Page 98 of A Storybook Wedding

I’ll tell you how I made that magic happen.

It was simple, really. My agent, Trina, knows someone at Questlove’s agency, and Trina owed me a Bali-trip, new-car, and down-payment-on-her-house-size favor. So she made a few calls for me, and Quest talked to the producers, who said that if I could make it into the studio by 2:00 p.m. for rehearsal and stay through a 4:00 p.m. taping, then he would help me out. Thank God the publishing world is small.

It just so happens that Questlove’s a really good dude. He even gave me a signed copy of The Rhythm of Time for CJ’s autographed collection at the library.

The rest goes like this:

CJ’s manuscript got two full requests, but they both said the same thing: it wasn’t high-concept enough, meaning that for a debut, it didn’t offer anything fresh and new to the literary scene. Strong writing though. Good voice. Lots of potential. We reworked her query letter so it didn’t come off quite as threatening (not a look that will endear an author to a potential agent), but after a few more rounds of querying, we decided to put that manuscript in the drawer, and I suggested we try something new.

It was really fine. Bryce was old news by then. Jamie had the triplets, adorable preemies they named after famous baseball players: Mikey (Trout), Aaron (Judge), and Ruthie (as in Babe). Jamie and the babies moved upstairs in CJ’s parents’ house because her mom insisted the basement was too cold. Jamie struggled to adjust to motherhood, while Bryce went off to Florida for six weeks of spring training. Melanie had a sweet little girl named Scarlet, her third kid. Everyone was healthy, and CJ’s mom was in her full grandmotherly glory.

We talked about our marriage and what we should do about it. I told her that if she wanted to get divorced, I would be fine with handling the legal fees. I also wanted to get her back in school, but CJ’s a pain in the ass who wasn’t about to let me pay for anything. Ultimately, we decided that we might as well stay married while enjoying the early stages of traditional coupledom. She lived in her apartment in Queens, and I stayed at my place in Manhattan. She slept over my place on the weekends, so I had ample opportunities to take her out on fun city dates until Sunday evening, when we’d head back to Bayside so we could attend the weekly family dinner, and then I’d sleep at her place on Sunday night. She did her library thing during the week, and I worked, first with Trina and then with my editor, Dan, to make edits on my second novel, Success.

I brought CJ to New Jersey to meet my sister—but only once, because once is enough outside of mandatory holiday obligations. (I blame Johnny for that; Lila’s almost old enough to make her way into the city by herself, and once that happens, I’ll be the coolest uncle she could ever ask for.) When my parents came up for Easter, CJ and I had brunch with them so we’d be free to have dinner with her family. We took more Advil in that single day than ever on account of all the maternal screeching.

Around Valentine’s Day, I emailed Dillon Norway to petition him to forgive CJ. She wasn’t going back to Matthias; he’d made up his mind about that, and we both respected it, but she was sad about how their relationship ended. So I just told him how much she regretted the fact that in order to save my job, she had to lie to him. He wrote back and said that he hoped I knew what a special girl I had on my hands and told me that I’d be a fool to lose her. He said that I should alpha read for her. She doesn’t trust herself, he wrote, but she should. And she will, with encouragement. He also said that when CJ inevitably cut her teeth in the publishing world—when, not if—he wanted a signed copy of her first novel, and he would be more than happy to pay for it.

Class act, that Dillon Norway. I printed out the email exchange and gave it to her as part of her Valentine’s Day gift.

The other part? A two-week couples writing retreat I found through Writer’s Digest magazine.

Because I had an idea.

“Let’s write our story,” I suggested. “We can do it in alternating POVs, where you write your side and I’ll write mine. And then we can pitch it to my agent. There are other awesome agents at Table of Contents Literary Agency. I’m sure someone would love to represent you there.”

She scrunched up her nose. “I don’t want to get an agent by riding your coattails.”

“Of course not. I’m not suggesting that you can’t do this on your own. I’m just saying it’s a great story. We could be a husband-and-wife writing team.”

She folded her arms. “That’s not a thing.”

“I knew you’d say that.” I handed her a gift, neatly wrapped in brown craft paper with a red bow stuck to the top. “Open it.”

“It’s a book,” CJ guessed.

“Naturally,” I laughed.

“Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka. Who are they?” She flipped over the book, titled The Roughest Draft, and skimmed the back.

“They write mostly teen romance. But this book is for adults. Read it. I think you’ll really like it.”

“You actually think we could write a book together?”

“Absolutely. At the very least, we could give it a shot.”

So that’s what we did. By Christmas, the manuscript was done, and CJ, stubborn bull that she is, insisted that she wanted to query it.

But Trina and I had other plans.

For her thirty-first birthday, Trina set her up on a phone call with Evan Dresner, an agent at Table of Contents who reps Karlie London, a super-famous romance writer. He was trying to blaze trails throughout the romance space, and Trina and I thought he’d be a great long-term fit for her.

We were right.

Publishing a novel takes a long time. Most people don’t realize exactly how long the process takes. For CJ and me, it was about ten months of writing, then another four months of editing with Trina and Evan, another month on submission (since our story wasn’t appropriate for Boone, we had to go out on sub, a great experience for CJ to have firsthand), and eighteen more months from signing to publication.

Almost three years in total.

By that time, we’d bought a house in Little Neck, a few blocks away from CJ’s rental. I kept my apartment in the city to use as an office and commuted there every weekday on the Long Island Rail Road. We wrote as a team in the early morning, and then I’d work on my solo projects in the afternoons so we would be together in the evenings.

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