Factoid One

Jeannette is the name of one of my ex-girlfriends from high school.

Factoid Two

The village depicted in the book, Tremont, is named after a street in the Bronx, where my father is from. You might recognize that Tremont is also the last name of Max, in my novel “Falling for Jillian Ashley.”

Factoid Three

The first book I’ve written in which a child features prominently in the story.

Factoid Four

The first book I’ve written in which a dog is featured in the story.

Factoid Five

Originally, the book was going to be set in the Midlands of England. That was really a quite arbitrary decision on my part. I didn’t want it to be set in a major city because I wanted to have the creative latitude to invent an entire village without concerning myself with geographic accuracy, and I figured I could bury the village I had in mind somewhere in the Midlands.

However, after a couple of discussions with UK fans, they put the idea in my head of using Cornwall instead. After doing some (admittedly cursory) research into the region, I decided it would suit my needs splendidly.

Factoid Six

In order to get the spelling of certain words correct, I changed the settings in Microsoft Word to expect me to write using UK English, rather than American English.

(I still managed to get some wrong, though!)

Factoid Seven

The address of the Newquay Royal Arms, where Jeannette and Katelynn get married is the actual address of a real hotel in Newquay.

Factoid Eight

Inspiration for this story came from a friend in the UK who told me about how her American girlfriend had left for America to visit family, but never came back. The American then sent my friend a wedding invitation a few months later.

Factoid Nine

Inspiration for Jeannette’s “shoecase” came from…me. I also pack a suitcase full of nothing but shoes when I’m going on a long trip.

Factoid Ten

Originally, I had written that Darcie had eaten a tuna-with-bacon sarnie for lunch at the shop, in Chapter 7.

Wow! Did that get a reaction from my UK beta readers!

Apparently, in England it is not universally acceptable to put bacon on…everything. (Which, why wouldn’t you? It’s bacon!)

However, the UK beta readers acted as if I had described a sandwich made out of bat guano and broken glass.

I resisted their ludicrous attempts to get me to change it to something else because it’s BACON…on tuna! That’s a match made in heaven!

The UK beta readers suggested tuna and sweet corn instead. To which I was like, “What?...Is that even…What?”

In the end, I decided to go with their suggestion because I started imagining the emails I would get from the UK, and I was like, “Yeah…no, I don’t need that kind of aggravation.”

Bonus Factoid

Even though a tuna with bacon sandwich may be considered a sign of the apocalypse in the UK, I've gotten my revenge...

I’ve written that one of the main characters in the next Carlsbad book eats a tuna-with-bacon sandwich, because no one can stop me.

Factoid One

Robyn went through several name changes…

Micah

Violet

Clare

Factoid Two

I originally considered having Katelynn Jefferson (featured in “What to Bring to Your Ex-Girlfriend’s Wedding”) as the love interest for Tamsin. One of my beta readers for that first Cornwall book was a big proponent of that idea, but I decided I’d rather develop a different story for Katelynn.

Factoid Three

The first book I’ve written in which the final chapter (not the epilogue) does not end with a scene involving both main characters.

Factoid Four

Depending on the circumstances, I will also use a travel agent, rather than booking certain trips online myself. I find it far more convenient—and cost-effective—for more complex vacations.

Factoid Five

For some reason, I was thinking of King Richard III when I named Tamsin’s uncle, so I guess you can say he is named after the king.

Factoid Six

I got the idea for the lightweight drawstring travel bag which Tamsin gifts to her clients from my own family’s travel agent. He sends the same gift when his clients are about to leave on a voyage.

Factoid Seven

As with the previous Cornwall book, every time I mention that my characters drive from one town (typically Newquay) to another, I use Google Maps to get directions from one place to the other, paying particular attention to how long such a drive would take, in order to make sure that it would in fact be plausible for that bit of the story.

Factoid Eight

Tamsin’s girlfriend at the start of the book, Kendra, is named after a girl one of my best friends dated in high school.

Factoid Nine

I want to try these Jammie Dodgers! They look delicious!

Factoid Ten

I literally sent messages to all my UK consultants, asking what are the popular sandwiches in England. That’s how I discovered the egg and cress sarnie.

I also learned of the existence of something called the cheese and pickle sandwich. And I was told Branston pickles are the go-to pickles for that.

I’m trying to decide if I want to create a character who would eat such a thing.

Bonus Factoid

Robyn’s use of the phrase “first world problem” is actually something I do a lot. I often find myself muttering that a few times each day in order to keep at least a smidgen of proper perspective when minor (and sometimes not so minor) annoyances occur.

Factoid One

This is the first time I’ve released two Cornwall series books back-to-back without releasing a Carlsbad book between them.

Factoid Two

Katelynn’s favorite video game, Pac-Man 256, is also my favorite video game. I play it on my iPad daily to unwind and am quite good at it.

Factoid Three

I originally had Katelynn and Tina saying “I love you” in Chapter 22, but after writing quite a tender scene, I immediately felt my instincts telling me that it was too soon in the book to do that, and so I changed the scene entirely.

Factoid Four

Katelynn’s car, the Vauxhall Corsa, is the same car one of my beta readers drives in England.

Factoid Five

The book Katelynn orders from Darcie, Bloom County, is one of my father’s favorite comic strips ever. He also has the complete set and I’ve even read them. It was a funny and very topical comic strip that pointed out a lot of foibles in the America of that time—many of which still exist in this era.

Factoid Six

This is the first book I’ve written in which it is explicitly stated that the main characters eventually have a child.

Factoid Seven

Tina’s hairstyle is modeled after one of my good friends here in Carlsbad. It’s kind of a shaggy graduated bob which, in my opinion, not a lot of women can pull off successfully. But she can because she has the right facial structure for it.

I’ve seen other women try to pull it off and I’ve wanted to tell them to go immediately to their hairstylist and get it changed.

Factoid Eight

The opening scene was inspired by a tweet I read on my timeline about someone seeing a guy playing a guitar and singing to a woman in the park. I then tried to imagine how such a scene could go wrong…not difficult considering a man was involved.

Factoid Nine

Like Katelynn and Tina, I also hate having a gift I brought opened in front of a crowd of people, like at a party. If I’m with someone individually, I’m fine, but at a party it always embarrasses me!

Factoid Ten

The McNair—the science vessel Tai will be rendezvousing with in order to return to her duties on Aquila Prime—is named after Ronald McNair, who died on the space shuttle Challenger. His story--which I learned watching a documentary on Netflix about the Challenger event--is really remarkable and inspiring.

Bonus Factoid

The planet Knaht, mentioned in the bonus epilogue, is just the word “thank” spelled backwards because I was too lazy to try to come up with a different name and my eyes happened to land on the word “thank” on one of my computer monitors. :-)

Factoid One

Camden got her name from one of my beta readers. I simply asked her what she thought would be a cool name for one of the characters.

Factoid Two

For Julia’s car, I actually went onto the BMW UK site and “built” the car I wanted her to have, selecting from the options available on the website. You really can customize and then pay for your car completely online. Then, once you’ve paid, all you have to do is choose a dealership to have your car delivered to for pickup.

Factoid Three

There is a BMW dealership in Falmouth, so naturally that is the one I based Surfside on.

Factoid Four

The flag of Scotland Story:

This actually happened to me. I bought a new car, was unloading the trunk of my old car, and came across a flag. Not from Scotland, but from Bermuda. No idea how it got there. I’ve been to Bermuda, so that was a good clue, but this wasn’t a tiny souvenir flag. It was a proper-sized flag. I could have run it up a flagpole.

My girlfriend and I decided that alcohol had been involved in the purchase of the flag, but how it ended up in the trunk of my car was lost to the mists of time.

It ended up in the trunk of my new car, and is now in a box in our garage.

It turns out that a good friend of my family’s is from Bermuda originally, and so I plan on giving it to him.

Factoid Five

Like Julia, one of my best friends is very klutzy, even though she looks as though she should be the paragon of grace and poise.

Factoid Six

Julia’s Birthday Present from Camden…I own that Atari video game system as well.

Factoid Seven

As you can tell from this book (and others I’ve written), I’m very big on women checking in with each other via text messages or phone calls when they’re out.

This was a habit my parents drilled into me when I was younger, and it is something that my group of friends all do for one another.

Factoid Eight

One of the things I enjoy most about writing these Cornwall books is coming up with the hyphenated names of the old women in Tremont. I often just think of surnames in my head and then try mashing them together until I come up with one that sounds appropriate for an old biddy.

Factoid Nine

In Chapter 13, I have Julia driving to visit Camden in Carnon Downs, and repeating “Quenchwell, Quenchwell, Quenchwell…” over and over.

That’s because as I was looking at a map of Carnon Downs, looking for a street I wanted Camden to live on, I loved the name Quenchwell and so chose that.

But the name was so odd, and required my mouth to move in unusual ways whenever I said it, that I got in the habit of repeating it over and over again.

Factoid Ten

Much like Katelynn in Chapter 15, my girlfriend and I will often buy something from a place like IKEA and then have someone else build it for us. Usually brothers of a friend, or maybe our fathers…

The only time we will attempt to build it is if we are so super excited to see it in our house that we can’t wait for someone to do it for us.

Typically, about a quarter of the way through, we usually end up regretting every decision we’ve made up until that point…

Bonus Factoid

Like Julia, I too have always wanted to have sex in a cemetery.

Factoid One

In Chapter 8, the large number that Daisy imagines Kevin knowing the square root of (2,929,043) is actually my great-grandmother’s phone number from back in the day, when she lived in the Bronx. My Dad—who always likes to point out that people in my generation don’t bother memorizing phone numbers anymore) likes to show off by rattling off the phone numbers he still remembers from when he was a kid. His grandmother’s is one of them: 292-9043. And he doesn’t stop there. He still remembers all of the phone numbers of his “old gang” (as he calls them). Meanwhile, I do not know my own girlfriend’s phone number off the top of my head, and have it written down on a slip of paper in my wallet in case I need to call her from a pay phone because a zombie ate my iPhone.

Factoid Two

Some may ask why I didn’t include a chapter about Megan and Vanessa’s visit to Tremont in the main body of the novel, rather than adding it as a Bonus Chapter.

Here is my reason:

The power and humor of writing scenes involving Vanessa’s effect on others comes from explaining that effect through the eyes of others. Thus, I would have wanted to write Vanessa’s visit to Tremont from the perspective of the residents of Tremont. However, employing that style of writing (showing the perspectives of multiple characters in a single chapter) would have disrupted the flow of the rest of the story, and probably proved jarring to the readers.

But I knew I couldn’t get away with not writing a chapter describing Vanessa’s visit to Tremont, so I added that bonus chapter.

Factoid Three

This is William’s first appearance in one of my books since “Nothing But A Fling.”

Factoid Four

The propensity for Megan and Vanessa to overpack is always easy to write because it is the same thing my girlfriend and I do every time we take a trip anywhere. Depending on the length of the trip, 4 suitcases is pretty normal for us. And there are such things as brunch high heels and lunch high heels.

Factoid Five

Zero issue is an actual comic book term, referring to an issue that is intended as a back-story issue, providing information about a comic book series and its characters that a reader ought to know.

Factoid Six

Henrietta’s lack of vocabulary prowess is modeled after one of my best friends. She is a woman who is whip-smart in practically everything, but for some reason is not very good with vocabulary. She can communicate her ideas perfectly fine, of course, but is simply not someone who knows “six different words for the same thing, like you Sabrina,” as she puts it.

Factoid Seven

Originally, there was going to be a subplot about Vanessa arranging to have the comic book artist Monique Allison appear at Zero Issue Comix, but I let that fall to the wayside. Still, the Monique Allison bit helped point out that although Amelia and Daisy have a successful comic book shop in Newquay, it is still in Newquay, and not really on the radar much.

Factoid Eight

Speaking of originally…

Originally, more of the Carlsbad Royal Lesbian Court were to make an appearance in Newquay for the art show, but I decided that so many additional characters would prove to be a distraction from the main story.

Factoid Nine

Goodness, I had a hell of a time coming up with names for Amelia and Daisy’s mothers! I wanted something appropriately Cornish, so naturally I Googled it, and the assortment of names I was given was quite astonishing and very cool. I feel that the choices I went with (Elowen and Glanna) sound like something out of a Lord of the Rings book.

Factoid Ten

Originally (again), I was going to end the book with Megan and Vanessa receiving an invitation from England to The Orangery—the venue where Amelia and Daisy’s mums had planned on their daughters getting married. But I didn’t feel like pushing the timeline of the book out that far. I would’ve wanted such an ending to have occurred at least a year after the events in the main part of the novel.

Bonus Factoid

The majority of the comic book series mentioned in the book are, in fact, comic book series I collect as well. However, I’m not a comic collector in the sense of someone who reads them and can explain every bit of minutiae in them. In fact, I don’t even read them. I have comic books I have never even opened!

I’m a cover collector. I look for issues (regardless of series) that have cover art I am attracted to because I view them a little works of art. Of course, me being who I am, I only collect covers that feature women on them.