P.M. Vance has always been ready to try something different. By 2016, she had already been a high school teacher, served in the Peace Corps, been on active military duty with the Coast Guard, and worked as a consultant for offshore oil and gas. It’s not surprising, then, that when her husband asked, “What is the one thing you always wanted to do?” Vance had two answers: “I want to go to law school, and I want to write a book.”

With the publication of her first contemporary fiction novel, Game, in 2024, Vance has now accomplished both goals. Back in 2016, she was working as a consultant and living in Houston—a city she had come to think of as “an oven”—and she and her husband both wanted a change. “We just pulled the plug and said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’” she recalls. Shortly thereafter, the two moved to New Mexico, a place they had fallen in love with on a vacation to Taos. They settled in the Albuquerque area (where Vance still lives) so she could attend the University of New Mexico School of Law.

“I gave up a big career in Houston, but I’ve slowly built back up to having a really great career,” she says. Vance currently works for a Santa Fe law firm focused primarily on environmental and natural resources law. But even while building this new career, she never gave up on her intriguing polyvalence. She remains a reservist in the Coast Guard and, of course, also began a series of novels.

Game is the first in a planned trilogy following billionaire heiress Brooke Neville as she spends a summer traveling through Europe. On the surface, Brooke seems preoccupied with relatively out-of-touch problems like avoiding becoming a high-society trophy wife, chasing her dream of playing professional tennis, or getting closer to Patrick, the hunky Australian staying at her Berlin hostel.

But as Kirkus Reviews notes, Game is ultimately “a dark, tender coming-of-age story that delivers breezy pleasures and engrossing drama.” From the novel’s opening, Brooke’s intimate internal monologue hints at something much deeper than a lavish vacation. When a German customs officer inspects her passport, she immediately assumes he is judging her, writing her off as a spoiled backpacking blogger:

I want to tell him he’s wrong. Mostly wrong, anyway. I only wish I were that kind of adventurous or that level of cool. But no, not me. Not Brooke Antoinette Neville. Nearly all those stamps are from me being dragged around the world by my endlessly boring and privileged family in a heavily guarded bubble. Poor me, I know—the very essence of spoiled and entitled. But appearances can be deceiving.

As the novel progresses, we see how Brooke is different than we might expect: when she chooses to travel “old school” without a smartphone, how she bristles at possible interactions with new friends, and how a tragic event (that she references ominously as the something) back home drove her to flee Connecticut.

“For Brooke, this trip is like a cleansing process,” Vance says, explaining her desire to have Brooke travel without being constantly connected on social media. She hoped to focus on Brooke’s introspection and need to disconnect from the current pressures facing young people. (“Honestly, I’d be terrified to be in my twenties right now,” Vance adds. “I don’t even know if I’d survive it.”)

Vance’s decision to set the novel primarily in Berlin was also closely tied to Brooke’s character and drawn from Vance’s own connection to a city that fascinated her when she was Brooke’s age. “Berlin is such a vibe,” Vance says. “There’s just something so beautiful and raw and authentic about it.”

Vance first experienced Berlin while studying abroad as an undergraduate at the University of Tampa. The city’s graffiti, rich culture, industrial architecture, and divided history always spoke to her—and that seemed a perfect reflection of Brooke’s state of mind. “To me, it represents the emotional divide that she’s facing internally,” Vance says. “Brooke is between two worlds…She wants to stand on her own, but she’s scared and has all this emotional baggage.”

That emotional baggage is also rooted in Vance’s own experiences. While she didn’t grow up with the kind of fabulous privilege that defines Brooke’s world—Vance’s father was a retired teacher, and her mother worked for Florida Blood Services—she was often surrounded by wealth. Her Tampa neighborhood was quite affluent, and after spending years playing competitive tennis, Vance was frequently in environments where extreme privilege was the norm.

In recent years, and especially as more billionaires make headlines for less-than-honorable reasons, Vance started to wonder if her experiences on the fringe of privilege could help her craft a fresh perspective on a character from that world. “I kept thinking, how do you take a person who comes from such obnoxious, extreme wealth and make them sympathetic?”

Vance explores this by focusing on Brooke’s relentless drive on the tennis court: the intense pressure she places on herself and the rare freedom she finds in competition. “When she’s playing tennis, her wealth doesn’t matter,” Vance explains. “She can lose. She can lose big.” Vance also added a very powerful and personal layer to Brooke through the trauma that drives her choices and the plot as Brooke struggles to come to terms with her brother’s suicide. Having lost a half brother to suicide herself when she was in college, Vance also shares this struggle with Brooke.

“But not everything can be dark,” Vance says with an infectious laugh. “I’m actually sort of a goofy person. You must have some levity!” So to balance those heavier notes, Vance throws in plenty of fun from Berlin’s eclectic nightlife and whisks readers to another one of her favorite cities, Prague, for a romantic, soapy final act. “Prague is very Disney, magical,” Vance says. “It felt like a great backdrop for that part of the story.”

It’s there that Brooke and Patrick’s relationship runs into a delicious and surprising twist—one that sets up future installments and highlights Vance’s aim to craft a story with emotional range. “I definitely love emotional journeys,” Vance says, citing a wide range of authors that influenced her voice as a writer: Haruki Murakami for thoughtful introspection, and Jennifer E. Smith or Katherine Center for lighthearted fun.

The actual writing of Game was also an emotional journey with several layers for Vance. Her father was an indie writer himself and the one who first inspired her write one day. And in 2020, while Vance was both still in law school and deployed with the Coast Guard, her mother, to whom Game is dedicated, passed away. “You feel your mortality in those moments,” Vance says, reflecting on that emotional moment that pushed her to finish the book. “If you really have a dream, you’ve got to do the things you love in the time that you have.”

Vance hopes that as Brooke continues her journey, readers will not only discover a character with unexpected depth but also find inspiration to try something bold themselves: “Move abroad, take that adventure!” Vance says. “Give yourself the space to have whatever emotional journey you need.”

Rhett Morgan is a writer and translator based in Paris.