Before we get started, just look at this: Isn’t it the most beautiful cover you have ever seen? I know, I’m biased, but… it’s the most beautiful cover I have ever seen!
Yep, yes, you guessed it. It’s a Taylor Swift song. I think I don’t need to say I’m a Taylor Swift fan – although I just did. I was completely obsessed with 1989, listened to it nonstop for months, depicted each lyric trying to guess the stories behind them. Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly why Welcome to New York was the one that gave birth to this book. It’s not my favorite song, not even close, to be honest. I only remember I found my two main characters in these verses:
I have a lot of ideas. As I said before, I have way too many unfinished stories saved and buried somewhere in my computer. In the odd case where I do develop one of them, one of my main concerns is making sure everything would make sense outside of the page. Thus, a good chunk of my writing is spent researching. In Welcome to New York, I write about a lot of things I don’t know – living in New York, having a baby, working at a coffee shop, auditioning for theater, owning a business, among many others. Some of the questions that these situations raised were: Could a waitress with a baby afford an apartment in NYC? How do you get into Broadway plays? What is an equity card? What do you need to open your own business?
Yes, indeed I did. And I published it, too. So, it took me three years, two months and fifteen days to have it finished. Welcome to New York started off as a writing exercise, I never intended to make it into a book, even though publishing one was an old dream of mine.