My Personal Kryptonite: A Guest Post by Tessa Bailey

By Tessa Bailey / September 10, 2025 at 12:01 am

Hockey heartthrob Robby has got everything he wants, including game-winning moves and a ride-or-die best friend. But when Skylar shows up, Robby can’t get the irresistible star pitcher out of his mind in this breezy romcom. Read on for an exclusive essay from Tessa Bailey on writing Pitcher Perfect.

Paperback $14.24 ~~$18.99~~

Pitcher Perfect: A Novel (B&N Exclusive Edition)

By Tessa Bailey

In Stock Online

Paperback $14.24 ~~$18.99~~

#1 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey is back with an all-new enemies-to-lovers, fake-dating sports romance about a playboy hockey rookie and the disciplined softball pitcher completely immune to his charms.

It all started with two magical words. F*** you.

With that, my Robbie and Skylar love affair began. I was writing the previous book in the series, minding my own business, when out of the blue, I had this take no prisoners Division 1 softball pitcher demanding my attention. She wasn’t there to make friends—and you know what? There is simply something about a man who becomes interested in a woman when she is at her most combative that I find very appealing. My personal kryptonite. Enter Robbie Corrigan, resident ladies’ man and stacked, red-headed hockey boy, who has thus far been referred to as Orgasm Donor #1 throughout the series.

The odds were against me. I did not intend to make Robbie Corrigan of orgasmic fame a main character. He was there to be the comic relief. To challenge the real hero. To flirt with the heroines of the previous books and make the strong/silent type guy jealous. But my author gut told me Robbie had promise. A certain lasagna loving charisma that I shouldn’t discount right away. I might have ignored my gut, if it weren’t for Skylar, softball baddie, showing up and mesmerizing him with those two aforementioned magical words.

I related to Skylar in a lot of ways. I grew up playing competitive sports. That was my identity for a long time (second grade through senior year of high school). A basketball player. Skylar is in a similar situation where she focused so long and so hard on becoming the best athlete that she never learned how to flirt. Or date. Or feel sexy. Again, enter Robbie, who finds everything about her lack of polish incredibly sexy, but agrees to give her romantic lessons, in order to land this catcher for whom she’s been carrying a torch. Which brings me to my second, and possibly even more powerful kryptonite: the player falls for a girl only to find out she’s in love with someone else. Very satisfying. Highly recommend.

But how did I pull an Orgasm Donor out of secondary character wasteland and boost him to the top hero (possibly of the whole series) spot? I went deeper. Which, coincidentally, is Robbie’s specialty. Sorry. I gave him all the human qualities that we tend to find relatable and comforting to read in a character. Regrets, grief, professional frustration, indecision, yearning, gratitude, a need to make people laugh, a love of lasagna.

I’m a true believer that every (okay, most) characters in romance are redeemable once the author fills in the blanks and gives them texture, a way for readers to understand them—and I’m so glad I listened to my gut and took a chance on Robbie Corrigan. So is Skylar.