Author Interview: Sara Goff

Can you describe I Always Cry at Weddings  in a tweet (140 characters or less)?

>>A month till ‘happily ever after’ Ava realizes she’s met everyone’s expectations but her own & ventures out to find herself in NYC #CryatWeddings #ForLoveAndCourage

What are your favorite genres to read?

>>I grew up reading British and American classics. (My mother was my high school English teacher.) So, romance to me was the likes of Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and Little Women. You would’ve thought I’d end up writing historical novels, but starting in my twenties, I switched to reading contemporary fiction. In both my reading and my writing, I’m more issue-focused than I am a romantic. Romance shapes everyone’s life in one way or another, and that comes through in my writing, but I prefer to explore the challenges we face in today’s world and the decisions we make.

How important do you think social media is for authors these days?

>>Social media is critical to authors, and it would take a concerted effort to try and avoid it. My approach is to choose one or two avenues that work best in my network of friends and readers, and dedicate my time, maybe an hour a day, to building up those particular platforms. For example, most of my followers are on Facebook and Twitter. I like Instagram, but that’s more for fun. I only blog for my charity, Lift the Lid, Inc., and I’m real shy about sending mass emails, although that’s something I’d like to get over.

Where do you complete most of your writing? Any certain time of day that you prefer?

>>Where do I complete most of my writing? Ha! Anywhere and everywhere. When I lived in Manhattan for 16 years, I didn’t have children, so my writing looked a little more typical: at a desk in my ninth-floor apartment, where I had views of the historical Charities Building and a French charter school across the way.

Since then I’ve written on the floor of a cabin in Stockholm’s archipelago, my dog and newborn son playing beside me. In London, I ventured out to cafés in Notting Hill and Kensington. Now living in Connecticut, with two boys, ages three and eight, I write standing up in the kitchen, late at night in bed, or wherever I happen to be waiting for them to finish school, sports, and their music lessons. I’ve learned to be flexible and to take whatever hour I can grab.

Are you currently working on another novel?

>>I’m working on the sequel to I Always Cry at Weddings, mostly because my readers, friends and family insisted that I keep going with Ava Larson’s story. Since I Always Cry at Weddings was published in September of 2015, I’ve moved four times. That’s right, four times in two years, from London back to Manhattan, and then three times in Connecticut, finally landing in Westport. Moving is not conducive to writing, or getting anything accomplished other than unpacking…but now that I’m more or less settled down, I’ve been able to pick up the pace on book two.

I will say, the second book feels very different from the first. Ava is four years older and in a totally different phase of life, devoted to teaching dance. I think we all know how much our lives/outlooks/priorities can change from one phase to the next. Ava does not yet have children, nor is she married, which is a source of frustration, but she’s moving in that direction as she finds an alternative path to starting a family.

About I Always Cry at Weddings

Ava Larson is going to bring all the other brides to tears.

Engaged to a wealthy NYC socialite’s son, Ava is ready to set the city abuzz with her glamorous wedding. At least until she realizes her relationship isn’t what it should be. Then, in a move as daring as a red satin dress, she does the unthinkable–she calls it all off and makes a promise to God that from now on, she’ll save sex for marriage.

She’s convinced the future is hers for the taking, especially when an undercover cop promises a new romance…and an unexpected friendship with the homeless guy under her stoop brightens her days.

But when her carefully balanced life teeters out of control, weddings aren’t the only thing to make her cry. Ava has to figure out what life she really wants to live…and what in the world love really means.