DEBUT SPOTLIGHT: SARA GOODMAN CONFINO

It’s always such an honor to interview a fellow Lake Union author, and today I’m proud to feature Sara Goodman Confino, the debut author of FOR THE LOVE OF FRIENDS, a fun and feisty RomCom that’s been compared to Bridget Jones and 27 Dresses. I have had the absolute joy of reading For The Love of Friends, and I can tell you that Sara is a writer to watch! Not only does her prose flow effortlessly, making for a page-turning read, but her grasp of characterization and plot made it hard to believe this was a debut novel. It’s as perfect and effervescent as a glass of good champagne — and I’m not just saying that because Sara is my friend!

THE FULL SYNOPSIS

Lily Weiss is her mother’s worst nightmare: thirty-two and single—the horror! She’s also a talented writer but hides behind a boring job at a science foundation. To her friends, she’s reliable and selfless, which is how she winds up a bridesmaid in five weddings in six weeks. Anything for her three best friends and two (younger) siblings, right? Even if her own love life is…well, she’d rather not talk about it. To keep her sanity, Lily needs a safe place to vent.

And so her anonymous blog, Bridesmania, is born. The posts start pouring out of her: all the feels about mom-zillas, her vanishing bank balance, the wicked bridesmaids of the west, high-strung brides-to-be, body-shaming dress clerks, bachelorette parties, and Spanx for days, not to mention being deemed guardian of eighty-eight-year-old Granny (who enjoys morning mimosas in the nude) for her brother’s destination wedding.

So far the blog has stayed anonymous. But as everyone knows, few things online remain secret forever…

When all is said and done, can Lily help all five couples make it to happily ever after? And will her own happy ending be close behind?

“Whether you’ve been a bridesmaid a dozen times or somehow avoided the whole mess, For the Love of Friends is not to be missed. Funny and touching, Sara Goodman Confino has created a story that’s as wild as a good bachelorette party and as romantic as a first dance. I gobbled it up like wedding cake!” —Kelly Harms, Washington Post bestselling author of The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

And now for our interview…

Paulette: Hi Sara! 2021 has been quite a whirlwind for you, what with having a debut novel recently released, the beginning of a new school year, a new baby, and now you’re hard at work revising your next novel. Can you tell us about FOR THE LOVE OF FRIENDS and what inspired you to write it?

Sara: For the Love of Friends is the story of Lily Weiss, a single 32 year old, who finds herself asked to be a bridesmaid in five weddings in the same year. She’s happy to do it (okay, maybe not thrilled about her two much younger siblings), but things quickly escalate between bridezillas, wedding-related expenses, and general family drama. She starts an anonymous blog to deal with all of the chaos, which eventually goes viral and she has to deal with the fallout.

There were a few different pieces that came together to inspire this one. The first was obviously the weddings that I’ve been a part of, especially when contrasted with my own. I would have been happy with something small or eloping, but I have a large family and that wasn’t happening. So I was pretty laid back about a lot of the details (I told my two best friends to wear whatever they wanted and those weirdos picked matching dresses in one of our wedding colors… that would NOT have been me if a bride told me to do that!). But the weddings I’d been in… let’s just say I set my best friend’s ringtone to Darth Vader’s theme music for a year. (We’re closer than ever now, but we had a rough year.)

The other factor was the blog aspect. I used to have a humor blog that was somewhat popular—until I did a post that blew up because a corner of the internet didn’t get my sense of humor or that I was being hyperbolic and things escalated quickly. I got death threats (over a band I didn’t particularly care for) where people posted my address online and said to throw a Molotov cocktail through my window. Someone wrote to my school board and said I should be fired. It was a mess. So I’ve lived through a different experience than Lily, but I’ve still dealt with the fallout of a negatively viral blog.

Paulette: Wow! It really is amazing (and scary) how quickly things can escalate. As I read, I could feel Lily’s sense of panic and overwhelm as her life became overbooked with all of those weddings and also when her blog posts went viral. You conveyed her emotions so powerfully that it had me having empathetic anxiety!

You’re a seasoned writer, with solid storytelling skills, and it shows. Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process?

Sara: My current writing process is VERY different from my writing process in the past because I now have two children under five. Pre-kids, my writing was done primarily over the summer because I’m a teacher and I could knock out a whole book in a summer. But I also didn’t write in order for those earlier works (two are self-published, two shelved for now) and I think that was an issue.  I wrote For the Love of Friends in the summer of 2019 because my husband took our then two year old out of the house for large chunks of the day so I could, and I was a machine—literally doing 5,000-6,000 words a day. We were trying for our second and I knew I wouldn’t have time for a while (and I kind of viewed For the Love of Friends as a last ditch attempt at a publishing contract).

My next book (no title yet), was a COMPLETELY different experience. I had a deadline of August 3 and knew I needed time to edit. So I sat down in February and started writing in the hour and a half after my kids went to bed at night and literally wrote every night for fourteen weeks from 8:15pm until 9:45pm. And I finished the book in that span, writing completely linearly without stopping to edit or reread, which I had never done before. I was convinced it would be a disaster (or read “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” for 425 pages because I did that after teaching virtually all day with a baby home. But it’s actually kind of fantastic. No clue how that happened, but the fact that my editor had to approve a synopsis probably made it easier because I had a real plan to follow and I’ve always worked well under pressure.

Paulette: I’m not surprised at all that it’s fabulous, but having that synopsis in place ahead of time really does help streamline the process. Even though I like to hiss and moan about synopses, they are such a valuable tool.

What are your favorite and least favorite parts of the writing process?

Sara: I love drafting. Creating characters and letting them come alive is the absolute best because you get lost in their world. It’s one of the few times in my life when I can completely zone out of my own life and into something else. And it becomes a focal point for the rest of my day when I’m in that place. A workout is a great time to work through a plot hole/develop a character.

My least favorite part is the repeated editing. The first read-through is great. The second is okay (and better if I have time to let it sit a week or two), but after that? No thank you. There was a meme that said “Write the book you want to read… because you’re going to have to read it at least 50 times in the editing process” and it’s SO TRUE. I know it needs it, and it lets me really make sure that every word is the exact word that I want, but it’s the opposite of the world-building in drafting and it’s exhausting.

Paulette: We are opposites in this respect—I prefer revising to drafting—but I totally hear you on the escapism that drafting can bring. I do love it when you become so immersed in your world that time goes by without any recollection of how long you’ve been sitting at the keyboard. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Speaking of wonderful feelings, this has been a year full of milestones for you! How have you celebrated?

Sara: I haven’t done much yet. With the pandemic (and especially two small children who can’t be vaccinated yet), it hasn’t quite felt real. My mother wanted to hold a launch party, but most of the people I would have wanted to invite also have unvaccinated kids who are in different bubbles and with Delta, it just wasn’t smart to do. And the timing of getting the publishing contract was… interesting. My agent and I were pregnant and due nine days apart. We kept joking that we just wanted to sell the book before we had the babies and that we’d probably have them on the same day—but then we did. Like two weeks after signing the contract, we both had our babies on the same day. So between the world kind of ending and having a new baby, celebrating has been interesting. My husband got me a cake with the book cover, and we did a family dinner with my parents and grandmother and kids, and my mother got me a bracelet, but I kind of haven’t had time to do much for myself yet. (boring/depressing answer… sorry!) 

Paulette: Not at all! And many congratulations on your second baby! And I hear you. It’s been a scary year with so much uncertainty and anxiety. We thought we’d be past COVID by now, and yet, here we are facing down new variants. My own launch party will be very small, and all my events virtual. It’s just too risky to have an in-person event right now. The pandemic has been a big challenge for 2020 and 2021 debuts to overcome.

What other challenges have you faced as a debuting author?

Sara: Where to start? Trying to juggle everything while teaching online with a baby home. We decided not to send Max to daycare because the risk of a severe case in infants was elevated, but our now four-year-old son went to preschool because we couldn’t have taught with him home as well. And there was a lot of guilt involved in trying to juggle all of the things with motherhood. My own mother was our only babysitter because of Covid, and then I had my next book to write—which is a great problem to have, but it’s been a lot. But I also got to spend Max’s first whole year with him, which really isn’t a thing for working moms in America, so I wouldn’t trade the stress for anything.

Paulette: You are such a superhero mom—truly. I am amazed at how well you juggle everything. Let’s hope that the next year brings a bit more stability and a little less chaos!

Any words of advice for writers going into their debut year?

Sara: I don’t want to scare anyone with my answer! I think on the one hand, I had less stress about my debut because I had so much stress about everything else. If I hadn’t, I probably would have had much more anxiety about the book. Try to celebrate it. Hear the people who are proud of you—it’s so easy to brush praise off and let imposter syndrome take over, but this really is a huge accomplishment.

Paulette: It truly is. I remember how, just a little over a year ago, I thought that I would never be published, and now everything is happening so fast. It’s a huge thing and even after we’re gone, our books will live on. I think about that a lot. Becoming published is probably the closest any human ever gets to becoming immortal, and it’s pretty humbling to think about! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat today, Sara!

If you’d like to purchase FOR THE LOVE OF FRIENDS, you can find it on Amazon or request it from your favorite bookseller.

Sara Goodman Confino teaches high school English and journalism in Montgomery County, Maryland, where she lives with her husband, two sons, and two miniature schnauzers, Rosie and Sandy. When she’s not writing or working out, she can be found on the beach or at a Bruce Springsteen show, sometimes even dancing on stage. You can connect with her on Twitter and Instagram with the handle @saraconfino or find her on her Website and Facebook