Who is your best friend?

Maybe he or she is a childhood playmate, a college roommate or a colleague. Perhaps you have more than just one best friend – you have 3, 5 or 79.

Regardless of the number, there’s one thing that remains universally true: we all have different things we look for in a best friend and reasons why we stay together over the years.

Jennifer Weiner brings that message to life in her amazing new novel, Best Friends Forever. It will be released on July 14. I’m so thrilled I had the chance to dig into it before the big day.

I’ve been a Jennifer Weiner fan from the start. One of my own best friends, Chrisanne, who went to school with Jennifer in Simsbury (Conn.), introduced me to Weiner’s first novel, Good In Bed.

Since then, I’ve been hooked. Each of her novels has played a different and important role in my life, as well as the lives of my friends and family members who are also die-hard fans.

Weiner knocks it out of the park, once again, with Best Friends Forever. She introduces us to Addie and Valerie, best friends who have been estranged since high school. Now in their thirties, Addie and Valerie have each lived different lives yet still maintain their distinct personalities. Through their journey in the novel, which starts at the scene of a crime and ends – well – you’ll have to read for yourselves – Addie and Valerie explore the dynamics of their friendship at every turn.

Using well-grounded, vivid, and often humorous metaphors, suspenseful foreshadowing and realistic characterizations, Weiner kept me turning the page. Since she is a description expert, Weiner’s writing even helped me see elements of myself in both women as I reflected on relationships with my own best friends.

Some people hate when I tell them this; others love it. But I do mark up my books when I read memorable parts so I can go back to them later (I hear gasps).

Enter markup #12: One part that really spoke to me was when Addie is responding to Valerie’s request to borrow some clothes in their adult phase of their friendship. Weiner uses multiple, relatable metaphors to describe Addie’s feelings of pent up resentment toward Valerie while sharing Addie’s thought process and reconciliation of these emotions.

We all have likely been on that emotional rollercoaster with friends or family. How does Weiner describe it so well, so honestly and in such a down-to-earth way?

She just knows how.

I’m thrilled that Jennifer and I had the chance to connect about Best Friends Forever on the eve of its release.

***

Laura Cococcia: You’ve had a long, successful career as a writer and have studied with very well known authors, including Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates. What’s some of the best advice you’ve received from various writing mentors?

Jennifer Weiner: Joyce Carol Oates emphasized the importance not just of writing, but of rewriting – that’s the place where the magic really happened.

John McPhee taught me a tremendous amount about the craft of writing – how to structure a piece, how to balance dialogue and description, how to hook the reader in the first sentence and keep him or her reading until the final paragraph.

And Toni Morrison used to read her students’ work out loud, and hearing her read it made me believe that it was good (of course, Toni Morrison being Toni Morrison, she could have been reading my grocery list and I would have thought, ‘Genius!’ She’s one of the world’s all-time great readers).

Laura Cococcia: I’ve loved all of your books and know numerous other people who’ve felt both your characters and writing style are easy to relate to. Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

Jennifer Weiner: Thanks! I think I get inspiration the same places most other writers do: my real life, my wacky family, my wonderful friends, and lots of eavesdropping at the park or at the carpool pickup line.

Laura Cococcia: Your second novel, In Her Shoes, was made into a film with amazing actresses, including Shirley MacLaine, Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette. Did you ever imagine, when you were writing this or your other books, that you’d achieve such success?

Jennifer Weiner: I did not see this coming. And neither did anyone related to me! When I was working on Good In Bed, I’d tell my mother that I was writing a novel, and she would drape one hand over her forehead in an affected manner and say, “Oh, yes, your novel,” in a tone indicating her utter disbelief that such a thing existed.

When I finished the book, all I wanted was to get it published, and when I signed a deal with a publisher, all I wanted was to see it in bookstores and know that I’d written something that someone thought had value. I figured twelve people would buy it, and I’d know six of them from Weight Watchers, and the rest would be relatives…so no, I never imagined this kind of success.

I thought writing would be my lifetime hobby, the thing I did on the side of my paying job (which was journalism, which I loved). I feel incredibly lucky to be able to have made fiction my career.

Laura Cococcia: Best Friends Forever goes on sale in July. Any chance you can give readers a brief sneak preview?

Jennifer Weiner: You can find the first chapter by searching for my name at simonsays.com.

Laura Cococcia: What advice can you offer other aspiring writers – whether they’re looking to write fiction, nonfiction or poetry – to simply get their writing practices started and to sustain it?

Jennifer Weiner: The difference between people who believe they have books inside of them and those who actually write books is sheer cussed persistence – the ability to make yourself work at your craft, every day – the belief, even in the face of obstacles, that you’ve got something worth saying. I also believe that if you’re really a writer, you’ll write, and that nobody could stop you.

**

Best Friends Forever will be released on July 14th. You can click here to read more – and order your copy – on the Amazon.com page.

For more about Jennifer Weiner, her fantastic novels and upcoming appearances, you can visit her site at http://www.jenniferweiner.com/, her Facebook fan page or follow her on Twitter.

Thanks Jennifer – you’re awesome!