VESPER: Received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
VESPER: Received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.Following find an interview with author Evan Marks:
1. What is the name of the book and when was it published? Vesper, coming out on May 26.
2. What’s the book’s first line? “A LITTLE OBSESSED, A LITTLE IN LOVE lines the pavement in a thick yellow chalk near the corner of Perry and Hudson, its decaying legibility doing its best to defy the weeks of pedestrian stampeding it’s unwillingly endured.”
3. What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”. An anti-romance literary novel about independence, love, and self-discovery told through the eyes of Manhattan consultant Vesper. Torn between a group of friends who date to find a husband and another who do it for personal gain, all Vesper wants to do is enjoy each experience for what it is and the personal growth that comes with it. And that approach is working out just fine for her until she runs into Caspian in the South of France, who inevitably becomes her accidental love interest and, as a result, leads her to reevaluate everything she ever stood for.
On a deeper level, the novel explores themes around perspective, change, and societal complacency; hence, my publicist’s pitch: “Sex and the City meets Milan Kundera.”
4. What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event? A movie—Alfie starring Jude Law from the mid 2000’s. It tells the story of a charismatic male playboy living the highs and lows of urban dating. It’s based on the play by Bill Naughton from the 60’s which was set in London and is a great read. The movie was influential in Australia because of the showcasing it did of New York in an era where movies were the primary source of entertainment. Anyway, I was rewatching the movie in 2023 and the idea of doing a similar character study came to me, but with the twist of making the protagonist female. And here we are in April 2026, and the book’s about to come out in May.
5. What’s the main reason someone should really read this book? You enjoy a layered, voice-driven story that offers an unconventional perspective on the NYC dating scene with philosophical depth and a sense of escapism.
6. What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who, real or fictional, would you say the character reminds you of? Probably that her voice is the product of male authorship. Which, to be frank, was no small task attempting to get right. Thankfully, I had the benefit of a bunch of female-authored books from the likes of Sarah Rose Etter, Dolly Alderton and Kate Spencer that I could find inspiration from. The end result is a voice that feels about 80% accurate, which I believe is what makes it interesting.
7. What’s a great piece of advice that you can share with fellow indie authors? Sofia Coppola shared a helpful view on writer’s block that she learned from her father, and the advice was to put the pen down when you’re at your stride, at a part you’re really enjoying. It’s a lot easier to return to work when you’re excited to revisit it, versus trying to refuel an exhausted tank of creativity.
The other is to make your writing personal because that’s a large part of what readers are buying into when they pick up your work. The authenticity and originality of your life experiences and perspectives. At least, that’s the approach I took and it turned out to be a fun one.
8. Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?) It’s a combination of enjoying the process of writing itself and seeing a project through to completion. I couldn’t care less about the fame and fortune aspects of the process.
9. Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire? Living, it’s Alex Garland. He wrote The Beach when he was in his early 20’s before moving on to write and direct a bunch of legendary films, including Ex Machina and Devs. He once said that his works are often the consequence of a research interest he’s pursuing, where the story is simply a means of processing his findings. It’s an approach that resonates with my own ambitions as a writer and the philosophical and scientific ideas I’m interested in.
Dead, it’s Christopher Marlowe. Writer, spy, street fighter—a total badass.
10. Which book do you wish you could have written? Ovid’s Metamorphoses. If you read Vesper, you’ll know why.