The publishing veteran knew fact was stranger than fiction, so she turned her real-life love story right into a novel
Publishing veteran Christine Satisfaction has been an editor, a co-author and pens a daily column on Cup of Jo known as “” and now she’s opening a brand new chapter as a solo creator along with her debut novel,.
The e-book, out July 8, 2025 from Atria Books, follows a girl who finds herself in a love triangle with two males in her early 20s after which once more — with the identical two males — in her 40s.
The writer calls it “a big-hearted coming of age story for anybody who’s thought ‘what if’ a couple of previous love, who’s puzzled what it might be prefer to have a second probability, whose ideas wander to the one who bought away or by no means was.”
Under, in an unique essay for PEOPLE, Satisfaction explains how this story got here from her personal actual life.
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As a longtime e-book editor, reader and creator, I’ve at all times beloved tales you can sense are anchored in some facet of the author’s deeply private expertise; give me autofiction or a loosely veiled memoir any day. The important emotional truths in these novels are inclined to hit more durable and really feel extra actual and uncooked the blurrier the traces get between fiction and actuality.
However after I grew to become a author, I by no means – ever — thought I might use my very own life as a supply of inspiration. It could be too messy, too exposing. Then an intriguing flip of occasions in my love life modified my thoughts. It was too compelling, too stranger-than-fiction to go up.
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In a younger lady, Cora Belle, finds herself in a love triangle with two males in her twenties, after which, in a case of déjà vu, withthe identical two males once more on the eve of turning 40. If that premise sounds too juicy and too outlandish to be true, assume once more.
After I was in faculty, I had a boyfriend whom I dated for a number of years, spilling over into that fragile eve of “actual” maturity. We discovered ourselves at that fraught crossroads the place you’re making an attempt to resolve whether or not or not you possibly can go the gap, whereas additionally determining your individual particular person paths — regulation faculty for him, a profession in media for me.
Whereas he and I have been taking a while aside, wrestling with what the longer term held for us, I met one other man at a job interview, of all locations. We had a sparks-flying, mystical-feeling connection that I couldn’t brush off. However we have been too younger, too overwhelmed and ill-equipped for what that kind of severe relationship and dedication would imply. It was extra sensible to maintain it as a enjoyable fling. Safer.
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Quick ahead 20 years.
My faculty ex and I drifted again to one another after his divorce and in the course of the pandemic. When everybody else was making sourdough, I used to be off reliving my love life in reverse. Shortly after that, within the lead-up to my first novel being printed (how meta) I reconnected with my different blast from the previous, spinning me full circle — courting the very same two males back-to-back, twenty years after I’d completed it the primary time.
It was a plot twist straight out of fiction; in my days as a e-book editor, I’d even have suggested a novelist that it was too unrealistic, too contrived to work. Who would consider it? And that’s precisely what made it such an irresistible inspiration. Who amongst us hasn’t puzzled, at one level or one other, what it might have been prefer to get a do-over? To reconnect with a previous love? Or requested themselves, as I did: How can we resolve who to like and when? What’s extra highly effective: Destiny, timing …or our hearts?
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These are among the provocative questions that I lent to my character Cora in All The Males I’ve Cherished Once more.
She and I’ve some issues in frequent – we’re each nerdy Black ladies who grew up in principally white Washington D.C. suburbs — however we’re additionally very completely different (identical to Cora’s love pursuits are additionally completely different from their real-life counterparts). The place Cora is cautious, I’m inclined to leap; the place Cora is shy, I’m inclined to pressure strangers on the subway to be my buddy; the place Cora is pessimistic by nature, I’m an irrepressible optimist in most all issues, together with affairs of the guts. However in the long run, Cora needs what all of us need — to discover a true reference to somebody who is aware of and totally embraces all of the previous variations of your self and who you would possibly nonetheless develop into.
That took me a very long time to know. After these whirlwind romances of my youth, I used to be totally, extravagantly, single for many of my grownup life — by no means married, no children, by no means even lived with somebody — after which revisiting these romances in my forties modified all the things. I ended up with the person who my 24 year-old self, reckless and naïve as she could have been, knew deep down was proper for me. It’s an unbelievable second probability love story with a cheerful ending ripped straight from the pages of a novel. Or, on this case, the opposite manner round.
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by Christine Satisfaction is out July 8, 2025, and is accessible for preorder now, wherever books are bought.
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