Kat asked M.Q. Barber:

When you wrote the Neighborly affection series, who was your favorite character to write?

M.Q. Barber Whichever character was whispering in my ear at any given moment, in all honesty. I tend to think of writing as a form of empathy in which the author's job is to inhabit the worldview of each character and capture it on the page in a way that lets readers empathize with the characters, too (with the caveat that no character will resonate with every reader; the world would be a dull place if they did). I love writing Alice when she's overthinking and when she's leaping light-years outside her comfort zone. I love writing Jay when he's at his silliest and when he's at his most vulnerable. I love writing Henry when he's commanding and when he's coaxing. In the three main novels, of course, everything is filtered through Alice's point of view. One of the things I particularly enjoyed about writing the short story Three-Way Tie was the opportunity to balance their perspectives by writing a chapter in each character's voice. For me it's less about having a single favorite character and more about how the characters grow and change through interacting with each other.

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