Verity

by Colleen Hoover

Thank you all so much for always supporting my books. I’m very grateful Verity has been nominated for a Choice Award in Romance. My little dark and twisted book is in very good company, so make sure you cast your votes for your favorite reads! https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards?ref=CHKNH

Here, I’m invisible. Unimportant. Manhattan is too crowded to give a shit about me, and I love her for it.

I’m from a very small town in Texas. The first trip I took out of state was to New York City and talk about a culture shock! I was amazed at how many people there were in one spot. I’m used to being able to drive down a ten mile stretch of road without passing a single car. So while New York was overwhelming, it almost made me feel invisible. Because when you pass the only other car on a ten-mile stretch of road in Texas, they’re going to notice you. And they probably know you and know where you’re going or where you’re coming from. I was intrigued by the idea that in a city the size of New York, I felt more invisible there than I do in my tiny hometown.

It’s what you do when you’ve experienced the worst of the worst. You seek out people like you…people worse off than you…and you use them to make yourself feel better about the terrible things that have happened to you.

This is one of those moments I have to really use my imagination when I’m in the mind of a character. I don’t know that I would respond this way if I experienced a lot of tragedy. I’d surround myself with people who were less like me to try and pull me out of whatever mood I’m in.

And that’s why I stay at home and write. I think the idea of me is better than the reality of me.

I try to avoid projecting my own feelings onto my characters, but when I was writing Lowen’s character, I couldn’t help but transfer my feelings about my career onto her character. I see a lot of myself in her, especially with this quote. I feel very boring in real life, and I’m extremely awkward. I sometimes feel like people expect me to be one way in person, but then are disappointed to meet me and find out I’m not a bubbly, outgoing individual. Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it’s all in my head. But the feelings exist, and from talking to other writers, it exists in a lot of us.

“Some families are lucky enough to never experience a single tragedy. But then there are those families that seem to have tragedies waiting on the back burner. What can go wrong, goes wrong. And then gets worse.”

I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t experienced a lot of personal tragedy. But I know people who can’t seem to catch a break. People like Jeremy Crawford, who endured hardship after hardship and loss after loss. I fashioned his strength and perseverance after people in my own life who somehow find it in themselves to keep moving forward for the people they love. Jeremy fought to create as normal of an environment as he could for his son, Crew.

“It’s an okay book. There are words in it. Read it if you want.”

This is me with every book I write. It’s so hard for me to talk positively about my books, or to self-promote. Maybe that’s because I never feel like my books are perfect and there’s always something I would go back and change if I could. So when people ask me about my books, that’s basically me, stumbling over how to talk about them. “Eh. They’re okay. You don’t have to read them. I don’t want to be a bother.” Self-promotion is the thing I hate the most about this career. That and being in front of a camera. I’m most comfortable at my computer in pajamas.

I don’t want to call him an asshole. He’s a little kid, and he’s been through a lot. But I think he might be an asshole.

Before I became a writer, I taught school for a year. It was the worst year of my life. I have the upmost respect for teachers who find joy in what they do. While teaching, I discovered I’m not a huge fan of other people’s kids. I’m relieved the writing thing worked out because there are absolutely little assholes out there and I’m happy I get to write about them and not have to deal with them.

The good thing about sins is they don’t have to be atoned for immediately,

Being in Verity’s head was deliciously exciting. I felt like I was able to let loose and really explore what goes through the minds of sinister people. It’s a stretch, but it’s a fun one. I remember this sentence resembling how I felt while writing from her point of view. It felt wrong, like I was committing some kind of sin. But it was okay, because it was my character having these thoughts, not myself. But I am my characters...so I can see why it’s so hard for my husband to separate my own morals from those of the people I write about.

Jeremy was the first man Verity ever had true feelings for. And while she says she wasn’t falling in love here, I absolutely think she was. She went from experiencing the act of sex to the art of making love, but I think she was too self-involved to realize that.

I believe instant connections exist, but I’m not sure I’m a believer of insta-love. Not in the sense that you know right then and there that you love someone. It takes time to sort through those feelings, and it takes more than one experience with that person. I think that’s how Verity felt about Jeremy. She had a deep and immediate connection with him, but how can you say it’s love right away when there’s a chance you might never cross paths with that person again? Love is something that’s built and nurtured over a period of time, and Verity found it hard to open up to people. She needed that time to admit to herself that what she felt for Jeremy that first night was love at first sight.

My father died when I was in my teens. My mother died three years ago. But I grew up in New York State, on an alpaca farm, if you can believe that.”

I’ve been obsessed with alpacas for a couple of years now. We live on a lot of land and have the perfect place to raise alpacas, but my husband knows me too well and knows he’d end up being the one to care for them. So I sometimes insert the idea of owning alpacas into my books. I live vicariously through my characters in a lot of ways.

The End

The entire time I wrote this book, I planned on a completely different ending. One that felt a little predictable to me. I struggled with how I was going to end it until one night, when the book was already complete, I woke up at three in the morning with a new plan. I immediately got out of bed and stayed up most of the day writing the new ending. In fact, the two women who work for me read the first version and I forgot to tell them I changed the ending. They had no idea until they saw a review someone had written that mentioned a letter. The version they read didn’t include the letter. They no longer want to read early versions of the books I write because they never turn out the same in the end.

Thank you for taking a chance on this book.

I wasn’t sure I could pull off a psychological thriller, but I had more fun writing Verity than any other book I’ve written. It honestly took an adjustment diving back into romance with Regretting You. I’ve been itching to write another book similar to the feel of Verity, so I’m currently pushing my boundaries again by writing a paranormal romance. I never thought I’d explore that genre, but it’s been just as fun as writing Verity was.