Michelle New, thank you for crying when you read the breakup scene. Not gonna lie, it makes me a little proud.
CCL’s,
#becausecats
Other Work by Jana Aston
WRONG
I have a history of picking the wrong guy. Gay? Player? Momma’s boy? Check, check and check.
Now I can’t stop fantasizing about one of the customers at the coffee shop I work at between classes. It’s just a harmless crush, right? It’s not like I ever see this guy outside of the coffee shop. It’s not like I’m going to see him while attempting to get birth control at the student clinic. While wearing a paper gown. While sitting on an exam table. Because he’s the doctor. Shoot. Me.
But what if, for once, the man I’ve had the dirtiest, most scandalous fantasies about turned out to be everything but wrong?
Notes
These notes are filled with spoilers about the book, so if for some reason you’ve skipped here to read them, don’t!
Everly. Holy shit she was so much fun to write. Do you want a little backstory? Originally, I thought Everly ended up with Finn. Actually, let’s go even farther back. I think Everly’s original name was Jessa. I wanted a J name to go with Jensen, Jessa Jensen. But, as I wrote I was afraid that Jessa was a little too close to Jana, and that was weird. So it had to go.
When I wrote WRONG, I worked in a ton of names of people I knew. Probably 30 names. And one of the people I wanted to include was my great friend Beverly Tubb. Bev was originally a nurse in the exam room during Sophie’s appointment at the student clinic. And as some of you caught, when I changed it, I made a huge ass typo. So the nurse in that room is called both Bev and Marie. Oops.
Anyway, I had this epiphany at some point while writing WRONG that I’d drop the B from Beverly & I’d name this girl Everly. And I knew even then that Everly’s full name was Beverly Cleary Jensen, because her parents named her after Beverly Cleary. And she’d have a brother named Eric Carle Jensen, named after Eric Carle. So that random bit of information I knew about Everly a long long time ago. Those names were very purposeful, because I adored reading Beverly Cleary and Eric Carle as a child.
So that’s how Everly came about. Initially, I was only focused on Sophie & Luke. I wasn’t setting WRONG up to have a best friend that I could write about later. But Everly was just so much fun. So I started to think, well maybe. Maybe IF I wrote another book, someday, it could be about Everly. But by then I was pretty far into WRONG. And Everly had already made it clear she believed Professor Finn Camden was the one for her.
So Everly was chasing Finn in the background as I wrote Sophie & Luke’s story and I began to worry. How was I going to write Everly’s story? I don’t read books where the girl chases the guy. I don’t like it. I like alpha males that walk in & look at the girl & say MINE. That’s what I like to read. So did I want to write a book about Everly chasing Finn? Not really. And then, poof, I knew Finn had a brother. And I knew the brother was THE ONE. The brother would take one look at Everly & think, she’s mine. I realized that Everly would end up with Sawyer at that moment in WRONG when Sophie & Everly are in the coffee shop after Thanksgiving. Sophie asks Everly about her weekend and if she made any headway with Professor Camden and for the first time, Everly falters, unsure what is going on. Because I knew that’s where the books would cross & in RIGHT she’s just met Sawyer & he’s driven her home from Connecticut. And she is very very confused. But truthfully, prior to that moment in WRONG I did think Everly ended up with Finn.