Q&A With Caroline Leavitt 

Caroline Leavitt is a New York Times & USA Today Bestselling author of several novels. Caroline has written, Days of Wonder, With or Without You, Cruel Beautiful World, Is This Tomorrow, Pictures of You, Girls In Trouble, Coming Back To Me, Living Other Lives, Into Thin Air, Family, Jealousies, Lifelines, & Meeting Rozzy Halfway.  I am so excited about doing this Q&A with Caroline today! Her novel With or Without You was a Good Morning America Book Pick online & many of her novels have been optioned for film! 

Q: Caroline would you please give a brief description of each of your novels starting with your recent release Days Of Wonder?

A: Days of Wonder asks the question how do we forgive the unforgivable? It’s about two fifteen-year-old NYC kids: Jude, the son of a prominent judge and Ella, the daughter of a struggling single mother who was booted out of her Orthodox Jewish community for being pregnant. Jude’s father wants to break them apart, and the two desperate lovers begin to fantasize about killing Jude’s father (who also is brutal and beats Jude.) It’s all fantasy until it isn’t. But neither can remember what really happened the night of the attempted murder, and Ella goes to prison while Jude, wealthy, goes free. When Ella is early released, she wants just three things: to find Jude who vanished, to find the baby she gave up in prison, and to find out what really happened that night.

With or Without You is about midlife love and what happens when one person changes. Simon is an aging rock and roller living with Stella who is a very practical nurse. They’re arguing and drinking and drugging and, in the morning, Stella is in a coma. When she wakes, she has a totally different personality (which can happen), giving her a strange new artistic talent and the fame that Simon is still desperate for.

Cruel Beautiful World is set in that time when the flower power of the 60s morphed into the Manson years. It’s about a young girl who runs away with her high school teacher to one of the “back to the land” paradises that were popular in the early seventies which turns into a nightmare—her older, more stable sister must try to come to her rescue.

Is This Tomorrow is set in the lockstep 1950s and is about a Jewish divorced single mom with a son, who is targeted for the disappearance of her son’s young friend.

Pictures of You, the book that jump started my career is about a mystery. Two women are fleeing their lives on a foggy road when they crash. A little boy survives and so does the other driver, who falls in love with the little boy and his family. The mystery is what was the little boy’s mom doing in a car with a suitcase and her son who was hiding under a blanket?

Readers can see all the reviews and descriptions on my website, carolineleavitt.com

Q: Where do your ideas for your stories come from? Would you say that some of the characters you created within your novels are loosely taken from bits and pieces of people you know?

A: I always write about what haunts me. Sometimes it’s a relationship. Days of Wonder came about when a friend of mine leaned across the table and said “I have to tell you something, Caroline. I committed a murder when I was 15 and served time for it.” Another novel came about because I saw this haunting painting at a museum and there was a placard under it, explaining how it was a true story. I had to write that story! Sometimes it is about my own family, though they never recognize themselves.

Q: What lessons & emotions do you hope readers learn and feel after reading your novels?

A: I want people to feel. To cry. To feel a glimmer of hope. And I want them to close the book still wondering about the characters and feeling that they are real.

Q: Can you reveal any details of the next novel you are currently writing right now?

A: My new novel is called The Inseparables, and it follows a female friendship through the 1980s in Manhattan through Y2K in 1999. Like all my novels, it’s dark and thorny!

Q: Most of your books are optioned for films which I think is exciting! Has Hollywood started filming and casting for any of the movie versions of your books?

A: Ah, me and Hollywood. I had Madonna going to do her film debut in my early novel Into Thin Air and then that folded. I had a deal with Vera Farmigia and a big producer to do my novel Pictures of You and then Vera, who was going to direct and star, was offered another film with more money, and that was that. I had another book ready for principal photography when the producer ran off with the director! Options rarely become films. I’m happy to get the interest and the options and shopping agreements. I’ve written scripts myself—two were Sundance Screenwriting Lab finalists—but I don’t expect anything!

Q: With or Without You was a Good Morning America Book Pick. Were you starstruck that GMA chose your book to be a Book Pick?

A: I am always starstruck! And always grateful for any accolade. You never know what a book is going to do, and after spending four years immersed in the writing, it is always a little terrifying to wait and see what others think. But honestly even if all you touch is one single reader, that is enough.

Q: If you’ve dealt with self-doubt, unsupportive family and friends when it comes to your writing, how did you deal with it that might help other aspiring authors out there, deal with it? How do you deal with negative reviews and online trolls? 

A: Oh, a perfect question. I was told as a kid that writing was not a career. In high school, a nasty teacher sniffed at me and said, “You don’t write that well, so excuse me.” And in college, a famous author teaching an advanced creative writing class called me into his office to tell me that I would never make it. It made me more determined. I kept sending out things and finally, when I was in my 20s, I entered a prestigious Young Writers Contest through Redbook Magazine. When the big brown envelope came back, I was sure it was a rejection and ripped it up. While gathering the pieces of confetti, I saw something: the word CONGRATULATIONS. I won first prize!  Twenty thousand dollars and flown to NY! I got an agent and book deal immediately and it was the flavor of the year. But it didn’t last.

I bounced around from publisher to publisher after that—some went out of business. And my 9^th novel, Pictures of You, was rejected on contract from a major publisher as not being “special enough.” Of course, I sobbed and went crazy. I cried to everyone, and then a writer friend of mine told me she had a new editor at Algonquin who might want to see the novel. I sent it in, and the editor called me. I said, “I have to be honest. I don’t sell books.” She laughed and said, “You will now.” They took that book and got it into six printings six months before publication. It got on the New York Times Bestseller list and stayed there for three weeks the week of publication! The editor who had rejected the book asked if I wanted to come back to her. (My agent told her no on my behalf.)

But I had had failure before and I was wise enough by then to realize that success doesn’t always mean what you think it means, that writing is a long game.  You cannot know what is going to happen.

I do read my reviews, but I know it is one person’s opinion, and though it’s nice to get raves, and awful to get panned, I just shrug and move on. Not all books are for all people! I also review books for People Magazine, and I have reviewed for the New York Times and the Washington Post. (I am always kind.)

Q: What’s it like having your essays, stories, book reviews and articles appear in Salon, Psychology Today, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, The New York Times Modern Love, Publisher’s Weekly, People, Real Simple, New York Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and numerous anthologies? It sounds amazing! What advice would you give anyone wanting to submit their work to those publications?

A: It is absolutely and totally amazing.  I love connecting with readers and with people and it is the best feeling. Of course, I want to say, every acceptance came after about forty billion rejections. My advice? Write from the heart. Follow their guidelines. And never, ever give up. Really. Keep trying.

Q: You’ve appeared on The Today Show as well as Canadian and German TV! Were you starstruck when you met The Today Show Hosts? What were they like? 

A:  I am starstruck about everything that happens to me. The German TV was the strangest because I was hugely pregnant at the time, and they positioned me and translated the questions. The Today Show was lots of fun because it was for an anthology I was in, and the strangest thing was being in makeup. They said, “We love curly hair, but it has to be TV curly hair.” They sprayed my curls into shellac, put on tons of makeup, and I felt so weird! The hosts were so polished!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!