The heartbreaking, yet hopeful, story of a mother and daughter struggling to be a family without the one person who holds them together—a perfect summer read for fans of Jojo Moyes and Marisa de los Santos.
We had the pleasure of chatting to author Alison Hammer about her debut novel, You and Me and Us, which she describes as a “tearjerker”! In the interview, Alison chats about its inspiration, her publishing journey, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Alison! Thanks for chatting with us! Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?
Thanks for having me! During the day, I work as a VP creative director at an advertising agency in Chicago, and on nights and weekends, I write upmarket women’s fiction. My debut novel, You and Me and Us, came out just last week!
Your debut novel, You and Me and Us, released on April 7th. If you could only use five words to describe it, what would they be?
Only five words? Hmm. Tearjerker. Mother. Daughter. Love. Hopeful.
Now, tell us a little more! What can readers expect?
You and Me and Us is about Alexis, a workaholic mom, and CeCe, her distant teenage daughter. It’s the story of how their relationship evolves over a difficult summer as they lose the one person in their family who held them together. It’s a tearjerker, but I promise it will make you laugh and smile, too!
Where did the inspiration for You and Me and Us come from?
While You and Me and Us is my debut novel, it’s not the first book I’ve written. My first book, which took me 15 years to finish writing, featured the same characters, just a decade earlier. At the end of that first novel (which is currently in a drawer), I knew a secret that Alexis didn’t even know. She was pregnant.
That was the original spark for You and Me and Us. I thought it would be interesting to show Alexis with a teenage daughter, the same age she had been during flashback scenes in the first book. But the story didn’t really come together until I realized that Tommy would be sick.
Did you face any challenges while writing?
My biggest challenge was honestly trying not to cry in public while I was writing! I tend to be a coffee shop writer, and the scenes that are emotional to read were emotional to write, too!
The other challenge was one I put on myself! I wrote You and Me and Us as part of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month where writers around the world are challenged to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I’m pretty competitive and I thrive on competition, so it helped me finish this first draft in just two months. Quite a bit faster than my first book!
What was your writing process like? Did it change at all as you went on?
My writing process for You and Me and Us was very different from the way I wrote my first book, thanks to the deadlines and community around National Novel Writing Month. The daily word count goals helped me focus ongetting the words down on the page, versus slowing down and taking the time to craft each sentence. That part came later!
For the second draft, I do something that a lot of people think is crazy. After I read and mark up a copy of the first draft, I retype the story from first to last page. There’s something about the process that helps me get back into the story and make sure the language flows.
For the third draft and any other draft that follows, I work from that second-draft Scrivener document. Unless there’s a scene that needs a lot of work, and in that case, I usually end up typing that up from scratch, too.
The road to becoming a published author is different for everyone. What was your journey like?
My journey was pretty smooth compared to several stories I’ve heard. As I mentioned, You and Me and Us wasn’t the first book I wrote. In the summer of 2017, I had been querying my first book for almost a year, and while I’d had a few close calls, I hadn’t found an agent.
I had just finished the second draft of You and Me and Us, and I had a really good feeling about it. So I decided to pause my efforts on the first manuscript, and use the conference to practice pitching the new book.
Joanna MacKenzie from Nelson Literary Agency was the first agent I had a meeting with. We hit it off from the start, and she had some great comments about my query, and even suggested a comp title. It took a few months before I was ready to send her the full manuscript, but a few months after that, she offered representation!
Joanna and I worked together for about four months on two rounds of revisions, then she took You and Me and Us out on submission in mid-July of 2018. We got an offer pretty quickly, but because everything in publishing slows down in the summer, it still took a while after that. In September it went to auction, and I was thrilled to accept a two-book deal with William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. And two years later, it’s finally out on the shelves! At least virtually until stores open again!
What do you hope readers will take away from reading You and Me and Us?
That’s a great question! I honestly think readers can take something away from each of the main characters. From Alexis, I hope they realize that being there for the people we love is sometimes more important than being perfect. From CeCe, I hope younger readers realize that their parents are people, too. And from Tommy, that holding a grudge only hurts yourself. And if they’re fortunate enough to still be able to, I hope the story makes them want to call their mom!
It’s a crazy world right now. What is it like at your household right now and have you made any changes to get through the now very long days at home?
It is a crazy world! I live alone in a very small apartment in downtown Chicago. My day job in advertising has also been a nights-and-weekends job the past few weeks as we’ve been trying to adjust communication to align with the state of the world. Between that and the book launch and working on edits to my second novel (coming next Spring!) I honestly haven’t had time to do much else. I’m looking forward to things slowing down so I can take a breather so I can have time to do more reading and catch up on all these shows everyone has been binging! And maybe I’ll make time to clean my closet, too!
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
So many! Let’s see. If you like stories of Mom’s behaving badly, Kathleen West’s debut novel, Minor Dramas & Other Catstrophes was excellent—and so was Kathleen Barber’s latest novel, Follow Me. I couldn’t put it down! And I’m currently reading an advanced copy of Beach Read by Emily Henry which I’m loving. So keep an eye out for that one!
