The Nerd Daily recently had the chance to chat with Sophie Gonzales, author of the beloved YA rom-com Only Mostly Devastated, which is a fabulous queer Grease retelling. We got to ask Sophie all our burning questions about her latest release Perfect on Paper, future projects and so much more! You can find Sophie on Instagram, Twitter, and her website.
Hi, Sophie! Thanks for joining us! Why don’t you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! My name is Sophie Gonzales, and I’m an author from Adelaide, Australia. I’m a musical theatre geek who loves ice skating, drawing and singing, as well as—of course—writing queer young adult fiction.
Now onto Perfect on Paper! Give us the elevator pitch of Darcy’s story!
Perfect on Paper follows Darcy, a sixteen-year-old bisexual girl who gives anonymous love advice through a locker at school. When a hot senior figures out her identity, he blackmails her into becoming his personal dating coach. The goal: help him win his ex-girlfriend back.
Perfect on Paper is basically the dream come true – a bisexual girl giving anonymous love advice but not being able to figure out her own love life. How did you come up with this premise and what inspired you to write Darcy’s story?
The premise itself came to me without warning one day—honestly, this is how most of my ideas come, they seem to appear from the abyss. I think the abyss must have been sharing the general idea around, because when I was well into writing Perfect on Paper, Sex Education and The Half Of It both released on Netflix, which have since become comps for PoP! More specifically, the idea of which relationship theories would be discussed in the book came from my own historic interest in self-help relationship books. I started reading books and articles on the topic when I was a teenager myself, and a few years ago became really interested in how attachment styles affect adult relationships, and was keen to explore this through the book.
There are quite a few letters addressed in Perfect on Paper and Darcy handles each sent-in issue with a lot of care. What letter was your favourite to write and come up with a solution for?
The orbiting one! The situation was quite similar to something I went through myself once, and I loved being able to write the line “After getting dumped, you absolutely deserve to be re-courted with fervor. Don’t take on the emotional load of fixing what he broke.” Because it felt a little like writing a letter to my past self.
If Darcy had been around when you were in high school, do you think you would have written to locker 89 at some point?
I think I would’ve used up my bank account on that thing.
One of my favourite elements of Perfect on Paper is the discussion surrounding bi-erasure and the double standards in society that invalidate bisexual individuals if they end up with a partner of the opposite gender. What were the challenges you faced in bringing across this important topic?
Honestly, the biggest challenge has been in how the book is viewed, given the m/f relationship at its centre! My editor and publisher were supportive when I brought up the concept, which was wonderful.
Unfortunately, there is still a misconception that “queer” means only same-gender romance, when obviously that couldn’t be further from the truth when you look across the whole LGBQTIA+ spectrum. This stigma has influenced my experience PoP’s release, but while I acknowledge that, I’m trying my best to focus on those readers—especially my bi and pan readers—who do need and want this story, rather than giving my energy to people who feel this book isn’t queer enough based on the characters. I do believe that this barrier isn’t a permanent one, however, it just needs to be broken down—and Perfect on Paper is my contribution to doing just that. Change is, however, a collective effort. It won’t happen overnight, and I didn’t expect it to.
There’s also such a slow-burn romance between Darcy and Brougham! In terms of romance, what do you love to write? Any favourite tropes or plotlines you gravitate toward while reading or writing?
I love a slow burn! It’s agony to read, but the payoff is always so satisfying. I’m also a sucker for the trope of “I’m not going to let on how much I like you until you need my help, then it’s going to become obvious”—especially when it’s not a girl requiring help from a guy (all other gender takes on this trope are welcome on my bookshelf).
Everyone is incredibly hyped for your upcoming release If This Gets Out (co-authored with Cale Dietrich)! This was your first venture into co-writing a book, correct? What was the experience like and where did it differ from writing solo? Any favourite memories of the writing process you’d like to share with us?
It’s a totally different ballgame to writing solo! While we agreed on a synopsis early on, in practice, we each wrote our character’s point of view chapter and then let the other take over the next chapter. Inevitably, that meant Cale’s idea of how a scene or exchange would go was very different to how I’d pictured it in my head, so my skills of adjusting and improvisation were sharpened! I was saying to someone recently that one of the most unexpected parts of cowriting a romance is that your character is falling for a character who is unknown to you.
Traditionally when you write, you can create two characters who are meant for each other, and manipulate scenes so everything works out just as you planned. When your character is falling for another author’s character, though, suddenly it’s a lot more like real life—you understand their thought process a little less, you can’t necessarily predict how they’re going to act or react, and you need to dig deep to figure out what is making you fall for them. Just like a real relationship!
My favourite part of the whole process was at the beginning, when Cale and I were developing the characters we now know intimately. We wrote about ten thousand words of content that never made it into the book, and realised this was going to work because we were on exactly the same page with all of the side characters and their enormous personalities.
And of course we have to talk about your project The One That Got Away! The premise (18-year-old Maya has vengeance on her mind when she participates in a reality show in which her now-famous ex re-dates all his ex-girlfriends to decide which of them was the one who got away.) sounds to die for! It’s obviously still early, but can you give our readers a little sneak peek at what they can expect?
Yes! So it’s a sapphic rom-com that follows a girl named Maya whose cheating ex-boyfriend (famous by association, now his sibling is dating royalty) becomes the star of a reality show in which he re-dates all of his exes. She joins with a plan: make it through to the final spot, so she can break his heart on national television. But when she finds that winning him over is harder than she anticipated, Maya must team up with the beautiful, funny girl he cheated on her with, Skye—who, it’s worth noting, is less than impressed to find out she was made the unwitting “other woman”—to help each other make it through the series by any means necessary. But as Maya’s feelings for Skye start to turn into something more, she begins to worry: by helping Skye make it to the finale with her, is she unwittingly pushing the girl she’s falling for back into the arms of their scumbag ex?
