Debut Novelist Suzy Langevin x Main Chapter

The world may be reinfatuated with JFK Jr. following Fx's Love Story, but Suzy Langevin started writing her own Kennedy inspired novel nearly four years ago. Now that her debut novel, "American Royalty," is out, Langevin sat down with Main Chapter to break down her characters, the political and social plots, as well as her upcoming works. She even dives into what it was like writing a biracial characater as a White author and her hot takes on "Heated Rivalry" and romance adaptations. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello my book butterflies and welcome to episode seven of the Main Chapter Podcast. My name is Brianna, and if you haven't already, please be sure to like and subscribe. I would love if I could get to 100 is my current mini goal for myself. So please like and subscribe so we can continue going and spending a lot of books with the entire world. I just got done interviewing Susie Landerman who just came out with her debut novel, American Royalty. A better time and a love story of that world based off the kennedies. Because this book is also based off the kennedies. We see FMC Jasmine who is a Senate staffer for Senator Pasworth. And she gets tasked with repairing the reputation of a sense after he's involved in a breakup scandal with a pop star. So of course we have this reform, misunderstood, Playboy, opposite attraction trope, but we also see some really real issues like being a minority in politics, being a minority in DC, addiction treatment, LGBTQ rights. That's really informative, but also written in a very digestible way. And even when talking with Susie, you could tell that she is so educated and so passionate. I learned a lot from her. I'm sure you all will as well. And let's go ahead and get started with the interview. But my first question is this is your debut novel. Congratulations. What was the most surprising thing when writing this book?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So writing the book, I think, was a process that I've written short stories and other pieces that had taken on not quite that length, but had been some pretty deep endeavors before. So the writing process felt pretty at home. I think the publishing process is a whole different animal to navigate and going through the process of submitting a book to agents or to publishers and going through that whole process. I was thinking about it last night that um I started the first draft of this book in November of 2022, and now it is coming out in 2026. So it's about three and a half years of a journey with this manuscript, and it's really exciting to see it finally come to its end and be ready to go out in the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

That's such a long process, but I'm sure definitely rewarding. You mentioned how you've written short stories and creative stories. How did you get into creative writing?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

So I've been writing pretty much my entire life. Um thinking back to my very first published work, if we're getting very technical, was when I was in second grade. Um, our local newspaper published like poems and essays from local school kids in the paper. So my poetry appeared in the Happy Times pages back in the very early 90s. But uh, you know, I majored in English literature in college and I spent sort of my entire college career writing mainly poetry. And when I graduated and moved into my career in social work, that was one of those things that kind of fell by the wayside. And I wasn't writing as much at that point as I had been at other points in my life, in part because I never really believed like I had a novel in me. There's you spend all this time as a student reading, you know, things that are considered the canon of like great American literature, and you're sitting there, sitting there with my computer, and like, I don't think I have anything that important to say, you know, since I'm only going to write a book if I have something important to say. And then as I I got older, um, and especially into the pandemic when we were all looking for like new hobbies and new things that to occupy all of the time we had on our hands from time to time, I kind of came back to, well, what I really love to read is romance novels. And that's what I've spent most of my adult life, like really enjoy that genre. I love the escapism of it. I love the guarantee of I know everything's gonna work out in the end, so I can enjoy the journey without the anxiety, like that works for me. So it sort of came to if this is what I love to read, why couldn't this be what I love to write? Um, and so in about 2021, I picked up and started writing again, doing fan fiction, short fiction, a few different things to just sort of get my feedback underneath me. And then this is the first full-length novel that I wrote, and I've just kept going since.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

That's great. And I love that you write romance. I always say that romance is such an underappreciated genre because all of us love it so much, and it is really important to have these stories. And what I really loved about American Royalty, your story was Jasmine. To be honest, as a black romance reader, I do not see a lot of protagonists that look like me. And Jasmine was so refreshing. And to be honest, I feel like a lot of romance novelists kind of have a fear for writing about women that don't look like them. And you did it so beautifully writing about protective hairstyles and equity and even kind of like her friendships and these nuances. I remember even telling my mom, I was like, I'm really shocked this is written by someone who doesn't look like us. And I was wondering what kind of made you dive into Jasmine and want to write about a black woman as your first FMC?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Absolutely. So, with knowing that I wanted to set this story in Washington, DC, and that I really wanted this character to be somebody who was in DC but not of DC. And so, really being this person who's straddling both worlds, it felt really disingenuous to me to create a character that was a DC native who was not black, because DC is one of the blackest cities in the country. The people who live there, who work there, who aren't of the political system are largely black. So it felt like I would be doing a disservice to the community of DC if that was not something that was spoken to in this book, because it is such a stark divide between the two. Um, and having this character who really does have a foot in two worlds in so many different ways, it was really important to me to have her biracial identity be a part of that, and that she's sort of sitting in both of those places. I've had the wonderful benefit in my life of getting to work with people both professionally and as my client, as my clients and my career as a social worker who come from a huge variety of different backgrounds and hearing their stories and understanding where they're coming from, and really appreciating the power of storytelling and the power of what difference that makes. So leaning into that, doing a ton of research on reading first-person accounts, reading romance novels by black authors like Beverly Jenkins and Kennedy Bryan and Tally Hibbert, like getting into those characters and what their experiences were like to really flesh out what life could look like for a woman who really was living with a foot in both of these worlds. And I'm also super fortunate that my acquiring editor with my publisher, Shakira Blakeney, is a black woman and she was an incredible influence on this book. She picked it up, she believed in the character of Jasmine as a convincing woman who was biracial, um, and her fingerprints are all over this in terms of the authenticity and what it was created for. Um, so I'm grateful to her as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

That's amazing. I love that you had a support system and that you really did the research because I definitely think it's reflected in the writing in the book. I feel with book talk, I'm sure you're no stranger to it, is there's always these debates about minority characters and women of color and how they're perceived. People think there's often like not enough racial trauma in these books, or people also say that they want their characters to be whimsy and not have that like burden or like that being brought up. Did you have any concerns about how Jasmine might be perceived?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yes, and I think there's always that concern about characters no matter what identity they're coming from. And it's heightened when you're representing something that doesn't, you know, jive with your own personal lived experience. And so I wanted to be really respectful of that. And I think there are people that feel very strongly about reading, you know, mostly or exclusively from own voices perspectives, and that's a totally valid lane to take. And that I think we do have a responsibility as writers to reflect the world around us. And my world is populated by people of color, by queer people, by people from all of these walks of life. And I want all of them to have a voice and a space in the work that I write. So I do definitely, you know, letting this book out into the world, I know there'll be people that will have reactions to the fact that I am a white woman writing a biracial main character. And that's okay. Like that's for people to grapple with and have on their own reactions and, you know, see what works for them and what doesn't work for them for these characters. But I really think as long as we're doing it with the proper amount of research and respect, that it is our duty as artists to think about how do we reflect the world around us in the world that we create in our work.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

I definitely agree. And you talked about living in a diverse world, and it's reflected in the book because we see topics about addiction and LGBTQIA rights. And you mentioned being a social worker. So I was wondering how has your career impacted your writing?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

I don't know that I could separate the two at this point with what I do in my professional life and what I do as a writer. Um when I think about going back to that idea of not really having something to say or having something important enough to say, what I think I've realized through the process of writing this book and also my next book that comes out in July is that the most important thing we can say is that people deserve love no matter what else is going on with them. That, you know, there's space in this world for queer love and black love and fat love and disabled love, and like all of these things are so central and important to our identity and who we are, that we need to see that reflected in these books when people are loved, not in spite of what other people might perceive about them, but because of those things that other people perceive about them. So that representation, especially around, you know, mental illness and addiction, which is what I do in my professional life, I feel a real sense of responsibility to get those things right in these books and have them reflected because they are a part of so much of life that we need those themes to show up in books to help us navigate them in what we see every day.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, unconditional love is definitely like the foundation of the romance genre. And that's why it is so important to show that it can happen to anyone, and anyone can pick up a book and see that they can be loved no matter what they look like, what they're going through. So that's why I think stories like yours and like American royalty are so important. You do cover a lot of topics in your book, like I mentioned, like the addiction, LGBTQ, racism. How did you choose what topics to spotlight specifically in American royalty?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Oh, good question. Um, I think part of it was the context informed, some of it. Um, you know, when you were looking at something through the lens of this is a story that unfolds in the political realm. So it's where and how do those issues touch with the broader political conversation and the broader social conversations that go into that. I think some of it though was also just the unfolding of these characters. Um, you know, they're all sort of, I don't want to say they're like spins on archetypes, but they are very much like wanting to take something that I hope people have seen before or have an idea about and twist it and take it in a little bit of a different direction. Um, you know, the the Ashworth family is very obviously in some ways inspired by the Kennedy family. I'm from Massachusetts, like with this is Kennedy country up here. Um, and so looking at what do we think we know about these people who have been public figures their entire lives, and then what's really going on behind the scenes, similarly with you know, uh the character of Tess, who we find out throughout the course of the book has not been able to come out because of her father's career in politics. That what we show other people and what we only show to the people kind of closest to us is something that I thought a lot about. And it gave some really good opportunities to look at these issues of like, what is it like to have this public face that you don't feel like matches who you really are?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Right. I love that you brought up the Kennedys because they shape the next couple of my questions. But before I get to that, I think it's fair to say that American royalty follows like a pretty liberal standpoint, and we are in a very polarizing world. And I believe it when people say reading is political, I definitely think that is a correct take. Are you worried about people who might come from the other end of the political spectrum and any backlash that might come from there?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

About the backlash piece. Yes, I definitely agree that this is it has a position, right? And that this this book is coming at it from a particular perspective. And um, I actually had in the process of like querying this book, um, I had a publisher who told me that she brought it to her acquisitions team and they said they couldn't sell it for that reason, that they knew it would play really well in some markets, but in others that they were worried that it wouldn't be very saleable, um, which from a business perspective, you sort of have to respect that that's that's their priority. So I know there will be elements of it that some people find polarizing or could be a turnoff for some readers, but I think it's really important to speak the truth that is my truth, and that is the perspective that I hold. And coming from that perspective, that you know, the all of the characters in this book that come from these wide variety and different walks of life really do all deserve the happy ever after that they get. And this feels like the the way that that would happen for those folks.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah. That's so interesting that a publisher didn't agree, want to sell because of the viewpoint, like you said, like it makes sense from a business decision, but also I feel like just different types of viewpoints should be published in a book and understand that not everything is for everyone, but your book was for me and I I loved it. And I hope I hope the majority of main chapter listeners also agree. So you mentioned the Kennedys, and I had to bring up love story because I saw that you talked about how this, like how Trip is kind of JFK Jr. coded, but you started writing this book back in 2022. Yeah. So did JFK Jr. inspire Trip at all, or does it kind of just happen to be a happy coincidence that it's now coming out in a love story-obsessed world?

SPEAKER_01 14:49

I could not have done the timing of this if you paid me. Like this was a complete accident, the happy accident that all of this filtered out the same way. There's definitely an inspiration there in terms of this very public figure who is largely a public figure because of his family, not because of you know, any of his particular decisions or the things that he's chosen to do. The thing that really kicked off the start of this for me was thinking about um the Taylor Swift Connor Kennedy romance back in like 2012, and thinking about what happens on the other side of this pop culture and political crash when things don't work out maybe the way that people would have hoped that they would in that storybook kind of way. Uh, but the character of Trip is definitely influenced by JFK Jr. and this idea of how do you create a world or a path for yourself that pays homage to everything you know about your privilege and how you got here while also doing something that is just your own? Um, and I think you feel that tension with him throughout the book of wanting to lean into his family legacy, but also step into something of his own. Um, and that that was very much inspired by the JFK Jr. narrative.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Of course. And have you watched Love Story? And why do you think people are so drawn to this era and these type of romances?

SPEAKER_01 16:18

I've not watched the whole thing yet. I watched, I think, the first two episodes. So I have to I have to go back and finish it.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

I'm similar.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I've only watched like the first three, so but I think there is, especially right now with everything that's going on in the world, there is a certain nostalgia factor for a time when things perhaps felt simpler. I don't think they actually were. I think we were just in a very different, more analog place where we didn't know everything that was going on 24-7. So it was a little bit easier to distance yourself from those things. So I think there is a sense of nostalgia for just that whole time period that was a bit more disconnected. There's also a sense of right now with how many different ways people can get media and how many different, you know, avenues there are for TV, for movies, for books, there's more ways than ever to fill your time with content, whether it is for entertainment purposes or it's through TikTok or any of those kinds of places, that we don't really have like a monoculture anymore where there's one theme or one person or one family that sort of dominates the narrative in the way that back in the early 90s, everyone knew who JFK Jr. was. So I think there is some element of like looking for that unifying theme, that unifying thread. And that's not to say any of those unifying themes or threads were actually unifying because they still only spoke to one narrative and left out voices and people that didn't look and sound like what the dominant narrative was. But I think there is some sense of longing for like understanding that cache of celebrity and understanding what it would have been like to be in this sort of most famous Bachelor in America kind of place.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yes, I feel like there's definitely a lot of curiosity towards the 90s or even like the early 2000s. And I also just think that people like love seeing kind of like these relationships where people come from a little bit of a different background, like everyone like wants to have their Kepha Carolyn Bassette romance or in a way now their Jasmine Lewis romance, and so kind of we talked about Jasmine and Trip, but I also really want to talk about Tess and Addison because I saw on the threads post that you said that you thought it was strange that in romance that a lot of readers are so quick to hype onto MM romances, but we don't see that as much with WW romances, and kind of what inspired you to really put their story and make it a very important subplot of American royalty?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Um, I think one of the things for me was there's this thread that happens in media sometimes, the like bury your gaze trope. And I feel like it happens more to Sapic couples in some ways, at least in modern media thread, than it does for male male couples. And so I just really wanted to have there be a Sapfaq couple that got their happy ever after. And that was tied up. That's part of the reason why the book kind of lands and ends where it does, um, is that it was really important to me that there was not that thread of a couple that is getting not getting their happy ever after or not getting their their chance at this the same way that the the lead couple does. Um, and I think there is such pressure right now. You know, we see this tide of anti-LGBTQ plus sentiment coming from all these different camps, that there's a really important conversation to be had about is this going to force people back into the closet? And that, you know, we've made so much progress in some ways, again, coming from Massachusetts, where same sex marriage has been legalized for longer than anywhere else. Um, we don't always feel it the same way here that I know people do in other parts of the country. So, really wanting to be thoughtful about understanding that there is a duality there, and that even though it might feel that way in some spaces and places, that this is more accepted than ever, and this is something that people are able to openly talk about for themselves, it's not like that for everybody. So I wanted to have sort of that duality of Addison, who's very able to talk about, you know, her sexuality and what that's like for her, up against Hess, who's looking at a really different set of circumstances. Um, so there was some nice opportunities to play with that duality again of well, what's public and what's private, and how do we navigate that? That I wanted to build into this story that ultimately led to the the two of them getting their happy ever after as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, I think then coming from different standpoints was really important. I currently live in Los Angeles, which is like a very obviously liberal, accepting city, but I'm originally from Kennesaw, Georgia, which is like a suburb of Atlanta. And it was definitely a different dialogue when I was growing up, going to high school and middle school. So it definitely even now seeing like my LA friends versus some of like my old like Atlanta colleagues, how they approach different subjects. I think it's really important to see different backgrounds coming together and how it is a different experience for everyone. And I think it's even reflected how people receive these relationships now with like the Bridgerton news. People are up at arms about Michaela and Francesca and saying that it's not book accurate. 90% of Bridgerton is not book accurate, but this is like the one thing that people are like, away. Um so I'm I'm interested to see kind of how the media perceives it when it actually comes out, whether that be 2027 and 2028, they take 10. But I'm excited for it. But before we change the conversation from American royalty, I do want to come back to Jasmine real quick and to one more important relationship, which was her relationship with Danny. And I really do appreciate how Jasmine takes accountability and kind of acknowledges that she does play a role in hurting Danny with like her lack of communication and kind of delaying things. She does get with Trump basically a few weeks after her breakup with Danny. But I was wondering in your mind, did you think there was any potential emotional overlap or emotional cheating on Jasmine's end?

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Oh, that's a great question. I think one of the things that I tried very hard to do in the development of their arc was that there was a line for Jasmine that felt like crossing that was not impossible, but there was definitely like a point of no return. That once that line was crossed, it would be very difficult to uncross it. And one of the things that I I hope shows up in the narrative with her and Danny is partially her reluctance. And that her relationship with Danny, for better or worse, felt like I know what I'm getting, I know what to expect. This is I put the time into this, so I need to keep putting the time into this. Almost like a subcost fallacy sort of approach to her relationship with Danny, when it's pretty clear from the opening chapters that it's not working, but she's really sticking with it because of the optics of it and because of the sense of I have to have control over all of these things, and that taking that step into a relationship with Tripp represents relinquishing that control in a really concrete way around how she's perceived and what people think about her. So I think it's the does an emotional thing kick off before she breaks up with Danny? I'm not sure. I think readers can can decide for themselves where where that line is and if she's flirting with it. Um, but I hope it's obvious from the beginning that what she and Danny are trying there, and they're both trying to make it work. Yeah, but it's never going to because what they want is just so vastly different. That's one of the things I really love about writing about this time in people's lives and sort of this um most of my work is folks who are in their late teens, kind of through the age of 30, when you're still figuring out how to be a person for all intents and purposes. Um, and it's the the matching of how do I take my history and my goals and ambitions and who I want to be and match them up with somebody else's, and something that fit wants might not fit anymore. So, how do you make those decisions about when and where things are working for you or not working for you? Um, and it's interesting that you mentioned about Jasmine like taking accountability for that relationship because it was so important to me that there's no character in this book who's perfect, and that they all sort of have their flaws or their things that um other people reflect back to them that they're not super comfortable with or that they wish were different. Because I do think there is a tendency, sometimes, especially with male main characters, to make them like seem like this idealized version of something. And I wanted everybody to feel real and not feel like there's some idealized vision of whatever, but they're fully fleshed out people who are going to make mistakes and do things that are you know hurtful even if they don't intend to, or they come into something with the best of intentions and those intentions aren't realized. So I think you know, having Jasmine acknowledge that I don't want to be on a pedestal to you, I want to be real, and that's the thing that really I value was really important to me to be a theme that carries throughout the whole book. Um, but my editor did hate Danny. The comments that she left about him in the margins were really entertaining. I enjoyed that greatly.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Yeah, he's not the most likable character, but I think it's also because we're seeing it through Jasmine's story through her eyes. Uh, but I think you're really right with like compatibility. I think that's what made their relationship real because I'm 25 and I'm seeing a lot of my friends who are in relationships kind of face these challenges because it comes down to if they match well with their person. So I think that's really what happened with uh Danny and Jasmine and kind of made it more realistic and also what you said like not that any character is perfect. But that's all the questions I have for now on American royalty. I know we have a few minutes left, so I really wanted to talk more about adaptation. So we talked about Love Story, which is also based off a book called Once Upon a Time. And then I saw that your dream series to get adapted is Talia Hibbert's Brown Sisters series. What makes a book adaptable? And can you expand on why you love that series so much?

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Oh, so that series in particular, um, I I just love all three of the stories. I love how they play off of each other and that you can pick up any one of the books and start in any one place, but you still get the the richness of the relationships between the sisters and everything in those families. I as a person who is myself disabled, I'm hard of hearing, and I um have a chronic illness, so much of what Talia Hibbert does in her books is just like top shelf disability representation around neurodivergence, around grief and loss, around you know, all of those different things that her characters show up with that are still whole beautiful people who are flawed and not idealized, like canonized people with a disability in any way either. They're just so rounded and so incredibly human that I think there's so much richness for people to be able to explore in those characters and in what we see across all three of the romances in that. I also think one of the things that I love is like a Bridgerton, where it's each season is its own story, but then they're interconnected so that you don't necessarily have to start from episode one. You can pick up anywhere, and they're they're very like bingeable in that way. Um, so I think the interconnected nature of those three books would make just a really great limited series.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

That's great. I don't read a lot of books with disability representation. It's something that I'm trying to do more in 2026 because I am also neurodivergent and I have a speech disorder. And like it's already hard to find books with black characters in it. It's even harder to find books with neurodivergence or disability representation. I've seen like a couple of mentions of ADHD or ADD, but it's never like a very integral part of the story, which sometimes I feel like is a disservice because that's such an important part of like a person and how they view things. So I'll definitely have to check out her series. She really just sold it. But my hot take is that not every book needs to be adapted. And there's like a lot of times where I see that like adaptation, I'm like, oh, I don't know if we really needed a series about that. I feel like a lot of times the magic is that it is a book. And I was wondering, do you have any hot takes around adaptations or just books in general?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

So I will say I'm skeptical about the off-campus series that's being adapted, um, the the L. Kennedy books. I actually really enjoyed some of the books from that series. Um, some of them were not my favorites, but I still read all five of them because I'm a perpetual completor. But um I that is one of those ones where I think the mental picture that you have of some of the characters is so clear based on the physical description of the book or how they're talked about, that when the casting doesn't match 100%, I sort of have that moment of like, oh, this is taking me out of it. I'm not totally sure about that one yet. Um, I think my probably very lukewarm take at this point, though, is that um I think heated rivalry is going to usher in a new era of like hockey romance shows. And I think they've missed the point. I think the popularity of heated rivalry is at least in part, if not you know, largely driven by the fact that this is the type of romance that we haven't seen before, that this was, you know, about male couples and this pressure cooker professional sports and everything that that happens with that. So I am very afraid that Hollywood is going to take the exact wrong lesson from heated rivalry, and we're gonna get inundated with hockey shows with white boys and thin blonde love interests, and not the actual energy that was behind this because of the diversity and the new perspectives that we were seeing. So I hope I'm wrong. Um, because Bridgerton dust step is not making me super confident that I am. But I hope it means that we see more diverse love stories on the screen rather than of this proliferation of hockey shows. But I fear we might be getting to proliferation of hockey show territory soon.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

I agree. And I just had a hockey romance author on a few uh weeks ago, and she was lovely. But we were talking about like why hockey romance is like so popular. And I remember when I posted a clip on my socials, a lot of people were like, well, hockey romance is so popular because 90% of the time they're white, and it's easy to write like white romances around hockey. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's so true. And I feel like at the end of the day, we're just gonna see like a lot more white hockey romances, and I think the off-camp series, I'm like you, I'm like excited for it. I'm a little hesitant about it, though, as well. And those are all white characters, and I think we're just gonna see kind of like this repetition, but I'm hoping there's a producer or a studio somewhere that kind of picks up and makes something a little more diverse, and we do get those more diverse stories. You mentioned the casting a little bit, and fan casting can be a pretty sensitive subject to people. And I was wondering, did you have any people in mind when you were talking about American royalty?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Oh, okay. So, yes, the character of Tripp, like his physical archetype, is partially based actually on an actor whose name is Matt Cornette, who ironically is going to be doing a book adaptation series from a Carly Fortune book on Amazon later this year. So that is very much sort of like what the physical archetype was based on, in part because he has green eyes. And the song that I had in mind when I was writing parts of this book is the Taylor Swift song I Know Places, which is specifically references somebody with green eyes. So there was a whole like physical archetype that went with that. I don't think I had the same like mental picture in mind necessarily for Jasmine. Um, though if I were to fan cast it now, I think Yaro Shahidi from Groanish is like the picture I would have in my mind. Um but those were sort of when you think about the physical archetypes of it, those were some of the things that I was considering when they were coming to life.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

I think those are both great archetypes. So my last question for you is earlier in the interview, you mentioned your next work, the plus one pact. And I was wondering if there was anything you could tease about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Oh, um, so the plus one pact, which is coming out in July, is one of those books that I actually refer to it as the book of my heart. And it's a concept that a lot of authors talk about. It's the story that you write, like not because you think there's a market for it or because you think anybody else wants to read it, but it's like the story that that's inside you and the one that you're like, I need to get this out here. And the story of the plus one pact is a um young woman, her name is Alyssa, gets invited to her best friend's wedding, who she's been hopelessly in love with for forever. And she's like, Well, I'm not doing this by myself. So I need somebody to come with me. And her roommate's brother, Jeff, agrees to go with her as like his her plus one, if she'll go with him to another wedding that he has to go to, that he doesn't have a date for because he's grappling with this long-term anxiety disorder that's really gotten in the way of him being able to create relationships for himself that he feels like are the direction that he wants his life to go. Um, so he's taking his bar exam, like he's got a whole bunch of stuff going on at the start of the book. But it was really important to me to write this story where there was a male character who was actively in therapy, not because somebody else told him he had to be, but because he genuinely wanted better for himself. And his process of therapy is like depicted on the page. You see him in session with his therapist. Um, our male mental health does not get the attention that it deserves in our media, and we don't talk about it the same way that we talk about it with women's mental health. So I wanted to create this character that was open about his experience of his mental health and have that be a process that you see on the page. And Alyssa is a plus-sized character who everything about her is not about the fact that she's plus sized. Like she's done the work, she is in a good place with her and her relationship with her body. And so this is about her finding love, not because she's come to terms with like who she is or what she looks like, but because she's ready now. She's done the work and she's in a place where she feels comfortable and confident in herself. And the last thing she has to do is let go of this hang up that she has with this old relationship, and then she's ready to move forward. And so creating these characters who had like the ability to engage and talk about what was going on with their mental health and to just be who they were in their body was something that was really, really important to me. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity to tell that story and have that come out into the world.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

It sounds like it's going to be a great story. I'm super excited, especially talking about the male mental health aspects. That's like my number one critique with a lot of stories that I don't feel like the men do as much of the mental work, or it's kind of shallow. Like summer I turned pretty, I hate it. Like when Conrad was in therapy and he was still lying to his therapist. I'm like, Dad's not doing the work. So I'm really excited to see this version of it. And I wish you all the best with it. But thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really believe of yours. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that. Be sure to read American Royalty if you haven't already, and look out for Susie's next book coming out this summer. Next week, I am interviewing Sarah Hoover and her best-selling memoir, The Mother Load, Episodes from the Break of Motherhood. This interview, we talked all about representation, and we are continuing that theme next week, talking about representation, specifically with postpartum depression and the mental health of mothers. It's such a real, raw, transparent interview that I encourage you all to come back to listen to. I hope you have a great week, my book butterflies, and I'll see you next time.