Author Spotlight: Carley Fortune
photo by @kyreeeeeeen
Have you ever finished a book and wanted to know more about the author than their quick bio revealed? You’ve come to the right place! Our Author Spotlight features some of your favorite writers and takes you behind the page as they answer personal questions.
This week we’re spotlighting Carley Fortune, New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After!!
1. What inspired you to write Every Summer After?
I like to say that Every Summer After was fueled by righteous indignation and nostalgia. I grew up on a lake in Barry’s Bay, where the book is set. When my parents sold that house over ten years ago, I packed up my childhood bedroom, taking two shoeboxes full of my old diaries back with me to my home in Toronto. There are thirteen journals that I kept from age seven until my early twenties, but I didn’t read them until March of 2020, during one of those early lockdown weekends. My teen years hit me hardest — the unrequited crushes, the feelings of loneliness and unworthiness, the friendship dramas.
That summer, my husband, son, and I spent all of July and August at a cottage near Barry’s Bay. I think the combination of having read my diaries and being at the lake had me thinking a lot about the summers of my youth — swimming, reading on the dock, waiting tables at my family’s restaurant. I was working full-time in journalism, and I got off a very stressful call one day and decided, spur of the moment, to write a book and to finish it by the end of the year. It was something I’d always wanted to do, and at that moment, it felt urgent to reclaim my creativity. I didn’t know exactly what the book would be when I hung up the phone — but I knew I wanted to write about the lake, cottaging, the people we lose touch with but still stick to our ribs, and adolescent friendship and love through adult eyes. I started writing Every Summer After that week.
2. What books are on your nightstand right now?
I’m about to begin Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’ve read all of Taylor’s books and am such a huge admirer of her work. I tell everyone who is interested in modern media or workplace generation clashes to read Iman Hariri-Kia’s A Hundred Other Girls. For lovers of love stories with real depth, I cannot recommend Ashley Poston’s The Dead Romantics highly enough. And I am counting down the days until early January when Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert is released. I’m a big Talia Hibbert fan, and I’m excited to read this one, which is her first YA novel and one of the first books being released under Nicola Yoon’s new imprint.
3. Where is your go-to place to write?
For the past year, I’ve been working at home while my husband looks after the baby. They are not a quiet duo and ours is not a large house. I’m usually holed up on my bed with my noise-cancelling earphones. If the baby is napping, I sit at a desk in front of a large window in our living room. This fall, I’m going to spend a week (alone!!!) at the lake so I can write. I feel so inspired when I’m by the water, so this will be a dream come true.
4. What is your favorite Indie bookstore?
Oh, that’s hard! We have some fabulous ones here in Toronto — Flying Books, Type Books, Queen Books. I adore the children’s bookshop Mabel’s Fables, which is so magical that when you step inside, you feel like you’ve entered the pages of a fairy tale. I lived in Victoria, British Columbia, for a year, and my favorite might be Munro’s Books in that city. It’s so grand — whenever I visited, I felt the tug to write a book.
5. What are three books you’d recommend readers start after Every Summer After?
If you’re looking for something similar, as in an emotion-filled, second-chance romance with dual timelines and a mystery at its core, then I would say: Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary, and of course, the OG, Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren.
6. What would people be surprised to learn about you?
I suffer from chronic migraines — one headache can go on for months and months. I became pregnant with our second child shortly after beginning Every Summer After, and because I couldn’t take my usual medication, I developed a headache that lasted the entire pregnancy, and beyond. I’ve just had my second round of Botox as a migraine treatment, and I have my fingers crossed that it’s going to help.