Scrubby’s PBnJ is a small-town contemporary romance about a sandwich shop owner in learning, through work, faith, friendship, and a tender slow-burn relationship, that she is worthy of love and success. What were some sources that informed this novel’s development?

I remember back in the early 2000s, I think, there was a restaurant that opened in Downtown Chicago that specialized in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That always fascinated me, and I wondered how they would have done had everything been homemade, and not essentially store-bought bread, peanut butter, and jelly.

How did you decide to lean so fully into the rhythms of ordinary life instead of pushing for more dramatic plot turns?

That’s my style. This book took place in the same universe as some of my other works, namely Afternoon Rebecca and 14 Hours of Saturn. There was a lot of crossover with this book and the others. Brynn is from Pine City and worked at Anderson’s Steak & Seafood, two places first found in Afternoon Rebecca, along with Dollar Junction Community College and her attorney, Charles Ruckman. Scrubby and Dewey meet Saturn O Syres and Janus Rings at a dance at a civic club in their hometown. Saturn O Syres is the protagonist of 14 Hours of Saturn, and she and Janus went to the dance a few times. Ordinary life is what I write about, and the little things one may not notice before.

Dewey and Brynn’s romance feels intentionally gentle and old-fashioned. What kind of love story were you hoping to write between them?

Christians with pasts. Also, I prefer true romance – boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy tries to woo girl – over boy and girl meet, then immediately jump into physical relations

How much of the restaurant world, menus, cleanup, staffing, and daily routines, came from observation or personal experience?

Very little, if I’m honest. I have worked at restaurants in the past, and some of that did inform this, but it was more just my imagination over anything else.

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