An Exclusive First Look at B.K. Borison’s Longtime Listener
9 min readB.K. Borison understood, from the “very beginning,” that she would write Maggie and Cooper’s love story. She also understood it would be a daunting task. The third—and supposedly final—book in her beloved No. 1 New York Times-bestselling Heartstrings series is drawn from the plot of Nora Ephron’s 1998 rom-com classic You’ve Got Mail, which Borison considers a “seminal film,” both personally and culturally. Borison credits the late Ephron with sparking her desire to write romance in the first place; properly emulating Ephron’s work was the least Borison could do to thank her.
When the author first set out to write the Heartstrings books after the success of her Lovelight Farms series, she planned it as a duology: Her first book, 2025’s First-Time Caller, loosely based on Sleepless in Seattle, would be followed by her You’ve Got Mail-inspired Longtime Listener. But then And Now, Back to You—drawn from When Harry Met Sally—snuck its way into the lineup, dropping earlier this year. Finally, Borison will conclude the trilogy with Longtime Listener on Feb. 23, 2027, starring Maggie Lin as the tireless radio station manager at Baltimore’s 101.6 LITE FM and Cooper West as the Fortune 500 executive of a media conglomerate, keen to acquire Maggie’s station.
“Initially, I was supposed to write this book second, and then my editor was like, ‘No, you need to write [And Now, Back to You] instead,’” says Borison, who uses “B.K.” as a pen name but also goes by “Becs” or “Becca.” “[Longtime Listener] was always planned, and I would even say this one was more firmed up and planned than First-Time Caller was when I started it. Of the three of them, Longtime Listener is most solidly connected to the plot [of its respective Ephron film], what with the pen pal element, and not knowing they’re talking to each other, and the corporation trying to acquire the small, locally owned business.”
Maggie and Cooper’s roles, of course, mirror those of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’s characters in You’ve Got Mail, in which an indie bookseller and the owner of a Barnes & Noble-esque corporate chain begin an anonymous pen-pal correspondence via email, only to realize their true identities later. In Longtime Listener, Maggie and Cooper become similarly anonymous online confidantes while, IRL, Cooper touches down in Baltimore and immediately clashes with Maggie.
Longtime Heartstrings fans will recognize both characters from First-Time Caller and And Now, Back to You, but for those in need of a refresher, Borison paints this portrait: Maggie is a “true businesswoman. She runs the radio station with an iron fist.” But when we meet her at the beginning of Longtime Listener, “she’s buckling a little bit underneath all of the tasks and the work of maintaining this entire enterprise herself.” Meanwhile, Cooper, the vice president of acquisitions for his global media conglomerate, is “very cunning,” Borison describes. “I have a tendency to write men that are very soft, but Cooper is not that way. When we first meet them, they’re very much butting up against each other and rubbing each other the wrong way. It’s been a challenge, but a fun one to figure out: How do they start all the way on opposite sides and come together to have a romantic relationship?” And not only do they have to come from opposite sides, but as Borison points out, they have to fall in love “twice”: first as online confidantes, then IRL.
“Of the three books, this one feels probably the most rom-com-y,” Borison continues. “The challenge is everybody is so deeply emotionally connected to You’ve Got Mail as a film. Every tour stop I’ve had for First-Time Caller, and And Now, Back to You, when I tell people what the third one is based on, there’s a gasp around the room, because people love it so much. Then I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ That’s the challenge with being inspired by classics, these films that have transcended time and everybody adores: You take on a lot when you tell people, ‘Oh, it’s like You’ve Got Mail.’ I think I’ve intimidated myself a little bit in the process.”
It was only after she’d been working on the draft for Longtime Listener for a while that Borison hit a particular chapter—“I don’t even remember which,” she admits—and realized she’d figured the rest of the story out. “There’s always a point where I’m like, ‘Oh,’” she says, “‘This is who you are. This is who you are together. And this is where you’re going.’ Getting to that point can sometimes just be by clicking one letter at a time.”
Borison, who enjoyed a career in creative direction and social media before she transitioned to full-time writing, got her start as a self-published author in 2021 and has since moved to traditional publishing. In a mere handful of years, she’s released eight books, with the upcoming Longtime Listener marking her ninth. “I hope I keep being surprised by everything that happens,” she says. “I think publishing is such a weird career path, but if you come into it with expectations, you’re bound to be disappointed, so I try to be like, ‘We’ll just see what happens.’ Luckily, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by everything so far.”
Below, Borison gives a preview of what readers can expect from the third (and final?) Heartstrings romance; discusses her inspirations; and teases the First-Time Caller film adaptation, in development with A Cup of Happy Productions.
On how Nora Ephron first inspired her to become a writer
I checked out the Sleepless in Seattle DVD from the library. I remember watching it in my bedroom—I think I was, like, 14 years old—and I had such a visceral reaction to that Tom Hanks monologue. It just made me feel so much. I was like, “I want to do this.”
So I consumed everything Nora Ephron ever wrote. It just connects perfectly in my brain. It connects my head and heart so much. What I love so much about Nora is she never shied away from leaning into romance. She was so happy to just write a romance. I say “just” a romance, but I think sometimes we’re told, as romance novelists, that there needs to be something else driving the plot forward. Nora was always like, “The romance is the plot. These characters and their love story, that is the plot.”
On writing the local-media-versus-big-business battle for a modern audience
When we start the story, Cooper doesn’t even really know why he’s being ordered to acquire this middle-of-nowhere, mid-Atlantic station with a moderate listening audience. He’s like, “Why do we care? We are this huge monstrous whale and this is the tiniest of tiny fishes. I don’t know why I’m here, but I’ve been told to do it, so I’m going to do it.” It was fun for me to create the backstory and explanation as to why he’s doing it.
[There is] a challenge in making it feel realistic. I think we do, through Maggie’s lens, see why it’s so important to her to be local, to remain local. I love local media; I think it is so critically important. My parents love a local radio station. They love local weather reports. I didn’t realize how much my parents consumed local media until I married my husband and he was like, “You know so much about local weather reports.” I’m like, “You don’t?”
It felt very nostalgic and in line with Nora Ephron rom-coms to be focused on this very small station in Baltimore. For me, it still feels so relevant, but I think for a lot of people—who only listen to Sirius in their car, or podcasts, or on-demand listening—it almost feels like it’s from another time. I’m determined to hold onto it with two hands. I love my local media.
On the value of romance in storytelling and beyond
I think romance represents all the things we should aspire to be. I see other authors engaging with comments on social media sometimes, specifically from men who are like, “[Romance novels are] creating unrealistic expectations.” It’s like, why are they unrealistic? Why can’t we choose to have partners that are considerate, and vulnerable, and loving, and generous with their time and affection? I think it’s not creating a standard that’s unrealistic. I think it’s opening a different perspective of like, “Hey. This is something that you can ask for. This is something you deserve.”
There’s this perception, sometimes, that soft and gentle things are not worth our time or consideration, and I just disagree so wholeheartedly with that. Love is the most important thing we do, as people, and it transcends so much more than romantic partnerships.
On the extremes of being a modern author
We work in silos, as authors. We’re very isolated when we’re creating the book, and then you just get thrown into a tour environment with hundreds of people every day. Tours are so wonderful to meet with readers, and I love doing events for that reason, but they’re also so physically and emotionally draining, because so many readers come up and want to share what your books have meant to them. I love hearing it, but you’re hearing hundreds of those stories over and over again. You talk to sometimes hundreds of people in one night, and then you go back to a hotel room by yourself and you’re just like: noise, quiet, noise, quiet. Then the next morning you wake up early, you get on a plane, and you do it all over again, like seven days in a row. I’m an introvert by nature, so it’s hard for me to flip that switch.
I have noticed a change, this past year, [on social media], in that not only do I have access to hundreds of thousands of people, but hundreds of thousands of people have access to me. For me, that means slimming down what I consume. I think reader conversations and readers having access to authors, in a way they’ve never had before, have sort of slowly been amplifying to an unhealthy point. Social media can be good, but I think I learned this past year that I need to feed myself in increments. I need to find the quiet to write. My head isn’t quiet when I’m listening to social media, so I need to be quiet to myself and be good to myself in that way.
On ending the Heartstrings series
I’ve been struggling so much with wrapping this book up—I struggled the same way with the fourth book in the Lovelight series—because it’s hard for me to put a period at the end of a series. I had a writer friend tell me, “It doesn’t have to end if you don’t want it to end.” I can do whatever I want with it. I feel the same way with this series, where Longtime Listener is the planned ending, as I intended it, but I have left myself doors to go back in, if I want to.
That’s just for my own reassurance, because I’m really bad at goodbyes. It’s hard for me to say goodbye to these characters and this world, especially. First-Time Caller did incredible things for my career, and continues to do incredible things for my career. It helped me find so many readers. I think it opened a door in my brain to different creativity, and a different way of writing romance. The series has been so self-indulgent for me to share my love of Nora Ephron, of ’90s rom-coms, of Baltimore. It’s so special to me for those reasons. I struggle saying goodbye to these three couples.
On the First-Time Caller movie
It doesn’t feel like a real thing that is happening. It could not be a real thing that’s happening, but [either way] it’s inconceivable to me that I started writing books on the porch in my tiny apartment with a little baby in a jumper, purely for myself. Then enough people are excited about these books to want to see it brought to life on screen. I can’t even conceive of seeing my characters brought to life on a screen. I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it, to be honest with you. I think I’ll probably be watching through my fingers, but it’s inconceivable to me that my life has changed so much from that first book, to this book, to a potential movie. Even anybody being interested enough to want to make it into a movie is the highest compliment. I can’t share anything [about the film] yet—I know things, but I can’t share them.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.