Kilby Q&A: 10 Things You Always Wanted to Know About “Spooning Leads to Forking” (But Were Afraid to Ask)
It's time for another installment of Kilby Q&A! This week, I answer ten questions about my new culinary romance novel, Spooning Leads to Forking! There’s always a story behind the story…
Q1: First of all: yay! This is the follow-up to your much-loved novel, The Secret Ingredient! Why did you decide to turn it into a series?
A: Mostly, because I’m a huge foodie and there’s no way I’ll never not write about food and wine. I had so many big concept ideas for stories that had a deep connection to the culinary world. I decided to make them into a collection to make it easier for my readers to track which of my novels are steeped in culinary themes. Each book in the series can all be read as a standalone (though there is a surprise grand finale that brings all of the characters together). For now, Hot in the Kitchen is the umbrella they’ll all live under. The next book in the series, after Spooning Leads to Forking is called Romancing the Stove. Yeah, I like a good pun.
Q2: This looks like it’s shaping up to be a small town series. Is it? Do you live in a small town? If so, is Sapling like a town where you’ve lived?
A: I live in San Francisco now, but grew up in a small college town, which is like growing up in any small town except with more cheesy bars. It had a sweets shop where I used to buy hard candy sticks, a diner counter where I used to go after school for milkshakes, and an old-style pharmacy on the town square. There was a post office and a train station so small you could walk across the tracks, and my dad would give me his pocket change to buy newsstand candy whenever he took me into the city. I loved the shared experience of people and places and traditions that everybody knew and living in a place that wasn’t overrun with big, national franchises.
Q3: What did you love about writing this book?
A: All of my books are a little autobiographical. In Spooning Leads to Forking, Shea is a food critic and I used to be a food, wine and travel writer myself. It was a great time in my life. I loved going undercover, ordering a bunch of dishes and getting to try a zillion things at a single restaurant and I loved the process of writing many, many restaurant reviews. I also reviewed a lot of wineries and wine-world experiences (I live in Northern California right outside of wine country). Between the writing side of my career and earlier experiences I had working in restaurants, I had huge inspiration to cook up the Hot in the Kitchen series and I loved writing the characters and settings.
Q4: Who was the hardest character to write, and why?
A: I wanted Ethan (Shea’s ex) to be a nuanced character. A lot of times, ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands are portrayed as lying, cheating, abusive jerks who the heroine never wants to see again. I tend not to like how exes are set up to be one-dimensional in that way. But, in Spooning Leads to Forking, Shea leaves a husband who loves her and who has not betrayed her. Still, without some big act or event that brands him as bad or irredeemable, their marriage has legitimate problems and leaving is the right thing for Shea. She leaves him because he can’t adapt to the ways in which their marriage needs to change. He’s older. She married him too young. At some point, she no longer wanted or needed him to make all the decisions. Their marriage has died because he can’t accept that she’s grown up and he steamrolls her every attempt to make things between them equal. I really love the sutblety of their bad relationship. I think a lot of marriages are dysfunctional and irreparable for reasons that aren’t dramatic. Still, the act of leaving is dramatic. That’s part of where the story gets its tension.
Q5: Do you speak from experience? Were you ever in a bad relationship that paralleled Shea’s relationship with her ex?
A: I definitely identify with Shea, and with what it means to get out of the wrong relationship, and to feel like you have to figure out your life again. I had a pivotal breakup in my twenties. I was living in New York City at the time and I ended up moving to Brooklyn after that breakup because I didn’t think Manhattan was big enough for the both of us. Shea very much lives that experience of being exiled from her own life, even though she’s the one who makes the choice to go away. I think a lot of women have to start over at some point in their lives. But being brave enough to put yourself out there often comes with really rich gifts.
Q6: Enough about Shea. What about Dev? People say Romance readers fall in love with heroes, not heroines. How did you craft Dev into the perfect book boyfriend?
A: I actually fall in love more with heroines than with heroes, probably because heroines without agency are my pet peeve and I really latch on to books where that’s not the case. It may also be because I’m bi. No matter the gender of the character I’m writing, neither of them is a proxy for a person I want to be—both are proxies for people I would want to date. When it comes to Dev, what I love about him most is that he’s patient and wise. He gets that Shea has a past and that she’s figuring things out. To me, he strikes just the right balance between opening the door for something to happen between them and not being presumptuous or pushy. Also, I love a hero who is a defender of what’s right in the grand scheme of things. Just like Max, my hero in The Secret Ingredient, was fighting against land developers coming in and buying up half the town, Dev is fighting against big industry and the company that has the whole town under its thumb.
Q7: That’s something else you’re known for—writing about social justice themes—what was the significance of Packard Industries in this book?
A: Ha! Well, Packard Industries was a nod to Twin Peaks. The Packard Saw Mills controlled by the Packard family was one of a few empires in town, though Twin Peaks had the Horne family and also some illegal drug-runners and criminals running things. But it’s no surprise I was drawn to that show—it was largely about organized justice vs. grassroots justice. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper was by-the-book until he realized the way he was supposed to do things couldn’t deliver justice. Most people remember the show just being weird, but “who killed Laura Palmer?” was the central question and it took the whole series and a follow-up movie to solve. Ultimately, Special Agent Dale Cooper was completely converted to believing in vigilante justice. I would say, not only do I write social justice romance—I write vigilante justice romance. It’s not Romantic Suspense—it’s Contemporary Romance with something worth fighting for. In the case of Spooning Leads to Forking, Dev is fighting to save the town from ruin and he’s not always doing it by the book.
Q8: So Packard Industries was named after the Packard Saw Mills in Twin Peaks…any other shoutouts or homages peppered into the story?
A: Ugh! There are always too many to name. One thing I find when I go back and reread my own books is that, in every chapter, there’s something. I actually started highlighting passages off of my Kindle version and writing notes that readers can check out every time I find one of those kernels. Off the top of my head, Kendrick’s house is based off of a friend of mine’s house; Sapling is loosely based on a town that a different friend of mine lives in, in Evergreen, Colorado; I put warm morning buns into the story because I love warm morning buns. Apart from that, if you check out my own highlights on Goodreads, you’ll get them all. They’re all linked from the back of the book.
Q9: Something you put in the afterword following the story mentioned a bigger series related to Kendrick. What’s that all about?
A: Kendrick is actually a huge deal. Kendrick has his own upcoming series and he’s the kingpin of something huge. His series hasn’t come out yet, but part of his thing is that he knows a lot of people. Kendrick is a common factor across many of my boos, regardless of series and universes. I don’t want to let the cat all the way out of the bag. What I’ll say is, what Shea finds out about Kendrick in Spooning Leads to Forking is just the tip of the iceberg with him. He is not a midlevel IT guy, as she discovers. But he’s not just a hacker, either. And his love story kicks off a whole, big chain of events.
Q10: Alright…that sounds like it would be getting us ahead of itself. What about the next book in the series? When does that come out?
A: I don’t know when Romancing the Stove will come out. I have some competing priorities. Plus, I’m way behind on everything, because, COVID. This year has not been the year I’ve wanted it to be, for many, many reasons. The net result is, stuff’s getting pushed back (sorry). With that said, I’m not abandoning the series. Romancing the Stove will come out—probably sometime in 2021.