"I was (and am) still worried that people will tell me I'm being naive."

New York Times bestselling author Evelyn Skye on playing with POV, building a community on Substack, and her warm hug of a novel, THE INCREDIBLE KINDNESS OF PAPER

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order Evelyn’s kind-hearted contemporary novel, available now.

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Me: Hello, my friend!

Evelyn: hi hi!!

I'm so excited to be talking with you about THE INCREDIBLE KINDNESS OF PAPER! Big congrats—how are you doing?

I'm doing great! Book release has been really fun. But I'm also a little glad that the big publicity push is over? It's tiring for this introvert, even though I have loved connecting with readers as they discover my new book.

That's great! You are definitely not alone in feeling exhausted by the launch promo. It is so not authors' natural state!

I literally tell my family, "OK, now it's time for me to turn on Author Mode" before I do an event or an interview. It's the genuine you, but, like, a more articulate version, haha

Hahaha. My partner can recite some of my lines about my book and its origin story by heart because she hears me share them on podcasts so often in the next room. (Apparently I speak VERY loudly on videos and pods!)

But speaking of questions you have to answer 1000 times! Can you share what the book is about?

I'd love to! A Goodreads reviewer said THE INCREDIBLE KINDNESS OF PAPER is "like Love Actually for human connection," and that made me happy because she really got it.

When the main character, Chloe Hanako Quinn, loses her job as a high school guidance counselor, she writes herself a small pep talk on a square of yellow origami paper and folds it into a rose. She means to keep it in her pocket as encouragement when she needs it, but she loses the paper rose... and an elderly neighbor--who is having an even worse day--finds it. That message turns out to be exactly what the neighbor needs to spark an idea that changes her life.

So Chloe decides to start leaving these yellow paper roses around New York to lift people's spirits. And it turns out that people are hungry for hope and kindness. Also, one of the origami flowers makes its way to her long lost childhood best friend, Oliver, and well... it helps them reconnect in an unexpected way.

I love this! Love, Actually but about ACTUAL love and not romantic infatuation laced with weird, never-discussed toxicity (we do not need to get into my feelings about Love, Actually lol)

What was the inspiration for this book?

I'm embarrassed about the inspiration, but here goes. I got into an Uber and did the not-uncommon thing of mumbling hi to the driver and nothing else. We spent 15-20 minutes together in that small space of his car in total silence. When the ride was over, I was suddenly disappointed--and frankly, horrified--at myself for completely failing to acknowledge the other human being just a few feet away from me. So I resolved from then on to look at the app before the pick-up and note the driver's name, then smile and greet them like a real human being. Like, "Hi, Andi, how are you? How's your day going?"

That's not always easy as an introvert, but I decided that it's my responsibility to put a little bit of kindness in the world. Technology makes it too easy to forget the people around us sometimes.

I've had a lot of great smiles and hellos from Uber drivers since. Sometimes we chat longer, sometimes we don't.

But that moment of recognition that I could actually affect someone's day with as small a gesture as "Hi, Andi" plus a smile really hit me. That was the seed that sparked THE INCREDIBLE KINDNESS OF PAPER and Chloe's paper roses.

I love that! What an important reminder for 2025. How'd you go from that revelation to the characters, the origami—the actual plot?