Get to Know Our Friend Carley Fortune

A Deeper Dive With Our Most Recent Guest

A Conversation with Carley Fortune

Her are some great insights from Carley that were not covered in our on-air interview, which you can WATCH or LISTEN to now!

What was it like revisiting Charlie, Percy, and Sam in Barry’s Bay?
Writing this book and spending time with these characters is like going back home. I grew up on the lake in Barry’s Bay, and there is so much of myself in Sam and Percy. Plus, Charlie is my favourite character to write. He’s a provocateur but there’s so much more to him than that—and we only see glimpses of it in Every Summer After, so it was satisfying to be able to give readers a fuller picture. I want readers to fall in love him the same way Alice and Nan do.

Whereas Every Summer After is a book based on my childhood living in cottage country, One Golden Summer draws on what the lake means to me as an adult. Like me, Charlie and Alice both live and work in the city. Their time in Barry’s Bay allows them to step outside of their busy adult lives in Toronto, to have time to reflect on where they’ve been, where they are, and where they want to go.

Readers have been waiting for Charlie’s story! What was it like exploring such a beloved character’s love story?
I started thinking about Charlie’s story as soon as I finished writing Every Summer After, well before the book was published. But after the book came out, I received so many messages from readers wanting his happily ever after. I’ve been approached by fans at events with pitches for who he should end up with. And I’ve also heard from readers who think he’s a villain and totally irredeemable. Readers have their own relationship with the characters in that book, but so do I. It was crucial for me to set aside any perceived reader expectations and tell the story I wanted to tell. That meant finding a way back to Barry’s Bay through a compelling protagonist with her own journey. I spent much more time figuring out who Alice was and developing her as a character before I began writing than I have with any other book. I auditioned a bunch of different main characters—even went as far as writing 11,000 words then trashing it—before settling on Alice. It was like the literary equivalent of The Bachelor. But I wasn’t just trying to find the right fit for Charlie. I was looking for a heroine with the kind of emotional depth and complexity that made me want to better understand her. The last thing I wanted was to write a book that pandered to the Every Summer After fandom. If you’ve read ESA, I hope you’ll be delighted by revising these characters and Barry’s Bay. But my hope is that One Golden Summer stands on its own.

How was your writing experience different for this novel, pivoting from dual timelines to one continuous storyline?