New Adventurers’ Frequently Asked Questions

Well, first of all, kind of rude. We just met, maybe back off a little bit.

Second of all, that depends on what kind of a person you are. Are you nosy? Do you like behind-the-scenes content or rewatch podcasts? Have you ever flirted with the idea of reading the Silmarillion? Did you come here to yell about how I misrepresented the way camera crews are rotated to each team during actual filming? Are you currently procrastinating and in search of something that isn’t the thing you should be doing? Then perhaps there is something worth your time here. If you’re unsure, consider reading the book and then returning here once you finish. Or not returning at all! It’s your life!

All sorts of things! Cast boot orders, photo galleries of locations described in the book, as well as maps, author’s commentary, and deleted scenes.

I love reality TV. Is that obvious? I love games and competitions and puzzles, and I wanted to do justice to them with this book. Unfortunately, that meant that I spent months worldbuilding a version of The Adventureverse that would never have worked in fiction—a 24-person cast, two challenges per country, more countries, more travel, and an intense focus on behind-the-scenes knowledge.

In the end, most of that material ended up getting cut, and that’s partially what you’ll find here! Think of it as a backstage pass to the making of Good Luck, Babe!.

I’ll tell you the answer answer, but I’m warning you that you won’t like it (and I don’t like it either, so you’re in good company)!

The short version is this: I pitched this book too early in my career. I was not an established enough author to write the Good Luck, Babe! that I imagined—a wildly ambitious dual POV, full cast, reality-TV-accurate adventure. I would‘ve had to break genre conventions around word/page counts and delivery dates in a manner that is only afforded to the Sarah J. Maases and George R.R. Martins of the world. Maybe it’s a middle initial thing!

Publishing is competitive industry, and the more pages a book has, the more expensive it is to produce. Because of this, there’s a push across the industry to make books more inexpensive, often by shortening them as much as possible. (Sidenote: this is also why you don’t see a lot of hardcover books anymore!)

When I finally sat down after drafting and tried to simplify to story, it became increasingly clear that I couldn’t keep Yumi’s POV and cut the story in a way that was satisfying to the reader. I also had to remove several teams and destinations. There were a few places and challenges that I absolutely needed to keep in order to make the story work (I talk more about this process in the last Adventure envelope), and there were also places that didn’t work without Yumi’s perspective. For example, I would’ve loved to keep the Philippines, but without Yumi’s nostalgia and inner turmoil over her Americanization, it just lacked so much.

At the end of the day, commercial publishing is a business with rules that writers must follow if they want to continue putting out books, which I do! To be clear, I’m thrilled with the final copy of Good Luck, Babe! that now sits on shelves! But as you read some of these deleted scenes and wish they hadn’t been removed, think of that larger context and try to figure out why they were necessary to cut. It’ll be a fun critical reading/writing exercise!