#ALLISON RASKIN PAYLESS SERIES#

Allison was a little but of an influence toward, “hey maybe this isn’t so great.” And that influence has carried on to today. When we did meet I was very similar to Gen - I was a mess and hooking up with inappropriate people and way more party-heavy.

These girls are 22, and Allison and I didn’t meet until Allison was 24 and I was 25. But when you’re younger, you need those connections to bounce things off someone.ĭunn: It’s definitely similar to how our friendship was. As I’ve grown older, I can experience something and not immediately have to call another person and tell them about it. Raskin: Ava’s character is very heavily dependent on Gen in a way that I, at 30 years old, am not. Were there elements you felt strongly about including in the book?ĭunn: The STI storyline is something we really wanted to focus on.ĭunn: I was a journalist, mostly in high school, and I had the experience of not having a lot of queer community around. It makes it more intimate… It gives them room to be more flawed - in a private conversation with your friend, you’re going to be a little darker and a little shittier than if you were saying something publicly.

#ALLISON RASKIN PAYLESS SERIES#

Why write the book as a series of messages?ĭunn: I think part of it is you’re hearing directly from them so they’re unreliable narrators. We maybe should have outlined, but we didn’t! A lot of it was doing things in the moment that made us laugh. For a lot of the book we had a Google doc open and both typed in it.ĭunn: We knew some of the plot points we wanted to hit. We didn’t divide it up by character or anything. Raskin: It’s more standard than you might think. What was your writing process for the book? We jumped ahead to a milestone where friendships can either fade away or get stronger. Raskin: We had a great time with I Hate Everyone but You, and to us it felt like the story of those characters wasn’t over because it was the story of their friendship and their friendship wasn’t over.

Allison raskin payless