Chanel Cleeton’s two richly imagined dual time stories of Cuban America are break through best sellers, with the first, Next Year in Havana, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club choice. But Chanel’s put in a full apprenticeship writing contemporary romance before she enjoyed “overnight success.”

 Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Chanel talks about the family history behind her books and how a note on a CIA file inspired the plot for her most recent book, When We Left Cuba.

Six

things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Why Chanel switched from romance to historical fictionHow 'being a Reese Witherspoon choice' worked for herHow writing the book changed her appreciation of familyWhy she thinks 'luck' is an important factor in her career2019 - a great year for new booksHow law school 'drove' her to writing

Where to find Chanel Cleeton:

Website: www.chanelcleeton.com

Facebook: @AuthorChanelCleeton

 Twitter: @chanelcleeton

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chanelcleeton/

What

follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for

word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: Hello there Chanel and welcome to the show it’s great to have you with us.J

Chanel: [00:00:06] Thank you so much for having me. I'm

thrilled to be here.

Meeting author Chanel Cleeton

Jenny: [00:00:10]  I can see from reading the two Cuban books and looking online at some of your other work, that you might feel a little bit like one of those people who is now described as an "overnight success." Because the Cuban books have really taken center stage. The first one of them Next Year in Havana became a Reese Witherspoon book club choice. But you've done a lot of writing before those books. So it's one of those cases of "many years  work" to become an "overnight success." Is that right?

Chanel Cleeton - author

Chanel: [00:00:48] Yes. I had written about 10 contemporary

romances before I published Next Year in Havana. So definitely I had been

writing for a bit, but I still just feel very fortunate about how everyone's

embraced the books and really; just been so supportive.

Jenny: [00:01:03] Yes. You're a New York Times and a USA

Today bestselling author. You've also got an impressive academic record. But if

we went back to the beginning, was there a 

"Once Upon a Time" moment when you decided that you wanted to write

fiction? And if so what was the catalyst for it?

Chanel: [00:01:25] I think law school was really probably

one of the driving factors in me deciding to write fiction. I will be honest. I

didn't really enjoy it very much and 

realized it wasn't a good fit for me. It wasn't what I wanted to do with

my life. And I started thinking about the things that I was most passionate

about and while I'd never really considered being a writer I've always been a

really big reader.

[00:01:46] I mean there's

not a time in my life that I can remember not having a book in my hands and I

really just thought about how amazing it would be to have a career where I

would get to work with books in any capacity. So I really just started taking

it more seriously and I wrote a manuscript and was really fortunate that

everything was able to come together.

Jenny: [00:02:09] That's fantastic. You've mentioned

you've written 10 contemporary romances and I think they're arr...