Welcome to New York: Elissa Sussman chats about her newest novel, ‘Once More With Feeling.’

The following interview contains minor spoilers for Once More With Feeling.

As an avid reader and entertainment journalist, there is one book I constantly get asked if I have read: Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman. My answer is always, "Yes. It was my TBR before it was even written. The minute it was available for preorder, the charge hit my credit card." It doesn't matter that the Booktok sensation has been on shelves for over a year. People constantly make sure I didn't miss it. Recently, Elissa released her follow-up novel, Once More With Feeling. While I don't expect my friends, co-workers and acquaintances to associate this particular story with me, it almost feels full circle that the author and I have sat down to discuss it.

Once More With Feeling is the East Coast twin to its Los Angeles-based, beloved predecessor. Full of the same heart, ambition, comedic timing, and swoon-worthy romance, Elissa's second adult novel leaves behind sunkissed palm trees and transports readers to a crisp autumn in New York City. The book centers on Kathleen Rosenburg, a headstrong, courageous and ambitious heroine who used to be known as Katee Rose, teen pop sensation turned infamous boyband heartbreaker. Over a decade after the ruinous cheating scandal ended her career, Kathleen is ready for another shot at stardom. With the help of her best friend's genius new musical, she's returning to her roots: Broadway. There's only one problem. Her director, Cal Kirby, is a former member of CrushZone and part of the reason things took a turn for the worst. Only time will tell if the two former flames will be able to put aside their differences for the good of the production or if the tension that has always been between them will once again be their downfall.

Elissa was kind enough to grab a coffee and talk with The FMC about her latest novel, her love of ambitious characters, the pros and cons of writing multiple timelines, and more.

I know we are here to talk about Once More With Feeling, and for the majority of the conversation, we will, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Funny You Should Ask. With that book being such a hit, did you feel any pressure moving into this book both during the writing process and for the release?

For sure. None of it was external. It was all coming from within the house, from me. No one on my team was pressuring me at all. They kept saying, “Don't think about it. Stop thinking about Funny [You Should Ask]. But I was still worried about disappointing people. I am a very typical people-pleaser. I wanted to live up to the expectations of the first book, but I also wanted to push myself. I got in my head for a long time, and it was tough to get out.

Had you already written this one when Funny came out?

Nope! [laughter] I wanted to have the second one written. That was my intention originally. I wrote a totally different version of a different book that I turned in in December 2021. By the time the New Year rolled around, I was like, “Don't read this. It's not the right story. It doesn't work.” So, we pitched a bunch of different ideas for a new novel. This was the one that my editor was really excited about. It was also that one that was just a concept in my head. [laughter] Then, I just kept writing it. It got rewritten from the ground up two or three times. I don't think I turned in a draft that we were all happy with until September.

Wow. You cranked this book out. That’s crazy.

My team was ready to go as soon as I was. They were just waiting. My second book was supposed to come out in April, a year after the first, but we pushed it to the end of May. It was definitely a process. The feedback I was getting on the earlier drafts was like, “You're writing! Good job!”

Oh, no.

Yeah, I knew it wasn’t good then. I had all this really difficult, crazy personal stuff going on. But when I finally clicked, the response I got from my editor was, “Yes! This is it!”

Aw! Good.

I was like, “Thank God!” Because I was really starting to freak out. I was at the point where I had nothing else left. I haven't been writing for a while because this book was such a draining process. I needed to refuel and actually give myself a break because I wasn't able to give myself a break while I was going through all of this stuff. I had to write.

Breaks are an important part of the creative process. At least, I think I come up with all of my best ideas when I'm not trying to come up with ideas.

Exactly.

Once More With Feeling is marketed as a Friends-to-Lovers meets Enemies-to-Lovers story. Out of those two, which trope draws you in more?

I love Enemies-to-Lovers. I'm a huge fan. That is the trope that got me into romance. That was like my gateway, and that's still an automatic pick-up for me. If someone says a book is Enemies-To-Lovers, I’m like, “Thank you. I’m taking this right now.”

[laughter] Which do you find easier to write?

Enemies-to-Lovers is really hard to write. I feel like it is easier to do in historical fiction because there are reasons why grown adults can't be together. It's really hard to give contemporary grown adults an insurmountable reason not to be together besides that they just do not like each other. The go-to avenue is ‘he's in love with her secretly but acting like a jerk because he can't deal with his feelings.’ And that is not my type of hero. I'm much more into the type of hero who goes to therapy on his own, is intelligent and things like that. It's not everyone's cup of tea. [laughter]

I’m in the same boat as you. I don’t like books where I question why the heroine is choosing to be with someone who is just treating her poorly.

Yeah, exactly!

I want my heroines to be with a man that I would choose.

I want my readers to think if they met this guy in real life, they would like him. So, finding a way for them to not like each other and have readers still like them both is a really difficult thing. You have to find a past circumstance over which they can both be pissed. Once More With Feeling ended up being a really good situation for that.

It also has a stellar dedication: This book is dedicated to Prozac and Jelly Bellies. I couldn’t have done it without you.I love it. Some people judge a book by its cover. I judge them by their dedication or their map.

I'm not being facetious in saying that I couldn't have done it without those two things, either. I started Prozac about a year ago, and it saved me. It made it possible for me to be able to work and generally function. I was at a point where I was not eating, barely able to get out of bed, and not coping very well. I was able to put one foot in front of the other because of Prozac. So, I am very much for doing what you've got to do. There's no shame in getting help. There's no shame in taking medication. All of those things, therapy included, are really important. I would love to help destigmatize them in any way I can.

When you’ve mentioned it as you have, here in the dedication and as an influence to the characters a bit, but not part of the full plot, it helps people see it as normal, casual and, in a way, universal.

Yeah, it's just a thing. Kathleen deals with anxiety and things like that, but it isn't a book about anxiety. It's a book with a character who has anxiety and who's learning to deal with it. It is a lifelong thing. It's not something that you cure. It comes and goes, and you build up the necessary tools so you can cope with it.

Do you find dedications difficult to write?

They're difficult in the sense that I never want someone to feel left out. Again, it's the people pleaser in me. It was funny to not dedicate this book to a person. It took off a little bit of the pressure. Funny was dedicated to my husband. My previous books have been dedicated to my parents and my family. So, now, I’ve gone through the people who really helped shape me to this point and dedicated books to them for very specific reasons. I read Funny out loud to my husband as I was writing it. He was the person who was like, “I think this is going to be great.” Because he had read it, and he wasn't the target audience, I knew I could believe him. He wasn't just saying it because he's married to me.

I love that you read it out loud to him. That’s going to stick around in my brain.

[laughter] He's great. People are always asking me who Gabe Parker is based on. He's based on a lot of people, and Chris Evans was obviously one of those people because of the article, but Chris Evans is not a Star Trek nerd. Gabe is his own person, but he is based on my husband in a lot of ways.

Aw! I love that. Speaking of inspiration, what was the inspiration behind the specific story of Once More with Feeling? Were you a theatre kid?

Yeah, I'm definitely a theatre kid. I remember after my agent read the first real draft that worked, she said something like, “You know, I'm not really a theatre person, but I love it.” And I was like, “So confession. I didn't think about the non-theatre people.” It was as if someone had told me something totally new. I'd been so focused on impressing the theatre community that I was like, “Oh, right. There are going to be some references that people do not get.”

I didn't feel left out at all, and I wouldn’t consider myself a theatre person.

My readers are smart. I expect them to work some.

Exactly.

I originally worked in theatre. I was a theatre kid without any talent. But, I worked in theatre production and lived in New York for a little bit, where I would go to Broadway shows whenever I could, so I love writing behind the scenes. A lot of this book came from that.

I think that's the fun stuff. I found a common theme in the books that I’ve been reading this year of women taking back their stories. I’ve read a few novels in which the book serves as a lens into how we treated women as a society in the past and how that has affected who they are today. Was that your intention when you sat down to write Once More With Feeling, or was it a natural consequence of a different part of the story you knew you wanted to tell?

It's hard to ignore the conversations that we have about women who came into the public eye at a young age and had to navigate that and how we need to treat women coming up in the industry now. How are we getting better? That was all swirling around as part of the pop culture conversation and definitely informed my process. I had this video of Britney Spears–and I mentioned this in a few interviews–rehearsing for the VMAs, and then it switches to her performing. I watched that over and over and over again because we did not acknowledge or appreciate or honor the work that she did and the work that all of these women did. Things got boiled down to like “a sexy dance,” but so much work went into that routine. People love to comment on it and criticize it. I'd love to see them go and do what she did. I would love to see them try because they don't know what they're talking about. The same people who are criticizing Britney Spears for her “naked” Instagram stories and posts had no problem with her being on Rolling Stone in her bra and underwear. It sold magazines. Lots of these people who are claiming to be concerned about her are really concerned they’re not making money off her body anymore. She is doing what she wants, and that freaks them out. I wanted Kathleen to be a character who understands the role that she's in. She knows her looks are part of her appeal, but she's young, so she doesn't fully get it.

Something that I really liked about Kathleen, as a character, is that she is in the middle of her healing journey and is accepting her past and the role she played in the way things turned out.

Right. She loves performing. I don't see a lot of books where the female character is the star or celebrity. When I do, I feel like there’s this sense of, “Oh, you were forced into this," or "You fell into it.” If you are in a creative field, you have to want to do it to an extent because it is so hard. Plus, I like ambitious female characters. I think they're really interesting.

I find ambition is a good catalyst for Second-Chance Romances because it creates a natural reason why one or both people may not have been ready to settle down in the first place. One thing I love about Second-Chance romances, when there’s a significant gap between the first coming together and the second, is that it proves that even as adults, we’re just older kids. We just know more than we used to.

Just a little bit more. When you're young, you think you know so much. I think the gift that comes with getting older is that you realize how little you know and how nice that is. I know so much more than I knew when I was 20. Think of how much more I'll know when I'm 60. It’s something to look forward to.

Another thing that I think proves this fact is the gap that is being filled by rom-com fiction. This wasn’t always the case, but now there are rom-com books about women in their late 20s and 30s and into their 40s on occasion. For the most part, you can find yourself in a book these days. As an author that has also written YA, do you find it easiest to write stories centered around characters at the same time of life as you?

With Once More With Feeling, I get to have my cake and eat it too. I get to write them as teenagers. I get to like them as young adults. Then, I get to write them as adults. I like the time jump. I like exploring how characters have changed. I find it really interesting because I want to see the characters as they grow instead of being fixed in time. For this book, there's so much more story in the after and before. I really liked playing with who the characters were and how they’ve changed. It takes the pressure off, making the romance the thing that changes them completely. The time jump illustrates that they have changed on their own. You can do a lot of amazing growth with support and love around you over the course of your life.

Speaking of the story in the before and after, both Once More With Feeling and Funny You Should Ask to employ a dual/triple timeline plot device. What do you think of the pros and cons of using this as a writer?

It's complicated to keep everything straight, for sure. You always run the risk of losing people because there are people who just don't like time jumps, so they won’t pick it up, which is totally anyone's prerogative. You get to read whatever you want. I think it makes it easier to really explore a character in a fulfilling way because I get to see them at different points in their life. Chani and Kathleen are in their late 30s. We don't have a lot of late 30s characters, but I’m also kind of cheating because I'm writing them in their 20s and younger, so there's something for everyone to relate to. But it's definitely hard to find the balance of how much of each age to show and what parts of the story to reveal when. It’s a good way to build a lot of natural tension because you don't have to have the characters thinking about what they did prior in a way that human beings don’t reference in their own minds.

How does it inform your writing process?

For this one, I had three different outlines. I would write sections. Then I would put it together like a jigsaw. I knew what major plot points I needed to happen when. In the original draft, there was way more summer camp content. It was almost equally divided between the three. My editor didn’t think that timeline was needed at all. But I really, really love the last chapter. I knew it had to be the end of the book. So, I had to find a way to make summer camp sections work. That meant pulling back a lot and really cutting back on things elsewhere. I'm very proud of the book, and I'm really happy with the way it came out. There are those times when, as a writer, you know you need to keep something. It was obviously not coming through the way I wanted it to. I had to earn that ending a little bit.

I thought it was a perfect exposition of where she is in her life by the chronological end.

Yeah. Me too.

Speaking of the writing process, what is a book you've read recently that you wish you had written?

I have so many. Rachel Lynn Solomon’s book, Business or Pleasure, comes out soon and is one. I am deeply jealous that I didn’t write it. Anything Katie Cotugno writes. I think she has such a great eye for things. The way she describes things is so brilliant. I'm glad they're both writing and getting their books out in the world so that I get to read them. But I'm super jealous I did not write those.

Since this is The FMC, which female archetype do you most relate to?

I always joke that if I was cast on a reality show, I would totally be the “bitch.” I’m very opinionated and strong-willed in a way that I think certain men don't like, and that makes society uncomfortable. It stems from the joke that I don't have a resting bitchface; I have an active bitchface. [laughter]

That's an answer I didn’t think I would ever get. Thank you for being honest. Lastly, to bring everything back to Once More With Feeling–this is a question that is very important to me–do you like Grease 2 better than Grease?

Yes. I love it.

Me too! Everyone always gives me shit, but Grease 2 is better.

Once you find other people that agree with you, you’re instantly best friends

When Kathleen and Harriet said it was better, I was like, “Oh, my gosh. Is this real?” [laughter]

I love Grease as well. My Bar Mitzvah theme was Grease. But the second one is so ridiculous and so absurd. Plus, it has Michelle Pfeiffer, so it wins.