Melissa Senate Questions To Ask Before Marrying

This week my guest is Melissa Senate, author of seven novels, including her debut, the bestselling See Jane Date. Questions To Ask Before Marrying certainly has an intriguing premise!

A very popular New York Times article lists fifteen questions couples should ask (or wish they had) before marrying. Ruby Miller and her fiancé, Tom Truby, have questions 1 to 14 almost covered. It's question 15 that has the Maine schoolteacher stumped: Is their relationship strong enough to withstand challenges?

Challenges like…Ruby's twin sister, Stella. The professional muse, flirt and face reader thinks Ruby is playing it safe and will die of boredom before her first anniversary.

Challenges like…sexy maverick teacher Nick McDermott, Ruby's secret longtime crush, who confesses his feelings for her at her own engagement party.

I had some questions to ask Melissa.

Is there an event in your writing career to date which has really made you laugh?

There’s a pretty funny typo on the first page of Questions To Ask Before Marrying, on the “Praise” page. Says: ….the book has Senate’s trademark quirky pacing…” It’s supposed to be quick pacing. Quick, people! But let’s see, in general, I’d say writing is not the funniest of the professions. There are amazing highs and blechy lows, and lots of funny-strange moments, but not a ton of funny-ha ha moments.

Are you an outliner or do you prefer to let a novel develop organically?

I am a serious outliner. I love to outline. I write a detailed synopsis, then break that into chunks, then into chapters, then into scenes, all the while having my last line already formed. I write to that last line. I need a road map to write or I lose sense of the structure, of the threads, of the themes, of the emotional components. I lose it, period. I definitely take detours and often the road less traveled by me as an author, but I stick pretty closely to the synopsis I first wrote.

If you have a picture of a reader who'd particularly enjoy QTABM in your mind's eye, what does she (he?) look like? More importantly, what are they doing right now!

Hmmm, fun question. I think any woman would relate to Questions To Ask Before Marrying in some way—at its heart, it’s about the relationship between siblings who’ve never seen eye to eye and who are stuck in a car for three-thousand miles, both of them having major life crises at the moment, such as agreeing to marry one man when she’s in love with another, and searching for the father of her unborn baby without even knowing his first name. What these two women need and want and hope for are pretty universal. For some reason I have a picture of a reader of mine drinking a Diet Coke and reading my book on a chaise lounge, while her black pug, Lucille, scampers around. I have no idea where this came from.