Moving at the Speed of Fun

A hilarious new novel, and how it came to be.

Jun 20, 2024

Happy June Solstice. It’s officially summer*, season of the beach read.

(*In the Northern Hemisphere. But books transcend the equator.)

Seemingly everyone I know is reading All Fours or an Emily Henry novel. And while this is all fine and good — I’ve read them, too — may I suggest the funniest, zaniest, most entertaining book I’ve read in…maybe ever?

It’s called Big in Sweden. It comes out July 2nd. And you can preorder it now from your local indie bookshop, via Satan, or wherever you buy books.

OR, you can have Meg Ryan read you the audiobook.

Big in Sweden is the mile-a-minute, laugh-out-loud tale of Paulie Johansson, a woman who auditions for Sverige och Mig (a Swedish reality show) and actually gets cast. What transpires is stranger than fiction, which makes sense, as the premise is based on the author’s real-life experience on a similar show.

Full disclosure: Sally Franson and I went to college together, but that is not why I wanted to interview her, nor why I’m recommending her hilarious work. (Trust me, it speaks for itself.) It may, however, have something to do with why I had the courage to ask her probing, socially unacceptable questions. Bless her for answering them.

Today, I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Sally’s reality show experience and how her new book came to be. On Sunday, I’ll share the second half of our talk — a vulnerable deep dive, including writing wisdom and life advice I found healing and inspiring.

Big in Sweden is based on your real-life experience on a Swedish reality show. How did that come to pass?

It’s the strangest gift I’ve ever been given. A few years ago, I was struggling to complete what I thought was going to be my second book and had worked myself into a fit of despair. A friend said, ‘I heard about this show where Swedish Americans learn about their genealogy, you should apply.’ I hemmed and hawed. But then one day, on the winter solstice, which is very dark in Minneapolis, I hastily recorded an audition video and sent it off. I saw the casting process as this fun distraction. I never expected I would actually go through with it.

But then you got cast.

Then I got cast. But then COVID happened, and it couldn’t move forward. And I thought, ‘Well that’s good, because it was going to be shameful and stupid.’ But then in 2021, vaccines rolled out, and the producers called and said, ‘We’re filming, you leave next month.’

Every step of the way, it was like someone else was at the wheel. I’d think, ‘I guess I’m packing my bags…’ while waiting for my higher self to step in and say, ‘No, we’re not doing this.’ But I did it.

Was it strange to have this experience abroad and then to return home, where no one was aware it had happened?

Yes. The show, Allt för Sverige, is kind of like The Amazing Race meets that PBS show Who Do You Think You Are?, where you learn about your family history and Swedish culture. I was gone for five weeks. By the end of the show, I became very minorly famous in Sweden.

It was the best possible way to experience such a thing. I came back like a bat out of hell, skidding in like Kramer from Seinfeld. But no one cared. The fame was so minor and so removed from my daily life that I could look at it like a novelist and not be swallowed up by the experience.

Was it always your plan to write about it? How did you go about translating it into a novel?

It wasn’t my plan. But the experience — getting to travel and talk to all these people and participate in this weird thing — lit me up in a way I hadn’t felt in years, because it had been such a hard, brutal, painful time for all of us. And I thought, I want to share this feeling with people.

My agent said, ‘Why don’t you write about it?’ I wasn’t sure, but she suggested I write fifty pages and see where it went. I was guffawing every day, thinking, I can’t believe I’m getting away with writing this silly little story!

The stakes felt so low. I was just having a gas. I had forgotten that it’s okay to have fun, that writing can feel that way. It doesn’t have to feel like terror and trauma in the soul. It can be having fun — and wanting other people to have that sense of fun, too.

When my agent went out with it and someone wanted to publish it, it felt like a miracle. I couldn’t believe it all came out of something so stupid and so glorious — I’ve since decided that stupid and glorious, together, is where I want to live.

The book is like a carnival ride — it ticks right along and every beat is funny. I kept thinking, how much funny can one person produce in a day? How did you pack so much in?

The packing it in was not intentional on my part. It’s so chockablock, but I think part of that is because when I head to my desk to write and my heart starts pounding in my chest, I channel all that energy onto the page.

I once had a comic acting teacher who said, ‘You want to be working at the speed of fun.’ Fun is faster than your worry, and louder than your panic. I kept moving at the speed of fun because that’s how I kept myself from being scared. It’s like I had to go at that speed, or I was going to lose my nerve.

For me, the most joyful part of being a writer is the writing. If I start to feel fear, I remember that what I want to do is give a gift — a gift from my heart to someone else's. That lights me up inside, and that keeps me going.

Thank you so much, Sally. ❤️

Sally Franson is also the author of A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out, a book I absolutely adored.