Carley Fortune
Appearances
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
For me, it is a book that no matter where you're reading it, so maybe you're on the beach or maybe you're in your apartment, you feel like you're transported into the pages. And so I want you to feel like you're on the lake. You can like smell the pine trees. You can feel the breeze on your face and the sun on your skin and that you are with the characters.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yeah, that's a good question. So one of the characters in this book, his name is Charlie. He was a brother in Every Summer After. And after that book came out, people wanted more of the main characters, but they also wanted him to have a love story, a happy ending. And I had people approach me at book events. I had two women wait at the very end of the signing line for like an hour and a half.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Like you are watching these characters, um, interact with each other. They feel really real to you. So you're snooping on them and you are just in that place. You are immersed. You are away from whatever your life may be and you are in the pages of this book. And for me, my books all have happy endings. Hopefully there's big emotions and you're in your feels in lots of different ways.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I want you to laugh and cry and there's steamy bits and I want it to run the gamut, but I also want... readers to feel safe at the end. There's a happy ending and hopefully you walk away feeling better about humans and our ability to empathize with each other and relate to each other. And I think we really need that reminder right now. I agree.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
movies yeah so every summer after um is being adapted by amazon as a series okay um and that's greenlit the first season is shooting very soon are you excited i'm so excited what is that feeling like though if you do you get a say in characters that were casted do you get a say in production do you get any of that or do you sort of have to like sort of let go of the reins a little bit
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, I have like a bit of a say, um, but it's not my adaptation. So it's like not the Carly fortune and version of this book. And because it's a series, it's not, it has to be bigger than the book, right? The world, the characters develop. But it's pretty cool to see how it all comes together. So that's the furthest along.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Meet Me at the Lake has been optioned by Archwell, which is Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's production company. That's awesome. Yes. In conjunction with Netflix. Okay. And that is in development. There is like a beautiful script for it. And I'm so, I'm so excited about that. That was my toughest book to write. And there's a really important mental health story in that book.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And I feel like from like the first conversation about this adaptation, it was going to be treated with such care and respect. And that's like, how I felt every step of the way. For sure. So I'm really, really excited about that. And then my third book, The Summer Will Be Different, has been optioned, but we haven't announced who it's with yet.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yeah. I mean, it's all seems like there's always, you know, this person might be interested in it or this person and it's like, oh, that's so fun. And I try not to get too excited about any, cause you know how it is.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Like there's a lot of talk and there's a lot of, you know, possibilities, but until you are, you know, having that zoom call with a team or with a group of people and like seeing whether, um, Like they really are interested or you really connect with them and their vision with them. And then until everything's signed and sealed, I try not to get like too. But it's been very surreal.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Like having, you know, four years ago when my first book came out. Um, I like had no, I didn't even know I was going to have a book. Like, so to have all of this happen, it's just like takes, it's taken a while for it to sink in.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And they looked at me and they said, we have a bone to pick with you. Yeah. And I said, what? And they said, well, we've waited here all night to tell you, like, we need a happy ending for Charlie. Justice for Charlie. Justice for Charlie. And I would have pitches for who he should be with. The people were like matching him with characters from my other books and they were in my DMs all the time.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
They don't know. Um, which is great. And my son, my oldest son kind of is starting to get it, but, um, and he just wants to act in everything. He's like, can I, we have that in common. Can I be in this?
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Let me know. Okay. But for Marco, it's been like, I think the first thing for him was how I started writing every summer after, which was I wrote every single day. I would get up at 5 AM and write before I started work. And sometimes after Max went to sleep, I'd write or on the weekend. And I had just transformed and I finished it in four months. And he was like, what is going on? on.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, he was so excited and he, like, he has been like, of course, like, of course, like it makes so much sense. Um, but it had like, sometimes I think it was like last summer, maybe the summer before, sometimes we just look at each other, like, what is going on? Like, this is so...
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And so I had him, like, I knew that I could write him. I felt like I'd been thinking about him since I finished Every Summer After, like even before I had an agent, even before I had a book deal. his voice was in my head. And back then when I got my editor, we had talked about maybe a book for him, but I didn't really have an idea.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Oh, like I have no doubt that like BookTok has an enormous influence.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Like I'm not on it. So that is, I don't see, but it's everywhere. And I think it's so wonderful. Like I, having been in journalism and worked in magazines and newspapers and really like wanting to connect with an audience and, and sometimes publishing really wonderful stories that nobody like was reading.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, and so having like all this passion on book talk with people, like readers connecting other readers with stories and showing, you know, and I think what I love about romance and romanticist readers on book talk is there's no shame about what they love. And I think that's so wonderful. And, um, yeah. And I like, I've
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I was on book, I was on TikTok, um, as a journalist and then it was still on when Every Summer After came out and it was so fun to watch it start to explode. And then at one point there was a video that was like, um, it just is like slams down the book and it's like worst romance book ever. And it had 64,000 likes. And I was like, oh, this place is not for me. Yeah.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And it was like, for one, it's kind of amazing. Like I have created this book that people feel so, so many people have opinions on. But it was a real moment where I was like, okay, Carly, you are going to delete this and this is not a place for you anymore.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And then, um, the, you know, when I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my fourth book, I thought, you know, it's, it's time I've been thinking about Charlie. I feel like I can kind of put all the expectations of readers and opinions of which there were many aside and kind of tell the story that I wanted to tell. And it
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I'm really lucky. My husband has pulled away from his work. And so he is able and I write at home. So my office is at home. But he is able to like do the drop off and pick up in the morning. He does lunches, he does dinners. And so I'm able to just like go like after the kids leave in the morning, I go to my office and I write all day.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, I break for like exercise and then, um, I stop when, when the kids come home at four 30, sometimes I work a little bit longer. Um, but that's, that's it. And because, you know, because he's home, because I don't have to worry about food, I don't have to worry about laundry. Um, I don't have to worry about pickup. If the kids are sick, he will take them to the doctor.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
It's become so much more manageable. I wrote my third book. with like the kids being, Marco was still working and the kids were sick all the time and I was sick all the time. And I think we had three weeks of good health between like September and March. And by the time I was, that's kind of my writing period. By the time we got to spring, I was, I just had a full breakdown.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I was like, I can't do this work as a mom looking after these kids. Like I can't write with sick kids at home and I'm sick all the time. And that's when Marco stepped back from his job.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I am. I'm so glad. That's really cool. I couldn't do it without him.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yeah. When I started writing the book, like I wanted to write about where I grew up and how I grew up and that was Barry's Bay because it was just for me. But then when I started thinking about publishing the book, Canadian writers historically have been told that – I cared about getting an audience. If I was going to publish something, I wanted people to read it.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Canadian authors have been told that Americans are not interested in books set in Canada, so a lot of the time you'll see authors setting their books in the States. And, or, and so when I was out to agents, I asked everyone, like, is it okay that my book is set in Canada? And I had varying opinions about that. What was that? I don't understand that.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Every Summer After is really about like my relationship with the lake where I grew up on the lake in Barry's Bay, the setting of the book. I lived in the bush down a dirt road and cottagers would come in the summer. They would come to their lake houses in the summer and the lake would kind of explode.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Well, outside of America, the kind of like take is that Americans aren't interested in anything other than America.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
When I went out, when I went and spoke to readers about Every Summer After and relayed that, they're so offended by this notion. Yes. Literally. But I had also talked to authors who had said, yeah, my book that was set in Canada didn't sell as well as my book set in the States. And it's just this long... Canada is so bombarded with American media.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And there's... Canadian musicians have a hard time breaking in. And there's just this... Historically, there was this idea that if you want to break in to that market, you have to... talk to that market market more like the book shouldn't be super Canadian and so I I was not willing I had an agent tell me a Canadian agent tell me that I should set the book in like a coastal uh east coast to
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
town in the States. And I was like, I've never been there. You can't. I cannot. I can't. I won't. I guess it could be like Barry's Bay nowhere.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
go to Barry's Bay or grew up on Barry's Bay like they will be able to connect to this in a different way yes you know what I mean and I think like for audiences outside of Canada it adds to the escapism because you've never been there and what I found like when I signed with my agent Taylor, she's based in Los Angeles. And she's like, I love the setting.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And when we found my editor, Amanda, she's based in New York. She's like, I love the setting. And I was like, great. Like, I'm so happy to hear that. And then, you know, in hindsight, I was like, oh, the setting is like the care, like one of the main characters of that book. And I'm so glad that they had the like strength to be like, no, this is fine.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Like this is going to really work with our readers. Like we don't see a problem here. No, absolutely.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And so that book is about my like teenage years, whereas this book is really about kind of what the lake means to me as an adult. And it was really a matter of figuring out who the protagonist would be because I had Charlie and I did not know who she would be. And all my books have started with settings. All of them have started with the heroines.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
For sure. For sure. And sometimes they often find their way in without me really realizing it. So with this book, Alice, she's a photographer and she is a freelance photographer. So she's really been hustling to get to a spot where she has a list of clients who love her. She's always making her clients happy. She's always saying yes. She's always delivering.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And she's realizing that, wait a second, what am I getting out of this? What creatively... creatively fulfills me. And that is something that I really relate to as a journalist. And she's kind of stepping back and trying to figure out what is work for me now and what do I want? And I think I'm somebody who I can have trouble figuring out what I want. It's like, I am a very hard worker.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I like to say yes. I like to stay busy. But then when things get
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
are quieter it's like wait a second what do like is this what I want yeah what do I want um and so that like that felt really personal to me and Alice's story and so little like things like that just tend to like I didn't know what her career journey would be right when I started writing but that like felt like right I liked when she does the shoot for the I think it was swish magazine yes and she decides that she's gonna send the pictures that were
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
It's really hard to do. It's so hard. It's really hard to do. Especially when we want people to be happy with our work and we want to excel. But like you have to like – so how do you do that while like maintaining your dignity and like what you value? It's hard. It is hard.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I hope so. For sure. I worked in women's media for the last part of my career. And a lot of the stories that I would want to assign as an editor about our relationships to money or our jobs or to our family, that kind of comes into the books. So there is this central romance, but there's also looking at our relationship to so many other aspects.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And now I was like, I have to figure out who she is. And it was so hard to do.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Basically, I cry every book that I write. For sure. I cried at one, the scene where everything kind of falls apart between Charlie and Alice.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
cried with this book um readers have been crying throughout like the entire end which i just don't like i didn't i didn't anticipate that the same with every summer after i remember when that book came out people were cold my and my editor when she first read it she was sobbing for like the last hundred pages of the book and i didn't i i cried when i wrote the epilogue to that book but
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
not through the whole ending. And you just never know how people react. Yeah. Yeah. There's always like my editor always wants to cry.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yeah. Okay. So for the men, the male characters, they're usually names that my husband vetoed when we were naming our boys. What?
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
So this was really hard. I've never done like created the protagonist after I had the hero. And because I knew Charlie really, really well. well from having written Every Summer After and also having thought about him for many years. I auditioned characters like it was The Bachelor. I created over a dozen characters.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I think I counted 18 women with different names, different job titles, different personalities.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
different ways that they intersected with Charlie whether they had known him in the past or not known him before yeah and then I was trying to figure out like both a character whose story I wanted to follow and then how she paired up with Charlie okay I wrote 11,000 words of a book with a different character that I threw away are you serious yeah will you use any of those characters in a future book
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yes. Yes. I love it. Yes. And Charlie was a name that I really loved. Even when I was pregnant with my second, I was like, could I name them Charlie? I'm like, no, Carly and Charlie is too similar.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yeah, so we've kind of changed the process, my editor and I, so that I have more time with my first draft before I send it to her. So I give myself about four months to finish the first draft until I get to the end. And I don't revise as I'm going along. And I keep a little graph of how many words I've done. So once I've got 10,000 words done, I color it in. Every 10,000 words, I color it in.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, that's kind of cute though. It's really fun. Yeah. I like it. I like getting a gold star and it feels like getting a gold star.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
One a year, one a year. Um, and that is like plenty. Cause I spend, yeah, I spend four months drafting and then I step away from it for a couple of weeks and then I start revising by my, like on my own. Um, and that takes like a good chunk of time before I, so I just turned in the first draft of my fifth book to my editor and, Um, so would you have a release date for like 2026? Yes. Yes.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, so that's where Charlie came from. And then Alice, like the, the female characters are all a bit different, but Alice is a girl's name that like one of my favorite girls names and we don't have girls. So, um, I gave, gave it to Alice and then I was trying to, I wasn't sure about her name cause I wasn't sure it fit with Charlie, Alice and Charlie. Um,
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
That's right. Yeah. We don't have a date yet, but yes, yes. That's the, that's the plan. Oh, I love that.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I think in your case, I would tell myself that nobody is ever going to read it.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Anyone. But like, I think for you as a passion project first. Yeah. Just write, just write, assuming nobody's going to read it. Just write it as like the thing that you, the story you want to tell without all, you can edit anything, right? You need the words first. Right. You can make adjustments. You can improve it, but you need to have a first draft done.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And so whatever you need to do to give yourself permission to do that and space and confidence to do it, whether that's like, I am going to give myself an hour twice a week to work on it, or I'm going to give myself a word count goal. For me, I was like, I'm going to finish it by the end of the year.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And I figured out that in order to get an 80,000 word manuscript done by the end of the year, I needed to write 388 words a day. Oh, wow. So that's what I did. I just wrote 380 words a day. Sure. And it got done. And then I think having – it is so lovely to write with, like, no anticipation of anybody reading it. True. And then read a lot. Like, read widely, which you do.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And I found writing my book – I felt so, like – I felt so rebellious about it because it wasn't for my job and it wasn't for my family. It was just for me. And I think sometimes it can feel really hard to do things that are just for us. And so we need to kind of like – the first step is figuring out how to like claw – out some of that time and like the permission just to have fun and do it.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Oh, that's a good question. I feel like I have so many favorite authors and all my, like my favorite romance authors are all coming out with like new books right now. Tia Williams has a new book that's out today, which is, um, a YA novel. That's a Seven Days in June. And this book is about the character's daughter and her romance. So I'm really excited about that. I love Tia Williams.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
But then when I came up with her last name, which is Everly, Alice Everly, I just loved how that sounded. And then I was like, oh, Charlie would say that in such a sexy way.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I love Emily Henry. I love Annabelle Monaghan. I just read this book called Sandwich by Katherine Newman. I've seen it. Does it have the beach cover? Yes. I know exactly which one you're talking about. I think this book is a book every single woman needs to read. I'll add it. It is... so beautifully done. It's very short.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Um, the writing is incredible and it's about this family going, going to this beach house. They go every year. And the, the, the mother, she's about 50 and she is really going through the, like the hormones. And she is like, it just feels so relatable and it's about grief and it's about marriage and it's about parenting and And I felt like I was in conversation with womanhood reading it.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And it's a fast read. Oh, good. It's so good. And it's funny.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Or do you read a lot of like women's fiction? I'll read like a couple of thrillers every every now and then depending on what they are. And I yeah, I do read outside of romance. Okay, quite a bit. Sometimes like I love I want to have that comfort. And sometimes I want to read something completely different from what I do.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I don't. I haven't been on a historical fiction kick yet.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
But I feel like I need to because I love history.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yes. Which I think is cute. It's a nice little twist of name.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Seven Husbands of Emily? No, The Husbands by Holly Gravazio. No, is it good? I feel like you would like it. It's about a woman. It's British. Okay. And so it has that wonderful British voice. Yeah. And it's about this woman who comes home drunk from the pub and there's a man in her flat and And she realizes like she's looking at her phone and her hand, they're married. It's her husband.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And she's freaking out and then he goes up to the attic to find something and down comes another man. And what is happening is her attic is sending her different husbands. And if she wants to change the husband, she sends him back up to the attic and another guy comes down. And with each husband, her life is slightly different. So it's like the butterfly effect. Yes. Yes.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Except it's like, it's a comment on dating. It's like, it's so, you have to read it and it's so good. And, um, it's like, it's a mystery. It's a thriller. There's like, like it's everything. I just feel like you would love it. I would probably love it. I,
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I'm on Instagram at Carly Fortune and, uh, my website is carlyfortune.com. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I do. My parents still live there. Really? Yes. Yeah. So we had this house on the lake and they sold it 15 years ago. And I hadn't got, they still live in town. They had an inn and a restaurant, which they sold. And now they have a house in town. And before I wrote Every Summer After, I visited our house on the lake for the first time since my parents had sold it.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And it brought back a lot of feelings and nostalgia. And so I still go up there to visit my parents. And I also, every year, my husband and my sons and I stay at a cottage on a lake nearby. And it's where I start writing all of my books. I saw that. It's where I started to write One Golden Summer. And it's where I wrote Every Summer After. And I just love being at the lake so much.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
It's where I feel like... I feel like I take a deep breath as soon as I like I step inside the cottage and I look at the water and it's like, ah, the air smells different.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
It had this like slow build and then it made the list and was on for a while.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
No, I feel pressure. You feel pressure? I wrote every summer after just for myself. I didn't intend to publish it when I started writing it. Yeah.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
You get it you're a late girl I love it so congratulations on the on the release of your new book thank you are you excited I am so excited I think I'm most excited like more than any other book this book I'm most excited about why do you say that I think it's because this is my fourth book and I've become more confident with every book. And also because readers have asked me for this book.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
When I started, like I was about 14,000 words in and I was like, it's starting to feel like a book and I feel like I'm going to finish it. And, um, Then I sent the first few chapters to my best friend as I was still writing it. And she was like, you are going to be an author. And she was right. And she was so encouraging and just like she was certain. Yeah. And she's a huge reader. Oh, good.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
She was a beta reader. She was one of the people that I sent the, when it was done, I sent her, her and three friends, the manuscript. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So what were you doing before you started writing? I was a journalist for 16 years, but I wasn't writing. I was editing. So I, um, was assigning the writers and like coming up with the ideas for packages.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And in my last role, I was overseeing refinery 29 Canada. So I launched that brand in Canada, hired the editorial team, oversaw that team. And it was so wonderful. I was so proud of what we're doing. I loved the team, but it was so stressful. And in 2020, I got off a really stressful work call, furious. And I was at this cottage at the lake. And I remember it so clearly because it has a landline.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And I slammed down the landline, which is like the best feeling. And I was like, I'm going to write a book. I've always wanted to write a book. I'm it's 20, like in 2020, I need to do something for myself. I need to, I've, all my creativity has gone to my employers. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to finish it by the end of the year. And that, and that became every summer after. Yeah.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
No, so then I found an agent, and I was very lucky. I ended up signing with my dream agent, Taylor Haggerty, and then we sold the book after that. That's so exciting.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Yeah, I had one boy then. I have two boys. Max is eight and Finn is four. And so Max was, we had Max and then I became pregnant when I was writing Every Summer After. So Finn was born right when we were like finishing the edits on Every Summer After. So, so much was going on. So much. And we moved houses at that time. Oh my gosh. And it was like so wild.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Like I got a book deal, moved homes, finished edits on the book and had a baby within six weeks. Wow. And my husband was in quarantine in our house because it was like the pandemic. So I was like super pregnant and like packing up our house.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And ever since my first book came out, it's like a companion novel to that book. It has characters from that novel. And people have been asking me for this book for years. And I finally felt like I was in a place where I could tackle it, like I felt confident enough to tackle it. And so I'm just excited that it's out there. And
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I love that for you. And it was, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yeah.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I'm much better than I used to be. I used to be – before Every Summer After came out, I read every single like early review and I remember –
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
super negative review came in before the book had come out around it was like Christmas Eve and I was at home in Barry's Bay with my family and I was like and it was it was like and it felt like a very professional sounding review too and it was like this is unimaginative unimaginative and this that the other thing and it was so devastating I was like oh people are going to hate this book.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And I've really struggled with it. I used to sometimes go on... My second book, I had so much imposter syndrome writing. And both births have suffered with postpartum OCD. And so my anxiety is super bad. So I was writing it in this bad mental state. And I felt like I couldn't do it. Like the first book had been a fluke and everything was going to blow up.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
And, and like, when I'm in that kind of bad place, I like to try to like prove to myself that things are not going to go well, or, or it's like, if, if I can think of all the bad things that could happen, maybe like, it'll be okay. And I would like purposefully look at bad reviews. Really?
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
So I feel like that's relatable. But it turned out well for you? It did. And I've stopped doing that. I've stopped doing that. I did not do that with One Golden Summer. I don't seek out
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
reviews they come they come to you like they're all in your and I let you know right now this is publication day for me and there's so there will be so many like happy like reviews and comments and it and it's and it's wonderful but at the end of the day it doesn't um it's not for you they're like these reviews are for the readers and for the community of readers and it doesn't help you as an author either um to have all these opinions in your mind you have to be so
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
It's the beginning of May, so it feels like it's time for summer reading and some escapism and a happy ending. I feel like we need this kind of book right now.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
It's so true. Yeah. My best friend and I might like disagree on books all the time. Yeah.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
So I can't see the characters very clearly. I try to describe them so that you can picture them, but I'm not envisioning an actor playing the role. But the setting, the spaces, I... I can see very, very well. It's almost like a movie set for me. And I do draw out the exteriors. Did you do this? I didn't. The painting on the cover is by Elizabeth Lenny, who's done all my covers. Very good.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
Thank you. She's so talented. I'm so grateful for her. But, yeah, I draw, like, the buildings. I draw the shoreline. Like, I like to be able to move my characters through the spaces. Yeah, I love that. And that's kind of how I do it.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
I think there's a lot of me in all the characters. And there are, like, bits and pieces of people I know for the characters. So in One Golden Summer – uh, Nan, who is Alice's grandmother. She's inspired by my grandparents.
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
My mom's parents died before I was born, but they, um, had a cottage when my mom grew up going to a cottage and my grandmother would have the kids by herself during the week at the cottage with no car, no like, you know, laundry machine. And, um, her husband would come up on the weekend when he was done work. And there were these amazing photos of my grandmother at the lake
Barely Famous
One Golden Summer With Carley Fortune
and in her bathing suit and at this little cottage. And so Nan is really like my homage to my grandmother. I love that. Yeah. And she feels like everybody's grandma.