An Interview with Christina Lauren

Christina Lauren is the pen name of romance powerhouse duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, and several of their books have been featured and reviewed here at Smart Bitches, like Beautiful Secret and Sweet Filthy Boy. For those who haven’t given their books a chance yet, I highly suggest you dip your toes into the water. Just once. And if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll be one-clicking the rest of their backlist so fast you’ll pull a muscle.

Yesterday, Christina Lauren wrapped up their Wild Seasons series with Wicked Sexy Liar and the two of them were awesome enough to spare some time to talk with me about what it feels like to end a series. Plus, they talk about what’s in store for future books, how they manage their co-writing process, and what books they’re currently reading!

Amanda: How does the writing process work with a co-author team? Does one of you work on one aspect of the story and the other works elsewhere, or is it truly a collaborative effort?

Lauren Billings: It’s collaborative. I know there are some co-author duos where somebody will outline and the other will write. Or one person drafts it and then the other person revises it. But we do everything together. So usually we outline it together, in person, and then we make a spreadsheet that has like “what are the chapters?” and “who’s writing what?” Because our books are usually — and Sweet Filthy Boy is an exception — alternating point of view, that really helps with I’ll write this guy and you write this gal.

And then we draft it! We don’t write together though because we have really different writing processes.

Christina Hobbs: I am slow. She is fast.

L: And then when we are done — we’re usually pretty much in sync —we revise it together.

A: Well it works! It seems like a pretty good marriage between the two.

L: It’s funny that you say marriage because it is in a lot of ways. It certainly feels like a marriage. But it’s a really good system. I think a lot of people have a pretty intensive working relationship and it wouldn’t work for everyone, but it works for us. We’ve been writing together now since 2009.

C: Yeah, I don’t think there’s one single other person I can think of that we could do this with. It’s just this perfect mix of personalities.

A: How did you two team up? Did you know each other previously?

C: So we met writing fan fiction. Lo was doing a panel at SDCC on fan works and she invited me to come. I came out and when we met in person we just instantly liked each other and got along.

I can’t even remember what started it, but we were like, “let’s write a one-shot together.” And so we wrote this silly little one-shot and it worked so well and we had so much fun, and we were like, “Let’s write a book!”

L: Because, yeah, it’s so easy.

Amanda: Before I started this interview, I asked some of the other Bitches if they had any questions or anything they want me to pass along, and Elyse was dying to know how you write such amazing sex scenes.

L: That’s such an incredibly nice thing to say! But in all honesty, that just makes me feel so good. We write what we write, but we’re never like — “That was it!”

It’s nice to know that people like “those scenes,” but everybody has their own style. Maybe those just speak to her and whatever other readers love those scenes. For me, it helps when I just close my eyes and I try not to filter myself. One of the things our editor has commented on at times is that our sex scenes are very stream of consciousness. The punctuation and grammar kind of break down a little bit in those, and I think that’s because when we’re writing them, we want the characters to be in a place where they’re just thinking about that.

Unless! In the case of Sweet Filthy Boy, with Mia and the awkward time she has sex with Ansel. That one was fun in a way and really fun to work on because it was so different than everything we’ve written. It was like she expected to get lost in the moment and then she totally didn’t. But I think usually, we like our characters, by the time they’re having sex, the moment just absorbs them.

A: I definitely appreciated the awkward sex scene because we’ve all been there. It’s one of those romances that I’ll remember reading because the sex wasn’t perfect right off the bat.

C: I thought that was a hard scene to write. It was really hard to not make it hot. We had to make a little hot.

L: We combed through it a few times. It was fun to work on—

C: Because it was realistic. We’ve all certainly been there.

A: You started with the Beautiful Bastard series and I’m curious what made you — not necessarily switch gears since you have books coming out around the same time — decide to start a new series while in the midst of another one?

L: I think we’re going to write romance no matter what and we really like writing romance, whether it’s more or less heat. No matter what, we like kissing books.

Because Beautiful Bastard came from the fanfic world and we were reworking it for publication, that decided for us what that series was already going to be. Once we started working on the Beautiful series, it was just really fun. The characters are a little bit older and they mature through the series. But we wanted to do something different too.

The story for Sweet Filthy Boy came to us and then all of the characters whose books sprouted out from that. I feel like it’s been nice to have this group going through more coming of age stuff that we can write about, but still have this group that’s a little bit more grounded. They have their careers and they’re figuring different kinds of life things out.

It’s worked out sort of well for us and it was kind of happenstance. It’s been great to do both series and the last Beautiful book, which comes out in the Fall, will be a good way to wrap up that series. But it really hasn’t been hard to have them going on at the same time. It’s been really fun to be able to go back and forth.

C: The only thing that’s hard for me is switching from past to present tense. It takes me a good two chapters to really get back into it.

A: What is it like to finish a series and to see this whole journey of all of these characters come to an end?

C: We love the fact that each book can be read on its own. You don’t have to read Beautiful Bastard to read Beautiful Player and we love that. But there comes a point where we feel like the characters have all gotten where they need to be. And also we have a bajillion other stories in us!

L: We’re working on the last Beautiful book right now and one of the problems I’m having is that the ensemble is just so huge. We’re trying to write a scene where all of the characters are meeting the main female love interest and so there’s ten people, plus all these children, and it gets a little unwieldy. I’ll miss the Beautifuls, but they’ll always be there. It’s not like they won’t be on my shelf.

And like she said, we have a lot more stories in us. It’s going to be a little bittersweet though with the Wild Seasons series, only because I don’t think we weren’t quite ready to be done. Wicked Sexy Liar was so easy to write, unlike some of our other books. It came so quickly and was really fun and a joy. We finished and then we were like, “Oh, wait! We’re done. It’s over.”

We haven’t done novellas yet for them though, so we haven’t written every corner of their lives. But each of them has such a great, complete story that it’s okay. We can say goodbye. They’ll all still be there.

C: Leave them wanting more!

A: Do you have anything — and I’m sure you do — on the horizon after both the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series wraps?

L: We have two stand-alones that are contracted with Gallery Books and we’ve finished one. We haven’t announced the title yet.

C: We don’t even know if we have a title.

L: I really like it though and it takes place in the world of talent agents in Hollywood. I think it’s a fun premise, but it’s also really scary for us to write a standalone because we’re not spinning anything off of this. We have to make sure everything we want to accomplish in this book is in it. There’s something about writing an ensemble that gives you a little insurance policy where if you find something later you want to explore, you can.

We don’t know though if we’re going to do another series or a few stand-alones mixed in with series, but we’re kind of open to anything. We have a lot of ideas.

A: Do you have a favorite couple that you’ve enjoyed writing the most?

C: Yes! When we were first writing Ansel, I just loved Ansel so much. I don’t know what it is about him. Normally, we finish a book and I’m done with it. But with Ansel, I just loved him so much. And as we were writing the other books, especially Dirty Rowdy Thing, one day Lo was like, “Christina, why is Ansel in this scene?”

He was just in the background.

L: Like snacking on grapes.

C: I thought that he was going to be it for me, but then we started writing Wicked Sexy Liar there was something about writing Luke and he’s so funny and jokey and sweet, despite what London thinks about him at first. He’s right there with Ansel for me. I was really not ready to be done with Luke and London when we finished.

And usually, I’m like, “Goodbye!”

L: I don’t know if I have a favorite. It depends on the day. Yesterday, it was Harlow and Finn. I actually sort of love them all equally. It’s really hard. I love writing Bennett, but I don’t want to write any more Bennett books. And I love reading Beautiful Player, but I’m done writing Will and Hannah too. I don’t know! I like them all.

A: The both of you do a good job creating these heroes that capture different facets of men that people find attractive. Like with Finn, I have a weakness for men who work with their hands, so he’s probably my favorite. But with Ansel, you have this guy who is goofy, but can turn it on in the bedroom. They fit these nice niches that readers like in their heroes.

C: We just probably couldn’t write a straight forward alpha male for the life of us.

L: And I mean there are different kinds of alpha males. A few people have commented that Ansel is a great beta hero and I agree with that. He’s a puppy! But he can bring it behind closed doors. Whereas Finn and Will and Bennett are more alphas, but I also feel in many ways, Oliver has some alpha in him too. He’s so confident. He’s so steady. But it’s not about brute force.

I don’t know. It’s nice to have a balance. Our husbands have a balance of alpha and beta guy in them. It totally depends on the situation. It’s nice to think that men can be both and turn it on and off. You don’t want full steam all the time. Like put away the muscles, I’m just doing the dishes.

I mean, it helps that I’ve banged every single kind of guy between the ages of like sixteen and thirty. It was good research. I didn’t know that at the time.

Guys are fun to write. But so are females. Again, there’s a lot of different ways for characters, especially women, can be strong. They don’t have to be brassy and ballsy to be strong.

A: So I only have one final question and it’s something I love asking authors and people who work with books, what are you reading and loving right now?

L: I am re-reading The Captive Prince series by C.S. Pacat because I have an early copy of Kings Rising. I am seriously obsessed with these books. I am totally in love with them and I can’t shut up about them.

I also love a book by one of our friends, Mercy Brown, that just came out. Loud is How I Love You ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). It’s about the mid-nineties New Brunswick indie rock scene, and it’s kind of a coming of age story about this front woman of a band. She’s the singer and plays rhythm guitar and she’s just woken up the morning after she had sex with her guitarist. And she just broke this cardinal rule. It’s fun angst. She can’t seem to keep her hands off him basically and that’s the main conflict. But it’s so much fun because it kind of took me back a little bit to those years, going to see shows, and the drama of college.

But everybody needs to read Captive Prince. Everybody.

I even told my mom. It’s male/male, but it’s definitely going to go on your shelf, mom.

C: I didn’t read over the holidays. Lo was on vacation, so she read a ton. I started The Captive Prince in July while we were at Comic Con and then I didn’t ever get back to it, so I’m reading that now.

I’m a huge audiobook listener, so I’m listening to Year of Yes ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au | Scribd ). I was actually looking through my Audible account this morning and I realized I had so many self-help books. What is this about? And some strange memoirs.

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Once again, I’d love to get a big, huge thank you to Christina Lauren! Wicked Sexy Liar ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) is officially out now and I’m sure many of your have already devoured it. Feel free to drop us a comment about what you thought of the final Wild Seasons book!