How Jennifer Dupee Sits Down & Writes
'The Little French Bridal Shop' will leave you feeling hopeful in hard times.
Is a lie of omission still a lie? Larisa Pearl didn't think so and it got her into a heap of trouble.
When Larisa Pearl returns to her small seaside hometown in Massachusetts to manage her beloved great aunt's estate, she's a bit of an emotional mess. She's just lost her job and her boyfriend and she's struggling to cope with her mother's failing health. When she passes by the window of The Little French Bridal Shop, a beautiful ivory satin wedding gown catches her eye...
Now, to the delight of everyone in town, Larisa is planning her wedding. She has her dress, made floral arrangements, and set the date. The only thing missing is the groom. How did this happen? All she did was try on a dress and let her fantasy take flight. But word about her upcoming nuptials has reached the ears of Jack Merrill. As teenagers, they spent time together on her great aunt's estate, building a friendship that could have become something more had they chosen different paths.
Lost in a web of her own lies, Larisa must first face some difficult truths, including her mother's fragile future, before she can embrace her family, straighten out her life, and open her heart to finding love.
The Little French Bridal Shop is great for fans of Jennifer Weiner or Rebecca Serle.
We talked with Jennifer about finding inspiration in nature, being fascinated by old houses, and not feeling pressure to offer a happy-ever-after.
Q: Where do you like to write the most?
My cozy office (which I share with the washer and dryer!). I’m grateful to have a room of my own.
Q: When do you like to write the most?
9:00 am -noon (when I’m not working!)
Q: When it comes to drafting, do you prefer writing on a computer or freehand?
When I’m starting a new project, I tend to suss things out by freehand. I usually have a notebook where I collect images, phrases, ideas. I really let this all gestate for some time and I keep adding things along the way until I begin to get a picture of where I’m going. Once I have a strong sense of that, I transfer to the computer.
Q: Are you more of a plotter or pantser?
At heart, I’m a pantser, but I’ve become much more of a plotter. Software like Scrivener has really helped me collect my scribblings as I go along and it’s empowered me to organize my material into an outline of sorts.
Q: Stephen King has a great line in On Writing that says “the scariest moment is always right before you start. After that, things can only get better.” That scary pre-start moment often inspires procrastination in writers. Suddenly, you have to clean your entire house, do the laundry and play Candy Crush for an hour before you can actually start writing. Is there anything you need to do before you can actually sit down and work?
I really hate to work with lots of clutter around me. So if my office is a mess, I take the time to organize everything so that I can start. And I love a good cup of black coffee to get going.
Q: Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what music? Is your choice of music inspired by the project you’re working on?
I almost always write in silence.
Q: Some writers believe you have to write every single day. Is that true of your process? How often do you write/how long for each session?
In theory, I agree with this tenet, but I don’t always practice it. Still, I try to “lay a brick” or “string a bead” each day or at least read over the pages from the day before so the story is still on my mind. I find that when I do this, my mind is thinking about the work and thoughts/ideas will pop into my head at some point during the rest of the day even if I’m not actively putting words on the page.
Ideally, I’d like to work for about 2-3 hours each day. But I still work full-time, so my schedule doesn’t always allow for this.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give an aspiring author?
You can’t go around it, you have to go through it. By that, I mean that honing your craft takes time and effort and the only way to improve your writing is to continue to write and learn and get better.
Q: Where do you normally find story inspiration?
Setting is really central to my narratives so I often find inspiration in nature. If I have the setting, the characters start to arrive.
Q: The Little French Bridal Shop is a romance, but it feels like more of a comeback story or a welcome home story for Larisa Pearl. There's parental illness, break-ups, running from the truth. What made you want to explore these deeper subjects within it?
Yes, to me the story is about Larisa’s awakening and transformation. In the opening pages of the novel, she purchases a wedding dress though she has no groom. She’s grappling with her mother’s failing health and as the novel progresses, she perpetuates the rumor that she’s getting married. She is in a state of disillusionment and confusion; she’s not thinking clearly. In short, she’s not quite herself. I recognized this state as it was something I deeply felt when I was grappling with my own mother’s illness from breast cancer. As I began to delve into the writing, the story of Larisa’s deceptions became a vehicle to explore the feelings of loss of identity, disorientation, and confusion that consumes a child (even an adult child) who becomes a caretaker of an ailing parent.
Q: The setting of Elmhurst was so vivid. It felt like the house was a main character - how did you go about writing this larger-than-life home into the story? Was there a real-life inspiration behind Elmhurst?
I’ve always had a fascination with old houses and the stories that come with them. When my husband and I first started dating, I discovered his love for old houses as well. We often took neighborhood walks down nearby Elmhurst Road so that we could admire a historic house there. Several years later, not long after we got married, the house went on the market and we made a bid. Unfortunately, we were outbid by other buyers, but the house always stayed in my mind and as I embarked on my novel, I named my fictional house “Elmhurst” in tribute to that house on Elmhurst Road. My fictional house looked very different from the actual house we’d admired, but from the beginning, I had a very strong vision of it—a stately brick colonial perched on a hill above a small seaside town. I grew up on the North Shore of Boston near the coastal towns of Manchester-by-the-Sea and Beverly Farms. These small communities have an old world feel to them, a sense of the bygone, and their shores are graced by stately houses originally built as summer homes for the Boston Brahmin. It was clear to me that my fictional Elmhurst belonged in one of these towns.
Q: The story doesn't really have your typical happily-ever-after. What do you hope readers take away from this?
I never felt the pressure to converge on a “happily ever after ending.” Even though the book has some romance to it, to me the plot really felt like an education plot. Larisa really needed to learn how to be comfortable with herself by the end of the book and she needed to learn how to face her mother’s failing health. In doing so, she opens herself to the future possibility of romance.
Though the book tackles some difficult subjects, it’s ultimately a very hopeful book. I think readers will come away from it with a sense of renewal and a promise that when times are hard, we can find relief in facing our vulnerabilities and connecting with those we love.
Q: What's the last book you read that kept you captivated?
I was riveted by Julia Phillips’ Disappearing Earth. I am also currently really enjoying Tracey Garvis Graves’ The Girl He Used to Know.
Grab your copy of The Little French Bridal Shop at Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, or Bookshop.org. Happy reading!
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