(cont...) Backstory for In the Paint by Philana Marie Boles!

...It’s funny, I remember back in 1999, after the movie The Best Man came out people were often influenced to think—guys in particular—that a work of fiction has to somehow be a cleverly disguised re-telling about real people and real events. Remember the plot of that movie? How everyone was trying to figure out who was who in Harper’s novel? To this day I often meet guys and, when they discover that I’m a writer, they have delusions of grandeur, thinking that someday they’ll end up in one of my novels. It’s hilarious. And, as I assure them, I’ve always refused to let that happen. In the Paint initially created an unexpected challenge in this way, however.

Dallas Laylock was a tough character to tackle because I knew in my heart, from the moment he appeared on the page, that he was a direct influence of a guy that I truly loved, my first relationship post college. And so I knew, too, that Danni’s emotions would likely mirror what I was feeling. I was, as a result, pretty anal about self-editing while writing In the Paint!

Ha! I laugh at the memory of my cousin and I coming up with his name—Dallas Laylock—and then me making sure that not even his initials matched. Ha! Ha!

It got easier as I kept writing though. Danni’s story definitely took precedent. Still, I felt most of her every emotions. By the time I sent the sample chapters off to Mel, my then agent, and he then over to Kelli Martin, my new editor at HarperCollins, I knew that it was the authentic story that it was meant to be. And I was pleased.

I can’t remember what the original title was, but Amistad’s Rockelle Henderson—who handled marketing for ITP—and Kelli came up with that title, In the Paint. I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first so I told them I’d do my own modest market research over the weekend and get back to them on Monday...