1983 OCHS grad who works in tech field lets inner romantic out, publishes romance novel
OCEAN CITY — Daniel Lowden is a romantic.
That may sound odd for a guy who has worked in the tech field for 30 years, the past 10 in cyber security. While cold computer codes may be running through his head, his heart is pumping something much warmer through his veins.
During an eight-day burst of creative energy during the pandemic shutdown, the 1983 Ocean City High School graduate poured out a story that had been percolating inside him.
It formed the heart of a romance novel, “The Met Kiss.” He published it in the spring.
“I’ve worked in tech and worked really hard over many years and at the same time always considered myself a romantic. I asked my wife to marry me at the top of the Empire State Building, I’ve loved romance stories and movies over many years and I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for those type of things,” Lowden said.
“When the pandemic hit, like most people, the world changed. I was working from home. Working a lot, too much to be perfectly honest, but I love what I do and I love the company that I work for.”
But he needed a break.
Netflix was his choice to chill; his preferred oeuvre? Romance movies. Not all of them good.
“I felt like if I wrote something, I could write something that would be pretty fun. With all the negativity going on in the world — and this may sound a little sappy — I thought the world needed a good love story,” he said.
Lowden had the story building in his head and in his dreams. Even though he had never written a book nor knew how to do it, he decided to go for it.
Some people close to him offered their opinions and when he got some positive feedback, “I decided I’m going to try to self-publish my own book. Hopefully, if more than three people read it and get something out of it — get a fun story, a positive story out of it — I’ll feel successful.”
More than three people have read it. He has sold more than 7,600 copies since the book’s debut in April.
“I wanted to write something positive in a difficult time so people could escape and have fun and get away from things for a while,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
A burst of energy
Lowden writes a lot for work and publishes blogs regarding cyber security, so he is used to getting a story in his head and writing it down.
This story was much bigger.
“It kept building,” he said. “I didn’t plan over an eight-day period over Thanksgiving and then the holiday thereafter, but it kept pouring out of my head and I kept putting it into my computer.”
“I did that big burst of 30,000-some words and then built a lot more of the background and more details and more of the characters thereafter,” he said, fleshing out the story.
It took him time to finish because his full-time work keeps him busy, but he finally got it to a place where he decided it was “a good story.”
“The Met Kiss” and The Met Gala
Lowden decided a good time to publish was just before the Met Gala, that star-studded affair in New York City when celebrities show off fashions from the sublime to the outrageous on the red carpet at the annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
The Met Gala figured into his story.
“The Met Kiss” revolves around an unfulfilled, grief-stricken hotel heiress and a New York financier who has questioned his choices and is looking for something more. There is a mysterious neckless. A meeting on an island getaway. International travel. Attendance at The Met Gala. A shocking encounter.
The necklace figures into the book early.
Who gave this to her mother? Where was it? How did it disappear?
As the story grew, there were a lot of Easter eggs throughout the book about where this could possibly be, Lowden said.
He decided to make London part of the story because he has been there numerous times. He also attended the Met Gala last spring as a spectator on the street.
“The glamour, the dresses, the necklaces, the jewelry that they wear — I was blown away by it. It was a great experience,” he said.
Women inspired him to do something different and an Ocean City touch
“I decided not to follow the same drumbeat of all the other romance novels where there is a breakup in the middle. I wanted to do this my way,” he said. “I wanted a strong woman character for the story because I’m surrounded by strong women — my daughter, my wife, at my work. That was important to me, but at the end I wanted to say, ‘Hey, their story is amazing, but they took something for granted and there is a surprise at the end. See how it plays out.”
Lowden enjoyed weaving Ocean City into the story “because it’s so near and dear to me. I’m down there quite a lot. I included places that are special to me, Manco and Manco Pizza, Brown’s Donuts, Gillian’s Wonderland Pier. I just have so many great memories with my family and with my kids and the like, I wanted to share that as part of the story,” he said.
Lowden’s childhood included spending every summer in Ocean City. He went to high school here and lived at Second Street and Wesley Avenue from 1979 to 1983.
“One character is based on a woman who lived around the corner. She was from Germany and moved to Ocean City and is long passed, but I would change out the windows and screens in her house every spring and fall,” he said.
“A lot of the book is my personal story, but others not. I thought it would be fun to weave in some real-life stories into the book.”
Laughing, he acknowledged that he did not, in fact, marry a hotel heiress.
He and his wife of 28 years live in Summit, N.J. They have a 22-year-old son who graduated in the spring from Brown University and is now working in New York City and an 18-year-old daughter who is a senior in high school.
Lowden has worked for companies in Silicon Valley, London and for the past three years as the chief marketing officer at a Manhattan-based company called HUMAN Security.
He already has books two and three planned out in his head.
“I’m going to go back and tell the story of (the heiress’) mother and father as part of book three. That’s my plan.”
On his website, themetkiss.com, he includes photos of his travels, including to Ocean City.
“The Met Kiss” is available on amazon.com (there’s a link on his website). Some of the proceeds are going to Girls Who Code, a nonprofit meant to increase the number of women in computer science and is part of the story — his daughter does Girls Who Code — and back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is important to him.
Epilogue
Lowden sent a copy of his book to the CEO of The Met, Daniel H. Weiss, to let him know it was part of the story.
“He wrote me back this really nice note saying, ‘Thank you for sharing a copy of your book, The Met Kiss, with me. I agree that the world could use more uplifting stories these days. I appreciate you thinking of me and am grateful to add this to my collection.’
“That was really, really cool,” Lowden said.
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff