Novel Set in NYC Chronicles the Chaotic World of Event Planning

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Author J.T. Tierney captures the creative, competitive, “What-do-you-mean-the-lizard-escaped?” world of event planning in his latest novel, Perfect Plans.

Sofie Chen of Prestige Events was advancing quite nicely in her career, making clients’ convention dreams come true by handling details and managing crises, when two recent hires brought new meaning to the phrase, “The best-laid plans. . . . ”

Former theater kid Sofie chides Ryan Porter for being “Mr. Spreadsheet.” Still, she knows he’s a unicorn—a mathematician with no hospitality experience but a convincing argument on how he can transfer his statistical skills to be of service at Prestige.

Before she’s able to decide whether her interest in Ryan is more than professional, Sofie’s ex, Trevor Hoyt, comes on board.

Unlike Ryan, Trevor is a seasoned publicity exec; one whose assignment strategy is usually, “Let’s wing it.”

It didn’t take long for the two men, and their different approaches to the job, to become rivals; Ryan, who never met data he didn’t want to calculate, versus Trevor, who never met corporate jargon he didn’t toss into a word salad.

And whereas Ryan is an earnest rule follower, Trevor runs on charm and manipulation with a sabotage chaser.

Can Ryan and Sofie stop Trevor, and will it take more than a professional alliance but a personal one to survive the aftermath?

Straus Media sat down with Tierney to find out how these characters came to be, the allure of the rom-com, and post-retirement success.

This genre is traditionally written by and for young women. What was the attraction for a man in his 70s?

I am not your typical rom-com writer. Perfect Plans didn’t even start out to be a rom-com. I was trained as a political scientist and have always been fascinated by the variety of associations and organizations active in the US. I thought I ought to do something that uses my interest in that area and what I know about it. That was the premise, and I meant the book to be a wacky comedy. But then over time, these two central characters emerged, and a romance developed.

What inspired the contrasting backgrounds of analytical Ryan and theatrical Sophie?

I happened to read [the novel] Eleanor Oliphant [Is Completely Fine] and something about her character, the idea that she presents as someone who’s on the spectrum, and I thought, that’s what I need—one of these characters to be grainy and compulsive, appearing to other people as a bit odd. I started working with that idea and made Ryan Porter this quirky mathematician. It started working for me, so that’s how that came about.

As for Sophie, that happened organically. [Her theater background] comes from my having done high school musicals, and then in my adult life, I was in community theater. I’ve always just loved the theater world.

People tell writers to write what they know. But you were a teacher in Boston, you now live in Chicago, and have been married for four decades. You must have had to do a lot of research about event planning, New York City, and modern dating.

Well, I had to do research about event planning. Books. Websites. [A family friend] is an event planner. So, I pumped his brain.

With respect to New York, my two sons live in Greenpoint, and I’ve been to most of those places [mentioned in the book].

As for dating, I read widely and try to keep up on what’s going on in society and with trends.

I understand that you put Perfect Plans aside and you picked it up again. Do you want to talk about the challenges of writing this book or writing in general?

I found that with each of [my books] when I finished the draft, I left it alone. Then, after a long break, I came back to each of them and saw what needed to be done to fix it.

As in this case, I had written a lot of these chapters about various events, but it never really came together until I came back to it with fresh eyes and a new idea about how to cast the central characters.

The hard part, though, is always coming up with a germ of an idea for a story. Each [of my books] has come about because one day a story just occurred to me. Then, I sat down and started writing, not worrying about where it was going to go.

And that seems to be the trick, at least for me: to just make myself sit down and start, even if the place where I start doesn’t end up being the book I started out to write.

Writing books is your “second act.” Can you speak to that?

What I’ve learned from writing fiction is that if you just apply yourself to it, if you have an interest in doing something, sort of like mathematician Ryan is attracted to the idea of event planning, and bring whatever skills you can muster, you can do it.

I think it’s finding what gives you meaning and what brings you happiness that leads to success.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel The Last Single Woman in New York City.