OMG great question! That was sooo cringy to read about, I wonder what it was like to write about and why that particular twist?
Yes I agree, I was sooo shocked she didnât keep Jason - I was like âreally?!â I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with her for it too.
Also, when she realized, I believe with Bohai (sorry itâs been a minute since I finished the book) that they can just live their own lives separate from each other and she can stop cycling through husbands and perhaps meet the right one in every day life, why didnât she stick with that instead of continuing to go back to the attic? That part I didnât understand. Personally, I wouldâve just made a pact with Bohai that we are friends but weâll lead our lives separately as we normally would and see what happens, rather than keep taking chances on the attic.
1 Like
Oh I love this question, I havenât been asked anything like this before! Honestly, I think I had an easier time of it than some writers because of the weird context of all the sex. The sex scenes, such as they are, are kind-of about how Lauren is negotiating this version of the world, the situations she finds herself in as she pretends that itâs all familiar, her expanding sense of the sort of lives she might want to live. Theyâre not particularly sexy sex scenes, right? I think the bookâs not quite what romance calls âclosed doorâ, because we do sometimes learn some pretty clear details about whatâs going on - like, when my mother-in-law read the book, it definitely occurred to me that she would read the line âunusually pendulous ballsâ. But the more explicit details are usually just a line or at most a paragraph or two, a couple of specifics to evoke the whole plus a general sense of how Lauren feels. There arenât any scenes where weâre with the characters for four or five pages through all the touches and gasps and moments of connection.
I did think about whether I could or should go into more detail about some of the sex, but I couldnât figure out a way to do it that didnât make those husbands feel much more important than the others, and throw the balance out, shift the general atmosphere - and the book was already on the long side, I definitely wouldnât have had space for, you know, eight full detailed sex scenes!
The swinging night with Toby was actually one of the easiest to write, because I knew when started that I wanted the sex to be just really nothing-y. Clearly not a good fit, in a way that showed us something about both their personalities. I first came up with the idea for that scene because I wanted a clear way to show that Toby wasnât Laurenâs perfect partner just waiting for her to notice. Often when you have a comedy with a straight woman dealing with some sort of romantic conundrum, and she has a straight male friend who is just always there, you know where itâs going, right? By the end sheâll realise her attraction to him and theyâll figure out that they were meant to be together all along. Which is often a great plotline, but in this particular case I wanted Lauren to be able to have a friend who was a guy whoâs attracted to women who we donât read as potential romantic interest - and it turned out that the funniest way to make that work was (a) to have the guy be in a clearly really solid relationship, but also (b), just to be on the safe side, have them hook up and it just be incredibly disappointing. So writing that scene kind-of freed Toby up to be a good friendly constant in her life. And it wasnât too embarrassing to write because I knew that as soon as it was over thereâd be a new husband and nobody except Lauren would remember it had happened!
Yeah good question! I think itâs a tricky one because thereâs no single obvious reason, itâs a lot of contributing factors that are sort-of scattered through that section.
They clearly shouldnât stay living together, I think - for a start, theyâre attracted to each other and if youâre living together itâs easy for that to spill over into something else. Plus Bohai hates London and doesnât want to stay for the whole of the winter, let alone the whole of his life. And theyâre both interested in finding a romantic partner, I think, which has got to be a challenge to do when you live with your ex. So, no cohabiting. In theory I guess they could have divorced and Bohai could have returned to Australia without resetting the world - but I think that would be very high stress for Lauren, because whatever she does from that point onwards to build a life, itâs always possible that Bohai could just decide that heâs had enough of the life heâs living, come to her house, climb into the attic, and reset everything for her, outside her control. Plus, I think at this point neither of them are really willing to give up on the possibilities of the attic, the idea that something wonderful and magical might be just around the corner.
Plus, on a more practical level - theyâd been having a very extravagant few months that involved Bohai in particular spending WAY more money than he was earning! So by the time he went up into the attic he was very much in debt.
My dad lives in Scotland and Iâd been over to the UK to see him a few times, and Iâd really enjoyed it (even though I usually went in the Australian summer holidays - which is winter in Scotland of course). Plus I was dating an English guy. So I figured: well, Iâd give it a go for a year or two, see how it went. And it turned out I really loved London! And it was great for the sort of work I was doing as well - lots of museums and galleries and cultural venues and weird games things going on.
Nowadays my dadâs in Scotland, I have a Scottish brother whoâs in Scotland too, and two Australian brothers one of whom is in Scotland (coincidentally!), the otherâs in Italy. My mumâs still in Australia along with a bunch of other relatives. So weâre pretty spread out.
Well, if someoneâs going to ask that question, itâs usually me! And I love your answers, Holly! I agree they werenât too sexy, but definitely enough to make you chuckle. Did your mother-in-law comment on the âballsâ?
1 Like
She did not, thankfully!
In terms of how long it took: well, I guess I started writing it in March or April 2020, and it found a publisher in something like April 2023. I wasnât working on it the whole time - an hour or so a day on the first draft during 2020, not much during 2021, then in 2022 I came back to it and started pulling it together properly, mostly alongside other work but there were a few months in late 2022 where it was the big project I was working on.
I kind-of already had an agent, who had offered to represent me when a childrenâs publisher wanted to publish a book version of a card game Iâd designed - that project had fallen through but I sent the novel to her hoping she hadnât forgotten me completely. She absolutely wasnât expecting a novel from me, but fortunately she liked it and thought she could sell it, so I had a much more straightforward time finding an agent than the usual! I then had another couple of months where I made further changes based on her suggestions. And then she sent it out to editors in I think March. So it all happened pretty quickly.
There was still some work to do after it sold, making changes based on conversations with my editors - that was maybe three months of work, spread out over a six month period or so?
Greetings Holly! I have not read your book, but based on what Iâm hearing here, I quickly ordered from my library in Ohio. Iâm always looking for book club books that are a bit different and if there is some levity, that is good.
Have you heard from groups who have discussed The Husbands?
Iâm still amazed at your dedication and determination to see the project through.
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer or was that an outgrowth of your game design?
Where did Laurenâs character come from? I know you said that her gaining different husbands grew out of peoplesâ experiences w/ dating apps. Was she a composite of people you know, or in some ways autobiographical, or did she just appear to you? How did she change as you wrote her story?
What kind of support system do you have? Do you mostly rely on family, or are there other authors who help you with your work? Or is writing something you reserve for yourself, and you only show others your work when youâre mostly done?
How involved did you get in the creation of the audio version of The Husbands? Are there any screenplays in the works?
Iâd love to know more about your game development. Would you mind telling us more about that? Which one are you the most proud of? (My favorite is â99 Tiny Games.â)
For BookBrowsers, more info on Hollyâs games can be found on her website: Games â Holly Gramazio.
Oooh, hope you enjoy it!
And yeah, Iâve heard from a few book groups! Iâve actually done zoom calls with a bunch of them, which is always good fun. At the moment Iâm mostly not taking more zoom discussions over summer while I try to get Book 2 done, but the info is here with links to a couple of possible discussion guides that my publisher put out, in case those are useful for anyone.
Ah thank you! Yeah that was a really fun part of writing, just thinking of every possible twist and problem and unexpected thing that I could, and figuring out how to pace them and what order to put them in!
Honestly, I donât think I had a bit I really hated writing. By the time I was doing the nine millionth check for typos Iâll admit I was very sick of the whole thing, but there wasnât a scene that stood out as a particular slog. I did have to have a few attempts at all the scenes of getting reluctant husbands to go up in the attic - they were a challenge to make hang together logistically and emotionally and within the wider context.
I once heard Sally Hepworth say that all characters are basically one third the writer, one third a person they know, and one third made up from nowhere, which I enjoyed as a framework! I donât think itâs exactly true for me but thereâs definitely something relatable in there.
For Lauren particularly, the main thing I took from myself is that Iâm quite bad at making decisions. I worry a lot about getting something irrevocably wrong. I have a hard time settling on a job, for example - obviously, as my âoh I design four different types of game and also now Iâve written a novelâ shows - or even choosing an ice cream flavour. So that forms part of the heart of Lauren. For her that means that actually the attic is quite joyful at first in a way it might not be for other people - that she doesnât have to worry about getting something wrong because she can just reset the world if she doesnât like the consequences. But as things go on longer and longer it makes it harder for her to figure out what to do and how to get out of the neverending loop of ânew husband, new husbandâ. In other respects sheâs not much like me - I think Iâm probably more similar to her friend Elena - but that difficulty with decisions is definitely there.
That core trait also informed the sort of relationships she would have - a bossy best friend, an ex who hates almost everything, Michael who tries so hard to get everything right, Zach whoâs so easygoing, the way she likes Carter so much because the way he sees her helps recontextualise how she feels about herself and her personality - and so a lot of other details about her kind-of developed while I was working out what different sort of lives she might have lived, the edges of who she could be.
Iâm not particularly aware of having taken inspiration for her from specific people, although Iâm sure I must haveâŚ! I did think a little about friends who seem very consistent in their day-to-day lives regardless of their situation, versus friends who seem to change their habits and hobbies a lot when theyâre in different jobs or relationships, and whatâs at the core of that difference. (I donât think either of those things are bad, but theyâre quite distinct ways of being in the world!)
For the audio, I was sent samples of a few different performers and asked what I thought - a couple of them were really strong, but in the end of those we went with Miranda Raison, whoâs great, because sheâs so experienced and great at the confused humour of it, and also she has a bunch of accents that sheâs great at. She did the whole audiobook for Lessons in Chemistry in an American accent(!!!), so we knew sheâd be able to do Carter. And she had a decent Australian accent too, which is important to me because obviously Iâm Australian and so is one of the most important husbands in the book! Itâs actually a surprisingly unusual thing to be good at - almost everyone who thinks they can do an Australian accent is terrible at it, like just bafflingly bad, to the ear of actual Australians. Iâve seen television shows where someone is meant to be an Australian and their accent is so bad that Iâve taken it as evidence that theyâre gonna turn out to be an undercover spy or something - but no, the accent is just that bad. (You know who has a shockingly great Australian accent, actually, is Kate Winslet. Absolutely incredible in The Dressmaker.)
So anyway, we went with Miranda and she was so great, Iâm so happy with how it turned out!
And oh, about screenplays - yes!!! A24 and Apple TV+ are working on it at the moment! A lot of the planning is still under wraps or in development, but the idea is itâll be a limited series. Theyâve got Juno Temple on board to play Lauren, Craig Gillespie as lead director, and Miriam Battye, whoâs an amazing playwright and TV writer, to lead on the script. Itâs looking so good, I am so excited.
I canât wait to see the screenplay! Thatâs going to be fun.
Speaking of âBook 2,â can you share a little about it?