How Bill Pullman's 'Portland lesbian' look in While You Were Sleeping inspired Alison Cochrun's next book

Who hasn't been inspired by a hunky rom-com hero or fierce leading lady?

But when Alison Cochrun, author of the acclaimed The Charm Offensive, began plotting our her next romance novel, Kiss Her Once for Me, she called on an iconic classic and turned it on its head to get those creative juices flowing.

"The inspiration for this book really was Bill Pullman, specifically in the movie While You Were Sleeping," she tells EW. "Because I firmly believe that his aesthetic in that movie is Portland lesbian. He wears amazing flannels and this Carhartt jacket and he has this floppy hair. It's one of my all time favorite movies."

Kiss Her Once for Me follows Ellie Oliver, who moved to Portland a year ago to pursue her dream job at an animation studio. But after losing her job and facing mental challenges, she's stagnating, working in a coffee shop and on the verge of losing her housing to a rent hike. When the coffee shop's landlord, Andrew, suggests a marriage of convenience to get him his inheritance and assist with her financial woes, she agrees. But when a visit home reveals that his sister is Jack, the woman she fell in love with on Christmas Eve one year ago, will their plans be derailed?

EW can exclusively reveal the cover for Kiss Her Once for Me, which hits shelves Nov. 1, below. We called up Cochrun to get the story behind her Sapphic holiday romance, why she adores her purple cover, and more.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Tell me more about Kiss Her Once for Me and where you got the idea?

ALISON COCHRUN: The short summary of the book is it's about a bisexual woman who agrees to a fake engagement with her boss only to end up falling in love with his sister. I like to think about it as Sandra Bullock's While You Were Sleeping meets Sandra Bullock's The Proposal. I love Sandra Bullock. It's a fake dating/marriage of convenience/will inheritance trope meets a second chance romance and the second chance romance between her and Jack is the primary part of the story.

Is it harder or different writing a holiday rom-com than something like The Charm Offensive?

I originally didn't set out with the intention of specifically writing a holiday romance...I began writing the book with this love interest of this female character, Jack, in mind and loosely basing it on the movie While You Were Sleeping. It started as a queer retelling of that, but it evolved into a different book with no coma plot, no amnesia. But it's still a story about a lonely woman who falls in love with a family over the holidays. In a lot of ways, the holiday part felt secondary to the characters that I wanted to write about.

The premise upends the "marriage of convenience" trope a bit – what interested you in trying to subvert that?

It really started more with a subversion of the fake dating trope, which is a trope that I absolutely love. Again, drawing from While You Were Sleeping, in that she has this fake relationship, but he's in a coma the whole time, right? He's barely a character in the story. I really liked the way that movie played around with the fake dating premise as a tension between the fantasy of the Peter Gallagher character and the realism of Bill Pullman's character, Jack. I like the idea of playing around with what it means to choose something fake but safe versus something that's real, but incredibly risky because it requires being vulnerable.

Both The Charm Offensive and this seem to have a vested interest in turning our most hetero romance tropes on their head – from the trappings of reality dating to the marriage of convenience – what intrigues you about playing with those signposts?

I just love romance. I have really grown up consuming romance and its various forms, whether that's books or movies. But I'm also someone who came out rather late in life. I didn't come out as a lesbian until I was 33. The stories that I consumed played a role in that. I really like being able to tell queer romance stories as a way of manifesting the happily-ever-after that I didn't really believe was truly possible for me because I never saw that reflected. I really appreciate being able to write these stories. But in a lot of ways rewrite the narrative that I bought into and that single definition of what love is and what love can look like. I like playing around with tropes because it's my way of telling myself that I'm worthy of love just as I am, which sounds very self indulgent. But it's true — in terms of just being able to write queer stories where people like me find love.

You mentioned that your heroine has anxiety, and mental health was a big part of The Charm Offensive. Why is that something that is important to you to weave into your romance stories?

It's hard for me to imagine writing characters that don't, in some capacity, struggle with their mental health — be that anxiety or depression or other mental illnesses — because it's such a huge part of who I am and my own life experiences. I like being able to write characters where mental health is a part of who they are, but not all of who they are. I would say mental health is less of a focus in Kiss Her Once for Me. And yet, we still see this character who struggles with anxiety who is working to overcome those difficulties. Her love story is intertwined with that journey.

The Charm Offensive went all over the world, this is set in Portland. What made you choose that setting?

I love travel. So I would write about travel in all of my books if I could, but for this particular story, it felt like it needed to be rooted in a place. I chose Portland specifically because I've lived outside of Portland most of my life. I have a real sense of home in Portland. Also, Portland is such a beautifully queer place to live. It is a place that is full of transplants. The main character in the book, Ellie, is originally from Ohio and has moved out to Portland. There are lots of jokes about how common that is in Portland to meet queer people who flocked here to find a sense of belonging that they couldn't find in other places. I love Portland as a city and I love being able to, in my own little way, write a love letter to it and the diversity in sexuality and gender that we have here.

A lesbian holiday romance might naturally draw comparisons to Happiest Season. Would you invite that or how would you say Kiss Her Once for Me sets itself apart?

The hard thing about Happiest Season, regardless of your own opinion of it as a movie, is that it was our only story. People were so invested in it being a certain way and meeting certain needs that they had because we just didn't have anything else. It was our one mainstream sapphic Christmas love story. It had so much pressure on it to be everything to every queer person. No one story can do that; no single story can reflect every queer experience because all of our experiences are so diverse. What I'm really excited about is to see more sapphic stories in general. There are so many amazing books coming out this year. But also, specifically more sapphic Christmas stories. I want lots of them so that no one's story has to hold that pressure and that weight. I hope that people love my book, but there are other sapphic Christmas books coming out this year too, including Courtney Kae has a book called In the Event of Love, which is exactly like a Hallmark Christmas movie and Helena Greer's Season of Love is also coming out this upcoming fall. I'm just excited that we have more stories.

The title comes from "Holly Jolly Christmas." Do you have a favorite holiday song or a playlist you used while writing?

Yes, I do have a whole playlist which features like six different iterations of "Last Christmas" by Wham because the book features flashback chapters. The book sort has a dual timeline where it looks back on Ellie and Jack's relationship to Christmas before. Honestly, my favorite Christmas song is "Tis the Damn Season" by Taylor Swift, and I listened to that on repeat a lot as I was writing this book.

Every author's cover experience and every book is different. but going into this did you have certain asks or requests or a Pinterest board before you arrived at this design?

My amazing editor Kaitlin Olson emailed me a few months ago about initial cover ideas, and I sent her back this long, rambling, detailed description of a specific scene from the book that I thought would look great on the cover. It takes place on the Burnside Bridge in Portland with the skyline in the background and snow and the characters are dancing. I'm an author, and I genuinely know nothing about book cover design. My ideas would have been way too busy and cluttered. But thankfully, the team at Atria and the incredible cover illustrator, Sarah Horgan, were able to take my chaos ideas and distill their essence into this beautiful eye-catching cover. The one thing they did keep from my original email was the background color. I love that my sapphic book has a purple cover.

I was going to say it's a bit unusual to have a Christmas romance with a purple cover. Why was that important to you?

I really liked the idea of a purple cover, regardless of the season. I thought it was really a beautiful idea. Lavender is very much a sapphic color historically. But one of the reasons they ultimately went with purple as opposed to a more holiday cover is that Kiss Her Once for Me is very much a holiday book, and a book that can be enjoyed any time of year. While it takes place at the holidays and there are lots of trademark holiday moments in the story, the scenes itself are not really specific to the holidays. The character journeys are also not really holiday specific. It has a lot of those festivities, but it also is a story that can be read anytime.

Can you tease the book in three words?

Festive, zany and angsty.

Related content:

• The 10 best romance novels of 2021
• 18 holiday romance novels to make your season holly jolly
• Hot Stuff: Fall romance novels offer hot monks, witchcraft, reality TV, and Keanu Reeves