Breakup to bestseller: How a Charlotte woman’s heartbreak landed her a book deal

After three hours of sleep and a surprise visit to the emergency room, Sloane Hart woke up with a pain that felt like “death by a thousand cuts.” It wasn’t from the shards of broken glass that cut her palm — but from the heartbreak of getting dumped by her ex (almost) boyfriend.

Though this isn’t what actually happened to Charlotte author Alissa DeRogatis, it’s the story inspired by her own breakup that landed her a book deal.

For five years, DeRogatis was in a on-and-off “situationship” — the kind of relationship with no labels or promises. But in June 2022, she and her first love, who she thought was “the one” finally called it quits.

“Ultimately … he just wasn’t ready for what I was ready for, and it was just this vicious cycle,” DeRogatis told CharlotteFive. “Sometimes we can have all of these big feelings and not know how to project them or know what to do with them, and I think that’s kind of what happened with me and my situationship.”

She processed the pain by setting out to write a fiction novel based on her own situationship: “Call It What You Want.”

“I read a lot of romance novels at the time that didn’t necessarily help me feel any better. It kind of just made me a little bit more sad,” the 27-year-old author said. “I don’t think right after a breakup, you’re in the mindset of like ‘I’m gonna meet someone else’ … so I had this idea to write a book like the not-so-happily ever after.”

‘Call It What You Want’, but was it love?

Riddled with Taylor Swift references and North Carolina staples, “Call It What You Want” is a fictional romance novel that follows the story of Sloane Hart, a senior at UNC Wilmington, and her evolving relationship with her upstairs neighbor, Ethan Brady.

“As their chemistry and connection intensify, Sloane finds herself falling deeper and deeper, but will Ethan ever be ready to catch her?,” the book’s summary reads. “Nostalgic, heartfelt and profoundly cathartic, “Call It What You Want” is an ode to almost-love stories — the kinds with no labels, no promises and the potential to turn your entire world upside down.”

Though DeRogatis used her breakup as inspiration for the book, she said only a small percentage of it is based on her previous relationship.

“Mostly it’s like my feelings. So Sloane’s — the main character — inner monologue is everything I felt, but obviously the events, the family history, the friends, the characters … all of that is so different from my real life,” she explained. “I would say it’s definitely more like almost what I wished had happened … so it was kind of just like a fantasy mixed with like, you know, my feelings and real-life experiences.”

The story of success after a situationship

DeRogatis originally self-published her debut fiction novel back in June 2023, about a year after her breakup.

Like Tareasa “Reesa Teesa” Johnson would later go on to do in her 50-part “Who TF Did I Marry” TikTok series, DeRogatis shared a lot about the situationship on social media, and the journey to writing the book based off the breakup got a lot of buzz online. So it wasn’t long before “Call it What You Want” reached thousands of people all over the world as a hit read on Amazon, landing her an official book deal.

“My first video about the book on TikTok was ‘I had this situationship breakup. No books told the story, like I was feeling really alone, so I decided to write one’ and overnight, I gained like a few thousand followers and I took people through the breakup journey,” she said.

“I was being really vulnerable with my whole journey, as well as like the writing process, so I think that’s a big part of it. People felt like they could experience it from start to finish.”

Now, the novel is in the process of being rewritten and traditionally published before it’s re-released online and in stores this June.

“To publish a book the traditional way, you usually query agents and then the agents will pitch the books to editors. I went the self-publish route because — while my book had some grammatical errors and maybe could’ve been a little bit more detailed, which is what this new edition is giving you — I didn’t write the book because I wanted it to be this perfect novel. I wanted it to be this story that girls like me, who had felt embarrassed, or alone, or unrelatable, to have something that they can relate to,” DeRogatis explained.

New changes to ‘Call It What You Want’

The cover and book title — a nod to Taylor Swift’s hit song — won’t be changing, but some of the storyline will in the newly released version of “Call It What You Want.” DeRogatis revealed that she originally wrote the book’s ending before the beginning, so now she’s going back to add in more details to further develop the full storyline.

“You see more depth into most of the characters,” she said. “It was really nice now that I’m like healed and over it to be able to go back and give their story more chemistry and more love … and make you understand why she fell for him in the first place.”

DeRogatis said she’d only ever planned on writing the one book, but because of the success of “Call It What You Want,” she’s now able to work as an author full-time, with a second book already in the works.

“I love the quote that’s like ‘Every ending is like a new beginning’, and I really think that while I hate that that had to happen and I had to go through that heartbreak … everything that has happened to me since then has been more than I ever could’ve imagined for myself or my future or my career,” she said.

“I was like ‘I have one story to tell and it’s this one, and that’s it,’ and now I want to write books for the rest of my life. So it’s really special and really crazy and I’m glad that something good could’ve come out of something that was not so good.”

The new version of “Call it What You Want” will be re-released on June 18, and is available for preorders online.