London-based novelist Anna McCallie made her authorial debut on June 23 with โAbby Offsides,โ a rom-com about a woman who abruptly ends her engagement, moves across the pond and falls in love with Lachlan Ramsay, a Scottish soccer star.
The novel, fit for the World Cup obsessed, is the latest book from Jenna Bush Hagerโs imprint, Thousand Voices x Random House Publishing Group.
During the July 2 episode of โOpen Book with Jenna,โ McCallie told Jenna about the surprising origins of the tale.
โAbby Offsidesโ started as a story McCallie told in her head to fall asleep at night. The only issue is that Abbyโs love story quickly started to keep McCallie up.
โI just thought to myself, โAll right, Iโm going to imagine a woman, and Iโm going to just think about the mundane details of her life. What does her hair look like? Whatโs she wearing? What does her office look like?โ And try to have it be just exciting enough that it drowned out the other thoughts, but not so exciting that I was staying up thinking about her,โ McCallie said.
It didnโt take long before that plan unraveled.
โUnfortunately, I failed, and she became too exciting, because night after night she ended up at a club with a man, and there was something wrong about it, and I just kept coming back to it,โ the author told Jenna.
Then, McCallie decided to confide in a friend about her nightly issue.
โI was telling my friend how Iโve totally failed at this insomnia cure, and he was like, โYeah, thatโs because youโre writing a book.โ I just hadnโt even thought of turning it into a story. As soon as he said it, I just thought, โOh my God, heโs right,โ and so I started writing it down,โ she said.
More about ‘Abby Offsides’
Abby and Lachlanโs love story interfered with Jennaโs sleep schedule, too, she told McCallie.
โI remember where I was when I finished (โAbby Offsidesโ), because I was in bed with my own husband, and I was like, โNo more noise,โ because I was so invested in these characters,โ Jenna said, laughing. โI think sometimes creating a world where people want to stay up late into night, โflashlight reading,โ is because you yourself were sort of not burdened by the story, but overcome with it.โ
That โflashlight readingโ is one of McCallieโs โfavorite experiences as a reader,โ she told Jenna. Having come up with the U.K. soccer romance herself, she didnโt get to have the same experience with the story, she said.
Still, McCallie said itโs exciting her first novel can do that for other readers.
โIโm so in the weeds that I donโt know what it was like to fall in love with Lachlan, because I was creating him,โ she said. โI love the idea that people are up there turning pages way past their bedtime โฆ itโs totally surreal that I have now created that experience for other people.โ