YA Holiday Rom-Com with Elle Gonzalez Rose - Caught in a Bad Fauxmance

In this week’s episode, Marissa chats with Elle Gonzalez Rose about her queer YA rom-com, CAUGHT IN A BAD FAUXMANCE. Also discussed: How a career writing marketing copy for the screen is transferable to writing books and book marketing materials, the fun of writing favorite tropes in romance, bonding characters over cultural foods, the challenge of showing both sides of romantic feelings when writing a first person POV, worldbuilding an entire town that’s outside your own experience, the catharsis of writing from a place of grief, favorite holiday traditions and so much more!

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello, and welcome to the Happy Writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you for joining me. This is going to be our last th episode of 2023. We have not yet started booking our guests for the new year, but many of you know I have a new novel coming out in February. So to be determined, we might just stay on hiatus until after the book comes out as I am not entirely sure what my promotion and touring schedule is going to be looking like yet over the next couple of months. So we will be back eventually but I'm not quite sure when yet. If, however, you are curious or interested in my new novel, it is now available for preorder. It is titled with a Little Luck and you can find out more about it on my website or on Instagram. So I really hope you will check it out. One thing making me happy this week garland door hangers. I just discovered this incredibly cool contraption this year thanks to a 50% off sale at Michael's Craft Store. They're like these tension rods that you put in your doorway and then hang your holiday garlands off of and they are so much easier than nails and hooks and all of the things that I have tried over the years. Wire and oh my gosh, I hate hanging garlands but I love how they look when they're put up and this is just it makes life so much easier and then gives you that instant Hallmark flair. I know I sound like a commercial right now, but as you guys know, this time of year, pretty much all I want is to feel like I'm.

[02:12] Elle: Living in a Hallmark movie and this.

[02:14] Marissa: Helped that dream come true a little bit. So I am probably going to buy one for every door in my house. Don't tell my husband and let's hope that the sale is still going on. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. She's a television producer from New York whose debut novel, Caught in a Bad fomance just came out last week. Please welcome Elle Gonzalez Rose.

[02:42] Elle: Hello. Hello. Welcome.

[02:45] Marissa: Happy holidays.

[02:46] Elle: How are you? I'm doing amazing. Even better now that I know about this tension rod.

[02:52] Marissa: Oh my gosh.

[02:53] Elle: I've been thinking, how do you hang these up? So that's amazing because every time I look at my door I'm like, how the heck do you get a garland on this?

[03:01] Marissa: I know. I feel like I've tried like I've Googled and what's that website that gives all of the step by step and I'm like, that just looks so difficult. My husband hates I shouldn't say he hates it, it is not his favorite thing to do, the Christmas decorations. And so I ended up tackling a lot of it on my own and I feel bad having to pester him.

[03:23] Elle: For some of these.

[03:24] Marissa: So this was like a dream come true.

[03:27] Elle: I'm absolutely going to write that down.

[03:29] Marissa: Because living in New York where it.

[03:31] Elle: Feels like there's never enough space to decorate for a holiday, I was like, we should do a reef on the door that doesn't take up any real estate. And I'm like, I don't know how to hang up a reef on the door. So this just changed everything for me. So now my holidays are going to be that much better.

[03:47] Marissa: You are welcome.

[03:49] Elle: Thank you.

[03:51] Marissa: I'm so excited to talk to you today. Before we get into talking about the book, the first thing I want to know is your origin story. I know your bio mentions being a television producer. How has that translated into now becoming a writer?

[04:07] Elle: Yeah, it's kind of OD because I have been a writer my entire life, so it's always hard when I get asked a question of like, when did you want to start writing? And I'm like when I was a child. It was so long ago, I don't really remember what had happened. But the television producer thing came first, actually, because when I was in college, I majored in creative writing after a long and arduous journey through Stem and a million other majors before I decided to settle on creative writing. But I mainly worked in television. I was working in production. I went to school in New York. So it was really good opportunity to work on set of different shows and be like the runner and whatnot. And then I did not work in that for two years. And then I came back to it through Happenstance. I happened to apply to a job at MTV. Now it's more broadly known as Paramount, so I'm more broadly a Paramount writer. But it was to basically produce and write the trailers that you see on air for the different MTV Paramount properties. And I was like, what an amazing job. Because I do genuinely really enjoy MTV's programming and I had been an intern there before, so it was just luck. That was kind of the first step in my journey to becoming a professional writer. So I did that for I think I was doing it for a couple of months before I started writing this book. So now it's like I'm pulling double duty. It's like writer by day, also writer by night. So kind of hard to find. Like, that's why I said I'm like, I got certain hobbies that I'm like, can't monetize this. This is just a hobby. I've already monetized one hobby.

[05:36] Marissa: I love that. The idea of writing trailers sounds really cool. That's not the sort of thing that you think of as far as careers that involve writing go, that sounds so.

[05:50] Elle: I genuinely didn't know it was a job until I got it. I was I mean, unless you watched the holiday I was going to like.

[05:59] Marissa: Isn'T that what Cameron Diaz does?

[06:01] Elle: Yes, and I don't think I'd seen the holiday yet at that point. But then when I watched, like, I think I'd already been in my job for at least a year and I was like, representation for the trailer writers of the world. I love it.

[06:14] Marissa: Do you feel like because I have to imagine that writing a trailer has to follow a certain not formula, but I mean, it probably has patterns similar to like a novel has certain steps and plot beats and whatnot do you feel like that has translated into novel writing? I think so.

[06:35] Elle: I think what you said is very interesting because it is really a formula, but in such a different way, where I think with trailer writing, what you've learned is because with trailer writing, you go through all these levels of clearances. Everyone has to approve something, every single person, all the way up the chain, and that can take weeks. And you go through so many revisions that by the end it's almost as if you're lucky if maybe one or two lines that you originally wrote in the first draft of your copy makes it to the end, it's still your work at the end, but it just evolves so much. Which I think is kind of funny because I've done a lot of revisions on all of my work, but especially with my first book, I did an R and R and I think my editor said something like, we love how you're willing to edit or like, you're really willing to change things up. And I was like, Listen, you have not come to me the day something is due and told me to start from scratch. I can do just about anything when it comes to revising. This is a walk in the park. But it is true how you do kind of get used to, oh, they really like it when we play with this kind of language or when we do this kind of thing. So it's almost like tropes for trailers. They love the new trope. They love when things are new and bigger. The er words like bigger and star studier and more exciting and things like that. So it does feel formulaic in a way, but you do have your own ways of keeping your spin. And I think that the one thing that really does kind of translate is having to write in a certain voice, depending on what kind of project you're working on. Like, if you're working on a moody teen drama, then you're going to want to have more of a moody teen drama vibe with your music and the copy that you're going to use. Whereas if you're writing for something like Repulse Drag Race, that's very different copy and language that you're going to have. So it's needing to keep on your toes and switching your voice and switching kind of the genre you're in, which is something that I do a lot in writing. So I do think that a lot of those skills are transferable. I never thought about it until this moment.

[08:31] Marissa: Oh, that's so funny. No, it really seems like it would be. And in particular, I have to imagine that there is some parallels between writing a trailer for a TV show and writing your pitch or synopsis or query letter for a novel. Did that feel kind of like a similar process?

[08:50] Elle: Oh, yeah, for sure. I feel like that's where I got kind of lucky is that I have had to write, like, for example, taglines, like, what goes on a poster? What's the punchiest way to sell a concept in just a couple of words? Because, you know, you don't have that much real estate to put words on a poster. And even then, things like that of like, we'll do write ups for campaigns, which is like, overall, like, oh, the trailer we're trying to sell here's how we're going to make it sound interesting. So I feel like I'm very I feel bad with whenever I'm editing a synopsis, I feel like I give a lot of notes on the blurb, the back cover blurb and whatnot, even though a lot of the time it is taken from my own blurb. But I'm very finicky about the details of blurbs and the exact wording. So I feel like I'm persnickety. I don't know if that's the right word, but I'm very particular with marketing copy because that's my job.

[09:37] Marissa: Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. I feel like I'm fairly persnickety with it also. And sometimes I wonder. My editor is always such a great sport. Thank you, Marissa. This sounds great. We appreciate it, blah, blah, blah. But part of me is always wondering, part of her like, okay, Marissa, let.

[09:52] Elle: Us yes, I have the exact same thought. We're like when I tweak something, it's just a single word. It's just like, can we actually just make that italic? It's just like, okay.

[10:04] Marissa: Oh, I get it so much. Okay, so here we are. Your debut novel just came out. Will you tell listeners a little bit about Caught in a bad fomance, starting with did you come up with this title?

[10:18] Elle: I did not. I'm sorry. I know that's so disappointing.

[10:22] Marissa: It is such a good title.

[10:24] Elle: Okay, thank you. All credit goes to my editor, Bria Reagan. She came up with it. fomance wasn't the original title. That was my only thing. I came up with the pun of fomance. And we had to change the original title for reasons. And when we changed the title, she came up with that because it was just, like, kind of a great opportunity for a pun. So it's funny because it took a long time for me to think of it with this title, but it still has the pun, which is all I wanted.

[10:51] Marissa: Yeah, well, I had lady Gaga in my head the entire time I was reading.

[10:57] Elle: I mean, I can't complain about that if it brings Lady Gaga to mind, who I am a huge fan of. I was like, this is great. It's like, yes, and I have no issue with that. I love that.

[11:06] Marissa: All right, tell us about the book.

[11:08] Elle: Yes. So Caught in a Bad Bomance is a queer ya rom.com about an aspiring artist named Devin who has a lackluster. First year of college, he's studying to be an artist at Calards in California. He returns to his hometown in Florida and his family decides to go on a last vacation to this winter cabin that they have at a lake where they usually spend their winter breaks and their summers and whatnot. And they're going to put this cabin up on the market because ever since their mom passed, they're struggling to pay the bills and they just kind of don't feel like they have the money to hold on to this very sentimental cabin. And while they're there, they run into their old time rivals, the Socooks, and they are just as annoying as ever, especially their middle son Julian, who comes to Devin with a wild proposition, saying, I need you to be my fake boyfriend. And Devin would say no if he were not now embroiled in a bet amongst the families in which there's this local competition and the Socooks bet the biases that they'll win. And if they win, they get the Baez family cabin and they can't let that happen. So Devin agrees to be Julian's fake boyfriend so that he can spy on him and hopefully take down the family for good. So a little bit of a convoluted plot. I struggle to summarize it quickly, but there it is. That's like the first 50 pages. Good.

[12:23] Marissa: That was sound.

[12:24] Elle: Thank you. I would hope so by now.

[12:29] Marissa: I love a fake romance. It's definitely one of my favorite tropes. Of course, you see it so often in books and media and every time I'm like, no one ever asked me to be their fake girlfriend. Why isn't this happening to there's really there's a lot to love about this book. It's like this kind of Romeo and Juliet ish vibe, the feuding families, but it's so ridiculous. There's this ridiculous family competition and all of these silly pranks and then of course, the fake dating and it is just really quirky and hilarious. I laughed so many times.

[13:10] Elle: Oh, gosh, thank you.

[13:13] Marissa: So let's start with like devin himself has such a great voice and very kind of dry and yet just very humorous. And a lot of the comedy comes through because of him and his character and the way he's thinking about things and his perspective. Was that a lot of your humor coming into the character or how did you go about tackling the humor?

[13:42] Elle: Yeah, I think that something. First of all, thank you for calling it funny. Thank you. I have a weird thing, but I always say I don't describe the book as funny because I feel like funny is not an adjective I can give myself. It has to be bestowed by another person. So I'm always honored when someone says it's funny. Thank you. I've been validated. But I think that it's something that really developed in the second major draft that I did, which was like a huge overhaul because originally it was in third person. And I think that there was still comedy there, but it was a little leaning, a little more zany in terms of the physical actions that were happening because you were less in Devin's head. And it wasn't until I started writing it in first person, which was the first time I'd written in first person in a really long time, that I really kind of tapped into this other side of comedy, which can be, like you said, more of the observations of the world and getting inside of a character. And so I think because it was my first time writing this way in such a long time, a lot of myself did bleed into it. But there are definitely I think he's a little pettier than I am. He's a little bit pettier and at times a little bit meaner than I am. But I think that some of his dry, self deprecating humor does kind of come from me. And I do always say, I was worried people would read this book and be like, this is just you again. Like, you just kind of wrote yourself telling a story. And I was like, no, he likes mint chocolate ice cream and I hate mint chocolate ice cream. We're clearly very different. Totally different person. We're completely different. I don't know where you got that from, but I do think he is definitely more self aware than I was at that age. But I think he has a little bit of my more mature sense of humor, but brought back a little bit because he is still a teenager.

[15:29] Marissa: Yeah. No, and it's fun because he's a teenager, but as you mentioned, he's in his first year of college. And so it's different from a lot of Ya where you've aged up just by a year or two years. And even that minor difference, particularly in contemporary, he is thinking about different things than a junior or senior in high school is thinking about. And it was kind of fun and weirdly. I don't know why publishing doesn't tackle more voices from this time period, but they seem to avoid it for some reason. But I loved it. I loved getting to see someone from this age group.

[16:13] Elle: Thank you. Yeah. And actually, he wasn't even originally going to be in his first year of college, like in the draft that was acquired by my publisher. He was a senior in college, and it was all about applying to college. And I can't remember why we ended up changing it. I think it had to do with the timing of the story, needed to shift. So we were like, oh, it's a little easier if he's in college. And I was so excited about that because, like you said, that doesn't seem to be a story that's really told that often in contemporary Ya, for whatever reason. But I was very passionate about it because it took all of the themes that I already had in that draft and really kind of brought them into fruition. This whole idea of being afraid of pursuing the arts that he deals with and feeling like you're failing at this one thing that you're very passionate about, and being able to put that in the context of like, oh, I'm actually living it right now, which is something that I personally went through quite a bit, was amazing. And I'm so grateful that we got to make that change in the end because that was not originally what it was going to be because I thought publishing wouldn't want that, but surprise, they did.

[17:12] Marissa: No, and that's interesting. And so your editor really sound like they were on board for that, that there was no pushback there.

[17:19] Elle: Yeah, not at all. I think it was kind of like a collaborative, like, you can kind of make it, tweak it a little bit with he'll still be in high school. But I think it was even her, she was the one to suggest it first, is like, you can make him a college freshman if you want to. And I was like, really? You can't? I was like, I can. I thought that was off limits. And I think it added so much to the story. So I'm in love with that change, and I'm so glad I got to make it.

[17:45] Marissa: No, I agree. I think it's yeah, like you say, you bring a lot of these themes into the story as far as Devin trying to figure things out, but he's really afraid that he's going to make a wrong decision and it's, you know, cost his family. And I mean, the emotions there were very authentic and again, a perspective that we don't get to see very often in fiction, even though that is such a turbulent, emotional period of time for so many of us. There's so much pressure and newness and really a lot of fodder that we could dig through.

[18:20] Elle: For sure.

[18:21] Marissa: Yeah.

[18:21] Elle: I'm genuinely so grateful over the moon that I got to do that.

[18:27] Marissa: All right, let's talk about romance. It is a romance, and it is, of course, a hate to love romance because these families have hated each other for so many years. For you favorite things about writing this romance, what were some of the challenges of writing it?

[18:48] Elle: I think my favorite thing is that combination of hate to love with fake dating, where it's like, you are forcing these people who do not like each other to spend a lot of time together. I just love that I knew kind of from early on in the story that I wanted to combine both of these things because I thought it was just such a fun experiment to combine these ideas. It's one thing if you're fake dating and you're strangers, which I also eat up. Fake dating is one of my favorite tropes. But it's like the tension and the possible banter between two people who are just petty and annoyed and have to do this, I think is just so much fun and makes the stakes a little higher. Because it's also like, oh, I really shouldn't be falling for you, because not only are you my fake boyfriend, I also don't really like you very much. So I was just having so much fun with that. And I think that another really fun thing that I enjoyed about this romance is that Julian, the love interest, is biracial. He is mixed Cuban, white and Korean. And something that I wanted to explore in this book because Devin is Puerto Rican, is kind of this like bonding over cultural food, which is something that I have done a lot over the years. It was kind of inspired by my own experiences with friends where you kind of come together by sharing different foods that are specific to your culture. Like Julian shares Choco pies, which are a Korean snack cake. And Devin talks a lot about this treleche cake, which is a cake that my family eats during the holidays. And it's amazing. And I thought that was such a fun thing to be able to write about and I'm so glad that that was something that I got to explore a little more, like the ways that you can bond through food and through your own respective cultures and respect for each other's cultures and the way that they both know. Devin loves Choco Pies and I won't spoil anything, but there's a scene with Chek and that was just so fun to be able to write and felt so tender to me and especially the process of I think it's kind of a slow burn. I don't know if anyone would consider it a slow burn, but takes a while for things to get there because they really don't like each other for a long time. So I just love being able to slowly see these two people warm up to one another. I just love dragging it out for as long as possible. But I did cut some of it so they get together a little faster than they did in the original draft. But I think that something I struggle with when I write any romance in general, and I try to be as aware of this as possible, is that a romance is two sides. And I always want to keep in mind when you have the love interest.

[21:13] Marissa: They'Re swoony as heck.

[21:15] Elle: They're always super swoony because you're usually reading from a first person perspective and you're like, yeah, I'm falling for that person. They're doing all these wonderful things. But I always want to keep in mind, well, why is the main character the perfect person for that love interest? Why are they falling for you? What is it that they like about the main character? So that's something that I think is challenging is like, you're so in the main character's head that it's often hard to show how are they kind of being there for the love interest as well, instead of just a love interest being there for them and performing actions for them? I hope that's something I did well in the book, but I know that's something I think about all the time in romance is like, what's the other side of this? What's the story like? If I had to write this book again from that person's perspective, what are we going to see of this main character? Basically?

[21:59] Marissa: No, that's such a great point. It can be difficult to lose sight of that, particularly when you're writing in first person, like you mentioned, because it is so one sided as far as the story goes. So yeah, no, I know for me, when I write romance, I also will spend a fair amount of time thinking, okay, but why is that person falling in love? What are the moments for them that they'll look back and think, oh, this was the first time that I really felt attracted to them? Or this was the first time that they made me laugh? Or what were those moments that are special from the other perspective?

[22:34] Elle: Exactly.

[22:35] Marissa: Yeah. And then also the mention of a slow burn. Of course, I am all in for a slow burn, but I particularly adored being in Devon's head is because he is so attracted to it's so hard to fight it. It's so fun to watch.

[22:59] Elle: Thank you. He's a silly, right?

[23:03] Marissa: And then, so we've got, of course, this great romance as the center of the story. But I have to admit, I think my personal favorite relationship is the sibling relationship between Maya. They are twins. Right. I was going to say that.

[23:21] Elle: And then I had this moment of.

[23:22] Marissa: Like, wait, what a different book.

[23:25] Elle: They are twins.

[23:27] Marissa: Thank you. They are twins. And so they, of course, grew up as being incredibly close. But now Devin has gone off to college and has been gone for a year or at least six months or whatever, and Maya is not thrilled about that and is really good at holding grudges.

[23:44] Elle: I loved how you developed that in her.

[23:47] Marissa: You have, between the two of them, their own little special story arc, and I thought it was so tender and so sweet.

[23:57] Elle: Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's funny because I talk about the sibling dynamic because it's one of my favorite things, too. But it's funny because I actually did not grow up with any siblings. So I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I have a very classic Latino family in that we're quite large, but I said I grew up with a lot of cousins that were essentially like siblings. Like, I saw them every single day and whatnot we went to school together, so it's a little inspired by that in its own way. But it's like, I don't have a twin, I don't have a sibling that I grew up with. So that was all just kind of exploring a dynamic that I felt amongst different people, being combined into a sibling relationship where it's just more intense.

[24:39] Marissa: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And of course, we're writers, we have to use our imagination for all sorts of things.

[24:46] Elle: Exactly. I've never been to a lake in Florida, but I made it work.

[24:52] Marissa: So with Maya and her character, but then particularly the arc, the story and how her relationship with Devin changes and grows, was that something that was in early drafts or was it something that kind of got built in later? How did that come about?

[25:12] Elle: I think it was always there in the earlier drafts, but in a very different way since Devin wasn't always going to be going away, wasn't always away at college. So it definitely changed. But I think know, a big part of the story is that these families do not like each other, so there was always going to be tension with them because Maya really doesn't like this family and she's not falling in love with one of them, so she does not see things from his perspective. And it was always a very family oriented story because it's about two families. So the family was always a very core kind of structure in it and Devon's relationship with his family. So there were different kinds of tensions with Maya throughout all of the drafts because she was always kind of seen as a minor antagonist to the relationship other than the pressures of like, oh, we do not have our families don't like each other. She's kind of the representative of like, I really do not like this family. I feel very passionately about this. But as it evolved, it became more about the different experiences of what happens when you go to college. Like some people, for example, Maya chooses to stay at home because she feels like it's more economical. And also she feels kind of weird about leaving and leaving the state when her family has never done that. That's something I dealt with a lot, was like the idea of going away to college when no one else in your family seems to have really done that yet. So you're like, oh, I'm going to be the first one to go. It feels, OD, maybe I should stay. But there's that layer, and there's also the layer of feeling like Devin, who is now off doing his own thing in. California, which is very far away, much further than I went, now feels like know, off the radar and he's not texting them back anymore. And there are reasons that he's not doing that. But that kind of almost a friendship breakup in a way. Like that post college, like, oh, we're not keeping in contact the way that we used to and where we're not as close. And I feel weird about that. Just, I think, a very universal experience, but made so much more intense. When you are twins, you have been very close all the time. So that kind of came out more when we introduced the college element. And again, that's why I'm so excited about that change. It just made everything more stressful and more heightened. So it was great.

[27:20] Marissa: It worked out really well. It's hard to imagine the book without. I do. I love that we get to when Maya does show her more vulnerable side, which is not always, but that we get to kind of see the sense of abandonment and how much she just really loves her brother and misses him. But those feelings are coming out in a much more aggressive way, which, of course, then adds back to the humor and all of it.

[27:47] Elle: Right. She's an aggressive gal. I used to say that I was like, oh, Maya's the character that I'm actually like, but not at all. She's the character that I wish I was like. I'm nothing like her.

[27:57] Marissa: Yeah, I feel like I have one of those in every book. The character that I wish I was.

[28:00] Elle: More like, I wish I was her. She is cool and fashionable, and I am not. I hear you.

[28:09] Marissa: All right, let's talk about the town. You mentioned you've never been to a lakeside town in Florida. How on earth does one go about creating a contemporary town? I don't know. In your book, in world building.

[28:26] Elle: Different contemporary world building.

[28:28] Marissa: Yes.

[28:29] Elle: Yeah. So I grew up in a city. I very much do not go visit lakes very often. I do not have a family cabin. I grew up right outside of New York in Jersey City. So I've lived in a city my entire life. I don't even know how to drive.

[28:44] Marissa: Oh, my gosh. Really?

[28:46] Elle: Yeah. I don't know how to drive. I also don't know how to ride a bike. Don't know how to ride a bike. Which also happens in the book. That was a real thing that happened to me, but was that I actually went on a trip with my family to a different lake. I don't even know if it was actually a lake, but we went up to this place in the Poconos and I saw it. And I already had kind of the idea for this story with this lake setting because I watched the movie Cheaper by the Dozen Two, which is set of a lake and has feuding families. But it wasn't until I went to the Poconos and I went to this lodge where they talked about how they have families come year after year. They had cabins along the lake and they say, oh yeah, those are different families. It's kind of like a timeshare they'll come for summers or winters or whatever. They had all these pictures on the walls of the different families competing in all of these competitions that the lodge hosted. And they had all these activities like archery and spec riding and whatnot. And that was when I finally understood like, oh, that was not just a movie. This is a real thing that people do. What a wild idea. And I thought about how my family in particular, if this was a thing that we had grown up doing, would have been not we would not have had many fans because we take things way too seriously and we're very competitive. So I was like, oh, I think this is a great idea. And that was kind of where I got that from was I had based it off of this lake that I had been to. I looked at a lot of photos of different lakeside communities to kind of get a sense of it. But then that was more for the aesthetics of understanding what does a place like this look like and whatnot but then from there, what was so fun is that because it's a fictional town, you can kind of build it out however you want and have all the eccentric people that you want and whatnot. And that is something that I definitely struggle with worldbuilding in all sentences. I know I'm just like plopping things here and I'm like, I'm not going to explain how any of this works. That's something that took a long time to master is like building the town and realizing, oh yeah, you need to world build this town because this is not a real town that exists, so nobody's going to assume anything about it. So that was something that came into play, I think, in the later drafts, is really building up the town and all of the different traditions, what kind of people live here, what kind of stores do they have. And that's where this idea of the town being very kind of run down and not doing so hot came from was from those rounds of development.

[30:57] Marissa: No, that's interesting because you do end up having this concept of history that the town has been there for a while, that it used to be a really popular tourist destination, but things haven't been going so well. So there's been kind of a mass exodus and a lot of businesses have shut down. And so it's this cool portrayal where you get to see what people loved about this town and why so many families keep coming back. But also it's just a little bit more beat up these days and as opposed to being like so many vacation books are in just the quaint, idyllic beachside town, which is also lovely. But this was a fun take on it.

[31:40] Elle: Yeah. If people are out there, are looking, they're like, I want a lakeside romance, but I want the town to be like musty and dusty. This is the book for you. This town is dusty.

[31:50] Marissa: And it would not have occurred to me that the Games, the competition, is based on a real thing. I also had no idea that this.

[31:58] Elle: Was a thing that people do. Yeah, it was not in the original draft. And then I thought about it because I realized, like, oh, yeah, that's a thing that they do at these lodges. They're not as long as the Games in the book, are they're? More like spread out little game nights here and there. But I'm like, no competition. I'm going to make it work.

[32:16] Marissa: I love it. And it's a great climax because the whole book, you're building up to this big competition and the family is going neck to neck at the end of it. So, of course, from a plot structure perspective, it's a very natural place for that.

[32:30] Elle: Yes, it was just like, oh, yes, I can put a competition in here. This is perfect.

[32:36] Marissa: Was it difficult? Because from an outside perspective, from a reader's perspective, we see these Games and can't help but feeling like, this is kind of silly, this is really trivial. Who cares if you win or not, blah, blah, blah. And yet to the characters, it is a big deal and there are high stakes involved. Was that a tricky kind of thing to balance?

[33:01] Elle: I think so, because it's like, how do you make an egg toss sound? Like the Olympics is one thing, and I think that adds to kind of the humor, is like, how seriously they're taking it. I think there's a line very early on in the book where it's like, well, what do you win if you win these Games? And they're like a plastic gold medal, but they're talking about it. It is a solid gold trophy. It's important to me and I think it's fun. It's interesting because it is like action scenes and you're writing them in this very kind of tense and emotional way, but really it is just some people running in the forest for a plastic gold medal. And I think that adding these people there are like, other contestants who are just kind of not caring, I think helps a lot with reminding everyone that this is not that serious because they just don't take the competition very seriously. They just sit out certain things if they don't feel like it. But I think that it's like, oh, okay, I'm just going to sit this. But, yeah, I think the toughest part is capturing that intensity in a moment that is really not all that intense, but also very physical and keeping it interesting and not feeling like you're just reading them like I now paddle two inches, and now I am here on the river, and now I paddle on the left side. And I'm also not a very physical person, so I have trouble describing how that is all happening. But I think that is keeping the tension up and making it feel exciting and making it feel rewarding, because the whole book is building to this moment. So it's also like, not only does this feel rewarding, but how much time do you give this moment? It should feel like it's not just like a blinking, you'll miss it moment. The whole book is about this competition. It should feel like you're here for a good chunk of time, but it shouldn't take up a whole third of the book. So I think that was the trickiest thing, is figuring out how much of the competition to show.

[34:52] Marissa: No, that makes sense. And it's funny that we're obviously talking very specifically about this book and this competition, but I feel like that can be applied to the climax of any book. There's always that moment of, like, you want to draw it out enough that it feels very satisfying to the readers, but if you drag it out too much, then at some point readers are like, okay, another battle sequence or another race or time to move on and have some resolution here. And that is, I mean, I feel like for me, that's one of my ongoing struggles as a writer is figuring out the climax and how much or how little.

[35:32] Elle: Oh, yeah, I'm so wordy. Like, the original draft of this was, like, over 90,000 words, so I never know when to stop. I would put it for days. Like, I would spend thousands of pages on one specific instance, usually the climax. So I think that's where I definitely need, like, an editor to come in and reel me in and be like, okay, you got your point across. You don't need three chapters of all this.

[35:54] Marissa: Right?

[35:55] Elle: I am also very wordy.

[35:56] Marissa: I think it's funny that you said it was originally 90,000 words as, like, being too long, because it's been a long time since I wrote a book.

[36:03] Elle: That was that short. Well, I'll just say the book did not warrant being it felt like 90,000 words. That felt like a lot of words.

[36:13] Marissa: No, it is. And obviously a lot of books come in at 70, 80, 85. But yeah, it takes what the book takes. I think that's the important come away there. I also want to spend a moment talking about family traditions, because this book is very much built around family traditions with the cabin and the competition, but also it takes place during the holidays, and it feels extra important because this is the first time this family has been there since Maya and Devin's mom passed away. And this used to be the place that they came, and so now they have a new stepmom, a new stepbrother, and they're trying to build new traditions. So that very much becomes a big theme of the book for you. How important was that working into the fabric of the story?

[37:05] Elle: I think it was interesting how even that theme, a lot of the different themes in the book evolved over time because I had been working on it for so long. But that theme in particular because it was not originally going to be set during the holidays, is something that a lot of things came up later on as I wrote the book. But when it was changed, there's so many things that it was originally set in Alaska. It wasn't even set in was by the time that we had changed it, that it was going to be set at the holidays. One, I was excited because the holidays are one of the few holiday I guess Christmas, rather, is one of the holidays where my family actually does have traditions that I really enjoy. We only usually have them for either Christmas or Thanksgiving, and they're kind of the same thing. But it was exciting. But also for me at that point in my life, my dad had actually sadly passed away shortly after I started working on the revision that eventually was acquired. So by the time I was incorporating this idea of the holidays intermixed with grief, i, too was going through the holidays intermixed with grief. And it was very cathartic to kind of write what my own experience was in a way that felt very palpable for children, for teens, rather, because I'm a little older, I feel like I had a more solid grasp on my emotions at the time. I mean, I'm still a person. I was grieving, I was a little all over the place. But it was very nice to take those thoughts and kind of distill them in a way that felt very cathartic, but also helpful to show teens and young adults that, yes, it is okay to feel this way and it is okay to feel upset about these things. I think a big thing is accepting that getting rid of certain things or like moving on, is not a betrayal of the person that you lost, which is something that I struggle a lot with, is this idea of holding on to things even though you know that you shouldn't. That's a huge theme in the book as they try to hold on to this cabin. So it was something that for me was very cathartic, and I hope we'll read as cathartic to anybody who has had to go through that. But also just talking about the importance of embracing new traditions, especially because sometimes it makes you feel so much better to not be living in your grief, and it allows you to open up to new experiences and change things around and make you feel a little bit less heavy during the holidays especially. But again, really reiterating that it is not a betrayal to this person. It is not a bad thing to move on. It is okay to experience new things and explore new options, which is something that I do in my second book as well. Yeah, that was something that was important to me because it was coming from a personal place.

[39:40] Marissa: Yeah. No, I can tell. Just the way that you talk about it. Since we are again, of course, here in the holiday season, what is your favorite tradition this time of year?

[39:52] Elle: I think it's always rooted in food.

[39:55] Marissa: My family loves food. I'm right.

[39:58] Elle: There just the food that we get to eat specifically. It's not even a dish. But now that I'm an adult, I get to have coquito, which is like our version of eggnog. And oh, it's so good. And we only drink it around. Like, you can't have it at Thanksgiving, you got to have it at Christmas. But something that's important to us is that I know some families do this that are not Latino, but we always celebrate on Christmas Eve. And my family hosts Christmas. We split it up so certain people get certain holidays. Christmas is our day, which is always exciting for me. So it's all about like Mayawelo always comes over because she's the only person that we trust to make this very specific dish called rokungandule. That's a Puerto Rican dish. And she always comes over early to make it at my house. And then we're playing salsa music and we're dancing and getting ready. And we're very stressed because my mom over committed to stuff and we're running around. So those are like the chaos of it. And I have a huge family, so our house is always packed on Christmas Eve and then we do nothing on Christmas. Christmas is just a day. So that kind of is my favorite.

[41:01] Marissa: Tradition, that and the coquito. But I love it. Is it difficult to make? I want to try it now. I'm so curious.

[41:08] Elle: It is not. I made it for myself for the first time last year. I mean, it wasn't as good as some of the ones I've had, but it's actually not as bad as I thought. You just need to buy a bunch of stuff that's in cans. The trouble is making sure you buy it's called like what is it called? Grandma de coco. And it's like, don't buy coconut cream. That's a different thing. You need Grandma de coco, which is not coconut cream. And I learned that the hard way.

[41:33] Marissa: That's a good tip.

[41:34] Elle: Yes. So follow when they say like, this is the name of the thing you put in it. Follow it exactly. If you see something slightly different, it is not the same thing.

[41:43] Marissa: Oh, that's good to know. Now, I eggnog homemade eggnog a few years back and it was a disaster. Never again. From here on out, store bought.

[41:53] Elle: Oh God. Yeah. I see why people are afraid because they probably made the mistake that I did, and they're like, I can't make this again.

[42:02] Marissa: All right, are you ready for a bonus round?

[42:04] Elle: I am.

[42:05] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[42:09] Elle: That's so hard. Okay, so the book is not it's not 100% sad, but it is a little bit more somber. I love The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes because it just reminded me so much of my childhood as a person who went to an all girls high school and was, like, trying to figure themselves out. It's so funny. It's so touching. It brings me so much joy because it reminds me so much of my youth.

[42:32] Marissa: What are you working on next?

[42:35] Elle: I am working on a couple different things. Right now, I'm in developmental edits for my third book, which is a ya thriller called The Girl, you Know, which comes out from Bloomsbury and also has twins, coincidentally. I just love twins. I guess I'm also working on coming up, too. I'm also working on my second ya rom.com, which comes out in May of 2024. It's called Ten Things I Hate About Prom. If you love ninety s rom coms, it's got like, Easter eggs left and right, which is so much fun to write. And I have another ya rom.com that I'm working on that I can't talk about. But if you really like Legally Blonde, but you wanted Elle to end up with a girl, then you're going to like this book. That's all I can say.

[43:18] Marissa: That sounds so fun. And I have to say Ten Things I Hate About You filmed in my hometown of So, it is one of my all time favorite movies. So I'm really excited to see your take on the 90s romcom. It's a lot to live up to.

[43:34] Elle: Because I was like, this is such a good movie. When I rewatched it, even my partner, who's not hugely into romcoms, I was like, this is a really good movie.

[43:41] Marissa: I know. He led Normous shoes to stadium steps. It's iconic.

[43:48] Elle: It's enormous shoes to fill. I'm even hesitant to say, like, yes, ten Things I Hate About You, but also be gentle. That's an amazing movie. I know.

[43:57] Marissa: All right, lastly, where can people find you?

[44:00] Elle: You can find me on Instagram at El Gonzalez Rose or on Twitter at E Gonzalez Rose or on TikTok at Gonzalez Rose. And that's Gonzalez spelled with two Z's.

[44:09] Marissa: Awesome. Elle, thank you so much for joining me.

[44:12] Elle: Thank you so much for having me.

[44:14] Marissa: This was amazing. Readers definitely check out Caught in a Bad fomance. It is out now, of course, we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore. If you don't have a local indie bookstore, you can check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org slash shop slash marissamire. And don't forget our merchandise available on Etsy, instagram and tpublic. You can find the links in our Instagram profile. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and follow us on Instagram at Marissa Meyer, author, and at Happy Writer podcast. We will be back sometime in 2024 with more interviews and inspiration. Until then, I am wishing you a very happy holiday season. Stay in, inspired, keep writing and whatever life throws you today. I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.