Bread Novel: A Guest Post by Haley Pham

Four years after their ill-fated romance, former best friends Blair and Declan find themselves working together in a small-town coffee shop, unable to avoid one another. But the two can’t help but rekindle the growing spark in this delightful romcom about second chances. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Haley Pham on writing Just Friends.

When I look back at all the little breadcrumbs that led to writing a book, I’d say the trail is very long, and very segmented. The first breadcrumb was dropped when my mom took me to the library and let me check out the maximum number of books. She would read every single one to me. I still remember the first time I looked at a word and understood that the letters matched the sound ascribed to it. That word was “fairy.” There’s weirdly a lot of fairies mentioned in my romance book set in the real world. Three-year-old Haley would be proud.

The second biggest breadcrumb, perhaps this one was a loaf of bread, was dropped by my fourth-grade English teacher. She would squat next to my desk and recommend book series after book series she thought I’d love. I devoured them all. She wore a necklace inspired by The Hunger Games, so I went on Etsy and copied her. That was the first time I realized being a reader was cool. She and I shared a secret language no one else in class understood.

At seventeen I started a journal of essays and poems that I was convinced was going to be published. I’m extremely grateful it wasn’t. I’d make my boyfriend at the time, my husband now, watch videos of slam poetry on YouTube. Look up, “Pages Matam – Wings.” Despite the emotional topics, I felt hyper after watching those videos. Discovering how people were able to manipulate language made me feel more alive.

At twenty-one, I started talking about books in my YouTube videos more often. Then, all I could do was think about books, so that was all I talked about.

I started writing this love story between Blair and Declan in a beach town so small and so idyllic, it felt like a snowglobe. That’s how I wanted it to feel. Like this tiny world I could work through my own questions about life in. How do you suffer and share it with the people around you? What are friendships supposed to be like in your twenties? How are you supposed to carry the weight of supporting your family and chasing your dreams? And to balance all of that hard stuff out: what might it be like if your childhood crush still held a candle for you? Then set it all on a beach with good coffee.

I love how romantic stories are a safe place to ask scary questions. It’s also a safe place to be honest about the messiness of our emotions. It forces you to consider what caused fear in someone’s life. And it asks you to trust and forgive anyway.