Happy Wednesday, friends! I’m delighted this week to bring you my interview with Brina Starler, author of the brand-new romance novel, Anne of Manhattan. As you may have already surmised, it’s a reimagining of the characters from Anne of Green Gables, and of course, a romance between Anne Shirley and her nemesis slash true love slash one of only two good LM Montgomery love interests ever, Gilbert Blythe. In Anne of Manhattan, Anne and Gilbert are grad students in New York City who are forced to work together on their thesis project, which involves mentoring the youth. Brina joined me to chat about the book, what’s relatable about Anne Shirley, and whether the bananas thing is true. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below, or download it directly to take with you on the go!
You can find Anne of Manhattan wherever books are sold! You can find Brina on Twitter and Instagram, and at her website.
You can get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. As a brand new feature, you can also follow me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Storygraph! If you like what we do, support us on Patreon. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcript
Gin Jenny 00:37
Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys. I’m Gin Jenny, and I’m here today with author Brina Starler, who wrote the new romance novel Anne of Manhattan. Brina, welcome to the podcast.
Brina Starler 00:49
Thank you. How are you?
Gin Jenny 00:51
I’m what my friend calls quarantine fine. How are you?
Brina Starler 00:55
Yeah, same.
Gin Jenny 00:58
Well, would you start by telling us a little bit about the book?
Brina Starler 01:01
So Anne of Manhattan is based on Anne of Green Gables, the iconic book and series by L.M. Montgomery, which came out in, I believe it was, 1918. So I’ve changed it a little bit. I took the bare bones of the characters and wrote them a modern story, how I would imagine Anne and Gilbert Blythe, a boy that she’s had a rivalry with her whole life, and then her best friends and all that, and I sort of took the basic of the original storylines and reworked it.
Gin Jenny 01:40
Yeah, I noticed that you did– I mean, spoilers, I guess for anyone who hasn’t read Anne of Green Gables yet, but I noticed you didn’t kill Matthew. Thank you.
Brina Starler 01:48
Yeah, well, I have had, too many times–because I’ve read the original books so many times. I can’t even tell you. I’m such a huge fan–and every single time, I ugly cry.
Gin Jenny 02:00
It’s devastating.
Brina Starler 02:01
It breaks my heart. And for people who don’t know who Matthew is, it’s her adoptive uncle sorta, I guess you would say? I think of Marilla more as her adoptive mother in that way. And then so I think of Matthew, Marilla’s brother, as her adoptive uncle.
Gin Jenny 02:17
Yeah, definitely. And he’s the first person who really clearly likes her a lot. And like immediately.
Brina Starler 02:22
He has big like dad vibes, even though he’s the uncle. It’s kind of like that. “She’s my angel and she could do no wrong.” He always indulges her, and I think he probably was the first person in her life who just unconditionally loved her.
Gin Jenny 02:39
I’m getting teary just thinking about Matthew dying. It’s so awful. Really. Thank you for sparing us.
Brina Starler 02:44
Yeah, it really is heartbreaking. So I couldn’t do it. I did not have it in me. I couldn’t do it.
Gin Jenny 02:51
Well, tell me about your first encounter with Anne of Green Gables. Did you read those books as a kid?
Brina Starler 02:55
I have read them so many times. I honestly couldn’t tell you the first time. I think I was a young teen. I went through a phase where I was obsessed with Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and The Secret Garden, all those sort of similar classics. Little House on the Prairie. And yeah, I just remember I kept coming back to Anne of Green Gables because Anne Shirley is eminently relatable for me.
Gin Jenny 03:24
How so?
Brina Starler 03:24
I’m an only child. I’m not adopted. But I am an only child. And my mom likes to joke about this. But I was always my head in a book. I was very imaginative. When you’re an only child, a lot of times, I think you have to make your own world, to make your own friends, your own fun, and it’s all kind of very insular. I had cousins, but not anybody who lived near me. So I was very much a loner in a lot of ways. I spent a lot of time playing by myself and whatnot. And I made up a lot of different worlds in my head. And also, I would get the report cards that always said, Brina is a social butterfly. I kind of related to that. And it’s very funny in the way that she is very excitable and she has a lot of imagination, and she just wants to share with everyone all the time.
Gin Jenny 04:16
And that was you.
Brina Starler 04:16
Yeah. I’ve calmed down a little bit since being a kid.
Gin Jenny 04:22
But, um, so did you read the whole series? Like you read the whole sort of arc of Anne of Green Gables, like through to Rilla?
Brina Starler 04:27
I never read Rilla. Yeah. And I kept meaning to because I keep hearing Oh, my God, it’s so good. It’s so good. But I think I just got really obsessed with the Anne of Green Gables arc, all the way to like, Anne’s House of Dreams. So all the way to the end and her kids and everything. Which is my favorite? I mean, I think the first one is obviously a classic, and it’s really funny. Yeah, none of the others are quite as funny, because she’s growing up and she started mellowing. But the first one is hilarious. I mean, it’s laugh out loud funny to me in certain parts. But I think later on when Anne is an adult and her and Gil are married, and they go through some things in their marriage where they wind up losing a baby, they have a stillborn. And then when their kids are older, and I think it’s World War One has started, and several other boys go off to war, and only one of them comes back.
Gin Jenny 05:26
Oh, God.
Brina Starler 05:27
Yeah, some of those books later on, I didn’t appreciate them as much, I think, as a younger person. But now that I have teenage boys in my own, I kind of can relate to those a little bit more too.
Gin Jenny 05:40
I think that I found that to be true of a bunch of some of the books you were mentioning like Little Women. Not Little Women so much, although that one too. But like Louisa May Alcott’s other books, like some of them had kind of an emotional depth that I didn’t fully appreciate when I was a kid.
Brina Starler 05:51
Right. And then the great thing about books like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and The Secret Garden is that you can enjoy them as a kid, but you also can enjoy the complexity of them as you’re older too, and sort of read them with a new viewpoint.
Gin Jenny 06:06
Yeah. Which can be both positive and negative. I mean, I think Secret Garden– Yeah. Secret Garden is tougher to reread at times. I mean, but I still love so many parts of it.
Brina Starler 06:15
Yeah, it is, it is tougher to read. And the same thing with Little House on the Prairie, you find racism in there, which I couldn’t see as a kid. And part of that is who I am. I’m a white woman who was raised in a middle class home in New England. I was raised Jewish, but it was very much in like a white Ashkenazi Jewish community. And so when I went back to look at these books, and read these books as an adult with a completely different viewpoint, and completely different life experiences, I was like, oh, wow, I don’t remember this at all.
Gin Jenny 06:47
This is honestly a benefit of having siblings, because, not always but sometimes, the childhood classics get kind of divided up between you, and Little House on the Prairie books were really my older sister’s thing, so I didn’t really get into them. So I didn’t have that like emotional connection to deal with in adulthood.
Brina Starler 07:04
Yeah. And it is hard sometimes when you look at those books that you have such a nostalgic feeling for. And so I think that’s kind of like, you can love something and be really critical of it. Yeah, I love, I love Anne of Green Gables. But there’s this part in there that’s iconic about how Anne gets from a shifty peddler. She hates her red hair. So he says, Oh, I have something. I’ll make your hair nice and dark. And she’s always wanted like raven-black hair. So she’s like, great, and she takes the hair dye, and she does it and it turns her hair green. And that’s a really funny iconic scene that people who love this series know about. What I didn’t realize was that the peddler in it was called the Wandering Jew. A couple of mentions about that shifty, Jewish, untrustworthy peddler. So you know, I’ve been– I didn’t– Even as a Jewish kid. I didn’t take note of that, as always.
Gin Jenny 07:59
Yeah, definitely.
Brina Starler 08:01
You know, I can look back now and say like, I love LM Montgomery, and I love her books, and I love her characters, and it’s great, but this aspect is problematic.
Gin Jenny 08:09
Sure. Did you read others of her books besides the Anne of Green Gables series?
Brina Starler 08:13
I really didn’t. I never really got into any of the other ones. I tried a few of them. But no, I think it was just the characters of Anne of Green Gables just really, really stuck with me.
Gin Jenny 08:22
Yeah, absolutely. Which ones did you try?
Brina Starler 08:24
I honestly am blanking on it. It was so long ago.
Gin Jenny 08:28
No, that’s totally– The reason I’m asking is I’m gearing up to pester you into reading The Blue Castle, which is my favorite of hers.
Brina Starler 08:34
Oh, somebody else was telling me to read The Blue Castle too.
Gin Jenny 08:37
It’s great. I mean, typical caveats about LM Montgomery and her old time books, but it’s terrific. It’s about this woman who’s, you know, she lives with her family. She’s the kind of Fanny Price sort of person where everyone kind of dumps on her and she doesn’t have that much agency. And she has like a really beautiful cousin called Olive, and everyone’s like, well, Olive’s so great and Valancy is also here. And then one day, she finds out that she has a year to live, and so she decides to just live life however she wants to, and she’s just going to do what she wants and say what she wants.
Brina Starler 09:05
I’ll have to check it out.
Gin Jenny 09:06
Yeah, you really have to. I’m sorry to be a Blue Castle evangelist. But it’s so good. There’s this dinner scene where she’s talking to all her horrible relatives and just saying whatever she’s wanted to say to them for her whole life. It’s so good.
Brina Starler 09:19
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s the type of book where you know, you can really fall in love with it. But then of course, it breaks your heart at the end.
Gin Jenny 09:26
I won’t spoil anything about what happens. But you know, LM Montgomery isn’t like the most sad ending person, I’ll just say.
Brina Starler 09:32
True. She will get you sometimes.
Gin Jenny 09:34
Oh my God, it sounds like she had a very sad life. I don’t know that much about her. But from what I’ve read–
Brina Starler 09:39
I think she had a lot of depression.
Gin Jenny 09:42
Oh, bless her. So how did this specific book come to be? What made you want to write a contemporary retelling of Anne of Green Gables?
Brina Starler 09:48
So this is actually a really funny story. So I’m huge on Twitter. You know, we met on Twitter.
Gin Jenny 09:54
We did! I think we met on Twitter because people were talking shit about the South and we both got mad.
Brina Starler 10:00
Yeah, for people who don’t know, I live in North Carolina, but I’m a transplant. But I’ve lived here almost as long as I lived in any other place, including where I grew up. So I’ve acclimated. But I am really into Twitter. It’s kind of like my social media platform of choice. And I follow several editors and agents, and I happened to see one day that Tessa Woodward, who is an executive editor at Harper Collins, William Morrow, was tweeting about some manuscript wishlist that she’d love to see come across her desk. And she was talking to a friend of mine, and they were just chatting. And I had followed Tessa for a while, but she didn’t know me. We didn’t know each other. Well, Tessa had said, Oh, I’d love to see a modern Anne of Green Gables. I jumped in and was like, Oh, my God, you know, what would be amazing? Is if it was like, I don’t know, New York City, and they were competing grad students or something, something like that. And Tessa literally tweeted back: I would love to see that, too! Can you write that for me?
Gin Jenny 11:02
Oh, my gosh.
Brina Starler 11:03
Yeah. And I was like, obviously. But no, but I was like, Oh, my God, that would be amazing. Sure. And she’s like, great. Let me know when you’ve got something. At that time, I had been in talks with Mackenzie Walton over at Carina over a different manuscript, and so I was working on that. And I kind of thought Tessa meant, like, when you get something, send it over. So I wrote down my idea. I wrote down like a summary I came up with and then I left it alone, I went back to work on the other manuscript. And I don’t know, about a month or two later, I had responded to something else of Tessa’s that she’s tweeting out, just like, Oh, yeah, that sounds awesome. And she’s like, yeah, you know what also sounds awesome? She’s like, I would love to see that book come across my desk. Where are you at? I was like, Oh, you meant like, go write that now! Oh! So I explained to her that I hadn’t been writing it, because I’ve been working on something else. But I had a summary, and would she like to see it? So she said, Yeah, send it to me. So I sent it to her. And like two days later, she sent it back and was like, I love it. I’m so excited. I’m super, super excited. I love Twitter. I love Anne of Green Gables. When can I have the book?
Brina Starler 12:15
Wow.
Brina Starler 12:17
Yeah. And I was like, Well, I don’t have a first chapter. I don’t have an agent, so I had to get an agent. So then I sent out some feelers, because I knew a lot of agents. So I sent out some feelers and talked to some people, and then got on phones, conversations with several agents. And then I wound up with my first agent. She’s really great. Jen Eaton, who is no longer with the agency that I’m at now. So I transferred at that point, I was at New Leaf Literary. So I transferred over to Susie Thompson, who was amazing. But I made the deal when I was with Jen. And what happened basically was that we talked to Tessa and she’s like, Okay, give me four chapters and a good synopsis. And then if I like it, then I’ll send it on to acquisitions. And we’ll go from there. And she liked it. And she sent it on, and they bought the book, and then I wrote the book.
Gin Jenny 13:16
Man, so it was just total– A lot of it was really serendipity, then!
Brina Starler 13:19
Very much! I think it was very much being in the right place at the right time and taking advantage of that.
Gin Jenny 13:26
Yeah, absolutely.
Brina Starler 13:27
I definitely could have probably just walked away from it and been like, Oh, no, this is too intimidating, just too much. I’ve never written a full book before. But I was like, This is Anne of Green Gables.
Gin Jenny 13:40
Yeah!
Brina Starler 13:40
Nobody else– I did research. Like nobody else has done an Anna Green Gables updated novel. I don’t know why.
Gin Jenny 13:48
Absolutely baffling to me! Because I was also, as I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking about that. And I was looking and there’s like nothing.
Brina Starler 13:55
It really blew my mind.
Gin Jenny 13:57
Yeah, especially because it’s so beloved. Did you watch the TV, like various TV adaptations as you were preparing for this? Or were you trying to keep your distance from adaptations of it?
Brina Starler 14:06
I’ve seen the Megan Follows one like a million times, of course, growing up. I love that one, the Canadian TV show one, and I’m a huge devotee because that’s the one that I watched, you know, when I was in my formative Anne of Green Gables years. But I could not watch Anne with an E, because I was writing the book. Even though it was set way back then. You know, it’s kind of the same thing when you’re writing an established property. You never ever, ever go on and read fanfic about it or anything. You have to keep that story, I think, original and in your head and not let anything influence it from the outside. So I really was just too nervous to watch Anne with an E. I was like, I don’t want to get any of that in my head.
Gin Jenny 14:48
Yeah, no, I totally get that. Well, if you do end up going to it, I thought the young actors who played Anne and Gilbert had just superb chemistry, and the kid who plays Anne is just excellent. They were great.
Brina Starler 14:59
Yeah. I will probably get to it. I just don’t watch very much TV, but I will probably. I think it’s in my queue.
Gin Jenny 15:06
Well, you also shouldn’t listen to me because, I hesitate to bring this up to you, lest it affect our friendship. But I was always more of an Emily of New Moon guy than an Anne of Green Gables guy. So I feel like my opinion on the adaptation is worth nothing because I’m all in the Emily in New Moon camp.
Brina Starler 15:21
No, because I think, I know for a fact there are a lot of people who are huge fans of the show who never even read the books. Just like any property. You know, where people love the Harry Potter movies who never read the books, or Percy Jackson or whatever. What’s the most popular one right now?
Gin Jenny 15:38
Shadow and Bone.
Brina Starler 15:39
Shadow and Bone! There are a lot of people who have read the books and that’s cool. That’s fine. Like I am very much of a mind of however you get to the fandom does not matter. If you get there via Emily of New Moon, because you decided to read that because you loved Emily of New Moon, and you wanted to watch Anne with an E, or read the books, then I don’t care.
Gin Jenny 16:05
What do you think makes an adaptation good? Like what are some favorite adaptations of yours?
Brina Starler 16:09
Mmm. Definitely all in on Shadow and Bone, cause I am a huge Six of Crows fan.
Gin Jenny 16:17
Oh my God. Six of Crows is great. Like I watched the whole thing this weekend, and Jesper and the goat were just absolutely flawless. I mean, all of it was enjoyable. But like Jesper and the goat were the best.
Brina Starler 16:28
Yeah. And I’m really, really, really looking forward to next season because I know Wylan will be coming in. I don’t even know who they have playing him yet.
Gin Jenny 16:35
No, I don’t either. But I feel like all the actors they cast have been excellent so far.
Brina Starler 16:39
And I will say in a reverse sort of adaptation of the universe, Star Wars obviously came out with the first three, and it wasn’t an adaptation, it was movies. But then the Star Wars literature, the novels came out. They started coming out, not long after, I think in the 80s they started the first ones. But I would say Timothy Zahn is my favorite Star Wars author, and I say that having several friends who have written Star Wars. So I love you guys, but!
Gin Jenny 17:09
So is he the guy who invented Thrawn? Is that the guy?
Brina Starler 17:12
Yes.
Gin Jenny 17:13
Yeah, so I haven’t read– I read a couple of Star Wars books when I was a kid and I first got into Star Wars, but I haven’t read any more. But my brother in law is super into Thrawn.
Brina Starler 17:21
I read he’s coming out with something new, and then I think they’re adapting Thrawn for the screen.
Gin Jenny 17:27
Oh, are you excited?
Brina Starler 17:28
Yes, very excited. But yeah, and then another property, would say an adaptation that I’m actually excited about is the Dragonlance–Dungeons and Dragons Dragonlance–is coming out in a year or two. They’re doing a movie, and I am super excited because I was obsessed with Dragonlance as like a young teen. I actually did not know it was Dungeons and Dragons. That was literally not on my radar until three years ago.
Gin Jenny 17:58
No, me neither. I found that out just now as you said it.
Brina Starler 18:02
I actually did not know that, but I was completely obsessed with that whole world.
Gin Jenny 18:06
Wow. I’m really surprised. I feel like I need to pin my brother in law down and discuss this with him.
Brina Starler 18:11
Oh, you definitely should, but but be prepared to have like an hour of free time if not more.
Gin Jenny 18:16
Oh no. I am. He’s a big Dungeons and Dragons guy. I think he runs his current group’s campaign. So I know what I’m getting into.
Brina Starler 18:24
Yeah, my son also, my oldest one, he’s 15, he DMs. He’s a dungeon master for his group too.
Gin Jenny 18:32
It seems really hard.
Brina Starler 18:33
Yeah, it’s well, you know what? He gets very creative. He’s actually– He does some writing himself. Now he’s like, into a little bit romance, too, as far as like, storylines.
Gin Jenny 18:44
Awww!
Brina Starler 18:45
He’s always busting into my office like, what if?
Gin Jenny 18:51
Oh, that’s really really sweet. Oh, bless him.
Brina Starler 18:55
The only thing that my son has written that is like an existing property, oddly enough, is he wrote a short story, completely– No words, but it was from the game Unravel.
Gin Jenny 19:05
I love that game! I’ve played two games and that’s one of them!
Brina Starler 19:09
And he really likes– It’s very relaxing, like listening to the music.
Gin Jenny 19:13
Yes, it is. Yeah, I had to stop because the last level was really stressful, because the poor little yarn guy is in the snow and can’t escape from the snow. It’s horrible.
Brina Starler 19:21
Oh, I don’t know that he ever went that far into the game, so.
Gin Jenny 19:24
Well, I advise him not to. It’s depressing. So as I was reading this book, so I knew you were a fic reader anyway, because we’ve we’ve talked about it on Twitter, but had we not been, there’s a part in this book where Anne tells Gilbert that the bananas we eat today aren’t the same as old time bananas.
Brina Starler 19:42
I did fact check that by the way, but do you know where I got that from?
Gin Jenny 19:46
Yes, I do. From Steve Rogers fanfic, I assume.
Brina Starler 19:49
Yes, and usually, if that fact appears, it is Stucky, the Steve and Bucky romances. That’s where I first heard it. And it made me laugh and I was thinking about it and I was like, I’m gonna throw that in there and see if anyone notices. I did fact check it to make sure, because fanfic writers love to throw things in there and pass them off as facts and then you have to guess.
Gin Jenny 20:16
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. One thing I like about my current fandom is people often will post–because I’m in Untamed fandom now, RIP me–and people will post little like sources lists for their fics, which I really appreciate.
Brina Starler 20:27
Yeah, I do too. The author’s notes, a lot of times will contain notes about anything that you see that you might have a question about, or trigger warnings, which is helpful.
Gin Jenny 20:38
Yeah, I love it. Do you think of this book as being fanfic?
Brina Starler 20:41
I do. And I don’t think Tessa loves what I say that. She’s never said anything. But I was thinking from her point of view, she probably doesn’t love when I keep telling people it’s authorized fanfic. But, being that it’s in the public domain right now, it’s not like I’m cribbing off of anyone’s actual work that they’re–that’s–out there.
Gin Jenny 21:00
Yeah, like copyrighted work.
Brina Starler 21:02
Yeah, copyrighted. I kind of do think of it that way, because it’s an existing property, and I’m sort of playing on somebody else’s playground, which I really love. But it’s funny, because a lot of people have this attitude about fanfic, they see it as like not real writing, not real stories. I actually think that sometimes it takes more imagination, or at least just as much imagination, to translate somebody else’s work into an entirely new story, and not like tooting my own horn, but I can think of several other authors whose fanfic stories I’ve read that are just, I mean, better than probably 70% of original work that I’ve read out there.
Gin Jenny 21:49
Oh, God, yeah. Yes. Oh, my God. And I think in some cases, even to the point that for me, it kind of replaces the canon. Not to be predictable, but especially with Harry Potter, where the canon is now so like, depressing to think about.
Brina Starler 22:04
Oh, yeah. And, you know, I’m completely on the JK Rowling– To me, I do think of her as a TERF. I am so immeasurably disappointed in the person she turned out to be, and I think she did stain her legacy. And the books themselves have some issues, but no, actually, that’s one of my most active fandoms that I read in, is Harry Potter. And I just love it, because people are so– They put in so much diversity into it, that it’s kind of like, this is what Harry Potter could have been.
Gin Jenny 22:34
And they get really deep, I think, into the moral questions that the book either doesn’t grapple with or grapples with shallowly, but that the fic really digs into, which I love so much. How did you get into fanfic?
Brina Starler 22:45
Actually, via the BBC Sherlock.
Gin Jenny 22:48
Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah, drew so many people in. Yeah!
Brina Starler 22:51
And I don’t remember who first told me about fanfic. It was a long time ago. So I came in as an adult.
Gin Jenny 22:56
Me too.
Brina Starler 22:57
Yeah. But I look back now too, and I think: Well, actually, I mean, reading Timothy Zahn and Dragonlance with the Dungeons and Dragons, and then reading comics coming up is all kind of fanfic. Every new comic writer in a series, the person who’s currently writing a Captain America series or She-Hulk or Batman, I mean, they’re writing fanfic, because you’re writing new stories off of established characters. You know, I think for me, it wasn’t that big of a sidestep. It was just an, Oh my God, look at all this stuff already online. And it’s free. There is a lot of wading through.
Gin Jenny 23:33
Yeah, but I mean, I think that’s true with anything.
Brina Starler 23:35
One thing I have noticed, and there are such, I mean, just like with anything, and we see this a lot with like the Star Wars movies, you have a really toxic element of the fandom. But you also have people who just love the media, they just love the books, or they just love the movies, and they just want to experience that joy and spread that joy. So that’s one of the best parts about fandom.
Gin Jenny 23:58
Yeah, absolutely. What are some of your favorite tropes?
Brina Starler 24:02
Enemies to lovers is my number one. Always my number one favorite. I love that. Proximity is another one, and that can be translated into like only one bed or just kind of like thrown together in a situation or even a physical space where they’re kind of stuck with each other.
Gin Jenny 24:20
Yeah, I love a shared project for proximity.
Brina Starler 24:23
Yeah. And that one I used.
Gin Jenny 24:25
I was gonna say, yeah, which I loved. Yeah!
Brina Starler 24:27
Yeah, I used that one. So I guess you could include rivals to lovers too, which is what I kind of wrote with this one. Also, and recently, I’ve come to appreciate friends to lovers, because there’s a lot to mine there. I think that I didn’t used to appreciate, when I was younger, that sort of looking at someone in an entirely new light, who’s been in your life forever, or that you’ve been friends with forever, and then all of a sudden, you realize, Oh, my God, actually, I’m really attracted to them. I really, actually, I’m in love with them and I have been for I don’t even know how long, and like, wow, I’m an oblivious moron.
Gin Jenny 25:03
Yes! It’s so satisfying.
Brina Starler 25:06
Yeah. And I love the trope of like one character being really grumpy and sort of has a lot of shields up to avoid getting hurt. And then the other one is just like this ray of sunshine who comes in like a wrecking ball and just upends their entire life and worldview.
Gin Jenny 25:22
That’s the best. I mean, that’s really the source of my Untamed fandom in these troubled times.
Brina Starler 25:27
Yeah.
Gin Jenny 25:27
You had a shared project in Anne of Manhattan, which I thought was so fun. Can you say a little bit about what Anne and Gilbert are forced to do together?
Brina Starler 25:34
They’re paired up, and this doesn’t usually happen. I did do some research. Usually, if you have a thesis project or thesis paper, you’re working on your own, but there can be group efforts.
Gin Jenny 25:45
Also, who cares? It’s fun!
Brina Starler 25:46
Right! Author’s license! So I decided that because of lack of space, or whatever, that their thesis advisor would say, Okay, you know what, you guys work together, and I’m going to mentor you both at the same time. So being that they were both in the teaching master’s program, I had them working on where they had to come up with something to collaborate on, and so what they settled on was working with middle school-aged kids in an afterschool extra program for kids who were struggling with their English language arts classes, or who wanted to elaborate a little bit more on learning creative writing, just kind of those combinations, those all volunteer, but definitely would help the kids in their grades or just furthering. The school that they picked was sort of an art school, focused more on creative arts and everything. Like, you do have those. I think the most famous one is from Fame, the movie Fame, which is like really old, and I don’t think many people now have seen it. That’s what I was thinking of. But yeah, I decided, I thought that would be kind of fun, because I actually really liked the idea of them trying to figure out how to interact with middle school kids. Having a 15 year old and a 13 year old, I’m like, mwahahahhah, they can be terrible snd give them a hard time. But no, I liked the idea of them collaborating on something and also sort of showing different sides of being able to relate to these kids and how to figure it out, and how to figure out how to work together in these situations.
Gin Jenny 27:26
Yeah, especially because I think that when kids are portrayed in media very often, especially teenagers, very often it’s like, these kids are terrible. And I appreciate that you didn’t do that, because I love teenagers. I think teenagers are great and hilarious.
Brina Starler 27:38
Yeah, and they can be because it’s the age. But like, I mean, I remember what middle school is like. It’s rough. But yeah, they’re also good kids.
Gin Jenny 27:49
I’m totally out of step with everyone, because I had a great middle school experience, and then high school was when things got really– Like, I think like elementary school was terrible, high school was terrible, but middle school! I got my braces off. I grew really tall. I was good at Latin.
Brina Starler 28:04
That’s so funny. I had the opposite experience. I actually transferred from public school to private school because no, bullying was so bad.
Gin Jenny 28:12
Oh, my God, you poor baby. I basically had that experience in elementary school and like, got it over with.
Brina Starler 28:17
I don’t know what happened. I was fine in fifth grade, and then we transferred to middle school and it was like open season. I transferred, and it was like, I went through seventh, eighth, ninth, and sophomore year. And I transferred back to public school, and then it was okay, because even though the same girls kind of picked up where they left off, I was a lot more confident in myself. So I had a lot of different experiences with kids from all over the world. I don’t know. It just gave me a lot more confidence in myself, and especially when you have the attention of teachers and mentors, but it was also cool because James Van Der Beek went to school with me.
Gin Jenny 28:55
Oh, my God! Dawson crying gif himself.
Brina Starler 28:58
Yeah, we went– We used to be in the same theater plays. We were in theater together.
Gin Jenny 29:03
Whoa, that’s wild.
Brina Starler 29:04
Yeah. My mom has photos of him somewhere in a cow costume. It was really funny. He was Danny Zuko in Grease.
Gin Jenny 29:14
Oh, that’s good casting, I think. Who were you in Grease?
Brina Starler 29:17
Oh, I was like an extra. I can’t sing.
Gin Jenny 29:22
That’s what I was about to ask.
Brina Starler 29:23
I was background.
Gin Jenny 29:26
That sounds really fun, though.
Brina Starler 29:28
Yeah, it was fun.
Gin Jenny 29:29
One thing I thought was really fun and cool in this book, in Anne of Manhattan, is that, you know, it’s set in the present day, but there’s also flashbacks to when Anne was a kid, some of which map quite closely on to Anne of Green Gables. How did you choose those scenes? Like what things did you want to revisit versus what did you want to leave out?
Brina Starler 29:45
You know, it was almost intuitive. In fact, it’s really funny because sometimes I go back and I read it and I’m like, Whoa, I didn’t even remember that I actually wrote that as an echo. I was just writing it. And I forget how much of that I have in my head. It’s like permanently burned into my brain. Yeah, no, mostly it was just a: This was funny, or I felt like this was a really important part of her life, so I want to throw it in there. There were scenes that I couldn’t, or things in the original book that I couldn’t make into entire scenes, like the time that Anne accidentally got Diana drunk and sent her home. And it was a whole big thing, and her mother freaked out. But I made like a quick reference to it and translated it, of course, for modern time. I didn’t want to leave it out completely. I was like, but it’s such a funny story!
Gin Jenny 30:35
Yes, it’s so charming. And it’s such an LM Montgomery scene, like having read some other stuff, it’s like a classic LM Montgomery scene.
Brina Starler 30:44
It really is. And then I have a couple things tucked away that I might put on my website that were flashback scenes that never made it into the book.
Gin Jenny 30:53
Yeah, no, for sure. How did the book change as you were writing it, and as you were going through the editing process?
Brina Starler 30:58
Oh, it changed so much. In fact, if you look at the original synopsis that I sent Tessa versus the finished book, I’m shocked that Harper Collins wasn’t like, This is not the book you sold us. The bare bones that are still absolutely where they were, where it’s their grad school, and they were rivals to lovers, and from seventh grade on they went to school, but then I also had them taking a break, because I thought it’s better if they separated for a while and then kind of come back together as reunion. But no, I think a lot of it shifted. Anne’s sleazy advisor– This is where I kind of wish that publishing companies would allow you to put trigger warnings on books. And I feel a little bit guilty, because I feel like it might be springing this on people, but I definitely have sort of a MeToo situation going on in there. And I think it’s probably a situation that a lot of women are familiar with, with her mentor just being kind of a scumbag but doing it in a way that’s so subtle, most of the time that you can’t really call him on it.
Gin Jenny 32:05
Yeah, totally.
Brina Starler 32:06
It’s very predatory. And I think, you know, maybe you haven’t had a professor who’s done it, but maybe you’ve had a manager who’s done that, or you’ve had someone else in a position of power who’s done that.
Gin Jenny 32:17
A high school teacher, for instance.
Brina Starler 32:19
A high school teacher, yeah. People have said, you know, youth group leaders.
Gin Jenny 32:23
Oh, yeah.
Brina Starler 32:24
Yeah! And it doesn’t necessarily mean anything will ever come of it or that that person even truly is trying to make something come of it, but just sometimes the way they make you feel is super uncomfortable, like prey! Unfortunately, a situation a lot of women are very familiar with.
Gin Jenny 32:44
Yeah, regretably. It was very, like how far can Elle go?
Brina Starler 32:48
And that situation– Actually, that plotline came about when Tessa and I had met at Romance Writers of America national conference the last year that they actually held it in person, which is 2019, I think.
Gin Jenny 33:01
I can’t remember that far back, but I believe you.
Brina Starler 33:04
Yeah, I think that’s the summer 2019. And this was before she had bought the book, but we were talking about it. I said, Oh yeah, here’s what I want to do; and she said, Would it be too much to put in some elements of this? I was like, No, I like that idea. And so then I came up with the plotline. But I also kind of think of that as a reference to Legally Blonde. Yeah, I have a couple different sort of homages to different properties.
Gin Jenny 33:31
How did you reconceptualize these different characters? Like Diana is one that struck me because I feel like– I do want to preface this by saying I only read the first three books, I think, in the Anne of Green Gables series. So I don’t know what happens to Diana ultimately, in her life, but I feel like in the book, she was kind of drippy. And I feel like you did a good job of fleshing– Poor Diana! Bless her heart! But I feel like you did a good job of fleshing her out. So I mean, how did you kind of build the characters? What did you drawn from the original and what did you want to add to them?
Brina Starler 33:58
Well, I wanted to keep the friendship between Diana and Anne, because I feel like that is such an important female friendship. They call each other their bosom friends. So close as sisters. And I think it’s incredibly important because Diana is Anne’s first true friend who wasn’t part of her imagination. You know, and again, other than Matthew, probably one of the only people has ever unconditionally loved her from the very beginning. She didn’t have to grow to love her. She didn’t have to love her in spite of various flaws, but she was the first person who just looked at Anne immediately and was like, You’re amazing! Even though she was a little scared in the original books, because she was such a sedate person. She’s not very adventurous in the beginning. Anne was as good for her, drawing her out of her shell and making her more adventurous, as Diana was for Anne, giving her someone who just loved her like that.
Gin Jenny 34:54
Yeah.
Brina Starler 34:55
But yeah, you’re right. In the original book, she is very quiet in a lot of ways. She’s very much a scaredy cat. And sadly, she’s portrayed as not very smart, especially compared to Anne, who’s like brilliant, blazingly smart. So next to Anne, Diana comes up short a lot of time. So I wanted to keep the original friendship and everything. But I felt like I needed to evolve Diana a little bit, give her a little bit more of a chance. And in the original book, she actually does wind up with Fred, and they pop out a whole bunch of babies. And, you know, her ambition, that’s what she wanted, she want to be a housewife and a mother. And that’s what she did. And that’s what she wanted. She was comfortable doing that. And that’s great. But I wanted to change that a little bit for this book, especially because they’re not really at that time of their life where they were interested in doing that. And I also, one of the things that apparently has been a bit of a bone of contention for early readers is that I’ve put a lot more racial diversity and LGBTQ diversity in there. One of the things I did with Diana is I changed her to a Black woman. I did that because I felt like in the original books, they’re super white, and super Christian, and super straight, which makes sense. It was 1918. She lived in Prince Edward Island, which is at that time majority white, majority Christian, and that’s what she knew. And that’s what she wrote. But I don’t think that makes sense for someone who’s growing up on Long Island and then lives in New York City. Yeah. So I just changed it up, and some people are like, Oh, it’s diversity for diversity’s sake. And I’m like, Why does it have to have, you know, a motive there? And one of my favorite things is– Somebody sent me, they saw on Reddit, there was a thread about it. And I thought it was really funny. The person who had started the thread was like, yeah, so apparently, she’s gotten dragged a couple of times on Goodreads for diversity, and somebody is mad because she put a LGBTQ relationship in the book, that wasn’t in the original books. She’s like, Sometimes people are just gay, Diane! And it made me laugh, because I was like, Yeah, that’s true. Sometimes people are just gay. There doesn’t have to be a motive.
Gin Jenny 37:11
Yeah, you wouldn’t say they were in there being white for whiteness’s sake, although they are! Would you ever write more in this world? Or would you ever write more in the LM Montgomery, like drawing from the LM Montgomery pool?
Brina Starler 37:21
I don’t think so. And as I would love to, I had talked to Tessa about doing a spin-off, books with Jane and so on, and she said, I think I just want to do a standalone. And I was okay with that. Because I feel like once I knew that, I was able to weave a little bit more into the background, but I couldn’t really concentrate too much unfortunately, on this background relationships. No, I definitely have some other ideas for original stories. But also, there are a few other adaptations kind of floating around in my brain.
Gin Jenny 37:53
Oh, can I ask what properties?
Brina Starler 37:56
So I had a couple of adaptations in my brain. And I haven’t sent anything over to Tessa yet. But so I was thinking of one that was sort of a adaptation, the bare bones of The Secret Garden. And then: I Capture the Castle meets the Vanderbilts. So yeah, sort of along those lines, and then another one I was thinking of was– Oh, so you know, Pride and Prejudice retellings are super popular. Such a great story! I was like, well, Pride and Prejudice, but Mary Bennett’s story. Because I was thinking, Mary Bennett is so obsessed with like music, and you know, she’s kind of like dour and religious. But if I cut that part out. Pride and Prejudice, but Mary Bennett meets A Star Is Born.
Gin Jenny 38:39
Yeah, I love that.
Brina Starler 38:40
Which is a weird, a weird idea. And I–
Gin Jenny 38:43
No, I love that.
Brina Starler 38:45
That makes sense in my head.
Gin Jenny 38:47
It makes total sense. I’m rereading Mansfield Park right now, and I love Mary Crawford so much. So the whole thing of like, pulling out smaller characters in Jane Austen to do something with them is so fun.
Brina Starler 38:58
Yeah, I was thinking about Mansfield Park at one point. And then interestingly enough, Swan Lake hit me too. I have a prose version of it by Mark Halpern that was given to me. It’s a beautifully illustrated cloth bound book. It was given to me when I was like, 12, I think. It’s surprisingly adult, for a story that is put together like a children’s book.
Gin Jenny 39:23
Yeah.
Brina Starler 39:24
it’s very political. Yeah, it’s a really interesting story.
Gin Jenny 39:29
I think I had that same book when I was a kid. Was it like kind of a blue, and it had a picture in the center?
Brina Starler 39:36
Yep. And it was like a swan taking off from a lake in the center of the cover.
Gin Jenny 39:42
Yes. I totally had that book!
Brina Starler 39:43
And it’s funny. It’s like, again, I read it as a kid and was like, oh, cool story! And then I read it when my first son was a baby. He was terrible at going to sleep. So I was like, What can I read that’s gonna bore him and put him to sleep? And I started reading it. I was like really caught up, and I’m like, wow there’s a lot of politicking in here, and a lot of hierarchy drama and royal court drama in here, and then there’s forbidden love, secret love. As Anne would say, a tragical ending. But then it’s really not. You think it’s a horrible tragic ending, but actually the very, very end, there’s a lot of hope.
Gin Jenny 40:23
Oh, man, I need to go to my parents and see if they still have it and reread it. I read it as a kid but I barely remember it.
Brina Starler 40:28
It’s really lovely.
Gin Jenny 40:29
Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. So those are all, those are the things you have in the in the hopper?
Brina Starler 40:34
Yeah, those are kind of things are bouncing around. But then I also have a couple of, you know, you always got to have like, a million things cooking, right? Because you never know what’s gonna stick. I have something set in the 90s during like the grunge era, sort of my love letter to my growing up: flannels and Doc Martens and Pearl Jam and you know, Stone Temple Pilots, you know, and then I have a road trip book.
Gin Jenny 40:56
Oh, I love a road trip book!
Brina Starler 40:57
Yeah, who doesn’t like a good road trip? That’s sort of that thrown together trope.
Gin Jenny 41:02
Oh, I’ve just gotten really nostalgic for like all my favorite road trip books. Well, before I let you go, what are you reading right now?
Brina Starler 41:09
What I’m reading right now: On my desk, I have The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. She came on my radar actually as a fanfic author, and she’s under Olivie Blake so I’m not outing her. When I said earlier that there were some people out there who write fanfic that is mind blowingly good, and like 70% better than any original stuff I’ve read, I was talking about her. She’s amazing. She wrote a 350,000 word fanfic that can literally be broken into probably four books, long books. There were something like 24 points of view, and literally everyone in that story has their own arc. And then it weaves into an overarching art and it is tight. So it’s really good. She makes me jealous as a writer. And then I have The Meet Cute Club by Jack Harbon, which– He’s really great. He writes really cute, funny stuff, and then he writes like super filthy stuff, and he’s great at both.
Gin Jenny 42:15
Great! The two food groups!
Brina Starler 42:16
Yes, exactly. That’s what’s on my desk like right now. And I had, just last night because it came out today, something hit my Kindle. I’ve been reading a lot more print lately.
Gin Jenny 42:28
I tend to prefer print, unfortunately, because I love romance, and a lot of that is just in ebook form. But I do prefer reading print books.
Brina Starler 42:35
Well, I got Arsenic and Adobo: A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mystery book, by Mia P. Manansala. And I hope that i’m pronouncing that right. But she is completely new on my radar. It looks so good.
Gin Jenny 42:48
Yeah, I read that. I really enjoyed it. I don’t read that many mysteries. Don’t necessarily take my word for anything, but I found it so fun and charming. And there’s so much food in it, which is great.
Brina Starler 42:57
Oh, awesome. I’m super excited for that. Yeah, no, I am not usually a mystery person either. My mother is. She’s huge into, especially, cozy mysteries. So I have to tell her if I really liked this one, I’ll have to tell her.
Gin Jenny 43:08
Well, thank you so much for talking with me. Where can people find you online?
Brina Starler 43:13
Well, I am online as Brina Starla everywhere. So I’m on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. But I’m most active, I would say, on Twitter and Instagram.
Gin Jenny 43:24
Well the book again is Anne of Manhattan. It’s so warm and lovely. And if y’all are LM Montgomery fans, you should read it. And if you’re not, you should still definitely read it.
Brina Starler 43:31
Thank you so much for having me, Jenny,
Gin Jenny 43:34
Thank you so much for coming on. And please do read The Blue Castle. I think you’re gonna love it.
Brina Starler 43:38
I will. I will definitely put that on my radar.
Gin Jenny 43:41
All right, take care. Thanks for talking with me.