Interview With Novelist Keelia Clarkson
Here at Wallflower, we love stories — ones with deep questions, relatable characters, soft romances, and happy endings. Which is why we’re excited to share more with you about our Editor-in-Chief Keelia Clarkson’s debut novel, Chapter One Again, which is set to release June 9th.
Chapter One Again tells the story of Jane, a ghostwriter living in New York City who quietly longs to publish her own novel. When she must return to Avila Falls, the tiny mountain hometown she fled a decade earlier, she stumbles across her high school crush from a decade earlier, and unexpected sparks fly.
Soon, Jane finds herself questioning the life she’s chosen, and wondering whether the answers to the life questions she’s been pondering were in the place she ran from all along.
Q: How did Chapter One Again come about?
A: The story was built around a bookstore. Initially I’d thought of writing it as a screenplay and having it take place in that single location. It would be about a woman who visits home for the first time in years and runs into her former high school crush. Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, they find themselves in long conversation, and soon a connection sparks.
But as I began to write it for screen, I felt like there was much more story to be told. Eventually, I decided to try writing it as a novel, and I fell in love with the writing process and everything that was suddenly possible to write through that medium — the small town of Avila Falls that I dreamed up, the cast of characters both lovable and silly that took form, the inner monologue of my protagonist that I was able to explore deeply.
Q: Underneath the romance and small town setting, what is this novel really asking?
A: The main character, Jane, lives a life that looks like she has it all. She’s carefully built the life she thought would be meaningful. She lives in the city, works at an important publisher, has an impressive resume and apartment, has cool friends. And yet, despite everything she’s been able to accomplish since leaving her hometown, she feels like something is missing.
Jane wonders whether her life truly matters, and whether the God she was taught about, whom she’s found herself distant from, truly cares. This novel asks what it looks like to actually live a meaningful life.
Q: Who is this book for?
A: It was my hope that Jane would be someone readers could relate to. I hoped that anyone who’s questioned the life they’re living, wondered if they’ll ever feel like they matter, struggled with insecurities that won’t go away, and wrestled with trusting that God sees and cares for them would feel understood through this book.
But it’s also for readers who long for a beautiful, good, cozy world in the form of a small town to escape to, where everyone knows each other’s name and everyone belongs.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from this book?
A: I think a lot of us feel like it’s necessary to chase that next “extraordinary” thing in order to feel like our lives are worthy. But the reality is, the vast majority of us live lives that would be seen as ordinary — with that in mind, I wanted to explore the idea of an ordinary life, and the incredible beauty and meaning there is in living one.
Q: Here are Wallflower, we always ask our women of note what their favorite book is. What’s yours?
A: This is probably the most difficult question to answer! It’s impossible to ever truly pick one book, and about eighty different thoughts came to mind. But in the spirit of small towns and Chapter One Again, I would say Anne of Green Gables. I can never get enough of the comfort that Avonlea and its people offer, the beautiful relationships that have stayed with me, and the beauty in the ordinary lives that L. M. Montgomery captured so perfectly.
