Susan Kietzman | Grace and Bradley Who?

People often ask me where I get the ideas for my books. And I wish I had a
response that involved dreams or visions or muses, but I don't. Because I write
contemporary commercial fiction, set in Small Town, America, ideas come at me
every day – and often in the most mundane ways. I read a newspaper article. I
have a conversation with a friend or a stranger. I hear a song on the car radio.
Once the seed is planted, my mind starts to sort through the myriad ways of
telling the story.

A quick tour of my previous books will help illustrate the process. My first book, THE GOOD LIFE, is a story about the definition of success, as seen through the eyes of a wealthy, mid-western, CEO's wife. A CHANGING MARRIAGE is a look at what can happen in a marriage after the honeymoon is over and life's challenges test love's limits. The Summer Cottage is a novel about competition, sibling rivalry, and the strength of the family bond, set in a beach house on the Connecticut shoreline. And EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY parses what mid-life crisis looks like for three, recent empty-nesters looking for a new identity. IT STARTED IN JUNE follows this same pattern, with one significant difference. Protagonists Grace Trumbull and Bradley Hanover have never been part of my life, outside of the pages I wrote. All of my other protagonists have come more directly from experience – from living in a corporate town in Michigan; from being married for a few decades; from spending part of every summer at my mom's cottage; and from feeling the indecision about the purpose of life when my boys left home. Grace and Bradley? I had no idea who they were until I chose them to explore how two people come together when they might be better off apart.

We all know these couples, the mismatched lovers who appear to have nothing in
common. And we wonder – at least I do – what is keeping them together. Grace is
forty-two, divorced, childfree by choice, and one of the most valued employees
at a media relations company. Bradley is thirty, romantically frustrated, born
into privilege, and just beginning to make his mark professionally. A work
assignment and an impulsive passionate evening fuse their disparate worlds. An
unexpected pregnancy prolongs what could easily have been a six-week affair.

So, why did I choose Grace and Bradley to tell this story rather than more familiar characters? One/out of curiosity, I wanted to write about a non-traditional relationship. And since women often date and marry older men, and men often pair up with younger women, I decided the woman would be older than the man by enough years to matter. Two, I wanted the male character to be an emerging adult, rather than a fully-molded man, to give credence to his flexibility and uncertainty. Three, I wanted to be inside the head of a woman who has no interest in motherhood. And four – I wanted to dump my suppositions, assumptions, prejudgments, and observations into a blender and push liquefy!

Telling a familiar story – the coupledom of dissimilar people – with unfamiliar
characters, allows the reader to examine this common phenomenon less
dismissively. With the exfoliation of Grace's and Bradley's age difference,
their drastically different childhoods, and their divergent personas, one is
able to determine if their core values are in sync and, futher, whether or not
it really matters. Powerful obstacles block the road to easy love for Grace and
Bradley. What they must determine is if hard love is worth the effort.