Interview with Jenny Judson and Danielle Mahfood

The Last Season is a collaboration between Jenny Judson and Danielle Mahfood, who met in high school and shared a mutual love of historical fiction and romance novels. Instead of passing notes in class, Jenny and Danielle would write short excerpts from imaginary novels that featured themselves and their classmates as characters caught up in tales of romance and adventure. Many years later, after cheering for opposite teams at Harvard-Yale games, they came together in New York City to begin writing The Last Season, inspired both by the Victorian period and the financial crisis of 2008.

Thank you so much for joining us on WWWB, Jenny and Danielle!

Tell us about your beginning, where are you both from?

Jenny is from Pound Ridge, NY and Danielle is from New York City, but we met in high school in New Hampshire and that’s where our story begins. After high school, we parted ways — Jenny went to Harvard and Danielle went to Yale. We stayed in touch and both ended up back in New York City in the early 2000s.  A few years after that, we began collaborating on The Last Season.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? 

In high school, we shared a love of both romance novels and historical fiction. When we were bored in class, rather than pass notes, Jenny would write romantic “excerpts” of faux novels, featuring Danielle and other friends and their crush du jour.  Danielle, in turn, encouraged Jenny to write a romance novel, so much so that in our high school yearbook Jenny wrote a note to Danielle: “the 1st trashy book will be dedicated to you.”  

Years passed and the romantic excerpts continued in the form of extended birthday cards, but Jenny had still not picked up a pen to start a novel in earnest. One day when we were in our early 30s, we went to see The Young Victoria — that was the day Danielle propelled the talk and daydreaming into action! We walked out of the film, and Danielle announced: “We are doing it. We are going to write that novel.” 

How has writing changed you as a person? 

Writing as a team has certainly brought us closer together as friends. Among other things it taught us about partnership and about being vulnerable and open with one another, which inevitably deepens the ties that bond. When you write you always feel a little exposed. Questions like “is anyone going to like this?” and “who am I to write a novel?” race through your head. We gave each other confidence and were sounding boards for one another. We also forced each other to stick to it and take the project seriously without taking ourselves too seriously. In many ways that has helped us approach a variety of challenges outside of writing. 

Writing taught us other “life lessons” as well. We found the time spent writing and editing The Last Season gave us a healthy outlet from everyday life and the demands of work and family. It helped us keep some things in perspective and inspired us to take more creative risks and “think outside the box” both professionally and personally. 

We would love to know more about your writing process, what is it like to write together? 

Our writing process changed over time but we basically worked in two modes. First, we collaborated on the storyline and came up with a shared vision, then we “divided and conquered” for both the writing and the historical research.

We originally conceived of the book as a first-person narrative (from three perspectives) and so we each wrote one perspective and split the scenes of the third. We then read our sections to each other over video chat (we were Facetiming, Skyping, and Zooming before the Pandemic made it such an essential mode of communication!). This helped us smooth out the differences in our writing styles and made the narrative more cohesive. 

Similarly, when it came time to edit — and we did some pretty major overhauls — we divvied up sections and then came back together to share and read aloud. We propped each other up when, in some cases, the edits seemed daunting, but we also had fun! Many glasses of wine were consumed in the process of plotting, writing, and editing.

Can you tell us a bit about THE LAST SEASON? What inspired you to write it?

Two ideas drove our initial conception of the characters. The first was the financial crisis of 2008. When we started writing, people were still reeling from that crash – many people’s lives and life plans had changed tremendously in the blink of an eye. We wanted to write a historical fiction novel that was both an escape from and a reflection of contemporary life.

We knew we wanted to have a character who started his life in a debtor’s prison, his family the victim of a financial disaster. That is the basis of Crispin’s character. Our original first pages, all of which wound up on the cutting room floor, were about Crispin’s destitute childhood. 

Additionally, because we were inspired by the movie The Young Victoria, we wanted to explore a parallel story about a character who was supremely privileged and sheltered throughout her youth, someone who seems totally removed from the struggles of the working world.  We asked ourselves the questions – what would happen if this character also faced financial ruin? What would she learn? Who would she become? That is how we conceived of Cassandra’s character. From the get-go, we wanted to write a love story and knew that these characters would meet and their lives would become intertwined. 

What would be your 6 word memoir? 

Since we are two co-authors, is it cheating to submit two?

Notes in class led to novel.

Friendship and determination made this work.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever had, and the worst?

Best: Writer Ann Lamont’s advice in her book Bird By Bird about embracing the “shitty first draft” is absolutely spot on.  Sometimes you just have to get something on the page, even if it looks like the writer’s version of a child’s drawing — stick figures and a yellow, blob-like sun. Lamont wrote, “very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.” Damn, if that advice didn’t make us feel better. We never would have gotten anywhere if we hadn’t just started and kept plowing forward, even when we were struggling for the right words. 

Worst: “Write what you know.” We’ve always found this advice is overly simplistic. In one sense you have to use what you know about being human — the scope and sway of our emotions, the natural flaws and foibles, the insecurities and desires that drive us.  On the other hand, reading and writing can be an escape. Writing allowed us to travel to a distant time and place, just as when we read certain books we travel through space and time. 

Do you need a special place to write?

Over the course of the last ten-plus years we’ve found that we can write pretty much anywhere — on a plane, in an airport, on the beach or just in a comfortable cozy nook at home.  It isn’t so much the place as the environment: we need to be able to cut ourselves off from the hubbub of work, kids, spouses, dogs, and buzzing phones…at least for a bit. 

Are you part of a writing community or a writing group?

People often talk about needing a buddy in order to achieve their goals — be it exercising or other self-improvement projects. We were that for each other. As we got closer to finishing the manuscript, we started to reach out to other writers, people we know in the book world, some of whom are editors and some writers. We got so much great advice from those people and have found the writing community to be incredibly supportive.  

What is your experience with social media as a writer? Do you find it distracts you or does it provide inspiration?

As first-time authors, we’ve had to take a crash course in social media :). We were never that well connected before — in our personal lives, we find it to be distracting more than inspiring. Oddly, we both have siblings who are way more into social media than we are, so we have leaned heavily on them and often joke that we are benchwarmers on the Instagram Thirds Team – not even JV.  That said, we’re getting more comfortable with social media, and it has proven to be a great tool to connect with readers and other writers.  

Who are your favorite authors?

It will surprise no one to hear that we love the classics: Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollop, and Jane Austen. That woman was a genius! Of course, there are a number of contemporary historical fiction authors we devour: Daisy Goodwin, Philipa Gregory, Madeline Miller, Amor Towles and Julian Fellowes — everything he writes and produces is brilliant. 

What are you reading currently?

We are really excited about a number of books that are hitting the shelves this fall, especially Liane Moriarty’s Apples Never Fall and Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway.

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Find out more about Jenny and Danielle on their website https://daniandjenny.com/home

THE LAST SEASON

A Zibby Owens for Katie Couric’s Katie’s Picks Fall Must Read

Set in Victorian England, The Last Season is a story of social upheaval, changing fortunes, and an unlikely romance that develops between a well-to-do heiress and a stable boy.

When they meet as adolescents at Drayton Manor, the well-to-do Cassandra Drayton and the manor’s stable boy, Crispin St. John, seem destined for very different futures. Yet, the two strike up a secret and forbidden friendship. Once discovered, they are forced apart, with Cassandra staying locked in her father’s world and Crispin traveling to India to make his own way.

Years later, when Cassandra’s high-society London lifestyle is shattered by her father’s spectacular fall from grace, she is surprised to reunite with her childhood friend, no longer a penniless boy but an enterprising young man who has risen through the ranks of the Indian cotton trade. As they navigate changing circumstances, fickle friendships, and social upheaval, Cassandra and Crispin find that the bond they developed as children is a lasting one.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing