Meet the Author Monday: Jon Rance 

It’s Meet the Author Monday! Each week we meet a new author and get to know a little about them, their writing process, publishing experience, and tips for other writers. Today we’re talking to Jon Rance, author of “Not Moving Out“.

About Jon Rance:

Jon Rance writes novels about love, family, relationships, and all the messy bits in between. His novels have been described as hilarious, romantic, and perfect for fans of Mike Gayle and BethO’Leary. His first two books, This Thirty something Life and Happy Endings, were published by Hodder and Stoughton. Since then, he has written numerous novels including, Sunday Dinners, Dan And Nat Got Married, and The Worst Man. Jon recently signed a two-book deal with HeraBooks and the first,One Hundred Moments Of Us, was published in the summer of 2024.

Jon grew up in England and studied English Literature at Middlesex University, London, before travelling the world and meeting his American wife in Australia. He now lives in California with his wife, two kids, and a dog called Pickle, where he writes full-time and drinks far too much tea.

About Not Moving Out:

Freya and Joe’s marriage has fizzled its way to the end, but for financial reasons, and to support their daughter in her final year of school, they decide they need to keep living together for six months.

They know it won’t be easy, but for Joe at least, it provides creative rewards: a struggling sitcom writer, he has found his new project. Why not write about his own situation? And the network loves it.

There is just one problem – Freya doesn’t know.

A relatable second-chance romcom perfect for fans of Mike Gayle and Beth O’Leary.

Author Interview with Jon Rance:

1. Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

Hello, and thank you so much for the interview. This is a brilliant first question, and one I haven’t really thought about before. I think I try to do a bit of both. Writing in the rom-com comedy arena, people do expect a certain formula to the book. I think romantic comedy gets a bit of a hard time because people say it’s so formulaic and predictable, but at the end of the day, people also want a happy ending. People read thrillers because they want twists, turns, a shock ending you don’t see coming! But in a way, aren’t they just as formulaic? I think the real trick with writing rom coms is creating brilliant characters that you love spending time with. I definitely do try and write something original in the genre, but also you have to give the reader the happy ending they crave. I think if I wrote a rom com with a sad ending, people would be quite annoyed! It would be like writing a thriller where the hero of the story gets locked up for a crime they didn’t commit, and the murderer gets away with it. For me comedy is all about the characters.

2. What does literary success look like to you?

My only dream is to keep being able to write and so for me that is success. If I can make enough money every year to keep writing, then it has been a brilliant year. Yes, of course, I would love more success, a film deal, maybe a television show, and lots of international rights being sold, but that’s more in my dreams. The cold hard reality is that being a full-time author is almost impossible these days, so if I can keep doing that for the rest of my life, I would consider it a success.

3. What is your favorite childhood book?

I used to love reading when I was a young boy. Of course we didn’t have much else to do back then, but I often had my head in a creased up old paperback. My favourite book and the one I read countless times was The Wind in the Willows. I’m not sure why this book struck me so much, but I loved it, and I still have my old paperback copy with some childish doodles inside. I also loved Road Dahl, especially Danny the Champion of the World and Fantastic Mr Fox. When I was a little older, I was a big fan of the Adrian Mole series, which inspired my first novel!

4. What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Gosh there are so many difficult parts of being an author, but when talking about the artistic process, I would say the idea is the most difficult part. The idea is everything and I have lots of ideas, but to really come up with a completely original idea is something challenging. Imagine now trying to think up an idea for a romantic comedy that hasn’t already been done. That’s really the trick. If you can come up with an original idea or at least an original way of writing a love story, that is what makes or breaks a book. Think about One Day for example. In many ways it is just a traditional love story. Two people who gradually fall in love over twenty years. It isn’t that which makes it so unique, but how he chose to write it on the same day each year–that is the unique part. Obviously, the writing is brilliant, too, but it was the idea that made that book so successful. It was a marketing dream.

5. What inspired you to start writing?

I think I was always creative. Growing up I created cartoons, went to art college for a year before I pivoted to do my degree in English Literature. During university I read a lot and started writing, mainly short stories, and then after university, I wrote more and more and finished my first novel. What really changed things for me was when I read my first Mike Gayle book. It was My Legendary Girlfriend, and when I read it, I realised what it was I wanted to write about. I think before I was just writing as a way of getting all my thoughts and ideas out, but it didn’t really have much direction. Once I knew what I wanted to write, it gave me the focus to really start writing with the intention of getting published. I think I knew when I was teenager, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, that I wanted to be an author, but it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties did I really believe it was something I could actually do

6. How much ‘world building’ takes place before you start writing?

Great question. The answer is quite a lot. For me, generally, a book starts as a seed of an idea. It’s in my head and in notes on my phone for months–sometimes years–before I start writing it. Once I know I am committed to the idea then I start writing down notes on a Google Docs document. At this point it is all very loose and just thoughts. Potential characters, locations, plot lines, and ideas for stories and titles. It’s like making a soup, and I keep adding and adding until it feels about right. Once I am almost ready to start writing it, I really get those notes into something like a structure with much more clarity on people and places. Before I write the very first word of the book, I will have written somewhere around 3-5 thousand words, and I will have a very good idea in my head of what it is I am trying to create.

7. How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?

Not Moving Out will be novel number thirteen and right now it is my favourite in terms of writing the exact book I wanted to write. Often when writing, when we start off, we have an idea in our minds what the book will be like. But what happens during the process is that the end product is actually quite different, for a variety of reasons. However, with Not Moving Out, I think it turned out exactly as I imagined it would. It has that perfect blend of drama and comedy, and I fell in love with both main characters. They’re both flawed human beings, and their relationship is also deeply flawed, but they’re both doing their best, trying to work out the complicated knots in their lives while trying to be the best parents they can. I think the dynamic between the two characters was so fun to write, and then, of course, there are the secondary characters, who also made the book such a joy. Saying that, I love all my books for very different reasons.

8. Where do you get your inspiration?

This is a great question and honestly, I’m not sure. Most of the time ideas just come to me, usually while I am falling asleep, and then it is just a matter of joining the dots. It is often just a mixture of stories I’ve read or heard about, news stories, bits of films, TV shows, and some sort of magic alchemy, and then I take all of that and somehow create a story out of it. ForNotMoving Out, the inspiration was definitely an article a read in one of the newspapers about the rise in couples having to keep living together despite separation for financial reasons. I had also seen quite a few Instagram stories on the subject, and it felt like an interesting idea for a novel. I ended up setting it in Brighton because I lived there for a while and fell in love with it. From there it was just a matter of fleshing out the world with characters and storylines, but the thing that really brought it all together was when I decided to make the husband, Joe, a failed comedy writer, and then him using their situation for a new sitcom.

9. Tell us about your first published book? What was the journey like?

That feels like a long-time ago now! My first published book was This Thirty something Life, which came out in 2012. It was quite an interesting journey to publication. I had written two previous novels and neither got me an agent or a publication deal. I sent This Thirty something Life off to agents and once again, nothing happened. This was my third novel, and I just wanted people to read my work. It happened to coincide with the beginnings of Amazon Kindle, and I started researching self-publishing. I decided to take the plunge and self-publish on Amazon. It took a little while, but eventually it reached the heady heights of number 6 on the Amazon Kindle chart! Soon after I was approached by a publisher who wanted to publish it, and then on the back of that I got an agent. It just goes to show you that sometimes taking a risk can really pay off.

10. Are you working on anything at the present you would like to share with your readers about?

I finished Not Moving Out in the middle of last year, and after some time trying to work out exactly what I wanted to write next, I decided on an idea that I had been knocking around for awhile. This happens quite often for me. I will have an idea, keep it in my folder of ideas, and then one day it just feels right. The same thing happened with The Worst Man. I had that idea for about two years before the time felt right to actually write it. My next book is based on something that happened to a friend of mine. It isn’t their story but based on the idea. All I can say right now is that it’s a romantic comedy set in two different continents! I am very excited about it. It’s funny, romantic, and has just the right amount of pathos. Thank you so much for the interview, it is very much appreciated!

To learn more about Jon Rance, here’s where you can find Him: