Walking into her sunlit and modern Los Angeles apartment, one would never guess that writer Josephine Angelini was a former bartender $60,000 in debt with no professional writing experience.

Although one look at her bookcase shows that she's a lover of words. She's surrounded by three cats and a loving husband. She’s a tall, blond-haired green-eyed beauty, and looks as if she’s never had to deal with hardship.

But her comfortable life only began in 2010, way after she quit her stressful bartending job at Nacional (a now defunct Hollywood Boulevard club) at her husband’s suggestion, went through even more stress as an out of work writer, wrote “Starcrossed” in eight months and garnered a seven figure book deal. "Starcrossed" is the first book in a teen trilogy series about love in a Nantucket high school set to the storyline of Homer’s “The Iliad,” to be released May 31 by HarperTeen (a division of HarperCollins).

Thinking that they could subsist on a couple of screenplays he sold, Albert Leon suggested that he pay the bills for a while because he saw that his wife’s job was wearing her thin. She was fearful that the club was going to close because of the 2008 housing crisis and wasn’t bringing home as much money as she used to. She wrote screenplays during the day, which she said weren’t very good because her brain was fried from working all night.

“Half of writing is thinking about your story and how you’re going to write it,” said Leon. “When you’re bogged down by other issues, it’s hard to tap into that creative side of you. That’s what I saw happening to her.”

Due to the writer’s strike and recession, the screenplay he was depending on to get them through the year was picked up right when the market crashed and the company that picked it up lost its funding. Angelini and Leon plowed through the year, both unemployed, and living on credit cards and faith that things would work out.

“We both understand what it means to not be creative for a while and how much that darkens your life,” said Angelini.

The couple tried everything before they were resigned to the fact that they had to live on borrowed credit while she wrote. Angelini applied for unemployment but couldn’t get it because she quit and wasn’t laid off. Leon was busy looking for the next screenwriting gig but couldn’t get anything because the writer’s strike was just ending and no one was hiring. A week before Angelini got the seven figure book offer, the pair drove from restaurant to bar to lounge so that she could leave her resume for bartending positions. Through it all, Angelini and Leon had no doubt that either her book or his screenplay would pan out.

“We thought, it’s now or never,” she said. “It’s one of those things where you have to get yourself into a hole to be able to do what you want to do. It’s a big risk, it’s a big gamble and we gambled on each other.”

The writers don’t recommend their approach to becoming a successful novelist or screenwriter though. They didn’t go out for three years except to work out together at the gym. They had no clothes except for sweat pants and tank tops. They couldn’t visit their families on the east coast. They couldn’t afford to go to the movies. They didn’t celebrate Christmas with presents or a tree. They stayed home, worked and wrote.

Leon described a few friends who moved to LA looking to break into the film industry but always had a backup plan while doing so. The couple never had a safety net.

“We knew that if you give yourself an out, you’ll take it,” he said. “And then you’ll end up regretting it for the rest of your life.”

And if it looks like in hindsight, they knew what they were doing along the way; Angelini admitted they were extremely scared.

“You wake up in the middle of the night and you’re like, ‘we don’t have rent yet,’” she said. “And if you have an out, that’s when you take it, when you get really weak. Neither of us wanted that.”

Angelini grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, the youngest of six sisters and one brother. She graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a classical theater degree that focused on Greek mythology and Shakespeare’s works. She was a bartender all through college and supported herself.

The couple joked that if her writing stint didn’t work out, they could always work on her parents’ farm.

“We were kidding at first but towards the ends we were like, maybe we really will become farmers,” said Leon. “We went through every single cent we had and didn’t have.”

When she met Leon in LA, she also suggested that he quit his job as an assistant on film sets to concentrate on writing screenplays while she supported him with her bartending jobs. She was able to make a couple of hundred dollars each night while she worked for a sake bar, then for six years at Nacional.

“I can look at her face for the rest of my life,” said Leon when first meeting his wife. Though they’ve only been married since September of 2009, they have been together for 10 years.

Two months from finishing her book, Leon turned to Angelini and asked why they weren’t married yet. She called her brother to come to the Beverly Hills Courthouse as a witness and they had a “shotgun wedding,” said Angelini. Their only wedding picture was taken on her brother’s iPhone and sits framed on their bookshelf. Afterwards, the no-frills couple ate a piece of pie and went grocery shopping.

“One of the things I enjoy so much about the book is that it really parallels our love story,” said Leon.

“Starcrossed” is about Helen Hamilton, a modern day Helen of Troy who initially goes through the everyday trials and tribulations of an awkward teenager in high school. She meets her soul mate and the Furies, demigods and Greek gods cause the notorious and heart wrenching drama they’re known for. It’s all centered on Helen, who becomes a strong and sympathetic character.

“Before I even started outlining for ‘Starcrossed’ I sat down and reread the complete collection of Jane Austen novels,” said Angelini. “Helen was really a mixture of Jane Austen’s heroes, a little bit of Elizabeth Bennet, a little bit of Emma.”

Helen’s last name, Hamilton, was taken from Edith Hamilton, the prolific author of Greek mythology.

“I had to name her after the goddess herself,” she said.

Readers familiar with “The Iliad” may remember Helen and Paris causing the Trojan War. Helen was married to King Menelaus of Sparta but eloped with Paris to Troy. They’re not completely likable characters because they’re not humanized in the epic poem. Angelini was able to turn the relationship of Helen and Paris into a universal and affecting love story, basing it on her experiences with her husband.

“There’s no, ‘this is my problem, this is your problem.’ It’s our problem,” she said. “No matter how bad it gets, we have to do it together, and that’s the way we’ve always been.”

They’re honest with each other as well. Angelini first told Leon about a story idea she had before “Starcrossed” was born, delving into an hour-long tangent of a world she made up that had no real focus. He told her to scrap her idea because it wasn’t a story; it was “a bunch of stuff.” He used FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” a modern day retelling of “Hamlet” and a show they’re both fans of, as an example to follow in that the premise was simple, but also engaging because of its established story.

She cried for 20 minutes, looked at the bookshelf, saw a copy of “Romeo and Juliet” sitting on top of her mother’s copy of “The Iliad,” and with her face still red, pitched the story of “Starcrossed.” Leon immediately liked the idea and Angelini sat down and wrote the novel in eight months.

The story came pouring out of her because she always had “The Iliad” to refer back to. She treated her writing process as a job. She worked in two shifts, in the morning where she worked on the outline and scenes for three to four hours, then at night where she wrote prose for another three to four hours.

Angelini never considered herself a writer even though she had written in journals every day since she was 10 years old. She’s a voracious reader and reads everything from works by fantasy and sci-fi writers J.K. Rowling, Marion Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, Philip Pullman, China Miéville to Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy.

It wasn’t until her late 20s that Leon saw the many filled diaries scattered around their apartment and gave her a computer to work on, and a book on how to write screenplays.

“Everyone in my life was telling me that I was a writer, and I’d be like, ‘I’m not good enough for that,’ I was so afraid of it,” she said.

She didn’t like writing screenplays because of how it constricted her prose style. But Angelini credits the structure of screenplays as an integral part in serving as a foundation to outlining her novel.

“I think one of the reasons why her book is successful is that she took lessons that she learned from screenwriting like the beats and the turning points,” said Leon. “That’s why the book flows and moves like a movie.”

Although “Starcrossed” is not being optioned yet into a film, talks have been happening with a production team. Angelini wants to stay focused on her writing with the second book in the series, “Dreamless,” to be released next summer and the third, “Ilium,” to be released in 2013.

“I’m still working on the third book and I want the books to be successful,” she said. “I want people to read them. And that’s the only thing I’m concerned with right now.”

Once she was finished with writing her book in 2009, she didn’t know what to do with it. Leon stepped in, jumped on Facebook and found her a manager, Rachel Miller at Tom Sawyer Entertainment, who found her an agent. Mollie Glick at Foundry Literary and Media approached Laura Arnold, an editor at HarperCollins who offered Angelini a three-book, seven figure deal with the publishing house. All of this happened in a span of two months. A year after that, Angelini earned another seven figures because the foreign book rights were sold to more than 20 countries, with more countries still coming in.

And luck turned for Leon as well. His film, Sabal House, which was the film they were depending on to help them through 2008 but stalled, is projected to start shooting in the fall. The independent film received funding last week.

“It’s helped a lot that we’re both writers,” said Angelini. “We understand that it might be sacrifice to work twice as hard for a year or two so the other person can write, but ultimately you’ll be happier because if one of you is doing well, then you’re both doing well.”

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