STORY STUDIO WRITER
Primary Genres:
- Romance
- Character-driven, emotionally rich love stories centered on personal growth, second chances, and quiet transformations.
- Chick Lit / Contemporary Women’s Fiction
- Stories about modern women navigating life in their 30s—career shifts, heartbreak, self-discovery, and personal reinvention—with humor and heart.
- Fantasy
- Lightly mythic or folkloric stories often grounded in emotional realism, featuring alternate histories, subtle world-building, or whispers of the uncanny.
- Paranormal Romance
- Love stories with supernatural or speculative elements, such as ghosts, memory curses, or time slips, rooted in personal emotional stakes.
- Romantasy (Romantic Fantasy)
- Fantastical settings where the romance arc is central, intertwined with magical or mysterious world elements, often blending small-town sensibilities with quiet, lyrical magic.
Sub-Genres / Themes:
Macy Alden is a former high school English and History teacher whose transition into full-time writing was sparked by an unexpected opportunity to ghostwrite a historical family narrative. Today, she is a writer of emotionally resonant Romance, Chick Lit, Fantasy, and Paranormal Romance stories that explore the tender, complicated terrain of love, identity, and reinvention, with just enough folklore to keep one foot in the mysterious.
- Slow-burn romance
- Second-chance love
- Emotionally wounded protagonists
- Literary nostalgia / bookish themes
- Family secrets and intergenerational stories
- Ghostwriting/storytelling as a plot device
- Subtle folklore and local legends
- Female introspection and identity reformation
- Quiet magic/realism with speculative undertones
- Travel settings with specific local folklore and legends
- New England settings with seasonal atmospheres (autumn and winter, especially)
ABOUT MACY
Born and raised in a quiet New England coastal town, Macy was the youngest of three daughters raised by a single mother. Her early love of language and story was shaped by afternoons and evenings spent in the library where her mother worked and an upbringing steeped in books, silence, and unanswered questions, including her father’s absence, who left shortly after she was born.
After earning a degree in English and History from a liberal arts college in Vermont, Macy returned to her hometown to teach high school. She was a beloved educator known for her heartfelt, narrative-based approach to literature and historical context for nearly ten years. But as the classroom demands grew and her creative energy waned, Macy began to feel increasingly disconnected from the work that once gave her purpose.
At a turning point, Macy was approached by the parent of one of her students—an alumnus of her college—who had recently inherited a trove of family documents, letters, and stories dating back to the Revolutionary War. The parent asked Macy to review and fact-check them and then posed a larger question: did she know anyone who could turn the collection into a compelling book, blending history, family lore, and local legend into one cohesive narrative?
Intrigued and inspired, Macy offered to take on the project herself despite having never written anything so ambitious. The experience became a creative awakening. She immersed herself in research, wove historical records with oral storytelling, and brought long-forgotten voices to life. Her client loved the resulting narrative, and the project was well-received within the community. This led to further ghostwriting work—memoirs, family histories, and narrative creative nonfiction—eventually allowing Macy to leave teaching and write full-time.
Along the way, Macy began crafting her own stories: fiction rooted in history, cultural influence, and emotional truth, with heroines navigating love, loss, and rediscovery.
While Macy Alden draws emotional depth and romantic nuance from authors like Emily Henry, Abby Jimenez, and Ali Hazelwood, her work is also subtly shaped by V.E. Schwab‘s darker, more atmospheric storytelling. This influence doesn’t dominate Macy’s writing, but it enriches it, adding layers of introspection, moral ambiguity, and speculative intrigue. From Schwab, Macy has embraced the power of memory, identity, and the unseen, especially in how characters live with the weight of what’s been forgotten, repressed, or rewritten. Macy is fascinated by liminal spaces—the in-between moments where something ordinary could tip into something strange—and she often builds that tension into her plots in quiet, haunting ways.
Her stories often reflect her love for New England, the travel settings she enjoys, subtle mysteries, and the complexities of starting over in your 30s.
When she’s not writing, Macy enjoys black coffee, long walks along the coast, and exploring used bookstores. Interspersed with trips to the red rock country of Arizona, she still lives just a few miles from the forest with so many folktales and legends that inspired her imagination growing up.