Meet the agency chief financial officer who is also a romance novelist

It’s common for industry creatives to have outside projects beyond their advertising, such as movies, books, or other forms of art. 

It’s a lot less common for an agency chief financial officer to have creative side gigs. 

Then again, Anna Gomez isn’t your typical CFO. Though she took on that role at No Fixed Address, which owns agencies such as Mischief and Courage, last year, she also published her eighth romance novel, “My Goodbye Girl,” in June, has a committed fan club, and is slated to have one of her books, “Moments Like This,” (co-authored with actor Kristoffer Polaha) adapted into a Hallmark movie. 

Born in the Philippines, Gomez kept her writing career quiet during her first advertising job at Leo Burnett, which she joined in 2004. She ended up working at the Publicis Groupe agency for 17 years, eventually rising to the role of CFO. 

“It was such a new culture to me because I worked in so many different big corporations that were very structured. And then I get into advertising where I’m like, people are always late for meetings or canceling or moving them,” said Gomez, who had earlier worked in accounting jobs at companies such as DHL and Kellogg. “But they became a family to me, and it was at Leo Burnett where I had the best mentors.”

Getting butterflies

Gomez, who said she never saw herself as a writer beforehand, self-published her first book, “The Light in the Wound,” in 2013 under a pen name—Christine Brae—that she assumed for five of her eight books. Each letter in the “Brae” last name represents the first name of her husband and three children. She has since written three books under her actual name. The book was inspired by a strained relationship she had with her mother for over 10 years. Her mom died shortly after the two had made plans to reconcile in person at Thanksgiving.

“I self-published it, and as soon as I pressed publish, I went for a 14-mile run and I didn't want to run back home. I was so afraid,” she said. “I thought two or three people would read it and I would be happy.”

However, the book gained a lot of traction, and one fan set up a fan club page called Brae’s Butterflies on Facebook that attracted over 30,000 followers.

Gomez confessed to being “paranoid” about her boss finding out and taking her less seriously because of the focus in her stories.

“I don't write smut or anything like that. But I also felt like there was this stigma against romance authors,” Gomez said. “I really tried to separate the two, but I always wanted to put my mark on it. So I started to talk through my characters and make them multicultural, make the heroine always half Filipino, and make her always have a strict family or strict values.”

“It was a good outlet for me,” she said. “It was my way of talking to the world without really having to talk to the world.”

After self-publishing her first book Gomez now works with Vesuvian Media as her publisher.

Gomez’s life as an author didn’t remain a secret from her coworkers for too long. In 2018, Leo Burnett CEO Andrew Swinand shared a USA Today article written about one of her books with the agency. Gomez said that moment changed her life and she felt relieved. 

Creatives and accounting

Opening up as an author helped Gomez relate to creatives even more, especially as she learned many people within the agency also have side gigs.

“I became cool to the creatives,” Gomez joked. “I had to make sure there was a line between compliance and policy and procedure and making sure people were compliant and we were compliant and we were doing all that. I also had to make sure that there was some empathy towards what the creative world was, where they don’t care about time sheets, they don’t care about expenses. [As a writer] you get into this zone as you’re writing your book where you don’t even change out of your pajamas for days. And you just get into this thing. And so I was able to identify with those two things.”

Now a seasoned writer, Gomez, who has a Hallmark movie adaptation of one of her books in the works, is trying to fight the stigma that romance novels are a lower form of writing because they tend to include sexual acts. Gomez has certain rules for her books. Each book she writes now only has three “love scenes” and they tend to be “closed-door scenes,” which imply any sexual activity rather than going into detail.

Another must-have for Gomez is that all of the main characters have careers.

“It’s about professional, strong women that kind of fall in love and all hell breaks loose, but there’s also redemption at the end,” Gomez said, adding that she has since learned, “You can’t be classified as romance if you don’t have a happy ending.”

Gomez said she does much of her writing at night or on weekends and says she doesn’t ever envision giving up her financial career for her literary gig.

“I just love accounting,” she said. “It’s a good balance because really writing is just a stress reliever for me. It’s just an outlet.”