Neighbors is a novel. It is a food blog. It is a story that unfolds with every single recipe.

Neighbors was born from a conversation I had with my friend Natalie, yes, the very same Natalie who created the lion's share of recipes for this project. Five years ago, we were sober and fantasizing about living next door to each one day in the distant future. We joked about how we could pass meals, snacks, and all sorts of treats between our homes if we were sick and hang out whenever we wanted. 

In the midst of bantering I said to her, “man, this has the making of a story to it. Like, two neighbors who fall in love because they share food through their kitchen windows.” She laughed, saying it did have that vibe and it passed seemingly out of mind as we ate a delicious dinner she and her husband made for the three of us.

Except, I couldn’t forget it. This idea would not stop nagging me, it even followed me into my actual dreams. And in those dreams, I met Ren. I met Nico. And together, I watched them live and knew I had to write their story. 

I initially envisioned Neighbors as an animated television series. However, given the state of the animation industry and the futility of getting any original IP greenlit, I followed my instincts and tabled the story for three long years.

Until, one fateful morning in the fall of 2022, Natalie and I had another conversation.

We were texting while I lolled around in bed, complaining for the umpteenth time how SEO made reading food blogs extremely annoying. How scrolling through too many posts where people would talk about their kids, spouses, their (quite frankly) doldrum lives just so we could get to the recipes was a process that, to put it kindly, sucked ass. I cheekily replied to one of Natalie’s quips with a, “wouldn’t it be interesting if before every recipe it was the chapter of a fictional story instead?” 

In that moment, Neighbors fell off the dusty recessed shelves of my mind.

Oh my god, I thought. This is it.

I had the story, and while making silly jokes to my friend, I stumbled onto the format. 

Neighbors could finally come to life.

Hours of research showed that—as far as I, and my web developer friend Rebecca could tell—nothing like this existed. There wasn’t a food blog out there doing this type of storytelling, which meant there were no templates I could use in order to see it through. So, I brought her on to build the website from scratch, and a year and half later, well, here we are.

If you’re here for the recipes or the world of Maple Grove, thank you for dropping by this tiny slice of the Internet. I greatly appreciate you giving this project any amount of your time. It literally could not have happened without the help of many wonderful collaborators over these last five years. 

And to the handful of friends (plus my therapist) who I entrusted this idea with—Natalie, Britt, Joshie, Meera, Shanna, Elizabeth, and Court—who patiently and steadfastly encouraged me over the years to actually write and publish it, thank you from the bottom of my heart.