Alison Cochrun on the Personal Journey Embedded in ‘Every Step She Takes’

As queer romance novels become more and more prevalent and well-loved, one name comes up again and again in bookish discussions. Alison Cochrun took the book world by storm when she released The Charm Offensive.

Then, her follow-up novels: Kiss Her Once For Me and Here We Go Again showed her fans that her attention to queer joy, mental health, and neurodivergence rep aren’t just a one-time only phenomenon. Cochrun hopes to have a repeat with her latest novel, Every Step She Takes, and further allow her fans to feel seen, heard, and appreciated.

We had the opportunity to speak with Alison Cochrun about her newest release, how she combats writer’s block, and what inspires her the most.

Eulalie Magazine: What are you most excited for readers to experience while reading Every Step She Takes?

Alison Cochrun: Every Step She Takes is loosely based on a trip I took in May 2022 where I trekked the Camino de Santiago, and that was one of the greatest, most transformative experiences of my life, so I’m really excited to share the Camino with readers. I hope they will fall in love with it and feel as inspired by it as I did.

Eulalie Magazine: If you were to say you were more like Sadie or Mal, which would you choose? Why?

Alison Cochrun: I’m Sadie for sure. She’s not-so-thinly-veiled self-insert, and while we don’t have everything in common, writing Sadie was a cathartic process for me because I got to tell a story about a woman coming to terms with her sexuality “later in life,” and essentially work through my own struggles with that.

Though I will say, I’m more like Mal when it comes to travel. My ADHD makes me restless, and I’m always fantasizing about jumping on a plane to visit somewhere new.

Eulalie Magazine: In your opinion, what makes the perfect romance novel?

Alison Cochrun: To a certain extent, I think the “perfect” romance novel is the one that finds you at the perfect time– at the time when you need that exact novel the most. Sometimes you don’t know why a particular romance makes you swoon or sweat or giggle happily. It just hits you at the right moment.

But if I were to attempt to quantify it, I would say my perfect romance novel includes all types of love: romantic, platonic, familial, and self-love. I like when there is character growth in tandem with the love story, and bonus points if the love story is what helps facilitate the character growth. Also, banter.

Eulalie Magazine: What was the hardest part about writing Every Step She Takes?

Alison Cochrun: With this book, the writing process itself was actually quite easy. Every time I sat down to write, I felt excited to return to these characters and this story. It was just fun.

The hard part was learning how to write a novel with a baby at home. My son was born shortly after I started drafting this book, and I naively assumed I would be able to parent full-time and write full-time. That has not been the case for me at all, so the past year has been a challenging journey in learning how to balance motherhood and work.

Eulalie Magazine: At what point in your career did you find yourself sitting back and saying, “Wow this is it. This is what I’m meant to be doing”?

Alison Cochrun: In some ways, I think I’m still waiting for this moment! Writing can be an extremely lonely and isolating job–not to mention a really hard job– and there are still days of self-doubt when I wonder if it’s the career for me. But there are also days when the writing is so fun that I can’t imagine doing anything else.

There are days when I get a thoughtful message from a reader, or days when I realize I’m doing the thing childhood Alison always dreamed of, and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and a sense of rightness. So I don’t think there has been a magical turning point in my career where I’ve felt at peace, and I don’t think there ever will be. For me, it’s more about celebrating those beautiful days as an author and remembering the hard days never last.

Eulalie Magazine: What has been the most surprising fan reaction to your novels so far?

Alison Cochrun: When I wrote my first novel The Charm Offensive, I had no idea what to expect in terms of how authors interact with readers, so everything surprised me in terms of fan reactions. The biggest thing, though, was how vulnerable readers were willing to be with me.

I received so many messages from people about the queer rep or the mental health rep or the neurodiversity rep, and what it meant for them to see parts of themselves reflected in that book (and in all of my books since). I’m so grateful when readers take the time to share those experiences with me.

Eulalie Magazine: If there was one thing you could say drives you, inspires you, what would it be?

Alison Cochrun: This is a great question, but I also hate it because choosing one thing that inspires me is so hard! If I focus on what inspires me right now, though, I would have to say that it’s writing books that represent the world I want to live in.

Every day, we’re confronted with news about an unkind, unaccepting, ignorant, and violent world. It leaves me feeling sad and angry and so miserably helpless. But when I sit down to write, I can create characters who are profoundly kind, and I can create a diverse world that’s fundamentally loving and welcoming. At the end of the day, I still feel helpless, but I also feel inspired to keep putting kindness and love into the world.

Eulalie Magazine: How do you combat the blank page syndrome that all writers deal with at one point or another?

Alison Cochrun: Well, in May 2022, I dealt with it by trekking the Camino! That spring, I was working on my third novel, Here We Go Again, and due to a variety of life factors, I was super stuck. Every time I sat down to write, it felt like pulling teeth to get a single sentence out, and more often than not, I would delete that sentence the next day because I thought it wasn’t good enough.

All writers deal with this problem at some point, and for me, the worst thing I did was try to coerce myself into writing at a time when I was uninspired. It only made me hate the book more. Walking away (quite literally, as the case was) and doing something to refill my creative well helped me find my way back to the page. It just wasn’t on the timeline my perfectionist brain wanted.

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Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun is available September 2nd wherever books are sold.

 

 

 

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