surviving a violent attack, a young woman discovers she is the daughter of a siren and a warlock and heir to a hidden world of magic. As dangerous new powers awaken within her, she must unravel the secrets of her bloodline and survive a centuries-old conflict between sirens and witches before the forces hunting her can destroy her first.
Hide Away/How To Melt A Snowflake
Shadows and Whispers, Christmas in Spite of You, Consent Series, When We, You Could Do Damage, They Call Him Nas
Implied Consent
Logline:
A sports attorney trying to prove she is more than her family name has to pivot when she is “reallocated” out of a dream job. A pity party, disrespected burger and Ex-NFL player becomes the trifecta that changes the trajectory of her life.
Holiday – Christmas in Spite of You, Romance: Consent Series
Logline:
A neat freak Scrooge and a Christmas-loving ball of chaos must coexist for a week after a Shared Space mishap. The friction that ensues turns the most magical time of the year into a push and pull challenge which tests their holiday cheer-or lack there of, but also prove that opposites do attract.
Consent Series: Television or Feature film
• Oprah Book Club: Featured in “The Steamiest Holiday Romances of the Season” • Oprah Daily: Included in “The Steamiest Holiday Romances of the Season”
• The New York Times: Named in “Holiday Romance Novels to Make Your December Merry and Bright”
• People Magazine: Listed among “26 Festive Romance Books to Read this Holiday Season – Whether You’re Feeling Naughty or Nice!”
• New York Post: Selected for “21 Holiday Romance Books to Cozy Up with This Christmas Season”
• Forbes: Received an honorable mention in the Q&A section, further showcasing its growing acclaim. 2025 USA Today Best Selling Author – You Could Do Damage 2024 USA Today Best Selling Author – Innocent Intent 2024 Black Girls Who Write – Best Black Novella – Twenty Fours Three 2023 Best Women’s Fictions Book: Shadows and Whispers 2021 Black Girls Who Write: Best Black Romance Author – Implied Consent 2019 Rolling Out Sisters with Superpowers: Top Women in Power
Rhythm’s Blues, If You Love Me, The Dillinger Chronicles, The Jareau Family Series, Hold Me While You Wait, Tethered Love, The Last Sad Love Song
The Love Syllabus, The World Around Us, The Winning Play, A Night with Ms. Grinch
The World Around Us/The Winning Play (Playing for Keeps)
Logline:
After finally creating the stable life she never had, a beloved community leader’s carefully built world is upended when an NFL superstar returns to reclaim her heart, setting them on a journey that uncovers a decades-old mystery capable of rewriting their family’s history.
The Winning Play
Logline:
To destroy the powerful family that stole her childhood, a determined young woman enters a dangerous marriage of convenience, forcing the NBA superstar she loves to become her greatest sacrifice as they fight to prove that some love stories are worth surviving anything.
Playing for Keeps: television
Uncovering Love, Blu, Dr. Bell
Logline:
After a friend’s death, two women from Louisiana are tasked with uprooting their lives and venturing to a small town in Florida, where one quickly lands into trouble, plunging them into the path of one handsome, brooding attorney, and his arrogant, equally handsome, attorney brother.
Uncovering Love
Logline:
A divorced, single mother navigating loss and grief collides with a sexy, charismatic homicide detective determined to uproot every concern in her life until he uncovers the love buried deep within her.
Soul Ties, A Drug Called You, & Solace
Soul Ties
Logline:
After an encounter at a secret masquerade sparks an undeniable connection, a woman searching for more from life finds herself falling for a mystery man who was only supposed to be a one night stand. Their connection becomes forbidden when she is surprisingly hired as the doula for his pregnant wife.
Married to the connect
Logline:
An ambitious Detroit drug kingpin and the woman who becomes his queen rise from teenage sweethearts to the heads of a powerful criminal empire. But as violence, betrayal, rival cartels, and the Feds close in, their love is tested by the very empire they built together.
“Our Vicious Oaths” and “The Blood Trials”
Take Two is a forthcoming contemporary romance novel I have in-development about a movie star heroine attempting to finally heal from a messy public breakup with her famous and abusive ex. When she begins to fall for her handsome, charming co-star who seems to be the perfect guy for her, she is scared to take a chance on love again. “Take Two” may also be well suited for adaptation.
Our Vicious Oaths lends itself best to television. It features an immersive world, thrilling plot, ensemble cast, and textually-rich story that can unfold over the length of a series.
Take Two may be best as a feature film. It features a Black woman’s journey of healing and finding joy again after an abusive relationship and learning to trust her judgement when it comes to relationships after having that trust in herself shaken to its core.
Afterwards
Rhyme & Reason
Commitment
Shots Not Taken, Adore You, Road to Love
At the End of it All, Saving Sunflower, The Endgame
Joliet
Logline:
After fleeing an abusive relationship, a former NFL WAG returns to her hometown, where she befriends a dangerous street fighter. Together they grapple with family secrets, violence, extortion, and generational trauma as they try to navigate their complicated friendship that quickly grows into a forbidden romance. They must ultimately choose between their families’ complicated legacies or love.
At the End of it All
Logline:
A disgraced college basketball phenom moves to his father’s hometown to start over at a local HBCU where his father has taken a coaching job. There, he battles grief, addiction, and an uncertain future. After his father assigns the basketball team host families, he becomes immersed in a family where he finds unexpected stability and falls into a passionate love affair with a girl who feels like the home he thought he lost after his mother died. But when their relationship is exposed, past allegations that haunt him resurface, threatening his redemption and everything she thought she was safe from.
Instagram: @AuthorRhondaMcKnight
Threads: @authorrhondamcknight
Tiktok: @authorrhondamcknight
The Thing About Home, Breaking All The Rules
Bitter and Sweet
Logline:
Raised as rivals after their mother’s death, two estranged sisters return home to save their family’s eighty-seven-year-old restaurant, where Gullah Geechee traditions, buried family secrets, and unexpected new love force them to confront the wounds that have divided them for years.
Writer in Residence
Logline:
A novelist struggling with writer’s block retreats to the Lowcountry after a DNA match upends her family history. As her search for answers leads deep into the Gullah Geechee community, she must uncover the truth about her past before she can reclaim her voice—and open her heart to love.
Somebody’s Wife, Somebody’s Husband and Summer’s Echo
The Last Man on Earth: A Survival Romance
Threads: @sherellegreen
Facebook: Authorsherellegreen
Tiktok: @sherellegreen
Blessed By Malakai, Sins of a Saint, Carter’s Undoing, Ruined Vows
In Creed We Trust
Logline:
Foster siblings are adopted into a powerful crime family for their unique individual skillset, but when the empire destroys the life of the most loyal son, his quest for revenge uncovers a buried secret that tears the family apart and forces him to kidnap the fiancée of his family’s closest ally.
Blessed By Malakai
Logline:
After a die-hard bachelor declares he’s ready to find a wife, his stalker ex-girlfriend leaks a private photo which starts trending for all the wrong reasons creating a hashtag where every woman he’s ever slept with shares a story about their intimate moment and prompts him to hire an image consultant for help.
No Reservations, Choose Me, Do Me, Closer to You
Choose Me
Closer To You
No Reservations
Supper Club Series (A Table for Two, A Perfect Pairing, A Promise of Forever)
No Reservations
Logline:
No Reservations follows Joy, Diane and Rochelle as they deal with struggling relationships and personal insecurities, all while grieving the loss of their friend and promising to fulfill her last wish…to finally take that girl’s trip they’ve put off for years.
All My Sisters and Me
Logline:
When a tense family anniversary vacation brings years of resentment to a head, four sisters-in-law–Giselle, Kamryn, Taylor, and Chanel–must decide if the truth will destroy them, or be the catalyst for a new beginning.
No Reservations: limited series
Supper Club: series
No Reservations – Romance in Color Award of Excellence, Amazon Editor Pick, Featured at Essence Festival 2024
TikTok: @tajmccoy
Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell, Zora Books Her Happy Ever After
Zora Books Her Happy Ever After
Logline:
A Black bookstore owner in DC dates her author crush and his brooding best friend in a love-triangle romance where both men carry secrets, and Zora must figure out what they are hiding before choosing her own happy ending, all while her unfiltered grandmother pressures her for great-grandbabies.
The Dating Prohibition
Logline:
A prodigal daughter returns home to DC to start her own speakeasy supper club in an attempt to break out of her big brother’s shadow and teams up with his best friend to scout potential locations for her business. She refuses to take no for an answer when he curves her for being “off limits” and they go round for round in secret until her business plan solidifies and forces him to make a choice.
Tik Tok: @tiyelove
Threads: tiye28always
Unforgettable Man, One Week
Chicago Blues
Loglines:
When a controversial relationship podcaster and Columbia professor meets his mother’s caretaker, a struggling playwright, his dogmatic view on love takes a tumble until he discovers that she’s writing a play about his traumatic childhood.
This Side of Beautiful
Logline:
An once Hip Hop princess is on her comeback tour as she grapples with her fluctuating emotions, self-destructive patterns, her estranged and newfound family, and an undeniable, complicated love from a quiet musician with his own struggles.
This Side of Beautiful for feature film