We chat with author Jayne Allen about The Most Wonderful Time, which is an irresistible Christmastime novel about heartbreak, hope, love, and the joy that comes from rediscovering oneself
What is your two line “elevator pitch” for what your new novel “The Most Wonderful Time” is about?
The Most Wonderful Time is a soulful holiday romantic comedy with a bit of a satirical twist. Similar to the movie “The Holiday,” the premise is two women of completely different ethnicities and backgrounds, both who are searching for something more in their life, swap homes over the Holiday and learn an important lesson about where they truly belong.
Can you share with us the inspiration behind the story?
I have always been a huge fan of the movie “The Holiday,” but wondered how the premise would be served if the women were really different from each other, especially in ethnicity and culture, and if one of the destinations wasn’t as welcoming. To me, that was an interesting laboratory to do some meaningful character exploration along the way to finding a happy ending for each of my protagonist characters. And discovering what actually was the right happy ending for each woman.
Your two heroines Chelsea Flint and Ramona Tucker, go through their own interesting journeys in the story, and their stories converge. How did you approach the development of each character’s arc, and how did you decide to bring them and the people in their lives together?
In Chelsea Flint and Ramona Tucker, I started with two characters who were very different on the surface, but who actually were different reflections of the same kind of wound or internal issue. They both gave an opportunity to look at life from a different angle to get to the root of the truth. In character development and in creating arcs, I’m always looking for the core human truth and working to find an authentic journey of healing for that person. So that healing pathway becomes the track that the story follows. It was a beautiful journey in the writing process to develop the layers of story that allowed Ramona and Chelsea’s paths to converge. It was a lesson to me that no matter how different we may seem from each other, or how interconnected we all actually are, we do need others to become our best selves.
The settings of Malibu, CA and Chicago, IL play a significant role in your novel. Could you tell us how you selected these locations and how you wanted to depict them? What kind of research did you do for each setting?
I chose settings that each had a distinct character. I’m from Detroit, so Chicago has always been a core part of my Holiday memories. We used to go to Chicago as a family for one day of shopping every year, and I can still feel the biting cold of walking down Michigan Avenue looking at the decorations in the department store windows. There was such a specific character to Chicago at Holiday time, the city just absolutely sparkled with charm. So, I wanted to capture that in the pages of The Most Wonderful Time. And Malibu is close to Los Angeles, where I live now, but it’s such a small town and so insular, it’s almost like its own world. That was perfect for a setting in a story about belonging and (re)claiming space for yourself.
I did a great deal of research for this book and really threw myself into the experiences in order to bring to life as realistically as possible. My goal was for this book was for the reader to feel transported every time she or he opens the pages. So, I traveled to Chicago over the Holiday time and spent a week living there eating, walking around, taking the “L” train, visiting galleries and stores. I wanted to find the corners of magic in the city that was so cold outside but so warm in spirit. It was the best research trip, and my mom came as my research assistant. She did a wonderful job. And for the experiences in Malibu, I actually went there as well and did it myself. Most notably, I took my very first surfing lesson! But I also spent two years learning how to draw and paint and I researched the entire history of the California coastline dating from the Jim Crow era to understand the dynamic of access and how segregation affected Black Americans’ cultural relationship to the water, even to this day.
The theme of family dynamics is significant in your storytelling. Can you elaborate on the importance of this element?
I think at the base, I’m writing about healing and to write about healing, you have to be writing on some level about personal freedom. As a Black American woman writing about my culture and developing an awareness of how this has shaped my own life perspective, I really appreciate having these characters that can show me the overlooked corners of my own experience and shine a light there. In particular, writing Ramona, I was able to really examine what kind of pressure you feel as a “striver” generation, meaning that your parents are of a generation that was substantially more oppressed than you in some way and who made tremendous sacrifice to ensure that you’d have the opportunities for more. That is both a gift and a curse, I think, for a lot of black people and women in particular. We feel that we owe so much, and thus need to do and accomplish so much, but often without looking at what the limits should be. Family is such a core foundational part of who many of us are, and the ties can be very tight in the black community. So, I wanted to examine what it looks like when we go too far in trying to pay back all those sacrifices, and how to regain balance. How to heal.
For Chelsea, it was almost the opposite, a completely different take on family. She’s dealing with grief having lost a significant part of her birth family and ends up discovering a different kind of family in the pages of the novel. The story that she embarks on is about finding family and defining family in a way beyond just who you’re given when you’re born. I think bringing her into the Black American cultural tradition of “found family” is really a beautiful celebration of this aspect that is normalized so we don’t even blink at calling someone complete unrelated as “my play cousin,” or “my sister,” and it truly means something substantive about that relationship. I loved exploring and celebrating that.
The book explores profound themes like love, loss, and self-discovery. Can you share how you navigated these complex emotions while writing?
At its core, this book is about healing. With healing at the center, there was a clear north star for how this book needed to unfold and even with the complexity of the subject matter, there was still a destination. So, I had to let the story breathe some and develop with pace for the plot, but also slowly enough to hold the emotion, which is very important. At the beginning of the story, you need to understand what Chelsea is feeling, that she’s stuck in grief, that she’s not herself. That matters as part of the story that unfolds for her, because you’re really meant to be able to viscerally feel her healing as you’re reading. The same for Ramona. And I always say that a writer can’t write past what they’ve lived or understand personally. So, I had to do a lot of personal work in healing my own wounds, particularly as it pertains to belonging and feeling “otherized” in spaces that should be more welcoming. I certainly reflected, journaled, and had to have very deep and meaningful (sometimes tearful!) conversations with a wide variety of people, including my editor.
Can you talk about any firsthand experiences or influences that might have helped shape the narrative of “The Most Wonderful Time”? (hint, hint . . . tell us about your surfing and art lessons!!)
I was so invested in this story and the characters, who I found so fascinating, I literally threw myself into research for this book. I had a character who went surfing, so I took surfing lessons to understand the meaning of the experience. I had a character who was an artist, so I spent two years during the writing process of this book taking drawing and painting classes, so I understood the mechanics of her work. I also had to examine my own personal experiences to figure out what healing looks like and what it could be for these characters in this story. There was a lot to unpack about the history of the California coastline and I did not expect to find that there was actual segregation in at the California beaches! But the research and writing process introduced me to the black surfing community, which I basically have never left since!
How did you incorporate festive elements into the plot, given the significant role the Christmas holiday season plays in the story?
When you title a book, The Most Wonderful Time, there’s pretty high bar to meet to make sure it delivers on that premise! I wanted to make the season come alive in the pages, so I wrapped in the delights of the Holiday—music, drink, food, and celebrations that were particular to each setting. In Chicago, you are going to have the wintertime Holiday. In Malibu, and Southern California, we do the Holidays a little differently because we don’t have the same weather that comes with seasons. But it’s still festive and incredible. I wanted to celebrate that with readers and really bring them into the character of these two very different places during the Holiday time.
What were some challenges you faced while writing “The Most Wonderful Time” and how did you overcome them?
I was working on this book for so long, a lot of the challenges were part of the research process. My Black Girls… trilogy books were so close and familiar, and The Most Wonderful Time was really a process of writing characters who are very different from me, especially the supporting characters. I needed to write two male love interests, and I also had a white protagonist in Chelsea, which is writing outside of my personal life experience. And then, there’s also Joan, who I’m coining as a “soft villain” in the story. I loved writing Joan! But the main focus was always writing these characters in their full humanity and not making them tropes or simply vehicles for the plot. So, I really leaned into conversations with friends and sometimes strangers to dive deep into uncovering what made all of these people who they more, and most important what drove the types of decisions they were making.
Were there any novels or non-fiction books that you read while writing that were inspirations for you? Both newer works and/or classics?
Yes! I always have what I call my “literary companions” when writing a novel. For this book, they were Sula by Toni Morrison, Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin, Aluetris by Anaïs Nin, Living the California Dream by Allison Rose Jefferson, and West of Jim Crow by Lynn M. Hudson. I also was fully inspired by the incredible documentary “Wade in the Water” about the history of black surfing.
What are some key messages or lessons you hope your readers will take away from the novel?
I hope that readers take away the lessons of claiming and reclaiming space and the pathways of healing. Also, I hope that readers take away an understanding that “belonging” is what we make it, and that love is truly anywhere we look for it.
