FROM BRIEFS TO BOOKS, ORLANDO LAWYER PENS FORMULA 1 ROMANCE

Romance novels and romcoms have long been the preferred escape for Orlando attorney Mary Rebekah Fritz-Gonzalez.

“I’m a big reader,” she says. “I think over the last year I’ve read over 150 books.”

When the product of someone else’s imagination started to lose its therapeutic zing, and when the heroines became disappointingly docile, Fritz-Gonzalez knew she could do better.

The result is “Checkered Love,” a 318-page “contemporary sports romance,” or “Formula 1 sports romance,” that Fritz-Gonzalez wrote under the pen name “Mary Rebekah,” at her publisher’s suggestion.

The book has been getting a good reception since Black Rose Writing released it July 30, Fritz-Gonzalez assures.

“My first book signing sold out, so that’s exciting,” she says. “It’s a little too early to have some solid metrics, but I’m optimistic at how it’s doing. It’s received a lot of attention.”

The heroine, Isabella “Izzy” Vega, is an “ambitious” attorney who represents Miami Grand Prix and finds herself going head-to-head with “Marcus Laurent,” a world-champion F1 driver.

“I created her to be a deputy general counsel for the Miami Grand Prix,” Fritz-Gonzalez says. “I wanted to tie it into Florida because I’m a native and I love this state.”

Mining the parallels between professional sports and the practice of law came naturally, she says.

“There’s always a winner, there’s the high stakes, there’s the preparation that goes into sports,” she says. “So, I liked that flow.” Once she figured out the plot, the project took about three months, she says.

For romance fans who track the tropes, the book fits neatly into the “enemies-to-lovers,” “forced proximity,” and “slow burn,” category.

The book may be set in the glamorous world of Formula 1 racing, – Fritz-Gonzalez is a big fan – but she assures it’s not racy.

“I’d call it mildly steamy,” she says. “There are a few intimate scenes, but nothing overly explicit.”

A Central Florida native, Fritz-Gonzalez is the daughter of an aerospace engineer father and a mother who worked in marketing. The couple met working for the same defense contractor.

The term “ambitious lawyer” could also apply to the author, who attended FSU as an undergraduate, holds a master’s degree, and earned her JD from Florida A&M University College of Law in 2020.

“I worked as a paralegal to put myself through law school,” she says. “So, the second I was barred, I just took over the cases that I was already working on.”

These days, she focuses her practice on helping corporate giants transition to the future.

“I do marketing compliance and transactional compliance for large Fortune 500 companies that are looking at how they can possibly adopt AI,” she says.

Legal training came in handy when she landed a publisher.

“I was used to dealing with these large Fortune 500 companies and their intellectual property and licensing agreements, and I got to negotiate my own, so it’s been surreal.”

“Checkered Love” is available wherever books are sold and Audible offers an audio version, she says.

Stay tuned, Fritz-Gonzalez advises. Another manuscript is in the pipeline.

 

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