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Where Fantasy and Reality Collide: One Novelist’s Happy Coincidences

Posted on 08.23.16 | Holly Robinson | 11 Comments

20160823_111536

I came downstairs just as my husband returned from our local liquor store, where he’d gone to buy wine for dinner. He brandished a bottle of rum at me. “They made it specially for you, I guess,” he said.

I looked, and blinked hard to make sure I wasn’t reading the label wrong. Nope: “Folly Cove Rum,” the label said. It was produced by Ryan and Wood Distilleries in Gloucester, a port city located on Cape Ann in Massachusetts. As it happens, my new novel, Folly Cove (due out October 4 by Berkley/Penguin Random House), is also set on Cape Ann, in an historic inn run by several generations of the same family.

Folly Cove wasn’t the name I originally chose for the novel when I proposed it to my editor. The first title was Birch Point, but I decided the name wasn’t lyrical enough and went fishing for a new one. I find inspiration for titles in all sorts of ways: Google, highway billboards, TV commercials, you name it. In this case, I thought of the name Folly Cove because I love the word “folly” and what it means—the primary definition is “a foolish act or behavior”–and each of the main characters in the novel had certainly been guilty of foolhardy mistakes. (Hey, you have to have a plot.)

Because the inn featured in my novel overlooks a cove in Rockport—a small historic town at the tip of Cape Ann, where the original settlers made a livelihood through timber, fishing, and hauling giant blocks of granite out of quarries—calling the novel Folly Cove seemed not only lyrical, but logical.

To my delight, Folly Cove turned out to be a real place—something I didn’t know until after the novel was nearly complete, even though I live locally and have driven by it hundreds of times. That was my first happy coincidence.

A second happy coincidence was my discovery of the Folly Cove Designers during a visit to the Cape Ann Museum in Rockport after my novel was complete. Between 1938 and 1969, the Folly Cove Designers—nearly all women—created designs in their own homes that were then transferred onto linoleum blocks, carved out, and used to print on fabrics. The Folly Cove Designers sold their designs to some fairly illustrious retailers, including Lord & Taylor and Skinner Silks. I love the idea of these women working on their designs, then getting together to give each other feedback and inspiration, just as I do with my writer friends when we swap manuscripts.

My favorite aspect of this happy coincidence, though, is that the Folly Cove Designers were created and led by Virginia Lee Burton. Burton wrote and illustrated several children’s books beloved by my family, including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and The Little House. I must have read those books more than five thousand times: one thousand times to each of our five children, plus on my own when I was growing up.

And now this: the happy discovery of Folly Cove Rum, created by Ryan and Wood Distilleries right here in Gloucester, by people who grew up near Folly Cove. What can I do, but drink a toast to creativity and happy coincidences, as I wait for my novel to launch this fall?

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Categories: Contemporary Fiction, creativity, Fiction Writing, How to Write a Novel, Penguin, Traditional Publishing, Writing Tags: Berkley, Cape Ann Museum, Folly Cove, Folly Cove Designers, Folly Cove Rum, holly robinson, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Penguin Random House, publishing a novel, Ryan & Wood Distillery, The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton, writing a novel

Holly Robinson's avatar

About the Author

Holly Robinson is a novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer. She and her husband have five children and a stubborn Pekingese. They currently divide their time between Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, and are crazy enough to be fixing up old houses one shingle at a time in both places.

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    11 Comments

  1. Susan Peterson says

    August 23, 2016 at 8:36 pm

    One of those winks from the universe! I think it foretells great things for you and this book!

    Reply
    • Holly Robinson says

      August 24, 2016 at 11:20 am

      Thank you so much, Susan!

      Reply
  2. Carol Boyer says

    August 24, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    Holly, I love to think all these coincidences were meant to be as you celebrate your new novel Folly Cove…just added certainty that you chose right in naming your novel in hindsight but you knew somehow deep down all along…and the Folly Cove Rum! What could be better proof! I am so happy to have my copy of Folly Cove, and I will celebrate your special day launch on October 4th because that’s my birthday…I will be thinking of you! Thank you so much for sending me your ARC! Its going to be winner!

    Reply
    • Holly Robinson says

      August 24, 2016 at 2:07 pm

      You’re so kind, Carol. And I love the idea that the book will go out into the world on your birthday. What a special day!

      Reply
  3. Colleen M. Story says

    August 24, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    Wow! How about that. Love those types of connections. It’s like you write it, and they come! (ha)

    Reply
    • Holly Robinson says

      August 24, 2016 at 2:07 pm

      Thanks, Colleen! It does sometimes seem as though life imitates art instead of the other way around.

      Reply
  4. Sieglinde Aigner-Crooks says

    August 24, 2016 at 3:48 pm

    so love wonderful and happy stories, thank you!

    Reply
  5. Andrew McAllister says

    August 24, 2016 at 8:11 pm

    Now those are a lot of happy coincidences, and fun to hear about. You were obviously meant to write that book. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Holly Robinson says

      August 25, 2016 at 9:22 am

      Thank you so much, Andrew!

      Reply
  6. eileen goudge says

    August 25, 2016 at 5:46 pm

    Strikes me as a good omen. I picture you raising your glass to the success of your novel.

    Reply
    • Holly Robinson says

      August 26, 2016 at 3:27 pm

      Thank you so much, Eileen! I intend to do that!

      Reply

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