New York Times bestselling author Carley Fortune discusses the character relationships at the heart of her new novel, Meet Me at the Lake.
Carley Fortune is the New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After. She is an award-winning Canadian journalist who’s worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, and Toronto Life. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.
Photo by Jenna Marie Wakani, 2021
In this post, Carley discusses the character relationships at the heart of her new novel, Meet Me at the Lake, her advice for other writers, and more!
Name: Carley Fortune
Literary agent: Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary
Book title: Meet Me at the Lake
Publisher: Penguin Random House, Berkley
Release date: May 2, 2023
Genre/category: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance
Previous titles: Every Summer After
Elevator pitch for the book: Fern and Will meet as strangers in their 20s, spend a life-altering 24 hours together in the city, and make a pact to meet one year later at Fern’s family resort. Fern shows; Will doesn’t. Ten years later, Fern’s back home running the resort, the place is in disarray, her ex is the manager, and in walks Will with an offer to help.
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What prompted you to write Meet Me at the Lake?
I came up with the setting—a classic lakeside resort in Ontario’s Muskoka region—during a bout of postpartum insomnia. That night I also saw Fern, who’s come home following the death of her mom, and I envisioned exploring her relationship with her mother through a series of diary entries her mother wrote the summer she became pregnant. The love story came next.
I wanted to do the exact opposite of what I did with Every Summer After, where the characters meet at 13 and have years to grow close and fall in love. In Meet Me at the Lake, Fern and Will spend just one magical day together. Could I build a meaningful connection in such a short time?
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
We landed on the idea in June of 2021. Meet Me at the Lake was always about the unexpected paths we find ourselves on and the people we take that journey with. But the shape did change over the course of writing. The book is told in alternating timelines—a present-day summer and 24 hours in the past when Will and Fern first meet.
In my first draft, the whole thing was set at the resort, and in the past, Will and Fern were 18. That timeline went in the trash when I wrote my second draft, so now we meet Will and Fern after they’ve graduated from university, and they spend the day in Toronto rather than on a canoe trip gone wrong. Rewriting that portion of the book was the most fun I had with this novel, and having Will and Fern be in a different life stage better served the themes I set out to explore.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
My publishing crash course took place with the release of Every Summer After last year. It was all new to me! One thing that was unexpected—though maybe it shouldn’t have been—is that there’s a moment when your book stops being just yours. You turn the world you’ve built and characters you’ve created over to the readers, and it has a life of its own. That’s both scary and exciting, and now I’m learning how to preserve my own relationship with the work.
I’m tremendously grateful to my readers and humbled by the excitement for Meet Me at the Lake. I hope it lives up to their expectations. But at the end of the day, I’m so freaking proud of this book, and that’s what I hold on to when I’m anxious about how it will be received.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Yes! Every Summer After came together so quickly. I wrote it in four months, did a round of edits with my agent, and then did one or two minor revisions with my editors over the course of a few weeks. Meet Me at the Lake was a beast in comparison.
I experienced so much self-doubt and imposter syndrome while writing the first draft, and then when I got my editor’s feedback, I knew I’d have to throw half of it in the garbage and take a scalpel to the rest based on those changes. I felt like I’d done a bad job.
But now, after having gone through the revisions, I’m so much more confident and trust the process. I went into my third book telling myself it was going to be a mess, and that the mess was the point. It’s been the most fun I’ve had on a manuscript.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
An escape. It’s one of the reasons why setting is so important to me. I want you to feel like you’re spending an exhilarating 24 hours in Toronto with young Will and Fern, and I want you to be right there with 30-something Will and Fern at Brookbanks Resort, with its wonderful cast of characters. It’s a book you can read when you’re relaxing by a body of water, or when you want to pretend that you are.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I have two pieces of advice, and they’re both kind of annoying.
The first is for people who dream of writing a book, and that is that you have to write a book in order to have written a book. Writing a novel was always a goal of mine, but I assumed I’d never do it. The trick, it turned out, was committing to finishing a draft and to not stop until I finished.
The second is to exercise, or if that’s not an option available to you, to have a practice that gives your brain a break (coloring books, cross-stitch, puzzles, etc.). Running (and walking when I’m not able to run) is essential to my editorial process. It’s where I come up with many of my ideas, how I shake off the cobwebs when I’m feeling stuck, and how I cope with much of the anxiety that comes with being a writer and author.
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