Haili Blassingame

I mean, it was totally different.

I mean, and that sort of...

The novel is a lot about writing a novel and how you have to write it to learn what it is.

And that was very much this process.

And I think I couldn't have written that prologue from the start because I didn't know what I was trying to say with the book.

And so I learned Sneaky Prologue, I think it was from Rebecca Mackay.

I think she talks about this because I think she has one in her mystery novel.

I have some questions for you.

And I love that because it's sort of like it doesn't brace someone for a prologue.

But yeah, so when I got to the end of writing the book, I understood that this was also a book about...

our dependence on stories to understand who we are and how that can be dangerous.

Especially when you talk about, you know, politics is really who told the better story, you know, it doesn't have to be true.

And it's about sort of the beauty of locating yourself and inserting yourself into a story where you're, you don't exist, but also the limitations of a story that they, you know, the resolutions we get in a story are not the resolutions we get in life.

And I think

I needed a way to set that insight up in the beginning or else I don't think it would have paid off in the way.

And also it's a tone thing as well.

Just looking at the cover and the way that the book is framed, a lot of people are calling it a romance and we can maybe get into the romances versus love story.

But I knew that I needed people to know that this is going to be a bit more than the love story that you got on the back cover.

And I felt like that was the most efficient way to say, okay, there's a bigger idea here about just like the value, but also the danger of our over reliance on stories to tell us who we are.

So yeah, that's how that came back.