A Breath of Fresh Air

Fun Facts

WARNING: This entire page is FULL of spoilers! Don't read any further unless you've finished the story!

- This story was heavily inspired by films The Way, Way Back and Love, Simon - I HIGHLY recommend both of them!!

- Sandpiper Beach is a fictional town inspired by a combination of the real life towns of Destin, Seaside and Panama City Beach, Florida. Those of you from the panhandle will probably notice some easter eggs!

- Chapel Heights is also a fictional town, and is not inspired by one particular place but rather a combination of rural Alabama towns I've driven through. Piggly Wiggly's are EVERYWHERE, but I've never actually been inside of one!

- My real life friends Chloe, Caitlin, Matthew and Mariah all have cameos in this story as employees at SplishSplash and Starbucks.

- I wrote Evan to be the same Myers-Briggs personality type as me to make it a bit easier to write from his perspective. He's an ISFP and Tyler's an ESFP, which are very compatible matches.

- In early planning, Isaac was not intended to have such a large character arc. He was actually originally written to be straight, and was a gentle, kind younger brother who would support Evan after Dave and Catherine both shunned him. Obviously a lot changed lol. Isaac is actually one of my favorite characters because of how much he changes and grows.

- I suck at drawing and know next to nothing about art, so when I decided Evan was going to be an artist I reached out to a friend who took art in high school to get her perspective on what the classes were like. I also got in touch with my aunt who used to be an art teacher, and she provided some great inspiration for Ms. Jade's character.

- Even though it's told in present tense as events are unfolding, I wanted to format the story in a way that it's almost like Evan's journal. That's why all of the visuals are either drawings or actual physical things that someone could keep and put in a journal, like receipts, stickers, etc. That's also why "Evan's" drawings appear as soon as a character introduced, before he's had a chance to sit down and draw them. Plus this gives the reader an instant visual of the person (or dog :))

- Spencer was the last character that I came up with and he was actually introduced pretty late in development, but I wanted Evan to have a best friend back home to have his back, keep him busy and help him get adjusted to a new school while Tyler was still down in Florida. Spencer will also play a role in the sequel :o

- Yes, that's right! A sequel is in the works. More info on the next page!!

- Music is something I really wanted to incorporate into the story. There's something really satisfying to me about a movie or TV scene that has the perfect music to match the emotion, and I wanted to try and do the same thing with a written story. Obviously it's not as effective, but almost every song in the story has a specific meaning in the moment!

- Another unconventional choice I made was to write character dialog in a way more similar to a screenplay format, with their name next to what they say. I don't know why, but I have this random pet peeve where I hate reading "blank said this" over and over again, if that makes sense? Lol maybe it's the TV production student in me, but it seems better pacing-wise to format it the way I did. And it's also more clear who is talking. Is this just me? I don't know.

- I have reference images of random real people for all of the main characters that I found on Shutterstock, for my reference as well as for artist reference when I had illustrations drawn. I don't know who the people in the photos are but they'd probably be weirded out if they knew about this lolol. They literally look just like I imagine the characters to though :o

- My favorite line of dialog in the whole story is "the snack that smiles back" when Evan is referring to Connor. That randomly popped into my mind and I literally burst out laughing to myself and instantly wrote it down because that is definitely something Evan would say. My second favorite line of dialog is when the aggressive sales associate Mikayla at SplishSplash says "Guess you'll just burn like a sinner in church. Pasty ass bitch..." This line was actually suggested to me by my friend Chloe and I DIED when I heard it. Poor Evan hahaha.

- In a very early, completely terrible rough draft of the story, none of the school scenes were included; it was going to start on the morning of the trip. After taking a trip to a cabin in the Georgia mountains I got a breath of fresh air (see what I did there?!? hehe) and decided I wanted you to have a chance to learn about the characters and their backstories a bit more. This was the single best decision I made; it added a lot of depth and inspired me to re-write later scenes with a lot more detail.

- The working title for this story was simply Sandpiper Beach. I actually didn't come up with a title until I was about 60% finished with the story. Other potential titles besides A Breath of Fresh Air were What If? and Welcome to Sandpiper.

- My absolute least favorite scene is when Dave explodes on Evan at the condo. The poor dude had already been through so much up to that point and I just wanted to give him a big hug even though he only exists in my mind :( I was actually super emotional when I was writing that scene and I had to step away and return to it at a later point. I hate it and I didn't want to write it, but it was necessary for the story. Luckily Isaac and Tyler came in clutch to take care of Evan :) HE MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS!

- I have actually worked both as a sales associate at an American Eagle store as well as a slide attendant at Universal's Volcano Bay Water Theme Park. AE and SplishSplash in the story were heavily inspired by my own job experiences - catching shoplifters was serious business, and there's such a broad range of personalities working at a water park!

- For any coaster enthusiasts out there: Pelican Plummet, the fictional coaster at the boardwalk, is a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter. It's inspired by Dare Devil Dive at Six Flags Over Georgia.

- I decided to set the story in 2019 since 2020 is a literal dumpster fire. Interestingly enough, the weekend the story takes place (March 28-31) is the same period I took a vacation to New York City for the first time ever. This was not intentional and I didn't realize it until later on in development!

- Originally, Sergeant Charlotte Robinson was actually a man - Tyler, Jess and Connor's Uncle. But I decided it would be cool to have a female Police Sergeant, especially to take down Dave hahaha so "Uncle Matt" was replaced with Aunt Charlotte.

- One thing that stayed exactly the same all the way through development was Dave's character. He was just as awful in early planning as he is now, lol.

- Every major character has a detailed list of their traits, tendencies, backstory, etc. and some of these things were never revealed in the story!

- A lot of this story was planned out, but a lot of it was also improvised on the spot. I like to get in the zone when I'm writing and sometimes situations just come to me. For example: The argument that Evan and Tyler have at the coffee shop was not planned. As I was writing I really wanted to create some tension and show that this relationship is not unlike any others in that there will be fights and things won't always be 100% perfect all the time.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask :) Writing this story was an absolute blast and I hope you enjoyed reading it! I would love to hear your thoughts!