Never Say Never

I cannot overstate the degree to which I was never going to write 'The New Place'. This was a stance I was so sure about that the day the nearly-realized idea for the actual novel popped into my head, I almost didn't write it down because the idea of following up a 'fake dating' romance with a 'fake engaged/married' one was simply too silly. Then, I realized that such silliness is exactly why I enjoy writing, so I whipped out the trusty notes app on my phone and proceeded to jot down my thoughts as fast as I could.

All books change from their conception to their publication, and some more than others. It's impressive to me just how much of 'The New Place' stayed the same from my first imaginings through multiple drafts and even developmental edits. I even have a record of such early musings on my Patreon, which was a a fun document to share with my Patrons, and I'm so happy that I produced an actual, real book to follow it up (and only a year and a half later! Which is lightening fast, if I do say so myself). 

So what exactly changed and what remained the same as I worked on this book? Let's dive in and see.

First, the premise of the plot revolving around a spousal hire was there from the very beginning. Nay, before the beginning, back when this book was but a joke, it was such a clear direction to head in for two academics that I pretty much couldn't have used anything else. Also, honest question: how often in day-to-day life is there even a reason to pretend at being engaged? Though to be fair, the same question could be asked about pretending to date, so perhaps we simply shouldn't examine our favorite tropes too closely (only one bed, I'm looking at you).

The other rather obvious problem our heroes would face in this book, and which stuck around from the beginning of this book's conception, would be Ned dealing with potential unemployment by losing his job. His need to support Peggy underlined 'The Place Between', so it simply worked too well to have that very financial stability at risk all over again. I'm sorry, Ned, for all the troubles I dragged you through, but consider this: you did get to marry Abbot, who is extremely handsome, rich, and good at baking. 

With those two pillars of the plot accounted for, a couple of other things were a given from the get-go. First, Abbot was still going to be living in Portland. The very fact of the decision to move in together had to be a lot of the tension of the book, so for that to happen, Abbot had to start the story still in Maine. With that, one of the first scenes that popped into my head was Chapters 15 and 16 when Ned and Abbot visit the realtor's office. The reason it's two chapters is actually just that I had so much fun writing that part that my editor was like: please, this is so long, you're asking your readers to complete a marathon. But I wasn't going to short change that part of the book, because I just loved the image of Ned and Abbot going into the realtor's with all sorts of confidence that they could bluff their way through this conversation, only to find out halfway into it that they were absolutely not even a little bit on the same page. It was delicious. I honestly could have made it even longer and been happy doing it.

So that scene with Sandy, and the overall plot of the book were pretty set from Day 1. As for what was added and changed later, I will say that it was an ongoing challenge to fit all the puzzle pieces together that the plot and the character arcs needed. For instance, I knew that I wasn't going to end the book with the wedding, since I wanted to enjoy the fallout of their rush to get married. That meant that they had to: find out about Adams, decide to pursue the spousal hire, meet the realtor, be pushed to announce an engagement, and then be pushed to actually get married all within the first 75% of the book, so they could spend that last 25% dealing with this marital mess and coming out stronger for it on the other side. Oh, and we had to get them into bed at least a couple times, Pat had to have space to be hilarious, Charles had to skulk around for at least a couple scenes, and Dan had to have the opportunity to be Dan. And that's before Peggy and Chris and and and and.

Clearly, I got the sense this was going to be a long book, and as I wrote, I was wary of anything that would take up even more word count. I tried to be extra careful how I went about fleshing out the book around the established central plot, but not all of my initial ideas were particularly good ones...

In the first draft, the story opens about two weeks before Claire and Pat get married. That's right: she's already in Pat's life, she and Ned and Abbot are good friends, and enough time had passed since the end of 'The Place Between' that Pat met her, dated her, proposed to her, and is now marrying her. There was no little bun in the oven, just the excitement of Ned being Pat's best man and him and Abbot attending the wedding together. Except: it was a terrible side plot. As readers, we had no investment in this Claire person, since we didn't know her at all, and it really felt like being asked to suddenly accept someone as part of the friend group out of the blue. That and asking for such a huge leap forward in time just wasn't working. So I quickly scrapped that idea and changed Claire from 'fiancee' to 'new girlfriend', and then realized it would be so much better if we actually get to see her and Pat meet on the page. Oh, and during all these initial drafts, she was working as a realtor. I figured she would be the one who found Ned and Abbot their house, and only so so so much later, after I got edits back from my editor and the book was really pretty close to being finalized, did she get a job change to veterinarian. It's weird in the end how well things work out, and how long it can take to arrive at the right answer - and the roundabout way you get there!

Another character who took a number of detours was Beverly. She was originally David, who was friends with Charles, and honestly didn't do much in the first draft. My editor pushed me to really dive into the part of the story that centers on Abbot and his mother, which was much less realized in the manuscript I sent to her. Ned's side of the book was fairly fleshed out, but Abbot didn't have as much to do, or as far to journey on his character arc, and it was a very good critique of the book at that stage that I had a lot more work to do with him. So I did what I do best: sat down and figured out how to ruin Abbot's life as ruthlessly as I knew how. To do so, I knew we needed to ramp up the tension on Abbot, so we needed to make everything worse for him, and for that, we had to bring the issue of his mom to the forefront, and therefore: we needed his past walking and talking in this book. So: Beverly. This had the added benefit of gaining another female character, and when I switched Claire's career, I was able to fairly simply tie in Beverly's wife as the real estate piece of the puzzle we needed. I really love Bev, and I love how much she added to Abbot's backstory, which simply didn't exist before she appeared on the page. (Also, just to be clear, she's played by Meryl Streep in my ideal fancast, the rest of which you can find here on my Patreon.)

A couple of other aspects of the story developed over the course of drafting and edits too. One of them is Abbot and Peggy baking together, since my editor wanted to see more real-time bonding between them, as opposed to me telling the reader they were close. Again, great advice, and the inclusion of them having an hobby that is just theirs did wonders for the story, and led me to writing Chapter 11, which is one of my favorites as pancakes are made, Dan goes on a internet-journey for smoked salmon, and Ned finds out about Adams (and speaking of fun bonus content on my Patreon, I have a behind-the-scenes DVD-style-commentary on Chapter 11 here). Also late in the development of the plot was Liesl's hurt over feeling pushed out of Abbot's life. My editor really encouraged me to make sure everyone had their own plot line, and Liesl was a pretty major character in the book to just be floating through scenes with no agenda of her own. I'm glad she got to get good and angry at Abbot, because I think he needed it, and I also really loved writing her in the throws of adolescence, where she's constantly pulled between irritation and joy and wanting more affection and pretending she doesn't. I feel like she really blossomed as a character and I'm proud of how I wrote her in this book. 

Overall, I'm proud of this entire book, really. It was incredibly hard to write, and it was a year and a half of really concentrated effort to pull it off. I love that it started as such a joke, and then ended up being something so heartwarming and touching, and which I think I really did justice to. All books grow as they're written, and for this one in particular, I enjoyed the ride it took me on. So thank you to Ned and Abbot for being up for another round, and for my Patrons for the support along the way, and to all of you readers who loved 'The Place Between' so much I felt like it was worth it to dive into a sequel, even not knowing exactly where it was going even as I worked on it.