Diary #2: The Hazards of Being Married to an Author

+ Unboxing author copies of ONE YEAR AGO IN SPAIN 😄

Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:

✍🏼 Part 2 of my Behind-the Scenes Diary for my new book, One Year Ago in Spain. The rest of the diary is here.

🎧 Audiobook sample from One Year Ago in Spain

🎥 A short video of me unboxing the author copies of my book!

🎁 Last Chance for Limited Edition Art and Autographed Bookplates

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✍🏼 Diary #2: One Year Ago in Spain

Evelyn and Tom dance-skipping away after their wedding ceremony. (Ok, it was really just Tom doing the dance-skipping, but Evelyn was laughing.)

Sometimes, I feel for Tom. You see, I am a magpie, and I steal pieces of him for my characters. He’s such a sweet, clever person, that whenever he says or does something particularly wonderful, I jot it down in my notes app.

This is the danger of marrying an author. Did he realize what he was signing up for when he said, “I do”?

First Lines are Fair Game

Take, for example, the first line of One Year Ago in Spain, which is my favorite first line I’ve ever written, out of all of my nine novels.

“They kissed like they were talking about the weather.”

Isn’t that lovely?? The main character, Claire, is on a mediocre date where there are no sparks, and you just immediately feel how horribly mundane the situation is.

The only thing is, I didn’t actually write that line. Tom did.

He just said it off-hand one day, when he was making up a story for fun on the fly. And it was so good that I stashed it away so I could use it some day—which turned out to be several years later.

But we work well together. I stole that first line from him, and then I filled in the rest. Here’s the whole opening:

They kissed like they were talking about the weather. And not the tornados of the Midwest or the searing wildfires of California. Just a tepid peck on the lips, as exciting as a partially cloudy evening.

All around them, Manhattan heaved like an impatient dragon, its sidewalks shimmering like scales sweaty with humidity. Streetlamps blazed, and the horns of taxis wailed. Everything in the city was alive—feverish, irrepressible.

Everything except Claire and her date.

There’s more stuff I stole from Tom for this book (like all his hobbies), but it’s too long to write about here.

I think most writers are literary kleptomaniacs, swiping from their loved ones, their friends, even snippets of conversation overheard from strangers in cafés.

(Hey honey, if you’re reading—thanks for letting me be a literary thief!)

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🎧 Audiobook sample from One Year Ago in Spain

Love listening to books? Here’s a preview of the audiobook, read by the wonderfully talented Victoria Villarreal and Anthony Rey Perez.

I LOVE their voices; they do such an amazing job!

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🎥 A short video of me unboxing the author copies of my book!

Ok I lied, you’re getting two short videos.

It’s always a special moment when your publisher ships a box of your brand new books! My heart was racing as I filmed this.

Please excuse the knife throwing that follows; I get silly when I’m excited (and at least I closed the blade).

Could you understand what I said at the end? Me, neither. It’s like the voice I use to talk to babies and puppies and kittens. I think I said, “Look at this beautyyyy!”

Anyway, I cannot wait for you to have this book soon. It’s out next week (Tuesday!) If you pre-order now, it’ll arrive on your doorstep on release day, huzzah!

Thank you for coming along on this book release journey with me!

I’ll have some more goodies for you next week, including:

• a podcast interview with Sally Fama Cochrane, the artist who inspired the paintings in One Year Ago in Spain.

  • And she's also going to interview me!

  • It'll be a joint podcast episode where we talk about art careers, writing careers, and my book.

• And then I'm having a little party for myself to celebrate the book. So I will also have photos from that to share!

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🎁 Last Chance for Limited Edition Art and Autographed Bookplates

You can buy One Year Ago in Spain anywhere, but if you want:

• this gorgeous, limited edition character art of Matías and Claire,

• a custom-designed bookplate autographed by me,

they’re available exclusively from these two independent bookstores:

• Meet Cute Bookshop or

• The Ripped Bodice.

My publisher will not be offering these outside of the pre-order campaign, so order by July 29th!

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