The movie and TV inspirations behind my books
Specifically Just Another Love Song, out August 2nd!
Did you know I have a book coming out in two weeks? Have I mentioned that recently? Maybe, I don’t know, constantly?
The thing about having a book out is that you spend a lot of time thinking about the book. Posting about the book. Talking about the book. Enough time that you’re like, “Wow, people must be very tired of hearing about this.” But then someone will ask, “Wait, you have a book coming out? I didn’t know!” And that’s why it’s your job to talk about the book all the time. Everything is about the book.
This isn’t really an author newsletter in the traditional, promotional sense. If I was a smarter, more business-minded person, I’d probably have a newsletter that was more promo-focused instead of “River Phoenix movie from 1988” focused. But I started this newsletter as an enjoyable outlet for myself, as a place I can talk about all the things no one asked me to talk about.
That being said, this week and next week we’re talking about Just Another Love Song, my new book, because I really want you to buy it and also because I love it! If you like this newsletter, there’s a good chance you’ll like the book because the same person wrote them. And also because my books tend to be almost as movie or television focused as No One Asked.
I love books, and reading is perhaps my truest, easiest pleasure. Movies, though, are often what light a fire in me and inspire me to attempt my own stories. I’ve stumbled upon more than one Twitter conversation about how attempting to make your books like movies is bad, and maybe it is! But also, this is just the way I am, and I learned a long time ago that I find more joy, success, and connection in writing when I lean into the things that come naturally to me versus rejecting those things because they aren’t “correct.”
Each of my books is inspired, either directly or indirectly, by movies and TV. Some of these are more obvious than other (I mean, I did write a book with a celebrity’s name in the title). Here are the screen inspirations behind all of my adult rom-coms:
On first glance, this is my least screen-inspired book. In fact, when I was writing it, I started to wonder if it would have significantly fewer pop culture references than my other books. The characters aren’t defined by the movies they love and they certainly aren’t the type of people to reference pop culture in every other line. However, it quickly became apparent that I was trying to create the sort of quirky, small-town feel you most often see on television. The town in the book, Baileyville, is pretty heavily based on my own hometown, Bellville…however, because this is my book and I make my own rules, I changed things around to make it cozier and quirkier. For example, in my real hometown there’s a sign across from the grocery store that says “Fuck Joe Biden.” I did not put that sign in my fluffy rom-com.
Instead, I thought about another famous small town that has provided me a lot of comfort through the years: Stars Hollow. I won’t lie to you and pretend that Gilmore Girls wasn’t a formative show for me. I started watching boxed sets of it in college, and now seeing the Warner Brothers logo gives me an almost Pavlovian feeling of security. I wanted Baileyville to feel as cozy, of course, but also weird, because small towns are often pretty weird.
My editor pointed out that the Baileyville Fair Board meetings are a bit like Pawnee’s town meetings in Parks and Recreation. And I thought a lot about the warm, cozy vibes of movies like Hope Floats (Harry Connick Jr.!) and the parts of Sleeping with the Enemy that are romantic and not terrifying (the house and the fair/carnival, NOT the cans/towels).
When I proposed this book, my agent asked “Is Mister Rogers hot?” and my editor referred to the book as “Hot Mister Rogers.” So you might understandably think I was inspired by Mister Rogers when I started the book…but I actually wasn’t! Everett, a television host and puppeteer, was completely inspired by my trip to the Jim Henson exhibit at COSI and the realization that Jim Henson was super hot. Of course, once my agent and editor pointed out the Mister Rogers parallels, I was like, “oh wow, duh,” and worked to bring that into the book. Mister Rogers is clearly a much more universal and relevant reference point than Jim Henson.
In a similar vein, we pushed the You’ve Got Mail connection with this one for obvious reasons: the main characters write emails to each other. That wasn’t my main Ephron reference point, though. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that the main characters in Sleepless in Seattle don’t even meet until the end! They barely touch or talk, let alone kiss. And so Teddy and Everett don’t meet until about halfway through the book, a decision that I knew some people would not like. As predicted, some people did not. Some people also did not understand a romance hero who has emotional intelligence, is creative, and works with children. But sometimes you just have to write the Jim Henson/Sleepless in Seattle book that’s in your heart!
Waiting for Tom Hanks/Not Like the Movies
Well, this one isn’t hard to figure out. WFTH was directly inspired by my year of rom-coms. At the time, I had two YA books that not a lot of people had read, but I did get a lot of feedback on my rom-com Tumblr. I kept wondering how I could turn that into a book that people would actually read, and then one day while I was feeding my newborn and recording his feeds/poops in a notebook (because the hospital told me to, in case this isn’t clear to non-parents…I wasn’t, like, writing down every time he pooped for my own entertainment), I had the idea to write about a woman who shared my obsession with rom-coms, but in a way that was negatively impacting her life. What if the obsession wasn’t fun, but something that was causing her to avoid real life? The title came to me right away, so I wrote it down right there in the poop notebook, which is surely still around here somewhere. In many ways, this was my easiest book because my plot was predetermined by all the movies I’d already watched.
Not Like the Movies, the companion novel, was basically the opposite of WFTH. If WFTH was about a woman who wanted her life to be a rom-com but it wasn’t, NLTM was about a woman who didn’t want her life to be a rom-com but it was. Same movie inspiration, but a different angle.
My next book
I can’t tell you too much about this one yet because I’m currently working on it, but much like everything else I write, it’s movie-inspired! This time in both a more direct yet also less direct way. Also it’s a movie direction I haven’t really gone in yet, so I’m very excited to tell you more soon.
Just Another Love Song comes out on August 2nd, which is so soon. I hope you’ll consider preordering it, or maybe even coming to see me and Jen Devon at our event at Gramercy Books in Columbus on August 9th. I’m really looking forward to it!
See you next week, when I’ll most likely still be talking about this book! I also really want/need to write about the films Two Lovers and Our Friend, which I watched back to back before realizing they had an uncomfortable connection (that connection being…Casey Affleck). Maybe I should save that for after the book comes out, but I might not be able to stop myself.