KR: Okay. There are hard-core curlers up here like my grandparents. I did not grow up curling regularly, but it’s one of those things that, you know, you do in high school, as a unit in phys ed, like you go to the curling club, you tie a plastic bag around your shoe, and you learn how to curl for two weeks. Then you do it as a corporate team-building thing when you get your first job. It’s definitely part of our Canadian culture, but we’re not curling-obsessed, I would say, except for a small niche group.
KG: I kind of wanted to do it too. Honestly. Like, it seems kind of fun like bocce but on ice and like with a broom.
KR: That’s exactly it. There is a ton of local beer leagues you can join to curl. A lot of people go to bonspiels on the weekends where it’s just like an excuse to drink all day and get together and play a really fun sport. I have friends that do that! So I knew enough about curling. I know how to play. I had to look up a few terms, mostly so I could just make them kind of sexual puns for one scene…
KG: Very important.
KR: It’s my favorite scene. Now, one of the main characters in your book is an improv comedian. Did you do a lot of improv yourself?
KG: I have dated a lot of comedians, and I’ve always been really interested in the women who are able to hang with it. I think it’s gotten better in the past few years, but it’s a really hard place for a woman to thrive. When deciding what Ari’s job should be, I felt like I wanted her to do something that was going to be really difficult, which requires somebody who can just totally roll with the punches, who’s very spontaneous and really funny.
KR: And there is so much humor in the book, but it’s also an emotional roller coaster. Both up and down. Where did you get the inspiration for the breakup in the book?
KG: I think part of that roller coaster is because this story started as fanfic. You post chapter by chapter, and you grow this built-in audience, and you have to take them up and take them down, leave them on a cliffhanger. But as I got into writing this book, I think I often felt I was arguing with myself, because I see both of the characters as aspects of myself, even though they’re so different. They’re arguing about things I feel that are deeply personal to me. Do you want to be in a committed relationship? How stable do you want to be versus how much freedom do you want to have? Just a lot of the internal struggles that I’ve had with myself over the course of my adulthood and often feeling like there are no right answers.
KR: How else do you think writing fanfiction affected how you approach telling a story?
KG: I come from the film world. I had written some plays and tried to write a romcom screenplay. So all of my knowledge about how you build a story comes from screenwriting books and screenplays. But being in the fanfiction community really helped me understand how to craft a longer narrative, because I had never tried to do that before. And I don’t think I would have written as much as I did if I didn’t feel like I had an audience. I had people who wanted to see what was going to happen next, and that was so encouraging. I don’t know if I would have ever been able to write this book if I hadn’t started that way. Was this your first book or had you written other books before? It doesn’t really seem like a debut to me. It seems like somebody who knows what they’re doing, and I’d love to know how you go about it.
KR: This was my third attempt at a book. The first book is so bad. I will save it. So one day, I can give it to people and make them laugh and show them that you can get better at things if you try. I saw a clip of Ed Sheeran on some talk show where he says how talent isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something you need to develop. They played a clip of him playing guitar and singing earlier in his career, and he’s genuinely terrible. It was the same for me. I get better with every book. My first book is like that clip: genuinely terrible. And then I loved the next book I wrote, but it wasn’t the right time for it. But it was a good learning experience for me. And then with this one, I had an idea. I knew how it ended before I even sat down to write it. I had the plot in my head. And it just flew out pretty quickly.
KG: Was there any time you had to kill a particular darling? Where you had to get rid of an entire character or scene you really loved?
KR: So…I really hate owls. And there was this rant about owls in one scene, how they’re the absolute worst, and our editor eventually had to say…I just don’t think this rant really fits here? But other than that, no. I’m definitely an underwriter. I had to build out things a bit more, like the sister relationship, to make the story fuller. So I think I’m not one to kill darlings but add additional ones. What about you?