Carley Fortune Tells Jenna Bush Hager Her Dad’s Sweet Reaction to Her Overnight Fame
The bestselling author reflects on fame, family and writing five novels in five years
Key Takeaways
- Carley Fortune says the pandemic helped fuel her breakout success.
- The bestselling author is balancing writing, motherhood and fame.
- Fortune's dad hadn't read a book since 1976—until he read her debut novel.
Carley Fortune is opening up to the Today show co-host Jenna Bush Hager about her overnight success and how it impacted her family. While appearing on Jenna’s podcast, Open Book With Jenna, to chat about all things books, reading and more, Fortune revealed that in the past four years, her career and family grew in ways she never thought possible. Below, we share what she said and reveal how her family reacted to her fame.
Carley Fortune opens up about her instant fame
Fortune has written five novels—Every Summer After, Meet Me at the Lake, This Summer Will Be Different, One Golden Summer and Our Perfect Storm—and all were bestsellers. There have also been a few book-to-screen adaptations, with the most recent one being Every Summer After, which was released on Prime Video earlier this month.
“I feel like part of the reason it took off so quickly, and in such a wild way, was that we were stuck inside. It was pandemic times,” Fortune told Jenna of the success of her first book, Every Summer After, which was published in 2022. “The books, I really want people to be able to kind of experience them with their senses, all their senses, so that you really do feel like you’ve gone away somewhere. And so they are great, great books to read on the beach, but they’re also great if you’re in your apartment and you’re not going anywhere because you can, you feel like the sun is on your face and you are having these experiences with the characters.”
“And I think that I didn’t realize that while I was writing my first novel because I was just writing about how I grew up,” she continued. “But then in hindsight, it’s like that is why people, one of the biggest reasons I think people love that book and enjoy the other books is they really get to have a book vacation.”
Since then, Fortune has published four other books, meaning that she published a book a year. She’s also working on her sixth novel, even though her fifth—One Golden Summer—was just published.
“I feel like there’s kind of this pressure, particularly in the romance genre, to be prolific, you know. I mean, like the other day an editor was like, ‘No, but in romance we want fast, fast, fast,'” Fortune said. “There are so many things going on with the adaptations, and with every book, it gets a little bit bigger and the touring and just the demands on time. And so it was very, and Our Perfect Storm I had to submit two months earlier than usual. So, usually I’m done at the end of October and I had to finish by the end of August and that really took it out of me.”
“It was very challenging and so writing the first draft of the sixth book, I was already feeling kind of stretched and I always try to submit my draft before I go on tour,” she continued. “So my books come out in May. So usually by the end of April, I am hustling to get a draft done and then I’ll spend the summer and early fall revising. But I’m really thinking about whether I need to take a break after that because I’m not a fast writer at all.”
Carley Fortune discusses her family life
Fortune is a proud mother of two sons.
“When I wrote Every Summer After, I had one child, and now I have two boys. My youngest is 5, and I became pregnant while I was writing the book. So I really associate the books with Finn and how old he is because he is 5 and now I have 5 novels,” Fortune said.
As for the rest of her family, Fortune says they all love and support her, but her dad’s reaction to reading her first book was priceless.
“Every Summer After was the first book my dad had read since 1976,” the author said. “He told me it was pretty good.”
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