Jennifer Crusie's Blog: Argh Ink

In other news, Maybe This Time is in stores! You didn’t now that? Have you been under a rock? This is what to look for:

It’s the red one in the middle. The others are just up there to show you what might have been. read more >>

And Maybe This Time is in stores! I’d tell you to go out and buy it, but that would be exploitive, so I’ll give you Andie’s banana bread recipe instead:

Andie’s Banana Bread
(You can knock back the chips and nuts to half a cup or even leave them out, but Alice will not be happy.)
read more >>

The Maybe This Time collage is one of my favorites because it has such a mood to it. Also it was a LOT of fun to make. (Click to enlarge. Click again and it swallows your computer.)

Music has a huge impact on my storytelling, but I’ve never written a book that relied as much on a soundtrack as Maybe This Time. The book takes place in 1992 so the music was crucial in rewinding my brain back twenty years. Although there are no flashbacks in the book (I am strongly anti-flashback), a lot of the music flashes back even farther to the year North and Andie were married, 1982, evoking memories and affecting actions in the present (well, in 1992).

The music from 1982 was music from Andie and North’s courtship (short though that was) and marriage. Andie’s theme was “Layla,” by Eric Clapton (original version) because North said that was the music that had to be playing in her head when she moved. (North’s theme was “Human” by the Pretenders, but I lost it when I moved the setting back to 1992 since it didn’t come out until 2004.) read more >>

If you’ve ever read a gothic romance, you know the house is everything. They used to call gothic romances “Girl Gets House” books, and there was reason for that: the girl marrying the hero and getting the house was a metaphor for her claiming power over her space, staking her turf if you will. But in Maybe This Time, Andie doesn’t want the house, she can’t wait to get out of the house, and when she does, she never goes back. For it to have that great an effect on her, it had to be fairly ominous. So I went on an internet search and found exactly nothing. Then Stroppy Rachel came through with an English country house that had been for sale for awhile. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted but it was damn close, so I stole the floor plans and changed them a bit and then photoshopped (badly) the house to get what I wanted, and voila, thanks to Rachel, I had Archer house. read more >>