Columbus author Kerry Winfrey releases new book 'Faking Christmas'
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
There's no dearth of Christmas romances set in small towns in New England, or the South, or the mountains. But central Ohio? Not so much.
Kerry Winfrey, 37, has set out to remedy that deficiency in “Faking Christmas,” a screwball romance that starts in Columbus and then heads out to the small town of Baileyville, the name of which pays tribute to the hero of the Christmas classic “It's a Wonderful Life.”
Laurel, the novel's narrator, has landed a job with a magazine whose slogan is “Everything is great in the Buckeye State,” on the strength of a column she submitted about her life in the countryside. The only problem: that's not her life she's describing so vividly in the column, it's her sister Holly's. Holly lives on a farm in a bucolic little town, where she raises goats and kids, cooks gourmet meals, cans vegetables and makes her own soap.
When her boss at the magazine, despondent over recently being dumped by his wife, begs Laurel to allow him to share the family Christmas festivities she has described so poignantly in her column, she concocts a plan that involves switching identities with her sister. For the husband she lacks, she is forced to make do with one of her sister's family friends, who just so happens to be Laurel's arch-enemy. When a sudden snowstorm forces everyone at the party to spend days locked up together, chaos, and romance, ensue.
“Faking Christmas” is Winfrey's fifth novel to be set in or around Columbus, where she lives with her family on the West Side.
More: Get in the holiday spirit with these 10 things to do this weekend in Columbus
Question: How did you decide to write a Christmas novel?
Kerry Winfrey: I have always loved Christmas. Like a lot of people, I'm sure! But I got the inspiration for this book when I was watching the 1945 movie “Christmas in Connecticut,” which is one of my favorites. It's about a woman who makes her boss think that she lives on a farm, that she's a wife and mother, and she knows how to cook and take care of animals and all this stuff, when in reality, she's a single woman living in New York City, and she doesn't know how to do any of that stuff.
I started thinking, why hasn't there been a version of this in the social-media age? We all know that people are lying on social media all the time. So I thought, I'm a writer, I can write that version. It ended up not being very much like the movie at all, other than that original plot point. But the Christmas setting was another thing I really liked about it. It makes everything so cozy, and it really heightens the tension, because at Christmas you're around your whole family, lots of things can go wrong, and there are a lot of opportunities for miscommunication.
Q: Where does “Christmas in Connecticut” stand in your ranking of Christmas movies?
Winfrey: It's right up there at the top. But to be honest, I love most Christmas movies. There's a point in the novel where people are arguing about the movie “Elf,” and whether it's good or bad. Some people don't like that movie, but I love it. I love the “Home Alone” movies. I love just about any Christmas movie.
Q: This novel has a screwball comedy feel, all the action and confusion, and there's a kind of lightness to it. How did you keep it light?
Winfrey: That's what I love about screwball comedies: they kind of require a suspension of disbelief. You have to believe that it's possible for someone to fool their boss like this, where in real life, if this was a realistic story, that would be a lot harder. It was fun for me to try to create something that didn't have anything that would make you cry. Like no trauma. I wanted it to be something you could read if you wanted an escape from real life, or if it was Christmas and you were stressed and around your family and just wanted to escape for a moment and read something where you know everything is going to be kind of silly and it's all going to turn out all right in the end.
Q: So I have to ask, do the names of Laurel and Holly echo Laurel and Hardy?
Winfrey: You are not the first person to ask that. The weird thing is that I didn't even think of that. I was just thinking of Christmas names. One of the things I love about Hallmark movies is that they go over the top with their names. So I just wanted the most Christmas-y names I could think of.
More: From trolls to barber poles: 9 of Ohio's most unusual museums
Q: So where do you fit on the domestic spectrum between Laurel and Holly?
Winfrey: I'm probably more like Holly, but not as good at what she does. I'm married, I have a kid, I cook a lot, I bake a lot, I do crafts. But I'm definitely not up there with doing my own woodworking or raising goats.
Q: Lego figures heavily here — you clearly know a lot about that. Do you do it yourself? It sounds like maybe your husband does that?
Winfrey: Luckily, I am often able to use my husband's interests in my books. Which is nice, because he can tell me if I'm making any big mistakes. He builds a lot of really cool Lego models. He comes up with his own. So I was able to ask him for a lot of advice — like about what would be a hard Lego set to build, or what would be a rare piece they would look for.
Q: Obviously, this is a novel that will particularly appeal to Columbus readers. What do you think are the pros and cons of a novel set in or around Columbus?
Winfrey: The pro for me is that I really do live here, I've lived here for a while, so it's easy for me to figure out where my characters would go or what they would be doing, what restaurants they would go to. The first book that I set in Columbus was “Waiting for Tom Hanks.” The reason I set it in German Village was that a movie had recently filmed there. Something with John Travolta. And I thought, they should film a cute romantic comedy there. It's so adorable.
There are so many rom-coms set in New York City, and other bigger cities. But I think smaller cities can be just as romantic and charming. So I wanted to set books here, and show that it can be just as cinematic as bigger locations. But the con is that sometimes I have to be careful because I want characters to be moving their way through the city in a way that might not be realistic. I don't want anyone to be reading it and think, Oh, they couldn't get from German Village to Clintonville in that amount of time. Or a business might close that I write about, that's always a problem.
Q: For you, what makes romantic comedy such an appealing form to write?
Winfrey: Real life can be very difficult, whether you're going through everyday difficulties or something bigger. It can be hard. I think it's nice to have a genre where you know you can escape into it and that even though things are going to get hard for the characters, everything is going to turn out OK in the end. No matter what, you're going to have a happily ever after. And you'll get to see characters grow and change and turn into better people, and end up happier in the end.
Q: Are you working on another novel now?
Winfrey: I'm working on something now. But all I can tell you about it is that it definitely will be set in Columbus.
At a glance
Kerry Winfrey will appear at 5 p.m. Dec. 1 at Gramercy Books, 2424 E. Main St., Bexley. The event is sold out.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Author Kerry Winfrey's 'Faking Christmas' novel set in Columbus
