As Katie Naymon unveils her debut novel You Between the Lines, the author and copywriter from Richfield has already been living out her own romance-novel-dream since meeting her husband while studying abroad in Sweden and moving to the country in 2018. You Between The Lines reflects Naymon’s personal experience as a sorority girl-turned MFA poetry student in North Carolina, but the romance takes on a life of its own between two Cleveland natives whose hatred turns to infatuation through verses and stanzas. Her own stroke of the pen shines through, with inspiration from established romance connoisseurs like Cincinnati natives Emily Henry, author of the bestselling People We Meet on Vacation, and Curtis Sittenfeld of Prep and Eligible. Ahead of Naymon’s book release on Feb. 18, Cleveland Magazine spoke with her about the book, her career and her Northeast Ohio roots.
Cleveland Magazine: Can you give me a quick synopsis of the book in your words?
Katie Naymon: It's an academic 'rivals-to-lovers,' in a very contemporary romance way, about two former high school students who end up in the same MFA poetry program ten years later. They were enemies in high school and are still kind of enemies now. And Will, the male protagonist, can't stop writing about the female protagonist, Leigh. It's juicy, very tense and a little angsty.
(Courtesy Forever/Hachette)
CM: How does the novel tie back to Northeast Ohio?
KN: It takes place in North Carolina, but it's about two people who met in school in Cleveland. There's a lot of references to Northeast Ohio because that is their shared background. Like, there's a pivotal scene that takes place in a corn maze, and they talk about being Midwesterners. There's a couple scenes that take place in Ohio because there's a high school flashback, and they go home for winter break. And there's just a lot of references and biographical information. One of them was born in Chagrin Falls; they're talking about Hudson, Medina, Rocky River. There is a fair amount of Easter eggs for the Cleveland reader, even though it does not technically take place there.
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CM: How do you balance applying your real-life experiences and training into a work of fiction?
KN: I had never written a book before until this one. I had no formal training in fiction, but I think I kind of approached it more like a poem in some ways. I think they're not so dissimilar; poems and novels both have beginnings, middles and ends. Poems also have characters, and it's also about scenes and what's happening on the line. But it definitely also didn't prepare me in a lot of other ways. Figuring out what the characters should do was a challenge. If you really know the people, then you can create a profile of that person. That's where you can begin the separation between the self and the character. I always knew that [Leigh] would be similar to me, but not exactly, so I would really try to flush out the psychology. I took an Enneagram test pretending I was the character, trying to think, How would she answer this? That early prep is where you separate yourself a little.
CM: What was the process of writing your debut novel?
KN: I was going in blind — never having written a book before — which I think is relatively uncommon, but I kind of think was a good thing because my identity was not tied up in being a novelist. It was very low stakes in that way, where nothing was riding on this, but I always had the ambition. Writing is, in many ways, excruciating work. It got easier when other people got into the mix, like my agent. But when it was just me, I would remember writing for a couple of hours and then going to talk to my husband and being like, ‘This is a nightmare.’ But it’s deeply intellectually stimulating; I loved it.
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CM: What resources in Northeast Ohio fostered your writing career?
KN: I luckily had some of the best academic experiences, from middle school and high school, and I was nurtured by a lot of really great teachers. Ohio has so many literary opportunities: different awards and ways that they nurture writers that I tried to do. I was in Power of the Pen; I loved that competitive environment and the community aspect. I've never had a full-time job that wasn't as some form of writer, like journalism or a copywriter. It was really the only thing that I was pretty good at, and once you identify the thing that you're naturally good at, it's like, ‘Let's just go on this.’
CM: What piece of advice would you give to aspiring writers?
KN: Finding a community of writers is really useful — people who want to read your work, support you and give you real feedback. I think a lot of times, writers will give work to people who will just basically hype you up, which I think is also really important. I think that those readers are useful and you should keep them. But I think you do need to find writers that you trust to be really, really honest. Those people can be really helpful in taking your writing to the next level. If you want to publish, you truly have to read as much as possible, and you need to be really familiar with what's selling. If you're not absorbing what's currently out there, you won't see those trends. Being a good writer is unfortunately not the entire battle when it comes to being published. It's so much about the concepts and the premise, luck, timing and being willing to write what the market wants and not necessarily your passion project. If you want to improve as a writer, letting other people into the writing can only be a good thing.
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