TWU alumna trades the grind for passion

Feb. 17, 2025 — DENTON — Darci Middleton needed a change.

An alumna of the Texas Woman's University biology division, Middleton spent years pursuing a career teaching science. She loved biology and chemistry and felt teaching would be a good fit, and she landed a good, stable job. Middleton's job, however, came with the baggage of modern secondary school teaching gigs: long hours of lesson planning and grading, disrespectful students and parents and low pay. A job, like so many, that merely pays the bills.

But instead of slogging through a life of employed melancholy, she did what the majority of us only dream of doing: chuck it all, follow a dream, and do something she loved. She and her mom pooled their assets and opened a bookstore.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Also sounds like a path to financial ruin.

Only, on the day of their store's grand opening, customers were lined up at the door. Literally lined up along Oak Street on a cold January morning. They poured into the store and emptied the shelves. Absolutely gutted the place, and it's been a scramble ever since to keep the store stocked.

Sounds like something out of a romance novel. Actually, it kinda is.

The bookstore is called The Plot Twist. Located in Denton's historic downtown area, the Plot Twist is a romance bookstore and bar, selling romance novels and coffee, tea, mocktails and alcoholic cocktails. In the back is a dark, cozy lounge with reading lights and a faux fireplace where customers can curl up with a book and a drink and get away from the world for a little while.

Which is where this story began.

"My job took a whole lot of my mental capacity, a lot of outside time," Middleton said. "I didn't get to spend a lot of time with my family because of everything that goes into teaching that's not teaching, that's really hard mentally and physically. I stopped caring and focusing on myself for the five years I was in teaching. I always gave as much as I could to my students, and I wanted to do that, but I also knew I needed to focus on myself for a little bit. I didn't know what that would entail until I started reading again."

Motherhood and work pulled Middleton away from reading. There was just no time. Then she picked up a copy of the fantasy romance A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.

"At first, I thought it sounds like Beauty and the Beast, and I didn't know if I was going to like it," Middleton said. "I got into about halfway and I was like, okay, I really like this. She's written several books, so it was just one after the other and I was reading every day."

Soon after, that rediscovered passion morphed into the idea for The Plot Twist. That's not an uncommon phenomena. For bibliophiles, there's just something wonderful about a bookstore.

"I told my mom I think we should open a bookstore with a bar," Middleton said. "And she said, 'okay, let's do it.' It just kind of manifested itself from there."

The idea remained abstract for two years but took corporeal form a year ago. In January 2024, Middleton asked her mother, Dawn Conner, to go in on the venture with her, and last summer her mother took the first step.

"For my birthday, my mom got our EIN."

With federal tax ID number in hand, they registered the domain theplottwistbookbar.com.

"What do we do now?" Middleton said. "We were trying to figure out not just how do we run a bookstore and where do we get all the things to run a bookstore, but also the bar aspect. How do we run also a bar? Neither of us have ever done either of those things."

For the next few months, they dug into the research and took trips around the state looking at other book bars and making connections. What they learned was daunting but not dissuading.

Next up, cost. Meetings with the Small Business Association and Texas Woman's entrepreneur center suggested that to start this business they'd need around $70,000. Which they didn't have.

And here's where every such dream gets scary, because going into business can drain bank and retirement accounts and leave entrepreneurs with crippling debt. Middleton and Conner lined up what they had. Savings. A mortgage on mom's house. Middleton's retirement money. A crowdfunding campaign.

Conner also thought they could do it for less.

"Serial DIYer over there, she said, I can do everything cheaper," Middleton said.

They searched the downtown area for an available storefront and found the former location of an art studio two blocks west of the square.

"We saw the for-lease sign on this place, and the very next day we were signing leases," Middleton said. "We were in the right place, right moment. It was how it was supposed to be, and it just kind of manifested and grew from there."

The building was empty when they were handed the keys, just exposed brick, wood beams, corrugated metal ceiling and an uneven floor.

"We knew before we had a building aesthetically what we wanted," Middleton said. "As a reader, I enjoy darker lighting, moody colors, and just a feminine environment to be in. We would build mood boards on Pinterest with ideas, picking and pulling different things we liked. We knew we wanted texture and wanted it to feel dark and moody and romantic. So we kind of already had an idea of what we wanted to look like. It was a trial and error for a very long time until we felt something fit our aesthetic."

A little too much trial, in fact.

"Amazon at one point said, ‘no more returns for y'all.’"

They built their own bookshelves, which had to be torn down and rebuilt because the floor wasn't level. They made use of existing beams to support the shelves and repurposed plywood on the walls for their bar.

"I think we were two months in, and we were exhausted," Middleton said. "We were here every day, all day. And we ended up hiring others to come help us with the build out in the bathroom and the bar because we had no idea what we were doing there. That was a game changer. A lot of volunteers came in to help paint and do a lot of things for us. We got a lot of support. We stayed within our budget and were able to at least manage everything under what we were told it was going to cost."

It was a whirlwind. They signed a lease on Nov. 1 and were headed for an opening just 78 days later, so while the buildout was taking place, they promoted and talked and spread the word with the help of content creators on social media.

January 18. Grand opening. They had coffee and hot chocolate on hand when the doors opened for the first time.

And opening day was, well, something out of a romance novel.

"We had people waiting five hours to get in the doors, and some of them traveled from other states to be here," Middleton said. "It was just out of this world. It was relief that there are people out there who love what we're doing and are very supportive and want to be part of the community that we're trying to build here."

And herein lies the secret of The Plot Twist's success. Preparation, sure. A great concept, absolutely. A good location, no doubt. Hard work, goes without saying. But it was also Middleton and Conner's choice of genre.

Dismiss romance as fiction's frivolous, guilty-pleasure niche if you like, but this niche is home to a large, ardent, devoted audience. More than an audience, it's a community.

Romance isn't a single genre, it's a collection of subgenres: contemporary, romantasy, young adult, historical, Regency, LGTBQ+, Christian, paranormal, dark, gothic, western, suspense, mafia, science fiction. There are subgenres like millionaire and billionaire romance. Tropes have evolved into their own subgenres, like second chance, enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, love triangle, amnesia, meet cute, childhood sweethearts, best friend's sibling and forbidden love. There are levels of spice (the amount of explicit sex). There is even alien romance involving non-human space aliens. Whether traditionally published or indie, romance is massive.

"We also have a local author section, and we can hardly keep books in our local author section on the shelves because they're just being bought out. So it's great to see the support for our local authors who go the indie route. We've had several of them just blown away, and it gives them the confidence to keep going. It's great to see that support."

Support is what romance readers do. They love these books, well-worn tropes and all. In 2023, sales of romance novels topped $1.4 billion, making it the highest-earning fiction on the planet.

According to Forbes and the Small Business Administration, 25% of businesses fail in the first year and most do not show a profit for 18-24 months. Which makes The Plot Twist a unicorn: a business that is making money two and a half weeks after opening.

Let that sink in. The Plot Twist was profitable in two and a half weeks.

Two and a half weeks.

On a chilly early afternoon in the dead of a February Wednesday, a time when traffic is usually slow for brick-and-mortar retail, the shop was not empty for one minute. The front door chimed constantly with a steady stream of shoppers surveying titles and, most importantly, making purchases. The Plot Twist's biggest challenge now is keeping the store stocked, and Middleton spends much of her time working with publishers and printers and placing orders every day.

"It has blown our minds," Middleton said. "It's more than what we thought we would be in this moment. Not even a month in, you know, we were able to actually afford to pay employees. Mom and I went into it like, oh, it could just be the two of us. We quickly learned we needed help. We met some wonderful women who decided to come on board and help with bartending. My sister-in-law is on board, too, and she's been helping a lot and she makes a lot of the things that we have in store, our bookmarks and stickers. Women fill the room in here 24-7. It's nice to be able to give back for all their help they put into this.

"It's scary," she added. "It still is, because most of the time, do we know what we're doing yet? We're constantly learning and adapting. But it's been fun."