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"Catching Air by best-selling author Sarah Pekkanen goes on sale today, and we were immediately drawn into the story of two couples&amp;amp;#8212;two brothers and their wives&amp;amp;#8212;who decide to run a bed and breakfast together in Vermont. We caught up with the author to ask her about her writing process, her dream casting, and more. What are your top three unexpected sources of inspiration? 1) Noise! It sounds counterintuitive, but I used to work in busy newsrooms, so it&amp;#x27;s hard for me to write in a cone of silence. I penned part of my first novel at Chuck E. Cheese&amp;#x27;s while my kids played! 2) Exercise. While I jog, my subconscious does the hard work of unknotting my plots. 3) Movies. Sometimes I need to get lost in someone else&amp;#x27;s storytelling to find clarity in my own. If I&amp;#x27;m feeling stuck, I often turn to Netflix. Describe three things you have on your person or on your desk while you work. 1) A cup of English Breakfast tea with honey because a little caffeine helps jump-start the creative process. 2) Headphones so I can blast one of my writing playlists (acoustic Pink and Katy Perry are my go-tos). 3) My sweet rescue Lab, Bella, who loves to drape herself across my feet while I write. If you could put your book in the hands of three people (living or dead), who would they be? Why? 1) My grandmother, who worked as a waitress her entire life and was one of the smartest people I&amp;#x27;ve ever met&amp;amp;#8212;she routinely whipped me at Scrabble. I suspect my love of words filtered down from her, and I know she&amp;#x27;d be proud I&amp;#x27;m an author. Maybe, if she&amp;#x27;d had the chance, she would have been too. 2) Truman Capote. His incredible book In Cold Blood is partly responsible for my becoming a novelist. Capote wrote about a true story&amp;amp;#8212;the murder of a Kansas family&amp;amp;#8212;but his prose flowed as seamlessly as the best fiction. As a newspaper journalist, I was inspired to weave storytelling into my articles because of Capote, and in a roundabout way, that led to my career as a novelist. 3) Emma Stone. She does a great job of showcasing vulnerability and strength, so I think she&amp;#x27;d be absolutely perfect to play the part of my character Dawn in the movie version of Catching Air! What were the last three books you read (for real, not books you&amp;#x27;d like people to think you read)? Oh, good, I don&amp;#x27;t have to lie and say War and Peace then? I just spent a delicious afternoon reading an early copy of Jennifer Weiner&amp;#x27;s All Fall Down, which was heartbreakingly beautiful yet funny in many spots. I also devoured After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and Til The Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma. What three words best describe Catching Air, and why? Satisfying, relatable, vibrant. My main characters&amp;amp;#8212;Kira, Alyssa, and Dawn&amp;amp;#8212;end up running a B&amp;amp;B in Vermont together, and I hope readers recognize bits of themselves in these women. There&amp;#x27;s a lot going on at the B&amp;amp;B, including an upcoming wedding (starring the world&amp;#x27;s most demanding bride!) and assorted guests popping in and out. Plus, Kira, Alyssa, and Dawn are essentially strangers, so they need to learn how to live together, especially since their personal styles couldn&amp;#x27;t be more different. How would you describe the ideal reader for Catching Air, and what do you think she&amp;#x27;ll feel when she&amp;#x27;s finished? I&amp;#x27;m hugely flattered whenever reviewers compare my books to those by Jennifer Weiner and Emily Giffin, so I&amp;#x27;d say readers who love women&amp;#x27;s fiction&amp;amp;#8212;which includes not only good storytelling and writing, but also characters who deserve happy endings, even if those endings aren&amp;#x27;t cookie-cutter perfect. I hope when a reader finishes my book, she&amp;#x27;ll feel as a little disoriented because she has been so fully immersed in the imaginary world contained between Catching Air&amp;#x27;s pages. Has the experience of writing this novel changed you in any way? If so, how? Definitely. Writing a book is such an emotional experience! In a way it&amp;#x27;s like falling in love because you get so wrapped up in your characters and their stories&amp;amp;#8212;but then it&amp;#x27;s a bit heartbreaking because after months of thinking about them, you have to say goodbye. Luckily, there&amp;#x27;s always the promise of another book to write just around the corner... What are you reading this summer?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2014/05/catching-air-sarah-pekkanen>