Gwen Tolios – Beyond the Blurb – Representation For All Series
Monica’s relationship with her father is falling apart, made more obvious when her return to Madison after years aboard results in him throwing her out of the house. Lisa Carson, her BFF and old college roommate, takes her in. Turns out Lisa has her own issues with her parents – they’re pushing her to date despite her lack of desire. So when Monica joins a Carson family dinner, she lies and says it’s starting a relationship with Lisa that brought her back to America.
Lisa goes along with the ruse – it gets her parents off her back and it’s only until Monica repairs her relation-ship with her father and moves out. What Monica failed to take into account however is that crush she had on Lisa in college? Yeah, that didn’t go away.
Beyond the Blurb
Beyond the blurb, tell us about your book. What is/are the genre(s)? If a romance, is it HEA or HFN?
I usually describe Returning to You as a romantic drama. It’s got an HEA, but with the full understanding that the couple will have work ahead of them to get it right (and the expectation that they will). There’s a fair amount of family and workplace drama, so I wouldn’t call it a light beach read.
That said, it’s full of romantic tropes – best friends to lovers, forced proximity, fake dating. And one shared bed scene too.
What are the main themes? How about the tone?
A big theme is boundaries – specifically how to deal with them being crossed (and crossing them). There’s a lot of missteps in this book, from both romantic leads, from family members, and some are easier to deal with than others. Communication is key need, which can get in the way as Lisa is not much of a talker.
Another theme is thinking and planning for the future. Lisa’s on the career path. She knows she can’t continue the American dream like her parents have, and so instead is focused on amassing money to retire before the age her father does. Monica has to face head-on the fact that her dad is aging and has to start thinking about providing him care. They both come against these blocks – life won’t be as you planned – and have to work through that.
What was the biggest challenge while writing?
A big challenge was that this book hadn’t started out as a romance – it was supposed to be about the ending of a friendship (told you this is a romantic drama!) – but early readers picked up such strong romance vibes that I decided to commit and turn it into a romance.
It meant a few structure changes – originally Monica’s dad lived in California, not Wisconsin, so many of her plot points weren’t integrated with Lisa’s. Lisa’s stuff happened, then Monica’s. With that came implications to their relationship too.
Is this a type of story you’ve written before? If not, what made you deviate from the norm?
This was my first romance! While I hadn’t originally set out to make this story one, I had purposely set out to use romantic tropes. I blame my bookclub.
My bookclub is an ace bookclub – we only read books with ace or aro rep, and after reading a handful of them I was craving a different style of representation. A lot of characters were aroace, or authors didn’t separate out aro and ace identities and lumped it under ace. The characters were also often in best friend roles, and aceness almost always came out in terms of the character not wanting a relationship (which is more aligned to aromanticism). As a romantic ace I was desperate for representation of aspec people in a relationship.
So I knew I wanted ace lead with romantic desires, to show that not all aces wanted singlehood. I wanted my own relationship some day, so the romance was a wish fulfillment add. For drama, I’d originally figured I’d pair what looks like on paper opposite identities (a person who doesn’t like sex but wants romance with a person who loves sex but not the idea of a relationship) and wanted to blow it apart, but I’m so, so glad that I did, in fact, turn this into a HEA romance for multiple reasons.
What inspired you to write this story?
Eric’s plot is based conversations I started having about planning parent support, and realizing I didn’t see that in fiction a lot. It made me want to have it be an issue for one of my romantic leads. At the time I started writing this, there were a lot of family conversations I was on the edge of about how to care for my grandparents, and I had at least one friend whose mom had slipped into dementia early. It’s also when a lot of my grandparent’s generation started to go, prompting conversations with my parents about what they wanted. Senior care is stressful and expensive, and it felt like an overlooked issue in a story with young professionals where some of them might be starting to have to think about it.
How do you go about character creation?
I start with a template – maybe an archetype I like, or a character I’ve seen in media I was fascinated with – and build from there to fit them to my world. Characters often change – Lisa was originally someone obsessed with optimizing everything and had a thing for biohacking. But I trimmed that back to just have her know all the steps needed to get a promotion and an avid runner.
Do you have a favorite side character?
Scott! He’s just the best supportive dad.
Are you the type of writer that plans everything out or do you fly by the seat of your pants? Some combo therein?
I like to think of myself as a discovery writer – I discover the story as I go. But I usually have a premise and maybe the start of an arch when I start.
Do you write in order or skip around?
In order! Always
Be honest. Do you control the plot, or do your characters take over?
A bit of both? I very often feel like I’m channeling characters, and as I go things happen because I think from their mindset. But there are times where I totally go ‘let’s make this sense more messy!’ and toss in extra drama or a reveal just because I can. And then I have to make it into a plot point T.T
Have you learned anything while writing this book?
I did a bit of research on the digital nomad life for this, and while I sounds lovely I also think I’m too much of a introvert to do it. I want a small, solid friend group and moving around constantly would get in the way of that. I also did more research on dementia, I had no idea there were different varieties and that it could impact anything other than memory and make people a little paranoid. When charting out what symptoms to give Eric, I will admit I leaned into rarer ones, but I think it’s good to know how dementia is often portrayed in tv and movies isn’t always the way it shows up.
What do you plan to write next?
Not sure yet! I need to figure it out soon, as NaNo is around the corner and that’s always when I write new projects. I keep slowly rotating a sequel to Returning to You in my head however, with an ace lead who doesn’t know she’s ace and then settles into a QPR.
Gwen Tolios (she/her) is a queer Chicago-based author, staring at excel sheets by day and writing at night while trying to coax her cat to cuddle. While she got her start in SFF short stories, Gwen has also written contemporary romance novels.
Representation For All
I identify as biromanic asexual, and that identity, especially the ace bit, is really important to me and has an impact on my life. Only a few of my characters are ace, or aspec, but many of them are queer.
I’m also a first generation – ish. My mom came over so young she lived through a lot of experiences typical of a first generation and I’m solidly American. How I relate to her culture comes up occasionally in my work. Not quite part of the diaspora, but with enough family traditions for show and tell. I want to bring that connection to removed culture, as it were, into more stories.
Where to find Gwen:
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/gwentolios
