Today’s the day: Just Another Love Song is finally out! This newsletter is typically devoted to movies (or at least things I’m watching, reading, etc.) but since today is pub day, it only made sense to talk a little bit about the story behind Just Another Love Song, how it came to be, and why I love it and hope you might, too.
This is a special book to me because I’ve been trying to write a small town book for years. I love small towns as settings…there’s Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girls, of course, but also a lot of rom-coms are set in small towns. And I’m from a small town in the middle of Ohio, one with just a few traffic lights, a sizable Amish population, and a population of under 2,000 (1,999 to be exact, although I’m going off census information I found online and not a quirky sign like in the movies).
When I started writing JALS, I knew I had to include these things:
-Summer. Starting with WFTH, I realized that I wanted my books to be firmly tethered to specific seasons because that’s something I love when I’m reading. WFTH is post-Christmas winter, NLTM is spring, and VSY is fall. So JALS would be summer, which meant exploding gardens, tons of flowers, sticky sweat, lots of sunshine, truck rides with the windows down, ice cream, front porches, summer storms, etc.
-A fair. In my hometown, we have a famous (infamous?) street fair called, for reasons I couldn’t possibly explain, the Bellville World’s Fair. It’s a big deal, and so I wanted JALS to revolve around a fictionalized version of the fair.
-Country music. As previously mentioned, 90s country music holds a mulleted, denim-shirt-wearing place in my heart. I wanted Hank, the male lead, to be a country singer, but I didn’t want him to be super famous so I specified that he was a famous alt-country singer—think Jason Isbell when he was less famous than he is now. And I wanted to mention a lot of country music from my youth.
Basically, I organized the book around those tentpoles. I decided to try a new writing process for this book and, I’ll just be upfront with you, it was a bad idea! I’ve always wanted to be one of those writers who just starts writing and discovers their story as they go. It turns out I’m not that type of writer, and I absolutely tortured myself trying to write this without a detailed outline and my usual process. I rewrote more of this book than I’ve ever done in my whole career. There were entire plot lines and characters that got cut (Sandy had grandparents! Hank had a pregnant teenage sister!). I took out whole scenes (including one where, and I know this will sound weird, all the female characters smashed a bunch of electronics in Hotpants Ed’s yard). I changed the ending. I rewrote a good portion of the book. It was harrowing.
The other big challenge was that this was the second book I wrote during the pandemic, which meant I had no childcare. I’m a stay at home mom and I love spending time with my kid, but it’s hard to write a book when you have zero dedicated work time. I don’t ever want to sound like I’m complaining because I literally have my dream job and dream lifestyle, but even when you have your dream job you still need…well, time to do it. Luckily, I was able to go to my parents pretty frequently and let them entertain my child as I frantically typed away at my laptop upstairs. My parents still live in my hometown, which meant I had the delightfully meta experience of writing a book based on Bellville while I was actually in Bellville.
Eventually, I turned it into a book I love. This, the whole “putting a book out into the world” part, is the scary part for me. Writing it all by myself feels very safe. Even sending it to my editor feels pretty okay. But knowing that it’s done and printed and I can’t change it? That’s hard.
I feel good, though, because this book turned out exactly how I wanted it to. The thing I always tell myself when a book comes out is “people will either like it or they won’t,” which maybe sounds meaningless to you. But it reminds me that I have no control over how people feel about my books. Sometimes I write a book and feel in my bones that there are some people it will really speak to and some people it will really turn off (looking at you, Very Sincerely Yours). No matter what my main character is like, someone will say she’s annoying (this is true of every female protagonist, so don’t even bother trying to write one who isn’t annoying). There will be plot points that people don’t like. And not every book will be a hit, especially if you’re trying to make writing your career. I’m six books into this thing, and I’ve certainly had books that sold better than others.
But all I can do is write the book I have in me at the time. It’s not that I don’t keep readers in mind when I’m writing, because I really, really do—I have an ideal reader in mind for each book, and I always want to write something that people actually want to read. But ultimately, each book is what I want to write at that moment, and in the moment of last summer, I wrote Just Another Love Song. It took a lot of work, but it’s exactly what I wanted to put on the page: sun-soaked summer afternoons, firefly nights, moonlit lake swims, rocking chairs on porches, cricket chirps coming through the windows, hot coffee as the sun rises, tall zinnias swaying in the breeze, Shania Twain on the radio, Neon Moon at the dance, and nostalgia infusing everything.
If you’ve ordered the book or read an advance copy/left a review or are planning on buying a copy soon, thank you. Some of you have been here since the HelloGiggles days. Some of you bought copies of my first book both times it came out. Some of you started reading when Waiting for Tom Hanks came out, and some of you are brand new. I appreciate all of you so, so much. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, mostly because I’ve never been good at communicating or socializing or making friends in person. With words, though? I can do that, and I feel so lucky that I’ve connected with all of you in this space and through the books.
I hope that reading Just Another Love Song is a fun and nostalgic experience for you. If you want to really get into the mood, I made a Pinterest board (I make them for all my books…even future books, wink wink) and a playlist (yes there are two versions of Neon Moon, and I only regret that I didn’t include more). If you haven’t ordered a copy yet, you can find your preferred retailer right here.
And don’t forget, I’m going to be at Gramercy Books on August 9th, next Tuesday, with the wonderful Jen Devon. I’m reading her book Bend Toward the Sun right now and whew, I can already tell it’s gonna rip my whole heart out! She’s an amazing writer and I’m excited to talk to her. I would love to see you there, but please remember that you do have to register and either pay $5 or buy one/both of our books.
That’s it for now! Next week I’ll be back to a more typical format, but thank you for reading all my thoughts on JALS. Your support means the world to me, and in a very literal sense it keeps me doing my job. I’m forever grateful that I get to do this. See you next week (maybe literally, if you come to Gramercy).
Am really excited for my copy to arrive