On this publication day for The Love of Her Lives, I would love to thank everybody involved for all their support and encouragement. I also want to celebrate how that motivation got me to publishing my third multiverse romance novel! I’m so grateful to all of you.
I certainly don’t expect all the people who matter to me to read the book (it’s not everyone’s cup of tea!). That’s all good, but it does mean that they may miss out on my author note and acknowledgments at the end of the novel. So, like last year with book two, I decided to share that section here, by way of thank you.
It also begins with some context about the book and what sparked the story, so I hope you’ll enjoy it. Thanks again for reading!
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
How do you follow a pair of novels in which each protagonist finds herself in an alternate version of her life? By giving your next protagonist multiple alternate versions of her life, I guess!
After my first two books, in each of which there are dual parallel universes, I wanted to write a thematically similar novel to appeal to the many wonderful readers who have supported my work so far. But, of course, it was crucial to take the concept to the next level. Which is to say, something like the first two books, but on steroids!
For this story’s concept, I was inspired by Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and the original inspiration for my debut, Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, as well as the Oscar-winning movie Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. In all three of those incredible stories, the protagonist tries on many different lives, as opposed to merely splitting their life in two, as in Sliding Doors.
I wanted to take that true multiverse idea into my next novel, which I chose to set in Chicago as one of my favorite US cities, and where I was able to take a fantastic research trip to get my locations right. I came upon the idea of an incongruous basement door (which would somehow have a significant, life-altering history to my protagonist) as a personal portal to all her other lives. Initially, the house of this door was going to be some kind of student accommodation at a Chicago-based university. But I soon changed the door location to a family home near the city, when I started building out my characters and realized how crucial the Mason family would be to Millie’s story.
Once that device was in place, it was a whole heap of fun to imagine the infinite possible paths Millie’s life could have taken, some of which could be pretty extreme. After all, we’re arguably all just a hair’s breadth away from ending up as billionaires or on the poverty line (or anything in between); being in a relationship with a loving partner or an abusive narcissist; living in desperate sadness or incandescent joy; and anything else. It takes only the tiniest of butterfly-wing-flaps to cause seismic changes in Millie’s reality, further down the road — she’s even the unwitting creator of a futuristic technology that creates a sci-fi-like alt-reality. (And, for me, it only took one overly vivid dream to turn me into an author — for more that story, see [here]!)
People often ask me about my process, and to be honest, I’ve only just figured it out. I’ve always been a plotter, and will set out the story from start to finish in chapter-sentences before I start —that hasn’t changed. But The Love of Her Lives was the first novel I’ve written in what I’d call a regular, repeatable way. After all, my debut novel took several years and incarnations, given that I was new to all this and made many horrible errors. Conversely, the second book was written while I was furloughed from my day job in 2020, and the first draft only took five weeks, writing full-time. Whereas this third one, written at a steady pace on the weekends while working full-time at my new job, was completed in just under a year, start to finish — January to November 2023. The initial draft was complete by the end of May; the rest was my own editing and rewriting, then back and forth with beta readers and my agent, and then to the publisher and some more changes, all of which took another six months. So I now feel like I can complete a book in a year, which is reassuring. By the way, anybody curious about my writing process and publishing journey can follow my blog at cjconnollybooks.com.
Helping me along the way, as ever, have been my fabulous agent, Victoria Skurnick of Levine Greenberg Rostan in New York, and the whole team at my publishing house in London, UK — Joffe Books — especially their wonderful publishing director, Kate Lyall Grant. Warmest thanks to all of them for making me a happy and well-taken-care-of author, in an industry where I know that isn’t always the case!
I remain so grateful to the community of writers and readers who support each other, and have bolstered me in creating this novel, as well as others. Particular thanks this time to my NY Writing Gals group — Jen McGuire (a brilliant memoirist and essayist, and you should read her memoire Nest immediately), Erin Ortiz, and Heather Jacobsen — I really appreciate you all feeding me wine and chips in the Catskills to help me get “draft zero” across the finish line! And to my small but mighty group of beta readers, who challenged everything that was wrong with draft three — Jemma Wood, Shona McGlashan, Jackie Estacio, and Melissa Senger — this is a much better novel because of you.
My unending gratitude, as ever, to my personal support system who help so much just by being there, loving me, and being excited for this publishing ride I’m on. Special love to my girls Shona, Sarah B, Libby, Becky, Jo, Rach, Sarah J, and Nic A, who are spread far and wide, so I always have besties wherever I am.
Love forever to my brother Rich and his family, and my sister Alice and her family, especially the boys, Oscar and Felix — my great loves in any life! And, of course, to Mum and Ian, who took their chance and made their own reality the best possible version of itself. Thanks for inspiring me every day with your own love story.
CJ Connolly 