FAKING CHRISTMAS is out now!
A little bit about the movie that inspired the book, plus my overly honest gratitude for this job
Although I’m writing this the night before, by the time this newsletter hits your inbox FAKING CHRISTMAS will be in the world/in your bookstores/on your Kindle.
First off, I hope I’ll get to see you at one of my tour stops. I basically have two tour windows: publication week/the week immediately after and the beginning of December, because this is a Christmas book. Tonight I’ll be at The Book Loft in German Village, a store that’s near and dear to my heart, talking to my fellow writer/friend/book club member Kerry Rea. We share a name, an editor, and a city, and tonight you can hear us talk about books!
Since it’s publication day, I thought I’d share a little bit about the movie behind Faking Christmas. And because I’m me, I thought I’d also overshare about how much this career means to me, even though no one asked.
As you may have noticed, I love movies. Two of my favorite genres are screwball comedies and Christmas movies. And sometimes those two genres combine, which is the case with the 1945 film Christmas in Connecticut. It’s all about how Barbara Stanwyck is a magazine columnist writing about her perfect life on the farm, where she’s a wife and mother cooking beautiful, elaborate meals. At least, that’s what her boss thinks her life is like…she’s actually a single woman in the city, totally lying so she can earn money writing. We stan a deceptive single queen. But then, through a screwball-y series of events that spends way more time in a veteran’s hospital than you’d expect, her editor ends up inviting a recently-injured soldier to spend the holiday at her farm. So she has to spend Christmas pretending that she knows how to cook, farm, care for a baby, etc. Also there’s a character whose catchphrase is “hunky-dunky.”
I love this movie. It’s so funny and Barbara Stanwyck is so beautiful. I mean, look at her!
After watching it yet again a couple of years ago, I told Hollis, “I can’t believe no one’s made a modern version of this with social media.” I mean, it seems like an obvious idea when we know that many influencers are kind of lying anyway. And then it hit me. My job…is writing. I could write that updated story. Be the Christmas in Connecticut modern reimagining you wish to see in the world!
Luckily, both my agent and editor were instantly into the idea, which was good because I was on a major time crunch. Christmas books have to come out around October, so I didn’t have the option of turning this book in late and being like, “hey can you guys put it out in spring?” No one wants your Christmas book in April! I wrote Faking Christmas over the course of one summer, but it wasn’t even a chore because this was the easiest book I’ve ever written (except for maybe Waiting for Tom Hanks, which I wrote after my son started sleeping through the night and also without a contract, so I was newly acquainted with the concept of sleep, loving life, and writing for fun). Which is not to say it wasn’t a lot of work! I’m not sure I’ve ever done such intense edits on a book. I put in and then took out an entire plotline. My editor Angela gave me fantastic notes that changed the book a lot, and I’m so grateful for them. But it never felt like the stressful, pulling your hair out kind of work that writing a book can sometimes be. From the very beginning, I knew exactly what I wanted this book to be, and all I had to do was keep steering it back to that path.
What I wanted was something fun. Very Sincerely Yours and Just Another Love Song are both books that I wrote at the height of the pandemic, at peak anxiety and depression levels. I wanted worlds I could sink into with minimal conflict. I wanted, in the case of VSY, an autumnal Ohio paradise full of toy stores and old houses and a retro world that ignored our own modern world. With JALS, I wanted to disappear into a fantasy small town full of quirky characters and 90s country music. But those books took a lot out of me, especially JALS. I underestimated how emotionally fraught it would be for me to spend a lot of time with characters who are afraid they’ve wasted their life and their potential, or made the wrong decisions, or lost out on the ones they love. JALS completely wrung me out, and I was ready for something a little (or a lot) lighter.
I was also influenced by hearing so many readers talk about wanting to find truly light books. It’s a bit of a joke now to talk about picking up a book with a cute illustrated cover and realizing that it’s about deep trauma, but I’ve seen readers on bookish Facebook groups ask for rom-coms that don’t feature cancer or death or any other triggers. I wanted to write a book for those people, because sometimes I’m those people. Listen, I love to cry while reading. Love. It. But sometimes I just want to laugh. So I did my best to make Faking Christmas a purely fun book, one that won’t stress you out or make you cry. One that will make you feel like you’re watching your favorite Christmas movie, or smelling all the seasonal Bath & Body Works candles until an employee is like, “ma’am, you’ve been here for three hours and the store is closing,” or ordering a holiday drink from Starbucks because you want one of those red cups, dammit! That’s Faking Christmas. Pure, uncomplicated Christmas fun.
Faking Christmas is ultimately not much like Christmas in Connecticut—call it a reimagining instead of a retelling. I’m not interested in simply rehashing the plot of one of my favorite movies. I kept a woman lying to her boss and a deception/miscommunication filled holiday, but everything else is different.
Here’s what you’ll find in Faking Christmas: adult fans of Lego (also known as AFOLs), goats, beef wellington mishaps, a sugar cookie decorating party, a lot of Last Christmas, an emotional It’s a Wonderful Life moment, Elf arguments, crying to Adele, a defense of animal communicators, pillows with Christmas puns, Maxxinistas, over-the-top antics, NO third act breakup, general chaos, SNOWED IN (my all-time favorite trope), romantic ice-skating injuries, a little cameo from Not Like the Movies, a big white farmhouse, and, of course, just. one. bed.
It was a blast to write, and I really hope you love it.
I have a full week of three events, one out of state, and I’m so excited for them. I really wanted to celebrate this book’s release because my past few book releases have been a bit subdued (idk if you heard but we were in a pandemic). And I also wanted to do it up because I don’t have a book coming out next year! Which feels incredibly weird to type or say or even think! I’ve had a book out every year for the past seven years. I even wrote a book when I had a newborn, so letting that streak go was very difficult for me. It still is, to be honest.
For some people, a book a year isn’t a fast pace. For me, though, it kind of is, and I didn’t want to spend this summer killing myself and missing out on time with my kid to meet a deadline that, frankly, no one else is making me meet! All this pressure is coming from inside the house/inside my own head. And I always want to be super proud of everything I put out and give you guys the absolute best book I can, so this next one is going to take a little longer.
But right now, I’m really excited about this book. Recently I was visiting my hometown and I couldn’t help thinking how grateful I am for this job. As I was driving near the place I worked for four years after college, I was gripped with this visceral sense of relief that I’m not there anymore. When I worked there, I was miserable. I had not one but two narcoleptic coworkers. I listened to Mix 106.1 all day and I was going out of my gourd. My workplace held a Mitt Romney rally and I had to attend and I ended up shaking his hand??? It was a dark existence, and I was deeply depressed. But mostly, my life felt small. I didn’t feel like I could be myself, or like there was any future in which my life felt big and open. The person I talked to the most was a customer named Ed who would call and tell me blonde jokes (okay, so that part was actually nice…I loved Ed). I was so lonely and so tired of sitting at that desk and doing data entry and getting yelled at by my boss’s dad on the phone (sometimes he yelled so loudly that people down the hall could hear him! Over the phone!). I was scared to talk to people, scared to be myself. My life was small, and I was growing to accept that I was meant to have a small life.
But now I don’t feel like that. Not at all. I don’t ever have to listen to Mix 106.1 if I don’t want to, and I never shake Mitt Romney’s hand. I have this job where I get to be myself, loudly. I put myself on the page and then I talk to people as myself. My world is no longer as narrow as one older man who tells me blonde jokes on the phone and one older man who calls to yell at me. Now my world is full—of writers, of readers, of booksellers and librarians.
The best part is that I no longer feel like my life is small. It’s big now. I get to travel and talk to readers, I get to reconnect with people from my past (I just sent my second grade teacher a copy of my first book!), and I get to meet my heroes. I spend so much time around people who read, which is all I ever wanted as a kid. And I’m doing it all as myself. In my best moments, I don’t feel like I have to hide myself. I can do events and talk in front of people and not feel like I’m going to die or throw up. It feels normal now. It feels good. I never would have dreamed that any of this was possible for me back then, and I couldn’t do it without you. Reading my newsletter, buying my books, coming to my events…my entire career is because you do these things, and I’m forever and ever grateful to you.
Can you tell I’ve had 1/2 of a glass of wine? Yes, things are getting pretty crazy around here on Faking Christmas Eve. I hope you read Faking Christmas, and I hope you enjoy it. It was so much fun to write and I’m happy to have it out in the world. See you soon (maybe even in person!). xo
Catching up on my newsletters and this made me so happy and SO excited for Faking Christmas. The cover is so cute on my romcom bookshelf and can't wait to crack it open!
As someone writing their first book it was really inspiring to read about how far you’ve come. I’m looking forward to reading Faking Christmas, I preordered it!
Also, I laughed out loud like a crazy person at school pickup (we wait outside on the playground) when I read the part about you shaking Mitt Romneys hand. So thanks for that dose of daily awkwardness.