You never forget your first Elin Hilderbrand novel.
For me it wasNantucket Nights,its glossy lavender cover calling out to me during asummer getaway.
To read Elin Hilderbrand is to join a delicious subculture.
Courtesy photos;GlamourGIF
Hilderbrand, left.Swan Song,out June 11, right.
How did you decide its time for yoursorry for the punswan song?
I didnt really have any good ideas.Golden Girlfelt like an ending because the writer dies.
Hilderbrand, left.Swan Song,out June 11, right.
But my publisher really wanted a new contract.
At that point Id just delivered28 Summers, which I thought was one of my best novels.
They really were very persuasive.
The Five Star WeekendatAmazon
Well, they wanted a four-book deal.
There was no chance.
I asked for a two-book deal.
The Hotel NantucketatAmazon
I didnt have a final idea.
We decided to do three books, and I thought, Okay, lets hope I get another idea.
I wanted it to be an ending to the Nantucket-based novels.
So I came up with the plot ofSwan Song.
Its such a fun read, seeing old characters come back.
How did you map out this final Nantucket book?
Thats the first book where the Chief appears and really, I love that novel.
Blonde Sharon has been in my last few books, so I brought her back.
I thought the best way to do that is to use people that Ive already created.
Are your characters inspired by people you see living on Nantucket?
I love Nantucket so much.
Its the love of my life.
I go to the specialty grocery store once a week to get one or two things.
For, I dont know, two or three bags of groceries.
Im like, Holy shit, that is the kind of person that lives in my novels.
I was laughing, like, Okay, so thats a character straight out of my book.
Hilderbabes, your fans, are like the Swifties of beach reads.
Whats that like for you?
In the shoulder season, Nantucket is filled with Elin Hilderbrand readers.
They have their blue books, and they go to the places that I recommend.
Its very gratifying for me.
I have to keep my interaction with the fans to that.
I would go to town and meet every single person that came up to me.
It was too much time.
Eventually he was like, This is ridiculous, theres just too many.
If I bump into people, I always will take a picture and say hello and meet them organically.
People know that my son is a bartender at Cru, and he gets fans in all the time.
Oh, absolutely not.
I never set out to create these devoted fans who make Nantucket their destination.
Ive been writing for 24 years.
People notice, and I did develop a little bit more of a following every year.
And now here we are and Im retiring in it.
I dont want to put out a bad product.
You have so many novels written in the span of just over two decades.
How did you churn out a book every year?
The ideas were coming to me.
I was raising my children here.
Summer after summer would just give me ideas and material.
Nantuckets so charming at Christmas.
There was always a lot of material.
Ive written 27 novels set on Nantucket.
There isnt a lot of ground I havent covered.
I dont want to repeat myself.
Its time to say, Somebody else can take up where Ive left off.
Ive definitely documented Nantucket in the first quarter of the 21st century.
Where does the culinary focus in your fiction come from?
That sort of happened organically.
I have always loved to cook.
Sophomore year of college at Johns Hopkins, I had an apartment with a kitchen.
I loved it and I also love eating out.
I ate all these different cuisines.
There was a Burmese restaurant downtown that I loved.
Nantucket has one of the best food cultures anywhere; all of the restaurants are outstanding.
I have a lot of friends who have worked at them.
How has your work been affected by the way readers think about books by and about women?
Ive always been labeled a beach read.
And for a reasonthe novels are set on Nantucket.
I was very classically trained.
I was going to be a literary novelist, write the great American novel.
And in my head, I didonly it was set on Nantucket.
But I wrote the best book I possibly could.
I continued to do that year after year, summer after summer.
What an honor, right?
I found out that people were using my novels as an escape.
She read my novels and it gave her a mental vacation.
Over the years your books have become noticeably more inclusive and diverse.
How did representing more types of people in your work come to be?
It was a conscious choice on my part to represent more of what the country looked like.
I think a lot of that was due to coming out of my bubble and waking up.
You mentioned it may be time for someone else to be crowned the queen of beach reads.
Do you have any advice for writers who aspire to your level of success?
Thats my advice for anybody who wants to be a writer in any genre: Just finish it.
So many people have three chapters of a novel sitting at their computer somewhere.
And when I look back on that, Im like, How did I get that done?
The answer is I really worked all the time.
Work ethic is the most important quality in a writer.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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