Welcome back to Jen’s Jewels, your weekly must-read for all things fiction! Today, I am shining the spotlight on THE BLUFF by one of my favorite authors, Wade Rouse. Set against the magical backdrop of Mackinac Island at Christmas, this story is filled with family secrets, romance, and plenty of drama. Trust me, you’ll want to add this one to your TBR. Read on!
LIGHTNING ROUND
What’s your favorite way to spend an autumn afternoon?
I love to run the lakeshore, or hike with my husband, Gary, and our rescue dog, Gerti, take our boat out on Lake Michigan to see the fall color, antique, cook, dinners with friends, and watch college/pro football (Go, Mizzou! Go, Northwestern! Go, LA Rams!)
What’s your go-to fall drink, snack, or sweet treat while writing?
I make my own pumpkin spice latte(s) at home while I write at dawn, or head to Uncommon Grounds, our local coffeehouse in Saugatuck, Michigan, that makes the best coffee in the world. Gary is a great baker, and I love his pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting. When it’s close to Halloween, I tend to raid the Halloween candy after I run because ten baby candy bars never equal a full-sized bar, do they?
If your main character could plan the perfect early autumn getaway, where would they go?
Mackinac Island (where TTHE BLUFF is set), to stay at the Grand Hotel, of course. It’s the perfect autumn getaway! Fall color in Michigan along our lakes is beautiful!
THE FALL INSPIRATION
October often brings a sense of change and new beginnings. Did writing this book inspire you to try something new or push yourself in a different direction as an author?
Most definitely! I believe THE BLUFF is the most ambitious novel I’ve ever written: 11 points of view rotating in real time over three days at Christmas. This includes Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel – which I bring to life – as narrators as well as three generations of the Chapman/Brown family, from grandchildren to grandparents. I also reimagine a character and romance from the movie, Somewhere in Time, which was filmed on Mackinac Island at the Grand Hotel. When I was asked to write a holiday novel, THE BLUFF was my only proposal: I wanted to write a novel that wasn’t simply as sweet as an iced sugar cookie but a story that reflected the pain and division that we are experiencing in this world today. I firmly believe, as my grandma taught, that we have more in common than what divides us if we would only just shut up for a second, listen and focus on the good and how short our time is together. I hope readers love this new and different journey.
What was the very first spark that inspired this story?
It was more like a spark that started a flame that ignited a fire. The idea for the story started after my first visit to Mackinac Island a few years back (if you aren’t familiar with Mackinac Island, it is an island between the Upper and Lower Peninsula of Michigan that you can only reach by ferry or airplane. It is like going back in time to a Victorian village where the only transportation is horse-and-carriage and bike, or, in the winter, snowmobiles. The streets have been car-free for over 100 years. It is a place where life moves at the clip-clop pace of a carriage, and where the noise of day-to-day life is silenced by the delightful ding of a leisurely bicycle bell. It is pristine and stunningly beautiful. It is also home to the historic Grand Hotel.) I felt as if I were in another world the entire time I was on Mackinac, and I began taking notes as soon as I sat down on the ferry ride back to the mainland. When I got home, I immediately watched Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve-Jane Seymour movie that is considered one of the most romantic movies ever made. I was mesmerized by the love story. And then Diane Keaton died, and I read that The Family Stone movie was getting a sequel to honor her passing and the movie’s 20th anniversary. The Family Stone is one of my favorite Christmas movies ever made – a wonderful family drama that depicts the holidays in a funny and real way – and I watched it with my mom when she was diagnosed with cancer (something Diane Keaton’s character faces in the film), and it wrecked us and made us become even more brutally honest with one another. Ironically, my mother was considered a sort of “Ozarks Diane Keaton” during her life, as she was a nurse who was smart, spoke her mind and marched to the beat of her own drummer when it came to fashion. All these ideas coalesced into THE BLUFF.
Tell us about a scene that changed dramatically between your first draft and the final manuscript. What led to the revision?
There were actually a couple of key scenes in the book that changed dramatically after discussions with my insightful editor, Susan Swinwood, at Mira. One involves the wealthy grandfather CS, who rules his family with bluster and an iron fist as he did his company. Many things occur over the course of the novel that should change CS – or, at least, soften his outlook on life and his family – and I had scenes at the end that showed this subtle transformation. But, in speaking to Susan, she said, “Men like this don’t change no matter what happens. And, if they do, they certainly don’t show it or speak of it.” I immediately thought of my own father, and many male figures in my life (and this country), and I realized she was correct, so I rewrote scenes that show people around CS changing, but him remaining steadfast in his belief that he is always right (“might makes right”). The story is better for it. Sometimes, people just don’t change.
Another key scene involves Brie – the trophy wife of the toxic youngest Chapman son, Cormac – who gets caught in a doozy of a lie to undermine the family. In initial drafts, her character takes hell for her actions, while some of the men – who have acted just as badly – get an easier pass. My editor asked why? Why was I letting the men get off the hook so easily? And, conversely, why does a woman often get tagged as corrupt or awful when she is simply being as ambitious (and often conniving) as men? She was right again. I wrote a character who fought to have a better life and has no shame in doing anything and everything to make that happen and keep that life. The scene I rewrote toward the end of the book involving Brie and Cormac is – I think – now one of the best (and most shocking) in the book.
Did any character unexpectedly take the story in a direction you hadn’t planned?
Where do I start? So many did. This is a novel I outlined heavily due to the sheer number of characters, but I didn’t want to feel straitjacketed by not allowing these characters to change and evolve in ways that felt authentic and truly surprised me. Two of those characters are the grandmothers in the novel, Charli and Shirley, who couldn’t be more different: One icy, one sweet, one born to wealth, the other a born and bred Islander who worked her way through college to become a teacher. The way these two women evolve to see not only how much they have in common but also the power, dignity and beauty in one another was one of the most pleasant surprises in this story, and one that I did not have planned in the beginning.
Your setting feels like a character in its own right. What inspired you to choose it, and how does it shape the story?
Setting is a HUGE character in THE BLUFF. Most tourists know Mackinac Island in the spring and summer, when the lilacs are in bloom, the geraniums are blooming, the trees are green, and the lake and sky are blue. But no one knows Mackinac in the winter when the lake is iced over, snowmobiles are the only way to navigate the island, the sky is grey, the landscape endless white. I wanted to show the Island as it truly is, as it exists for far more months of the year than the few beautiful months people experience. The landscape and the unexpected blizzard I write about in the novel force the Chapman/Brown family to be as isolated as the Island itself. It forces the family members into stillness. It traps them in this real life snow globe and forces them to confront each other – and their trappings and secrets – without any ability to escape from reality. There is something about winter – when the trees are but silhouettes, when the wind howls, when the snow piles up – that is so beautiful and so revealing. In The Bluff, the souls of the characters are laid bare just like the landscape, and finally, finally, each can see themselves and the ones they love without any false adornment, and that sets the stage for real drama.
THE PERSONAL TOUCH
Can you share a behind-the-scenes fact about writing this book that readers may find surprising?
I loved exploring the history of both Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel. They are both truly living, breathing beings, which is why I decided to make them characters in the book who narrate key scenes from their own unique points of view. The Grand was constructed in the late 19th century, and it has what is known as the world’s largest front porch. The Grand is known for a number of notable visitors, including five U.S. presidents, inventor Thomas Edison and author Mark Twain. Carleton Varney, a protégé of Dorothy Draper, decorated the hotel in late 19th-century décor, including geraniums everywhere. Geraniums are featured on the Grand’s grand rugs and also run the entire length of the hotel’s porch.
I also loved exploring the history of Somewhere in Time, and discovered – per articles and conversations written by some of my celebrity journalist friends – that Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour actually fell in love while filming the movie but could never be together, which shows in their chemistry on film. That forbidden love inspired a similar forbidden love in THE BLUFF: For those who’ve seen the movie, I rewrite the history of the little boy with the ball who plays a key scene in the film with Christopher Reeve. He grows up to fall in love with one of the characters in my book, but the two cannot be together. The Grand helps narrate this heartbreaking romance.
If readers could step into one scene from your book for a day, which would you choose and why?
There is nothing like the ferry ride to Mackinac Island. Once you step aboard and begin to cross the lake, once you see the Mackinac Bridge spanning the water, once you see the Island come into view – the Grand Hotel spanning the hillside like a gull in flight – and once you step onto Mackinac Island, you are instantly transported back in time. You are in another world. I want readers to feel that as they enter the world of THE BLUFF.
LOOKING AHEAD
Can you give readers a sneak peek at what you’re working on next—without giving away any spoilers?
Lake Como FOMO is my next novel – and my very first romance! It will be published on June 8. I wrote this novel because 1) I didn’t know if I would ever fall in love as a gay man growing up in rural America in the 1970s and 1980s. It seemed incomprehensible. And 2) Travel changes us. Sometimes, it brings out the best in us, and sometimes it brings out the worst. But travel leads us on a journey of self-discovery, and often that journey leads us not only to appreciating our lives and the world we are seeing but also loving ourselves and those we are with even more. This book took root on a trip Gary and I took to Lake Como, Italy. That trip to celebrate my sixtieth birthday and our thirtieth anniversary was a full-circle journey from who I was as a boy to the man I am still becoming. It’s also where I fell head over heels again with my husband. The idea for that trip took root when I was a kid in the Ozarks. I took a world history class from a teacher who had traveled to Italy and brought the country to life with great passion. The cover of the textbook we were studying featured a collage of Italy: Pisa, the Coliseum, the cathedral in Florence and Lake Como. I used to stare dreamily at the cover of that textbook as I rode on the school bus as it traveled across dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. Someday, I thought for the first time, I will go to Italy with the man I love. One day, however, a bunch of boys saw me staring at the cover of the book and whooped the hell out of me with it, telling me I would never go anywhere or be anything. But don’t feel sorry for me. Just like Hop, the main character in Lake Como FOMO, I am a driven son of a gun, determined to prove everyone wrong. And that all started when I learned to love myself. My journey to love is not that much different than Hop’s in the book: He, too, meets Marino – a wooden boat captain – by happenstance, just as I met Gary. He, too, must learn to love himself first. The journey to love another always starts with ourselves. But sometimes that journey begins with a trip somewhere magical, like Lake Como. Sometimes, it starts – as it does in the novel and as it did on my first date with Gary – with a trip to a Pizza Hut. As Franz Liszt once wrote: When you write the story of two happy lovers, place them on the shores of Lake Como.” So I did. And it’s hilarious and hard and beautiful, and I hope readers love it! To amore!
Where can readers connect with you and stay up to date on your latest books? Please share your website, newsletter, and social media links.
Websites, newsletter: Readers can sign up via my websites, or my Substack, Unlearning Fear at https://substack.com/@waderouse (I teach a lot about writing here, too!)
Facebook, Instagram, Bookbub, and Goodreads
BONUS: The Author’s Playlist
Share 3–5 songs that capture the mood of your book or inspired you while writing.
THE BLUFF Playlist
- The theme song from Succession
- Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Judy Garland version from Meet Me in St. Louis)
- Take Me to Mackinac Island by John Manikoff
- Into the Mystic by Van Morrison
- Islands in the Stream by Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers
- Somewhere in Time theme song by John Barry
- My Grown Up Christmas List (Kelly Clarkson version)
- Grand Hotel by Regina Spektor
THE BLUFF by Wade Rouse
Succession meets The Family Stone in bestselling author Wade Rouse’s humorous and sharply observant look at a family teetering on the edge of merry mayhem.
The Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture‑perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
Chris Chapman is on the verge of losing everything: his father’s trust, his role at the helm of the family business, and his wife’s respect. Kat Chapman is already fed up with hosting her critical, stuck‑up in‑laws and their impossibly inflexible holiday traditions. Her solution? Invite her working‑class parents – born and bred Islanders – for Christmas, much to the horror of the Chapmans, whose rule that “We do not share Christmas with other people” is about to be broken.
As the snow piles up, so do the grievances: their teenagers—fiercely liberal Leah and conservative golden‑boy Chip—are locked in a battle of wits, Chris’s vaguely corrupt brother Cormac and his calculating trophy wife are stirring the pot, and Kat’s mother is holding onto a secret that could upend the entire game.
Deliciously messy and surprisingly tender, The Bluff is a feisty festive family drama about money, marriage, power, and all the things we bring to the holiday table besides the turkey.
Fiction Family Life [ MIRA, On Sale: October 13, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780778306221 / ]
Buy THE BLUFF: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Wade Rouse
Wade Rouse is the USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly and #1 internationally bestselling author of 21 books, including five memoirs, 13 novels and three holiday novellas. Wade’s books have been translated into nearly 30 languages and have been bestsellers across the world. His novels, The Secret of Snow, The Clover Girls and A Wish for Winter, have been optioned for film and TV.
Wade’s books have been selected multiple times as Must-Reads by NBC’s Today Show, Indie Next Picks by the nation’s independent booksellers as well as Michigan Notable Books of the Year. His memoirs and novels have been featured in the Washington Post, USA Today and on Chelsea Lately. Wade was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards in Humor (he lost to Tina Fey) and was named by Writer’s Digest as “The #2 Writer, Dead or Alive, We’d Like to Have Drinks With” (Wade was sandwiched between Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson).
2026 will be a big year with two books being published, including That’s What Friends Are For (March 3) and a Christmas novel, The Bluff</em, set on Mackinac Island (October 13).
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | GOODREADS | INSTAGRAM | BOOKBUB
About Jennifer Vido
Jennifer Vido is the award-winning author of the Gull Island series, a collection of sweet Lowcountry romances inspired by her love of coastal living and small-town charm. Her debut novel, Serendipity by the Sea, won Best First Book from the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf Contest. Jennifer has been named Baltimore Magazine’s Best Local Author for three consecutive years (2024–2026) and was named The Baltimore Sun’s Best Author in its 2026 Best of Readers’ Choice Awards. When she’s not writing romance, Jennifer shares her love of books through her weekly Jen’s Jewels column, where she spotlights exciting new releases and talented authors.
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