Evan S. Porter Wrote a “Lovers to Lovers” Rom-Com 👩‍❤️‍👨

It’s what you’re pretty much guaranteed as a reader or viewer of the genre. You’ll probably have to endure some drama to get there. A third-act break-up. A miserable misunderstanding. Maybe a grand gesture or two. But ultimately, you can be assured that the lovers will end up together before the final page. It’s comforting, really. To know in a world where almost nothing is certain that these stories will leave you a little more joyful than when you started.

I have often wondered, though: what happens after that moment? Once the couple kisses and hugs and we fade to black? Do they stay together? Or something else…

Common sense tells me that not every rom-com couple will make it. Amanda and Graham in The Holiday more than likely couldn’t figure out the distance. For that matter, I doubt Iris and Miles were still hanging out a month after that final New Year’s dance scene, either. Ronald and Cindy in Can’t Buy Me Love probably attended different colleges and fizzled out with the distance. I’d also bet most everyone who actually found love in Love Actually didn’t hold onto it for long.

All of this is fine, by the way. Not every love story has to be forever in order for it to mean something.

Still, I do believe in some of my favorite rom-com couples. So much so that I sometimes think about what the next chapter brought them. If after the buzzy, magical gaze wore off they had exhausting discussions about how to load the dishwasher or whose turn it was to take the kids to swim practice. Perhaps these tales are less sexy, but they are certainly more true to the issues many of us deal with in our own personal lives. You’ve fallen in love. Committed to each other. Then stuff happens. So… now what?

A rom-com that isn’t afraid to ask this question is Evan S. Porter’s sophomore novel, A Last Time for Everything.

Arthur and Wren have been together for a decade, mostly coasting on vibes and the dream that one day they’ll have their acts together enough to move out of their crappy college apartment. That is until Wren unexpectedly becomes pregnant. Freaked out by what a child will mean for them individually as well as a couple, they distract themselves with a Bucket List from the early days of their relationship. Wren is determined to check everything off before her due date. Arthur, however, is more concerned with the questions they’ve yet to answer about what happens after they become parents. It’s a warm, equally complicated and light-hearted story that’s perfect for anyone afraid of having to call themselves a grown up too soon; thoughtfully reflecting on what it really means to commit to someone forever, for always, and no matter what.

I bonded with Evan over our shared love of Scrubs and early-2000s pop-punk music. We also chatted about how being a parent has influenced his writing for better and for worse.

What do you do outside of reading and writing?

Not much. I have two kids who keep me pretty busy. My oldest is eleven. My youngest is five. We do soccer practice and tournaments, karate class, school pick-ups: all that kind of stuff. I don’t have as much time to do things for myself as I would like.

I enjoy exercise. I also listen to music and rewatch the same three sitcoms every night before bed: The Office, Parks & Recreation, Scrubs. Sometimes we’ll work in Schitt’s Creek. I love to watch other things, too, but right before bed, we can’t deal with anything intense. Those shows are like a warm, comfort blanket.

I love that you watch Scrubs! I’ve been binging it all summer.

I think it’s my all-time favorite show. It’s definitely underrated. When people talk about The Office and Parks & Rec, I tell them they have to get Scrubs in there, too. It’s so good. The reboot is also really great. I think they nailed it. I’m excited for the next season.

I often ask writers how they balance parenthood and their creative work. What’s your experience?

I juggle it very poorly. The days are long. There’s not a lot of extra time. By the time the kids are in bed, it’s ten o’clock, sometimes later. You’re always trying to squeeze things in. Trying to find little ways to steal time throughout the day.

With my last book, a lot of it was written sitting in the car at soccer practice. It’s the same thing with reading, too. I wish I could sit down for an hour and devor something, but it’s more like I can get a few pages in here and there.

But I’m inspired by my family and my kids all the time. The lived experience of having a family is so rich and deep. There’s so much fodder there. I love to write about parenting. That’s where I find I’m most interested. What does a marriage look like? What does a family look like? I have so much to pull from. My well of input is very high with all the things I’m experiencing and going through. I love that. It’s just the time management element that gets to be really difficult.

Do your kids love books?

They love to read. My oldest is into all the middle grade fantasy stuff right now. Percy Jackson, Hunger Games. I’d like to think I’ve exposed her to the literary world a little bit. It’s cool, getting the chance to go into bookstores and show them where my book is on the shelf, wander around and see what they’re interested in.

I guess kids are still reading the same books that my friends and I did when we were young.

They really are! It’s so interesting. My oldest also read The Summer I Turned Pretty. She was really into that for a while.

I guess at that age you can have your own tastes, but you want to read what all your friends are reading. too. And it’s fun for us to see the movies and TV shows from the books she likes. We get to share in it a little.

The Summer I Turned Pretty book is a bit less dramatic and sexualized than the TV series…

Yeah, I remember watching it and wondering if there was so much of the parents hooking up in the book.

You also mentioned working out. What’s that routine look like?

I make time pretty much every weekday unless something crazy is going on. I like to go to the gym before lunch. I usually do strength training. I’m turning forty next year, so I’m also working in more yoga. I’ll do that at home once or twice a week. It helps with the achey bones and flexibility.

I care a lot less about the six-pack than I did maybe ten years ago. I just want to feel good and be confident. I like being a fit, somewhat energetic parent, too. I think it’s fun to be able to do stuff with my kids. So it’s partially for the self confidence, but a lot of it is needing to get out of the house and move my body to be my best.

I’ve also been so into this phenomenon recently of how people look younger now. When you go back and watch Seinfeld, they’re in their late twenties but look so old. Part of it is fashion and style. But I was reading, too, that scientists have looked at our biological age and people are younger biologically now than they were a couple decades ago. It’s probably because everyone gave up smoking to carry around a water bottle, hydrating all the time instead.

A water bottle and a tote bag: all you need to properly Adult™.

We have a cabinet that’s just overflowing with Stanleys and Owalas. Wasn’t the idea that you’re supposed to get one and stop? We have a collection now.

You mentioned music. What do you like to listen to?

I have a special place for early 2000s pop-punk. Blink-182 is my favorite band. Anything from that era I’m obsessed with. But I also like what’s out now. Something I share with my wife and my eldest daughter is their music: Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams, Noah Kahan. I have no problem listening to that with the kids whenever they want.

I was at a wedding earlier this summer where the band did a whole pop-punk setlist. It was great, but I threw out my neck dancing.

It still slaps. Blink-182 put out an album, like, two years ago and it was excellent.

Have you seen them on tour?

I saw them when they performed leading up to the new record. It was sort of bittersweet and nostalgic, because they’re older and not the energetic kids they were when I was growing up. But they can still play.

I saw Green Day two summers ago. There were so many generations at that show, adults with their kids where everyone knew all the words.

I think that music is so important. Being a teenager or a pre-teen, you have to have the angsty music; that whiney pining. Kids today have a lot of love songs and break-up songs, but they don’t have the general angst of those pop-punk bands. I think that’s why those songs still persist. You need the “I don’t fit in” music, or the “I’m not the popular kid” song.

Interestingly enough, Taylor Swift did say she was very influenced by Fall Out Boy and Dashboard Confessional. Emo music made her who she is.

Oh, weird. I can see the similarities with Dashboard, in particular.

Let’s talk about your new book. How did you come up with the idea?

My debut was really about an established parent who had been doing it for a while and was dealing with his kids getting older. He was grappling with it being time to let go and rediscovering who he is other than just a dad. So I was really interested in going back and writing a story about people becoming parents for the first time; what that looks like and how that changes you.

I can’t remember the exact impetuous for the story. But I was kicking ideas around with my agent and starting talking about countdowns, how we have to do X, Y, and Z before a baby gets here. The original idea was, “Our life will be over when the baby arrives, so we have to do everything now.” It evolved into two people questioning where the last ten years went. They haven’t accomplished what they thought they would and now the window is closing.

You’ve called it a “spiritual prequel” to your debut novel, Dad Camp. Tell me more about that idea.

A lot of people I know who aren’t deeply embedded in the book world often ask me if this is a sequel or if it involves the same characters from Dad Camp. The answer is “no,” but I think it has a lot of the same ideas in the way it tackles family. It’s almost like if you took the characters from Dad Camp and went back fifteen years before to when they were first getting started in their journey to start families. It tackles some of the same themes of how parenting totally changes you but from a different perspective and angle.

Some of the stuff Arthur and Wren do is funny and crazy. How did you go about brainstorming the bucket list?

It was an interesting exercise. I think there’s another version of this book where things take place earlier in the pregnancy and maybe they have a little more money so they can go all over the world, doing a safari in Africa or a trip to Antarctica. But that was too big for me to write or wrap my head around.

The book takes place very late in the pregnancy, so they can’t really go anywhere. They don’t have a lot of money. They have to do everything on a shoestring budget with very tight constrictions. The exercise was coming up with what are some things that could be fun and interesting set pieces within those constraints, which was challenging but also cool and creative.

Have you ever had a bucket list?

Not really. I don’t think I’ve ever attached a deadline to some of the goals that I have. There’s a certain niche bucket list that I have. We love to go to Tybee Island in Georgia, so we have a Tybee Island bucket list: all the things we want to do while we’re there, like rent a golf cart or try a new seafood restaurant. I like stuff like that. But in terms of big, grand things, I don’t personally need to go skydiving before I die or climb the top of Mount Everest. I’m too busy trying to survive in the day-to-day.

When Wren and Arthur discuss parenting, they find themselves struggling to ask their older friends and family for advice because the world has changed so much from when they were kids. Why did you want to include this in the novel?

It came naturally in the writing. It’s such a hard, crazy time in the world, and I was writing this book that was very madcap and fun and honestly, kind of silly. There were times when I was writing where I wondered, does this matter? Is it pure escapism, or is there any meat on the bone in terms of why this is relevant?

What really came out in the writing is that parenting is so different now and so much more challenging in certain ways than it was for previous generations. Parents are so burned out and there is a lot that is demanded of them. We’re very involved. We’re very overworked. And you have all the social media pressures of what you should and shouldn’t be doing. It’s a different environment. I wanted to explore how that would effect people who are just becoming parents now.

Also, young people don’t have money. It’s not like you get this great career right out of school and buy a house with a white picket fence like your parents or grandparents did. It’s so different. You see that in Arthur and Wren who have sort of been toiling away in this crappy apartment, trying to save their way out, but it’s a battle they’re losing.

There’s been a lot of buzz around more “analog” parenting, too, giving kids landlines and bags of crafts instead of technology.

All kinds of people are trying to get back to that, I think. I’m doing it. I bought me and my wife the same Sudoko book. She used to do it on the app, but I wanted to do it on paper. I don’t need another reason to look at the screen. I want to work my brain in a way that’s analog.

Sometimes, I think I can feel my brain getting mushier post-pandemic. Social media was so different five or six years ago. Now, it’s all short-form videos and creators. There’s no normal people left. I’m on it a lot for my job, so I just really crave that analog experience.

This is your second novel. Did anything change about your writing and process between the two books?

This was a really hard one to write. I think it had a little bit of that sophomore, book two blues stuff going on. It was my first time really writing on a deadline, writing under contract, having the sort of internal pressure of feeling like a novelist now so it has to be good. I’m a very messy person when it comes to the process. I wish I had a very clean way of doing it, but it’s kind of all over the place. I just have to get through it.

It was also a challenging idea to write. The bucket list was a really cool structural element, but it was also easy to let everything become too episodic. Turning it into a cohesive story was a big challenge. It took a lot of rewriting, to be honest. A lot of discovery in the process, being willing to trash things and start over. It took quite a while to get to the final version. I think my craft and process evolved in some ways. And I’ve grown in terms of my prose and my character development. But the plotting was very difficult.

Another theme in the book is processing emotions around what happens when one chapter of our lives end and another begins. What happens if you don’t feel ready to turn the page? Why did you choose to explore this feeling?

I think whenever you have to say goodbye to a part of your life, it’s difficult. You have mixed feelings. We all go through this at different points in our life. I’m going through it now. My youngest daughter is five. We might have one or two more Santa Claus Christmases left. Even though I’m kind of excited for her to get older and be more independent, it’s hard to think about closing the book on Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, and Disney Princesses.

I think Wren in particular likes feeling like an early twentysomething, that the world is her oyster and they’re just messy kids figuring it out. Now, she realizes she has to be an adult and a mom. She’s not there yet. That was definitely something I could tap into in terms of understanding that feeling about chapters in my own life and how hard it is to turn the page sometimes.

So many stories about characters in Arthur and Wren’s age group are about falling in love or getting divorced. You rarely see two people who have been together and are still happy. Was this something you thought about?

I got married on the younger side, so I think I’m just not as interested in the traditional rom-com: falling in love, will they won’t they, happily ever after. I also don’t want to write things that are too dark about infidelity and divorce. I’m more interested in even if a couple is happy and they like each other and love each other, what does it take to make it work? There are stories to be told there, even if they’re not as often explored.

My agent and I think of this book as a “lovers to lovers” romance. I don’t think you ever really worry that they’re in danger of splitting up. It’s more about how do you get through these things together. I really enjoy telling that kind of story. I think a lot of people who are in a relationship will see themselves reflected in some way.

What’s something you’re hoping readers will take away from the novel?

It is a fun, zanny book. I hope people get a lot of joy and laughs out of being in the pages with those characters and don’t have to think about the chaotic world for a little while. I also hope it’s some food for thought. I want people to feel seen for how hard it has gotten to be a person now, but that you can get through it and make a path that works for you.

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Evan S. Porter is a dad to two girls, a blogger, and a freelance writer. He runs the parenting blog Dad Fixes Everything and has contributed to Parents Magazine, The Onion News Network, AskMen, The Good Men Project, Upworthy, and more. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, two girls, two dogs, and not much in the way of elbow room.