Read on for our conversation below, and purchase your copy of the bookhere.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Youve been writing for a long time, and finally decided to write an adult novel.
Why now?JUDY BLUNDELL:Im the debut author whos written 100 books.
Credit: John Keon
The story just didnt let me go.
About three years ago, I was really faced with this choice of having another project in the pipeline.
Ive got to find a way to finish this adult book.
Random House
Thats a long way of saying it took a while.
How did you approach crafting a beach read?
Did your process change at all?My process is banging my head against a computer all the time.
With this one, the plot was more complex, so I spent alotof time working on the plot.
They have what wed call a good divorce: Theyve worked out childcare and theyre still friends.
That was the first seed.
It got more and more relevant as real estate prices started really going up.
That is also a part of the novel.
How did you draw Ruthie?
Shes a really well-rounded, complicated protagonist.Novels are always about bad choices.
Shes been repressing her anger and frustration at certain things in her life, and so she scrapes.
She gets in touch with her anger.
She just happens to make a catastrophic choice with that anger to take back what she thinks she had.
There are certain summers in peoples lives where they go, Im only going to eat fruit and salad!
Or Theres this wedding Im going to and Im going to meet my true love!
Summers page-turning for people.
Im going to live better.
Its also a concentrated period of time for things to go wrong.
Youve covered young adult, middle-grade, now adult.
Anything else you want to tackle that you havent yet?Im working on another adult novel right now.
Thats my next project.
Im superstitious about talking about it, but Im planning on it not taking as long to write!
