After Happily Ever After deals with love, marriage, family, the empty nest, aging parents and what happens when they all come crashing down at the same time.
We had the pleasure of speaking with author Leslie A. Rasmussen about her new novel After Happily Ever After, book recommendations, writing, and more!
Hi, Leslie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I grew up in Los Angeles, and unlike a lot of other people, I’ve remained here. I started my career as an assistant on various drama and comedy television shows, then a few years later got jobs writing for television sitcoms. I have two sons, who are now in their early twenties, but when my second son was born, I took time off to raise them, while also earning a master’s degree. I continued writing publishing essays on Huffington Post, and Maria Shriver’s site, and then most recently wrote my first novel, After Happily Ever After. I love jigsaw puzzles, musical theatre, and good food. I’m also a hug dog lover, so not only do I have two Labradors, but one of them I trained as a therapy dog and I also volunteered at our local animal shelter.
After the chaos that was 2020, have you set any goals for this year? If so, how are they going so far?
2020 was a crazy year. Not being able to see friends, and feeling like I mostly stayed home, was tough, but I was grateful to have uninterrupted time with my husband and sons. When your children are over eighteen, you rarely have that kind of time with them so that was a benefit. The shutdown also forced me to slow my life down and gave me time to begin my next book and to read a lot which I’m grateful for. My main goals for this year are to finish my second novel and to hug all my friends.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
My parents read to me all the time, but the first book that I remember reading that I still cannot stop thinking about is “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” by E.L. Konigsburg. I loved the way the brother and sister in the book ran away and hid out at the art museum and took care of each other. I must have read that book cover to cover many times growing up, and once to my kids when they were old enough to enjoy it. I didn’t think about becoming an author at that time, but I did admire any writer who could come up with a story that people would want to read more than once.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
Growing up I was creative, and I enjoyed making movies with my friends and putting on plays in my backyard for the neighbors. I didn’t consciously think about being a writer as a career, but from a young age, I was always writing short stories, or in my diary through most of my teen years. When I originally got out of college, I was working toward being a line producer on television shows, but as I watched the writers I was working with and I read their scripts, I became more interested in the writing end of television. I began writing spec scripts on my time off work, and I realized how much I loved it. When I had written a spec script, I thought was good, I sent it to an agent, and he sent it out and that spec. got me my first job writing for a television sitcom.
Your debut novel, After Happily Ever After, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
The five words I would use to describe my novel would be: Humorous, Heartbreaking, Relatable, Family, Self-discovery
What can readers expect?
The reader will take a humorous and heartbreaking journey with Maggie Dolan as she hits midlife and tries to rediscover who she is and what she wants even if it means throwing her whole world up in the air.
Where did the inspiration for After Happily Ever After come from?
Through all the years I was raising my sons, I had many intimate conversations with other women about their families, relationships, and figuring out who they were besides being a mother. When I originally decided to write a book, I thought it was going to be nonfiction, so I spent a lot of time interviewing women both in person and through an anonymous survey that I created online. After getting all the material together and starting to write the book, I found so many similarities in the women, that I decided I would write a fictionalized version and create my main character as an amalgam of many of the women I interviewed. I did have one friend whose story was the crumb of the plot for the book, but as I worked on each draft, it became less focused on that crumb, and more about where I saw my main character’s life going.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
The biggest challenge I faced while writing the novel was learning how different writing a book is from writing a television sitcom. When writing television, I needed to arc the story over forty pages, when writing a novel, I needed to move the plot from beginning to end over three-hundred-pages. That was intimidating to me, so originally, I tried to write my novel without writing an outline first. Somehow, I thought that if I just kept writing, I’d figure everything out, but when I got to the middle of the book, I realized I didn’t know where it was going. At that point, I took a break and wrote an outline, which made things much easier. Another challenge was realizing that in television, the actors add their own interpretation to the characters on the page, but with a novel, it’s your job to describe the characters in such a way that your reader can visualize them. When writing a novel, you also don’t have a set decorator or wardrobe person to give you advice that will add to your story. To overcome these challenges, I read as many books in various genres, I went to writing conferences and took writing classes, and tried to teach myself as much as I possibly could, and when I got stuck, I turned to other authors for advice.
If it’s not too spoilery, were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
My favorite character to write was my protagonist, Maggie. I had a lot of fun coming up with her inner dialogue and how the things she worried about helped the reader get to know her better. I also enjoyed working on the banter Maggie had with her husband, daughter, and friends. The relationship I liked exploring the most, though, was the one Maggie had with her father. I liked how special it was, yet at times sad, and as my father passed away during the writing of my book, I had a fondness for what both characters were going through.
What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
I can’t say the road to getting published was an easy one. After I had written my first draft, I gave the book to a few authors who gave me insightful notes and I wrote a few more drafts. At that point, I went to the Kauai Writers’ Conference and took workshops with many accomplished writers, such as Christina Baker Kline, Kristin Hannah, and Alice Hoffman. After those workshops, I realized so many things in my last draft that I needed to rework. When I got home from the conference, I wrote another draft of the novel and that one I felt was the best draft. At that point I began querying agents, which I had been told ahead of time, would probably turn me down because it was my first novel. After getting quite a few rejections, I remembered I had met an independent publisher at the conference who I really liked. Her name is Brooke Warner, and she runs She Writes Press. I contacted her and she asked me to submit my book, which I did and when it was accepted, I was thrilled.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best writing advice I’ve ever received was to just keep writing even if you aren’t sure of where you are going with your story, and when you make it the best draft you think it can be, try hard to get it published. Many authors have told me that if you don’t try to get your work published, then your story will not ever get out there and be able to affect anyone. The worst writing advice I received was if the first sentence of your novel doesn’t grab a reader’s attention, then that reader will not continue to read your book. It’s great if your first sentence can be a real hook, but if it takes you a page to start bringing someone into the world you are creating, that’s fine also. Most people won’t stop reading after the first sentence and to spend hours making sure that first sentence is crazy good, seemed to me to be a waste of time.
What’s next for you?
I am a little over half-way through the first draft of my second book, which will also be women’s fiction. I’m also working on ideas for a few more essays for online sources, and I’m excited about soon being able to travel again.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Two of the books that I have read during the pandemic that I really enjoyed, are “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett, and “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” by Taylor Jenkins Reid, who I’m a huge fan of.
You can find Leslie on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and her website.
