Racing Towards Destiny: A Sports Romance (Love on Track #1): Received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Lena Gibson.
- What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Racing Towards Destiny: A Sports Romance (Love on Track #1). Publication date August 21, 2025.
- What’s the book’s first line?
Today was Anna’s biggest nightmare. The intermittent buzz of office chatter, humming lights, and clacking keyboards created an unbearable racket, making it impossible for her to complete her work.
- What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
After a nightmarish day, Anna loses her job and her boyfriend. Eager for a fresh start, she flies to Europe to find a picturesque village where she can write. Unexpectedly, she meets a handsome motorcycle racer and becomes involved in the racing circuit, exposing her to a life she never imagined.
- What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
My husband and I became MotoGP fans in 2010 when we first moved in together and he discovered the Speed Channel. Since then, we have become online subscribers to MotoGP.com and watch all the races. We follow the riders as they progress through the levels (Moto3, Moto2, and MotoGP). He pays attention to the bikes, their upgrades, and the technical aspect, plus the racing. I love the racing, but I’ve always followed the riders and the teams as well. I love having favorite riders and seeing them become winners or even world champions.
A few years ago, the top level of racing (the 25 elite motorcycle racers in the world), included several sets of brothers. My favorite rider, Marc Marquez, and his younger brother Alex were the most intriguing. Marc is an 8-time champion and already a legend. His brother was sometimes referred to as “Brother of…” I wondered what it would be like to be Marc’s younger brother, or any of the other brothers, because in each case, one brother is more successful than the other.
Isaac’s part of Racing Towards Destiny was inspired by this idea—the younger brother of a motorcycle racing legend finding his own path.
Anna’s story had a separate inspiration. For many years, I struggled with a terrible boss, one who felt like they singled me out to make my life miserable. As someone with ASD, I like routine and consistency. I like knowing the rules or guidelines and how things work and what to expect. My boss at that time constantly changed the rules and made me feel unsafe. I have always had an incredible memory, and this person would gaslight our staff and tell me that things I remembered hadn’t happened. Because I hated work during her tenure, when my friends and I would go for lunch every Friday, we would fantasize about not coming back. It became our dream to walk out of the building and disappear. Anna’s bad day (think Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst), which led her to sell her car and hop on the first flight to Europe, where she plans to reinvent herself, was based on this fantasy.
- What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
While Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is exactly that, a spectrum, I wanted to write a book that showed many of the aspects I’ve dealt with, including difficulties connecting with people and feeling taken advantage of. Anna is fictional, but many of the ways she interacts with the world are similar to mine. It was important to me to write a neurodivergent character who is simply a bit different but still relatable. She isn’t emotionally flat, but filled with emotion and sometimes overwhelmed. Racing Towards Destiny isn’t a story about her autism. It’s a story of Anna advocating for herself and living her dream. Along the way, she finds friendship, acceptance, and love.
As a huge MotoGP fan, it was also amazing to write about something I am passionate about, where I could show my expertise. My “research” was rewatching archived races and imagining scenarios for different kinds of fictional races. I enjoyed every second.
- What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
The most distinctive thing about Anna is her autism and how it isn’t necessarily a disadvantage, but also her power. She overcomes a difficult childhood to become successful and learns to believe in herself and be accepted and loved for who she is.
Like many of my main characters, she is created with bits of me and a healthy dose of imagination.
- Is this the first book you’ve written?
Racing Towards Destiny is my seventh published book, but the first about motorcycle racing. It is the first in a new series, Love on Track. The first two books are written, with Racing Hearts: All In coming in January 2027. The third and fourth have main characters and are in the planning stage.
I also have two apocalypse romances already published and a third, No Home Without You: A Post-Apocalyptic Romance (Love and Survival #3), coming in July of 2026. The first two are The Edge of Life: Love and Survival During the Apocalypse and Aftermath: Into the Unknown from 2023 and 2024.
I also have two time slip novels. The first, The Wish: A Time Slip Novel, was published in 2023 and focuses on someone who accidentally wishes herself back five years for a do-over. The second, The Right Time: Back to the 80s, is about someone who wishes for a simpler time and ends up in 1985.
I have also written my Train Hoppers trilogy of dystopian adventures (Switching Tracks: Out of the Trash, The Long Haul: Pursuit of Hope, and Rebels and Saints: Catching Freedom). The story focuses on hope and the rebuilding of society in 2195 as a rag-tag group of misfits struggle to break free from the corporate overlords and bring back food and democracy to the downtrodden. They were published in 2024 and 2025.
- What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
When I’m not writing, my day job is as a fourth and fifth-grade teacher in Canada, where I have been teaching at the same school for thirty years. My mission in life has been to inspire a love of reading and writing.
As you can probably tell from how many books I’ve written and published in the last few years, I don’t have a lot of time when I’m not writing. My children are grown and don’t live at home, so they no longer take up much time (though I love that they come over for dinner once a week). I always have a book or two that I’m reading, and I read every day. I also take walks with my husband, watch MotoGP races and movies, practice karate, and drink a lot of tea.
- How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
During most of the school year, I manage to find at least one hour for writing or editing per weekday and try to find a couple of hours on each Saturday and Sunday. On holidays, I often devote five or six hours per day to writing-related activities. My favorite is summer vacation, where I often edit a recent manuscript, complete line edits for the next publication, and write approximately half of my current work in progress.
- Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
I am motivated by a need to tell my stories and express myself. I spent so much of my life in my head and not sharing my thinking with others. Writing is a new way to share and be authentically myself.
- Which book do you wish you could have written?
The first two writers I’ve chosen are also Canadian. I wish I’d written almost everything by Guy Gavriel Kay. His writing is beautiful, his stories complex, and there is a lot of space for readers to fill in the gaps in the story. I love that he assumes readers are smart and will put together the more subtle aspects of his stories.
I also wish I’d written The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley. Her historical fiction novels are meticulously written and beautiful. In this one, I love the idea of ancestral memories coming out as visions, as her main character writes the story she sees in the past.
I also wish I could write like Ali Hazelwood and Ashley Poston. They’re amazing writers who have so much heart and story in their books that are so much more than “just” romances.
“Sometimes change is infinitesimal, slow. You don’t notice its icy fingers wrapped around your throat, stealing your breath, your beliefs, changing who you are until you don’t recognize yourself.” Lena Gibson, award-winning author of The Wish