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Will There Be Wine? (Novel)

Will There Be Love? (Novel)

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The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Whitney Cubbison – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. So today I have Whitney Cubbison with me. She is a dual American and French citizen living in Paris since 2009, hashtag living the dream. She grew up in Texas and California and she got a degree in French from UCLA. And she was working with high tech PR agencies in San Francisco and worked with uh Microsoft for 16 years, um including in the Paris office.

After she left Microsoft, she completed her first novel, Will There Be Wine, which is a story deeply inspired by her own experience as an expat divorcee living in Paris, navigating the cultural minefield of dating in a foreign country. And that came out in 2023. And she had so much fun, she wrote a sequel, which would became Will There Be Love?

So um we're gonna talk about those books and Whitney's life in Paris. Whitney, you were living my dream life. I just have to say that.

Whitney:

Well, somebody's gotta do it, Rhonda. It might as well be me.

Rhonda:

Might as well be you, totally. I love it. So talk to me a little bit about, so when you went to Paris originally, you were working with Microsoft. Did you think of yourself as a writer?

Whitney:

So I worked in communications at Microsoft. So I was always writing something. And from a very young age, I was always a journaler. So I think I was always writing something. I never really thought, gosh, one day I'm going to write a novel. And then I moved here. I was working for Microsoft. I was a speechwriter for the head of international sales. That's the job that I moved here for.

So I was writing his speeches and doing all of his comms work. And then I got divorced and started going on a bunch of really horrible dates. every single time I would come back to my friends and tell these stories about what was happening, they were like, oh my God, you have to write a book. This is ridiculous.

And I mean, one of the guys actually, I remember he said, you know what? It was a Microsoft comms guy. He said, I know great stories and these are great stories. You must write a book. And I was like, hmm. And I started thinking about it just very casually. And one day I just started writing and I think I was on a plane coming back from a work trip and just starting writing down some of the real stuff that had actually happened to me.

And really having no idea how to write a novel because it turns out you'll be surprised to hear that writing about cloud computing is very different than writing a novel. And you know, I kind of had to unlearn all of my skills as a technology PR writer to figure out how to do this.

And so when I started, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And I think this probably happens with a lot of first time novelists that are somewhat inspired to write by things that are happening to them. And so they vomit their life out onto a page, which is exactly what I did, and then go, okay, now what? And have to figure it out. But that was the fun part.

Rhonda:

Okay, figuring out was a fun part, So I love, you your website is datingdisasters.paris, just so like best URL ever so-.

Whitney:

That’s actually, the character in the main in the in the book has a blog. And so that is the URL for the blog.

Rhonda:

I love that.

Whitney:

I always had this thing whenever I was watching a TV show or movie, and there was a character that had their Instagram account or their whatever website, I often would go and check just to see like, is that a real one? Do they really have that? Are they playing this character through till the end? And most times they weren't. And it felt to me like a missed marketing opportunity. So I was like, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do it right. And so that's where that URL came from.

Rhonda:

That's so perfect. So are you the protagonist or did you create a protagonist that was kind of like you or not at all like you?

Whitney:

So the name of the character is the protagonist in the first book is Austin and Austin is very much me. There are a few little details that I changed just for the sake of fiction, but she is very much based on me. And I'll say that when I wrote the first book, I didn't necessarily intend to write another or to stick with her. 

And the second book, we'll get to it I'm sure a bit more later, but she is in there. She's not the main character of the second book, but the second book is 100% fiction. And so is the third, which I'm writing now.

And she's in it. And so, you know, her character has definitely evolved away from me. I think she still has a lot of the personality traits that I would have um if I were in some of these scenarios. But as the scenarios got further from my real life, she became more of a character and less of me. But yeah, think she's very close.

Rhonda:

Oh so you started something close to you and then it evolved.

Whitney:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

Yeah. I love that. So let's talk about Will There Be Wine? How did it end up? Why that title? Although, you you're in Paris, you're dating. Will there be wine? Yes. Oh, great. Great cover. Love.

Whitney:

Thank you. This is actually the whole string of like guys that she's scrolling through on the app. It's like, no, no, no, maybe that was kind of the design. The red shirts versus the yellow shirt on that.

Honestly, the title came from my best friend in Paris, who is the Daphne character in this book is based on her. And she often joked well before I started writing this book that if they ever made a movie about our lives, it would be called, Will There Be Wine?

Rhonda:

Okay. Love it.

Whitney:

And so when I, cause we're always, you know we live in Paris and so we're always out drinking wine, you know, at some point. And uh so, yeah, when I started writing it, I was like, I think that has to be the title. Cause I was sort of manifesting the, maybe it'll be made into a movie and who knows? But yeah, it very much came from her just that being the tagline of our day to day life in Paris.

And funny enough, like the second one, which is called, Will There Be Love? it seems like such an obvious evolution for a sequel. But I was really struggling with the title on the second one, because I thought that it should have wine in it as a continuity. I was like trying to play around with something for that. And I ended up meeting with this girl who was a friend of a friend who had come to Paris and she had read the first book and she had asked my friend if I would meet her for lunch because she enjoyed the first book.

So we were sitting down and I was telling her about the second book and I said, you know, I'm really struggling with the title. And I kind of told her what it was about. This is a girl I had just met and she was like, Oh, it should be called Will There Be Love? And I was like, duh, of course it should be.

Rhonda:

What's title of the third one? Cause you're kind of rocking a, I'm curious about the title of the third one. Cause you're rocking a Will There Be Blank.

Whitney:

The third one is called Will There Be Time?

Rhonda:

Yeah. I love that. Okay. So in the first book, these are rom-coms, right?

Whitney:

The first one is a rom-com. The second one I like to call a rom-drom.

Rhonda:

Rom-drom. Okay, little more drama happening.

Whitney:

A lot more drama. So the first one is really about the dating misadventures of an American expat in Paris. It is kind of, you know, it starts out with Paris is supposed to be the city of love. It's where everybody comes and falls in love. And it's where Austin Keller's marriage died.

Rhonda:

Right.

Whitney:

That's kind of where that story starts. And then it goes through all these misadventures of terrible dates and so it's like whoever said Paris was the most romantic city on earth was obviously lying like what is happening right now so it's this kind of comedy of errors of her searching for love and also searching for self and because you know when I when you're doing your own story basically I was like thinking about it after going okay how do I make it a novel and not just a random series of anecdotes.

Rhonda:

Yes.

Whitney:

And so I had to really think about like what are the messages that I want to leave with people what do I want readers to take away from this book and it was really about getting to know who you are in a post-divorce scenario, getting to know who the new you is, who you want to be, who you want to be braver to be, and how your friends kind of come in and support you and lift you up through all of these kind of trials and tribulations of figuring out who you are and what your life is supposed to be in a place that you didn't expect it to have to restart.

And so that theme of female friendship and that theme of really self-discovery and knowing yourself and being honest about that, those were kind of things that had to pull through to make it kind of stick together and to make it not just like slapstick, which is kind of where it started, but not where I wanted it to end.

Rhonda:

Right. Yeah. Because there needs to be a character journey, right?

Whitney:

Yeah, absolutely.

Rhonda:

Yeah. So in writing the second one, and you said, OK, it's got more drama. Why the shift?

Whitney:

A couple of reasons. So the first one,  the story kind of takes place over the course of several years, like five years-ish, five or six years. And I really liked the idea of writing a book that mostly took place over the course of a weekend. I wanted to do something that was much more compressed.

One of the big pieces of feedback I got on the first one was people really liked the dialogue, and I really like writing dialogue. And so was like, I want to do something that's very conversational, that's very character-driven, that's in a closed space ah where something is happening and that kind of lent itself more to drama.

And I also didn't want Austin to be the main character. The whole idea of the second book actually started, I was having a conversation with a girlfriend here in Paris and she was telling me that her parents never told her that they loved her. And so as a result, she was having a hard time saying it to her husband and her kid.

And I found that so heartbreaking that I really kind of sat with that for a while and was thinking about like, love and how easily it can either lift you up or you know um in one context or the other and as a perpetually single girl myself still I have thought a lot about the hierarchy of romantic love versus platonic love amongst friends versus familial love and how all of these elements can kind of mix together to make a great life no matter if you're with someone or not.

And so I wanted to look at that topic a bit more seriously. And so it was not going to be a comedy at the end of the day. So it basically takes place most of it over the course of the 40th birthday of this character, Ophelia. She goes to Ibiza with her husband and a group of friends for her 40th birthday. Turns out one of the friends isn't a friend and is actually her husband's mistress.

Rhonda:

Ah, fun.

Whitney:

Much drama ensues. Uh it's so she, Ophelia, is actually. Well, so Austin ends up at the end of the first book with a guy and for no spoilers, I call him Keanu. It's not really his name. so Ophelia is Keanu's first love. So she's the main character of the next book.

And so it kind of juxtaposes her relationship with her husband where they have a marriage in crisis against Austin and her guy who are just falling in love. So it's kind of about where it starts and ends and what builds it and what breaks it, but told through the lens of these two couples that are in very different places in their relationships. And it's four part narrator, which was my other challenge I wanted to take on.

Rhonda:

Oh four part point of view?

Whitney:

Yes. all four of them.

Rhonda:

That's challenging.

Whitney:

Yes. All four of them are narrators. And so that was my other thing that I really wanted to do differently. I wanted a compressed time frame. I wanted not one narrator. And I wanted to do drama. So yeah, very different book in the end. So standalone sequel can be read completely standalone, but very different book in the end.

Rhonda:

Wow. OK. So what were the biggest craft challenges for the first book and then the second book?

Whitney:

Craft challenges you mean just like figuring out how to do it?

Rhonda:

Like, oh my God, what am I doing?

Whitney:

Yeah. Yeah. mean, like I said, I really for the first one just vomited my life out onto a page and then was like, okay, now what? And I literally like went on Facebook and maybe LinkedIn and said, so I wrote a book. Does anybody know anybody in publishing? Like, I don't know what to do now.

Rhonda:

Oh my God. Okay.

Whitney:

I just threw it out to the universe and ended up being put in touch with various friends and friends and whatever, and who gave me amazing advice. And the number one piece of advice was hire a professional editor. And so I went to Reedsy and I found an editor and I was like, I just need a structural edit because I don't know how to make this like a book.

Because at the time it was kind of like one chapter per guy-ish. And within sort of the more significant chapters, there may have been a little bit of flashback or a little bit of flash forward. And she was like, you can't keep track of the timeline like that. It's impossible. You need to break that up and have those things occur in sequence. So when he comes back, it's like, oh, he's back. Maybe now is when they will. And you're like, yeah, well, duh.

That makes so much sense when you think about it logically, but when you're vomiting your life onto a page, it doesn't necessarily come as an inherent truth of what you're supposed to do. So I hired that structural editor who gave me some amazing feedback about, and I ended up tearing the book apart, adding about 30,000 words and then stitching it back together. Love that. like change the timeline. then I went and pitched for agents and I had initial interest from five, which was very exciting. And then all five of them said no, eventually.

And what that said to me was it's a good idea, but it's not executed well enough. So then I went and hired another editor to do what I thought was, what I hired her for was a copy edit. And she ends up missing the deadline. And I contacted her, I was like, hi, where's my book? She was like, the thing is, she said, I just loved your story so much, I didn't want to miss an opportunity to help make it great. So I've gone in and done a partial line edit.

And I was like, nice. So she had line edited a random third of the book in different places saying, you know, here's how to basically make this work. And when I read her edits, I was like, oh now I know how to do this. And I basically rewrote the whole book.

Rhonda:

Okay. Wow.

Whitney:

And so it was her edits were it was like the scales fell off of my eyes and I was like, okay, I got it now. Like I know what this needs. And, then I just had so much fun. I've worked with her on all three books since because I think she's phenomenal.

But it was like, you know, I literally had no idea how to write a novel. So the all of it was hard on the first. On the first one, like literally everything. Cause you know, once you figure out how to get it written, then you have to figure out like, I remember like in the editing process, it was like in Reedsy, was like, what kind of edit do you want? I'm like, I don't know. What do we need? There were kinds. Yeah. Who knew?

And then it was like, you're plugging in all the details on Amazon. like, what do you want your trim size to be? And you're like Googling, what is trim size? You know, just had no idea about any of it. And so when you're self publishing, you have to figure all this stuff out on your own.

And so everything was an adventure on the first one. The second one, I mean, it was, think one of the bigger ones was writing in a guy's voice, two different guys' voices, and trying to figure out how to get out of my own head. Because the first one was so much based on a character that was me. was you, yeah. That I had to really break down who are these other people.

And so I spent, because I worked at Microsoft for 16 years, um I spent, I think, the...a month or two in an Excel spreadsheet on a character map, just thinking through, who are these eight people that are going to be in the villa? How do they know each other? What are their personality flaws? What are their jobs? What do they look like? What are their ages? Like really kind of thinking through what is their kind of life motto? Like who are they?

And once I figured out kind of who they all were to each other and within themselves, I didn't, not a plotter, so I didn't have the plot really, but I just was like, I need to spend some time getting to know the people.

And then I started writing. So that was really an interesting thing too, because it was the first time I had tried pure fiction uh that I had started from a blank page. I wrote the first draft in two months. It just poured out of me.

Rhonda:

Well, you had a blank page, but you also had a pretty significant spreadsheet where you really thought through who these characters were.

Whitney:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

You know like you're going in fully informed. know who these people are. Yeah.

Whitney:

Yeah. But it was really fun. I mean, I just remember like closing my laptop at the end of every day being like, I have no idea what happens next. I'm going to bed and then I wake up and sit down and be like, okay, here we go. You know, all right. It was fun. I just had a great time and I'm having a great time with the third one now.

So I don't know, like the first book really did not convince me that I was a writer. The first book I was like 70 % of it was real stuff that happened to me and I did 30 % of project management to turn my life into a book. That's kind of what I thought.

But I didn't necessarily be like, oh, I'm a writer. And then on the second one, I was like, yeah, actually, hmm.

Rhonda:

I think I'm a writer now. Yeah I think I am.

Whitney:

I think I’m a writer now. So that was a really fun uh discovery, I guess, in the process of this second one.

Rhonda:

So are you a working writer now? Like, this is what you do?

Whitney:

This is what I do, yes.

Rhonda:

Wow. So the thing about self-publishing is you're also the marketing department. Now, you had worked in comms. Microsoft. So I'm assuming you've had a lifelong exposure to PR marketing, but um talk to me a little about the kinds of things that you do to promote your book.

Whitney:

Sure. So, um yes, my whole career was in PR marketing. So that definitely helped. And when I was evaluating that, like, oh, can I pull this off as a self published author, knowing that that was going to be part of the job? It's like, yeah, you know what? I can figure this out.

And I did hire for a while for the first I don't know, year-ish, I worked with a publicist, a book publicist to try to learn the ropes because a book marketing and cloud computing marketing are quite different in the end.

So I did work with somebody to kind of help me learn the ropes. My Instagram is my main marketing vehicle. It's where I do most of my stuff. I also, I try to do a lot of podcasts and pitch that kind of stuff when I can just because I enjoy it. And I think it's a great way to bust into new audiences that you might not otherwise have met.

And it's not just writing podcasts. What's been fun is I can do um dating. I've done quite a few with dating coaches or psychologists who talk about dating after divorce. Or I've done a lot of Paris-based podcasts about creativity in Paris or just life in Paris. So I'm thinking, and things like midlife career transition.

Rhonda:

I love working the angles. That’s great. That's such amazing advice. You don't see it on all the book podcasts.

Whitney:

Yeah, you have to think about yourself as the talent, which is obnoxious as that sounds, to say, there are things that I have done in my life that I have a certain amount of expertise on, and it's not just about the book that I wrote. It's about all these other aspects of life. And so where are the audiences of people who might be interested in a story like yours the book or your actual life and then how do you like use those things to talk?

And like one of the examples here in Paris, uh was a journalist who does a column on, it's called Leaving America. And it's just about people who have left the US to move to France. And it has nothing to do with anything other than like why and how people got here. I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna go pitch that because I can talk about what brought me here and get the books plugged as well.

And so, you know, it's just really about like having that 360 degree view of all the opportunities. But from a pure book marketing standpoint, Instagram has been my main focus. The Bookstagram community has been amazing.

Rhonda:

Bookstagram is the best. They blow my book budget every single day.

Whitney:

Yeah, seriously. And they're so generous and kind. And when I figured out kind of how it worked, I remember it like because the title of the first book was Will There Be Wine, I was looking for handles like books and wine 2022 or paperbacks and Pinot. I was like, okay, I think these people are going to like the book just on the title.

And so I did my research kind of based on the wine angle plus books, which for, you know, there's a lot of women out there who like wine and books. And so that was kind of an easy start. And then once I, think I got about 20 ARC readers before the first book came out.

And what I told myself is, okay, I'm going to go through that process, I'm gonna see how those reviews land in the week that the book comes out. If they're all mediocre, then I will accept that only my friends will ever read this book and move on to something else. But if they're good, then maybe I'll double down on marketing and figure out what it could be. And the reviews were excellent.

And so I then started basically almost monthly rounds of reviews where I would look, I looked at the comments on those first 20 ARC reviews, where if somebody was like, oh, this looks like a cute one, then I would reach out to them and offer, them a free copy to join the next round of reviews.

And so I did sort of monthly themed review rounds for many of the first 12 months on that book. Yeah. And, that worked really well to like grow that base. And so then obviously, by the time the second one came out, I had a established group of readers that I could then go back to. Right. And, know, having several of them be like, Oh, I don't even care what it's about. You wrote it? Yes, I'll read it. It's like, okay, that's good. That feels good.

So Instagram has been great. Podcasts have been great. You know, I've tried, I've tried Amazon ads. I've tried a bunch of other things. For me, I felt like the most effective things have really been podcasts and Instagram.

Rhonda:

Okay. Love that. But you know, I want to say like the reviews were good because you put the work in, right? Like you first you vomited it and then you were like, I don't know what this is. And then you got an editor and then, you know, and then you, you pitched it and it wasn't getting picked up. So like you got another at it, you know, like you did the work. That's why I did reviews were good Whitney.

Whitney:

Thank you. I appreciate that. I did do the work and I'm very proud of the work. And, but it's, interesting too, because I think, you know, as a, a reader also, I have the way that I read now is different as a writer because I'm reading for what about this character or this book? Am I liking, not liking and why?

And so I'm reading with a much more analytical lens on stuff now. And so even now, which is just three years after that first book came out, I look back on it and I'm like, God, I would do that book so differently today if I were to start over. I think that's such an interesting evolution too, to see how like your own brain kind of processes all these things as you get smarter and get to know the industry more and get to know what sells.

And I read a lot of stuff that um bestsellers and I'm like reading them going, why is this a bestseller? I don't care. It is so not something that appeals to me, but it's something that appeals to the market. And so then you spend time thinking, well, should I be writing to market or should I be writing about what I love? And ultimately I just decided it has to be the latter.

Rhonda:

It has to be what you love because you can't predict the market.

Whitney:

You can’t predict the market.

Rhonda:

Like by the time you get your book out into the world, the market might have changed.

Whitney:

Exactly. And also, like, especially as a self-published author, you spend so much time editing the book, like infinitely more time editing than writing it in the first place. And I do anyway. And um and like, do you really want to be spending all that time on something that you don't love? And the answer is no.

Rhonda:

Yeah, the answer is definitely not. So I have one final question for you, because I just can't resist when you were writing the first book, were you tempted to go on like to choose men that you knew were probably going to be a disaster date just to get material for the book.

Whitney:

There is one in particular where that is a true yes. And it is hilariously the one that I do as a reading most when I'm doing events was this date. And it was it was a date where the guy literally like right before an hour before we're supposed to meet, he texts me and he says, so how does it feel to have a date with the best looking guy in the 15th arrondissement?

And I was like, wow, like normally I would have just canceled, like straight up right then. But then I was like, this is the book I'm going. And it was, it was an absolute train wreck and it has become my favorite reading to do at my book events. So thanks to that guy.

Rhonda:

Yeah. Thanks to that guy. The best looking guy in the 15th.

Whitney:

But other than that, honestly, other than that, they were all just like really bad dates that I had hoped wouldn't be and were.

Rhonda:

Yeah. I love that. That's so good. All right, we're gonna put links to the books in uh the show notes and a link to datingdisasters.paris as well. So you can find Whitney. Yeah, look at those gorgeous covers. It's fabulous. Yeah.

Whitney:

Thank you.

Rhonda:

All right, thanks so much for being here with me, Whitney. I really appreciated the conversation.

Whitney:

Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

Your ratings and reviews tell the podcast algorithm gods that yes, this is a great show, definitely recommend it to other writers. And that will help us reach new listeners who might need a boost in their writing lives today as well. So please take a moment and leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. And I promise to read every single one. Thank you so much.