Spotlight & Giveaway: How the Story Goes by Andrew Forrester

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Andrew Forrester to HJ!

Hi Andrew and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, How the Story Goes!

Hi, Welcome to HJ!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

How the Story Goes is a book about two writers: Whit, who’s lost his wife and must somehow complete her mega popular children’s fantasy series, and Merritt, who’s been consumed by self-doubt after an exploitative relationship with a creative writing professor. Together, using Merritt’s knowledge of the fantasy books and Whit’s experience as an author, they search for the perfect ending to the series while and find their way back to storytelling—discovering something more between the two of them along the way!
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

I could not possibly pick, but here’s a line that makes me laugh:

“They worked in different literary worlds: he wrote for adults, she for children and teenagers (and, she always reminded him, women in their twenties and thirties). Scratch that, she wrote for everyone, and he wrote for people who had opinions about Masterpiece Theatre…”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I originally called the manuscript “Cozy Book Romcom” and then “A True Wonder” and then just “True Wonder”—dropping the “the,” like in The Social Network and Gilmore Girls. All bad titles for this book, but I think we got there in the end.
• “Cozy Book Romcom” does live on as the name of the playlist I listened to while working. Here are some of my fav songs from it:
• “Goodnight Dear Void” by George Fenton from the You’ve Got Mail soundtrack
• “Stardust” by Nat King Cole
• “Why Try to Change Me Now” by Fiona Apple
• “Little Person” by Jon Brion, from the Synecdoche, New York soundtrack
• “An Affair to Remember” by Marc Shaiman from the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack (are you sensing a theme?)
• “It’s Snowing” by Michael Giacchino from the Family Stone soundtrack
• “Emma Is Lost” by Isobel Waller-Bridge and David Schweitzer from the EMMA. Soundtrack
• The entire original score by from Rose Matafeo’s exceptional series, Starstruck, by Segal
• Dee Burton’s whole catalogue

If these vibes feel right to you, I have a book you might enjoy…

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

What I love about Whit is his resistance to being pitied. He really just wants to live his life and do what’s been asked of him, but he’s lost. I tried really hard to make him grumpy but loveable.

Merritt, I love because she is funny and capable. She’s been embarrassed and knocked down a peg or two, and like Whit, she’s a little bit lost—but where he is hapless, she remains determined and grows more so all the time.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

There is a scene on an airplane toward the end of the book that I’m really proud of, and when I previewed the audiobook (by the wonderful James Fouhey and Renata Friedman), I really felt it. My favorite quote from that scene is this: “In the end, it’s a story about the things we do for the people we love.”

Readers should read this book….

If they like

• Movies and books by Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers, David Nicholls, and Linda Holmes.
• Books about books or cozy New England settings
• Two grown-up protagonists who drink a surprising amount of tea

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I just finished a revision of a novel set partially in the same small town as How the Story Goes (Whelk Harbor <3). It’s about two scholars trying to solve a literary mystery and save the memory of a nearly forgotten novelist, all while working out the difficulties of their own complicated history.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: We’re giving away 2 copies of HOW THE STORY GOES by Andrew Forrester! U.S. only.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: How would you feel if your favorite author left your favorite series incomplete? or What do you think writers owe to their readers/fans? or What is a literary setting where you wish you could live?

Excerpt from How the Story Goes:

Growing up, Merritt had been a teacher’s pet, though not by choice. People were just constantly making her into one. She excelled at school and was well mannered and always game for a class discussion, and teachers loved that sort of thing. It had not been good, at first, for Merritt’s ability to do hard work, because every time she stood at the front of the room to give a book report on her most recent Madeleine L’Engle experience or explain the primary imports and exports of Brazil, her teacher would breathe a sigh of relief, immediately committed to being impressed by whatever it was she had to offer.

This moment with Whit felt a bit like that. He was dazzled by her preparedness, which in his eyes constituted quite a bit of work. The truth was, for a Greenwood Castle fan like herself, these documents essentially wrote themselves. She knew this world like she knew the complete lore of the Baby-Sitters Club, the history of most American Girl dolls, and the comprehensive soundtracks of the movie musicals she’d grown up loving: she had immediate, encyclopedic recall when it came to these imaginary people, places, and things. All she’d had to do was write it all
down.

And now Whit was looking at her like that, like she was something special, and she was desperate for him to look absolutely anywhere else.

“So I think we should make an outline—do you outline?”

“I outline,” he said, and she nodded, and then that’s what they did. They talked about possibilities for the ending of this final installment, what it would need, what people were expecting, what they were not expecting but might appreciate, what could be surprising but still satisfying. They talked about the beginning, and then the middle, and . . . some more on the middle . . . still talking about the middle . . .

“Maybe we should take a break on the middle,” Merritt said, and Whit agreed immediately.

“It’s almost time for me to pick up Annie from our nanny share, anyway.”

Merritt’s primary feeling at these words was relief. She felt like she’d been running a marathon where the mile markers had labels like have impressive ideas and project confidence and be normal. But there was the barest wisp of regret, too. She scolded herself. What had she imagined? That after a hard day’s work they would pop open a bottle of champagne to celebrate?

“But here, hold on a second.” Whit disappeared again into his sad what-the-cops-would-find-on-a-welfare-check study and returned with a piece of paper.

“My brother-in-law is a lawyer, and he drew this up for us.”

He slid the paper across the table and then collected their empty tea mugs, politely busying himself in the kitchen while she looked it over.

“If anything seems off or unfair or one-sided, just let me know,” he was saying, but she wasn’t really listening. “And of course feel free to have your own lawyer review it.”

The deal was this: she would be an uncredited ghostwriter, which she was not to publicize. Fine. But the money. Half of the advance was to be paid out to her in installments while they wrote, with the second half paid out in full on the completion of the manuscript, plus 10 percent of the estate’s royalties on the book.

She sat in silence for so long that Whit started wiping down the counters with a spray bottle and towel.

“Does it look okay?” he said eventually, with some of the same sheepishness he’d shown in the bistro.

Merritt was staring at the largest sum of money that she had ever been offered in any context.

“I’ll let you know.”

Whit smiled from behind the counter. “Great, look it over and bring it back next time with any notes.”

She agreed, trying not to look like she was rapidly ticking off items on a list of things she would do with the money. Pay off student loans, fix the rattly sound in her car, quit her job at the bookstore (once the manuscript was finished). Be an adult.

She packed her things, hardly noticing their weight in her various bags, and Whit led her out.

“Thank you,” he said, from the front door, looking out at her on the gravel path. “Really can’t believe how much we did today. I could never have . . . just, thank you.”

“We’ve hardly started,” she said, almost harshly, because he was getting earnest, and that was puncturing her daydream of a Scrooge McDuck money swimming pool.

“Exactly,” Whit said with a shrug. “Imagine where I’d be without you.”

Merritt touched her neck.

“Okay then,” she said. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Well, Tuesdays I have writing group.”

Merritt waited, a sharp hope piercing her chest at the thought that he might invite her. Then he looked apologetic.

“So Wednesday?” he said.

Merritt smiled widely, maniacally. “Yes! Wednesday. See you then.”

Back in her car, Merritt stared at the old gray stone house where her life was going to change. It was encircled by a farm fence and shadowed on three sides by a wooded hill, on the other side of which was the sea.

“No,” she said aloud to herself.

She had been here before.

“No,” she said again. She would do her job, she would make some money, and she would use this experience as a steppingstone to writing again. That was it.

She turned on the car. The brassy theme song for All Things Considered was playing on the radio. She slapped at the dial and drove home to her mother’s in silence.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

In this heartwarming, bookish debut, a young widower of a famous children’s fantasy author teams up with a down-on-her-luck MFA dropout to write the final book in his late wife’s series…and find their own perfect ending along the way.

Whit Longacre has a monumental task and a looming deadline. After his wife, Helen, died of cancer, she left him with their grieving eight-year-old daughter and a surprise in her will: the small task of writing the final book in her mega-popular children’s fantasy series for her legions of waiting fans.

Whit is the author of moderately successful (but well-received!) literary mysteries. He doesn’t have the first idea of how to complete Helen’s beloved series, and his enigmatic wife seems to have left no clues behind on how the story is supposed to end. Writer’s block is one thing, but to fail in fulfilling his wife’s last wish? Whit is guilt-ridden and dodging calls in the school pick-up line from Helen’s publisher and agent as the deadline fast approaches.

Then Whit meets Merritt Pryor, who works at the local bookstore in their small New England town. Merritt has moved back home after a disastrous affair led to her dropping out of her prestigious MFA program. When Whit realizes that Merritt is a superfan of the Greenwood Castle series, they come up with a plan to tackle the book together. For the first time in years, Merritt finds herself falling back in love with writing…and perhaps with the coauthor offering her the opportunity of a lifetime.

But when Whit uncovers a buried secret about Helen’s final wishes, he questions everything about what he and Merritt have created together, endangering the tender, electrifying partnership that has transformed their lives.

Can Whit and Merritt come up with an ending that feels right…for both a beloved series and for their battered hearts?
Book Links: Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Andrew Forrester is a writer and former English teacher whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Parents magazine. He holds a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature and lives in Austin, Texas with his family. How The Story Goes is his first novel.
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