Joshua Braff
MAPLEWOOD/SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — When Joshua Braff and wife Jill decided to have their first child 15 years ago, they agreed that he would be the one to stay home with the baby. This decision sparked teasing from his friends, who predicted that Braff would soon be spending his days lazily lounging around the house in his bathrobe, doing whatever he wanted with all his newfound free time. The reality of his situation proved to be quite different, however.
Novelist Braff, older brother to “Scrubs” star Zach Braff, recalled that acting as stay-at-home dad to his young son and daughter was actually one of the most exhausting times of his life. In fact, after completing such tasks as tending to crying babies, picking out the right foods and finding ways to entertain his children when they got older, he said he would sleep as deeply as if he had spent the whole day doing manual labor.
But as tiring as the job was, Braff said it was all well worth it.
“I love, in hindsight, that I went through this experience,” Braff told the News-Record in a June 5 phone interview. “I guarantee that I’m a better person for it and I think a better artist for it.”
The experience certainly helped Braff in writing his third novel, “The Daddy Diaries,” and he will be signing copies of the book at Words Bookstore in Maplewood on Friday, June 12, at 7:30 p.m. The author explained that he took inspiration from his own life to tell the story of Jay, who must adjust to being a househusband with two preteen children after moving to Florida from California for his wife’s work. While not exactly autobiographical — the son in the book is more of an amalgamation of friends’ children than his own boy, for instance — Braff said the real-life emotions behind moving to a place very different than he was used to, and watching over his children by himself were definitely influential.
“You can’t fake this,” Braff told the News-Record. “You can’t fake what it means to the father and to the children, what you’re going through. The phases of childhood are changing so quickly. It really is fleeting, so there’s so much fodder for a writer.
They would have these growth surges in the summer, and in the fall I was witnessing someone else. So that’s how I feel like I was nurtured as an artist because I am an artist that focuses on the human condition.
“My books are novels, but there’s truth and then there’s fiction for whenever I need to turn right or left,” he continued. “There is a lot of me in this and a lot of us, but at the same time there are things in it that did not happen to me.”
Another major inspiration for the book was the recent rise of the stay-at-home dad. Braff remembered that when he first started caring for his children, he often felt like the only father on the playground. As the years went by though, he noticed more and more dads becoming a visible presence in their children’s lives.
Soon Super Bowl commercials were depicting fathers handling BabyBjorns and picking up sons and daughters from school, and Braff said he realized this change in societal norms would make for a timely book examining the effects a switch in traditional gender roles can have on future generations. The resulting “Daddy Diaries” is his most relatable book yet, he said, garnering a strong response from men and women alike.
And that is a good thing for Braff’s publisher, Prince Street Press, which is in turn good for Braff himself. Prince Street was founded by Braff and wife Jill, a 20-year veteran of the digital publishing world, in an effort to recoup more than the 10 percent of sale profits Braff was getting with a mainstream publisher. Using the advance from his second novel “Peep Show,” Braff and his wife hired a team of printers, designers, publicists and the like to create their own publishing house that could better connect with readers through digital marketing, he said.
So far, everything has been going as well as they hoped.
“It’s much, much better reaching people this way,” Braff said. “Everything is working right now. A wave is building, and I feel it each day. A great deal of social media is always bubbling. My Twitter accounts are going up, my Facebook reach is going very high. And I’m booked for readings, I’m doing interviews and I’m aiming for TV.”
Right now, however, Braff said he is looking forward to returning home to the South Orange and Maplewood area. Braff, who grew up in South Orange and graduated from Columbia High School, credited the towns’ economic and cultural diversity for providing a wealth of influences for him to draw on for his writing. He fondly remembered crossing the creek behind the police station to get to South Orange Middle School, an experience about which he has written.
In the future, Braff said he hopes to add more writers to Prince Street’s stable. As for his own career, he said a collection of his short stories will be published soon. After that, he promised another novel will be on its way, possibly including a character with whom fans will surely be familiar.
“I may or may not continue with the protagonist from ‘The Daddy Diaries,’” Braff said. “The response has been very good.”