Windfall Author Jennifer E. Smith on What She’d Do If She Won the Lottery
In Jennifer E. Smith’s Windfall, out next week, a momentous lottery ticket changes everything in the tale of two friends who bonded over loss…and might be blown apart by an unexpected win. Alice has long known she’s in love with her best friend, Teddy, and it seems like he might finally be wising up to her feelings. Then she buys him an eighteenth-birthday lottery ticket, and the impossible happens: he wins. Now he’s $140 million richer, and everything is changing. As the distance between them grows, Alice starts to wish he’d never won at all.
Here’s author Smith with her take on the “If I won the lottery” fantasy we’ve all entertained at least once…
When you write a book about someone winning the lottery, you end up thinking a lot about what you’d do if you were lucky enough to win. In Windfall, the whole thing starts out as kind of a joke. Alice buys a ticket for her best friend, Teddy—whom she’s secretly in love with—for his eighteenth birthday, and to their surprise, he wins $140 million…which of course changes everything.
We all know the statistical probability of something like this happening is pretty small, but it’s not impossible. And it can be a lot of fun to daydream about it. So here are 10 things I’d probably do if I were to hit the jackpot:
1. Books! I’d buy a lot of books. Like…a lot of books. Because you can never have too many books, right?
2. Travel is a huge passion of mine, and if I won the lottery, my passport would never stay tucked away for very long. There are so many places I’ve been lucky enough to visit already, but there are a lot more I’d still love to see: Patagonia, Finland, Greece, Tanzania, Antarctica, Halifax, Peru, Rwanda, Croatia, Thailand, Morocco, Vienna…and on and on.
3. More books. (What? I don’t have a book problem. You do.)
4. I’ve always wanted a little stone cottage in Scotland, which is my favorite place in the world. It would have a wood-burning stove, and a library with one of those ladders that moves around the room, and a place to write that looks out over the water, and a Highland cow in the back garden.
5. Bookshelves! Because it’s starting to seem like I might need someplace to put all these books…
6. I’d throw a huge party to celebrate and try to make it cool enough that J.K. Rowling might consider accepting my invitation.
7. I’d buy books for all my friends. And their friends. And for every kid who wants one. And every school or library that needs more. Books for everyone!
8. It would be fun to use some of the money to help make other people’s dreams come true. How amazing would it be to have the ability to grant wishes for all your family and friends?
9. I’ve always wanted to own a bookstore, which is lucky, since at this point in the list, I’ve probably acquired too many books to keep at home. So I’d open a cozy little shop where people can browse and read and find the types of books that will change their lives more than money ever could.
10. There are so many important causes out there, and I’m a firm believer that we have a responsibility to help each other out. So I’d give a lot of the money to charities. But I’d also want to use it for random acts of kindness, because you can never underestimate what it means to make a small but meaningful difference in someone’s life.
Windfall hits shelves May 2, and is available for pre-order now.