375. Beautiful Friendships: Live at One More Page Books with Christina Lauren

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there! How are ya? Welcome to Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell. This is episode number 375, and today I am talking with Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, better known as Christina Lauren. This was recorded live on the 23rd of October in front of a very excellent audience at One More Page Books in Alexandria, Virginia. They were on tour to promote Twice in a Blue Moon, and I had questions from my brain and from the community at Smart Bitches. We are going to talk about their newest book and the themes therein – I promise, no spoilers – and about writing, productivity, travel hacks, caring for your creative self, and their professional and personal friendship.

I want to say thanks to Kristin Dwyer at LEO PR and Amber, Patricia, Rebecca, and Anna from One More Page Books and especially to Margaret, Hannah, Elle, Soni Wolf, Nicolette, Nan de Plume, Zoe, and Kareni for the wonderful questions that you sent in.

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Today’s podcast and the transcript are brought to you by All I Want for Christmas Is You by Miranda Liasson. If you like Jill Shalvis, Susan Mallery, and RaeAnne Thayne, you will love this holiday romance featuring a sexy firefighter, a surprise baby, a fake engagement, and a cookie baking contest, all set against the backdrop of the charming small town of Angel Falls, Ohio. Kaitlyn Barnes and her longtime crush Rafe Langdon share a sizzling evening that delivers an epic holiday surprise: Kaitlyn is pregnant. And if that weren’t life-changing enough, everyone assumes they’re engaged – a charade they must keep alive through the holiday season. But Kaitlyn knows Rafe better than anyone, and Rafe settling down is about as likely as Santa skipping Angel Falls this year. Rafe would rather Kaitlyn believe a lie – that their night together was a fling – than face his own dangerous truth: he is falling for her, hard. Rafe swore he’d never risk his heart again, yet the longer they pretend to be engaged, the more Rafe starts to want the real thing. But now he has to convince Kaitlyn he wants to be by her side, and their baby’s, for all the Christmases to come. Publishers Weekly calls All I Want for Christmas Is You “A scrumptious holiday treat.” And the book includes the bonus novel Christmas on Mistletoe Lane by Annie Rains and a chocolaty Christmas cookie recipe. All I Want for Christmas Is You is on sale now wherever books are sold. Find out more at mirandaliasson.com!

I want to extend a very special and heartfelt thank-you to our Patreon community. Each pledge helps keep the show going and helps make every episode accessible. You are making such a difference in this show and in many other supporters if you have more than one Patreon that you are helping. It is wonderful that you make a pledge each month to help shows like me out. Thank you so much for that. If you would like to have a look at our Patreon, it is patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, and every pledge is deeply, deeply appreciated.

I will have information at the end of the episode about the music you’re listening to. I will have, of course, links to everywhere you can find Christina Lauren, and they’re on tour, so they’re kind of everywhere, and the episode will end with a truly atrocious, horrible, bad joke because, well, now you’ve started sending them to me, and they’re getting better and better!

But now, live from One More Page Books in Arlington, my conversation with Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, better known as Christina Lauren.

[music]

Sarah: Okay! So before we get started, I want to give a few thank-yous to start, ‘cause I like to start with the thank-yous first. I want to thank Kristin Dwyer, who is –

[Cheers]

Sarah: – who is amazing and is the guiding light on the whole tour –

Christina Hobbs: Yes.

Sarah: – and is now dying of embarrassment. Hi, Kristin!

Lauren Billings: [Laughs] She’s like –

Christina: We would be lost without her.

Sarah: And you know how, like, you go to a show and it’s like, everybody, tip your bartenders? The ladies behind the counter at the bookstore –

[Cheers, applause]

Lauren: Thank you!

Sarah: Amber, Patricia, Rebecca, and Anna: thank you, ladies!

Lauren: Thank you so much!

Christina: Thank you!

Sarah: They, they moved chairs and pushed bookshelves, and now we get to hang out! Yay! Okay.

So I solicited questions from my website for this evening, so I have a mix of questions from me, ‘cause I’m super nosy, and I have questions from the people who read my community, and the first question was from Margaret: How are we all going to fit in the bookstore?

Lauren: I mean –

[Laughter]

Lauren: – this is pretty great.

Sarah: This is amazing!

Lauren: So it’s cozy and snuggly and –

Sarah: Yes.

Lauren: – just exactly the way a book signing should be.

Christina: Mm-hmm

Sarah: Right? It absolutely should.

Lauren: Thank you guys for coming out on Wednesday night.

Christina: Yes.

Sarah: Yes!

Christina: You all look very pretty.

Lauren: You do.

[Laughter]

Sarah: You put on, like, bras and real shoes?

Christina: I know.

[Laughter]

Lauren: You are the real MVPs.

Sarah: I’m wearing elastic-waist pants, and I’m not afraid to say so.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yeah, right? Like, come on, leggings for, leggings for life.

Lauren: Oh yes.

Sarah: So my, my, my first question – now, I have already read the book. I promise I won’t do any spoilers, because I realize you guys have not read the book, and to have it spoiled at a book event would suck, so I’m not going to spoil anything, but I have a few thematic questions. So don’t worry, I’m not going to ruin anything for you, because I’m not a horrible human being. I’m –

Lauren: I might; inadvertently, I might.

Sarah: She’s going to give away the whole thing?

Lauren: I will do my best.

Sarah: Right?

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: So I highlighted so many sections of this book. Do you guys have that experience when you read Christina Lauren? You just, like, underline and highlight, and then there’s, like, one word that, like, gets you right in the fourth ventricle, like, oh God!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Is that true for you too? Like, do you highlight the hell out of their books? Show of hands if you’ve written – yeah. I’m glad I’m not alone; thank you. So one of the things that I highlighted is, “My heart is a beast with claws that extend, wrapping around this compliment, and I gobble it down.” Do you know that feeling? Like, whoa, I know that feeling! The other one being, “To be bitter enemies, I’d have to give a shit.”

[Laughter]

Sarah: So do you have a favorite moment or line in this book that you wrote? Do you have a favorite scene that you were like, okay, this I love so much?

Lauren: I – so this is Lauren. I’m Lauren; this is Christina.

Christina: Hi!

Sarah: I should have made that clear! That’s Lauren!

Lauren: No, it’s okay. We, we –

Sarah: I’m Sarah.

Lauren: Yes! [Laughs]

Sarah: Clearly I’m superfluous to this.

Lauren: I really love the scene in the beginning of the book when Tate goes out to the garden. So, okay, so a little backstory: Tate is eighteen; she’s going to London with her grandmother for her birthday trip; her grandmother’s a little bit uptight. It’s sort of, it’s inspired by A Room with a View. I don’t know if you guys have seen that movie or read that book, but I was obsessed with Julian Sands in that film, and so I’ve sort of always wanted to, like, recreate that feeling.

Christina: I just heard, like, five sighs.

Lauren: Yeah, I know! The whole room swooned; that was a good moment. And so she goes to London, and she meets this guy Sam who’s there with his grandfather; they’re from Vermont. And she confides in him, and he’s the first person she’s ever told, that she is sort of the long-lost daughter of this famous actor, so think of, like, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, that sort of stratosphere, and she’s never told anyone that before, and she admits who she is. Her parents got divorced, her mom took her away to get her out of the public eye, and she’s been growing up, and the media is like, where is she? What’s happened to her? So anyway, so she’s in London, she’s sort of finally allowed out of this bubble of her protective world, she meets this really adorable guy, she tells him her secret, but the first night she’s there she’s just antsy. She’s excited, she’s out in this big world, and she goes out to the garden, and he happens to be there, and I think I just love this scene, just imagining these really manicured gardens and this sort of pristine space, and yeah, it’s where she goes and she, like, really gets to know Sam.

Sarah: Which is a whole other bubble for the, just the two of them at night –

Christina: Yes.

Lauren: The two of them, yeah.

Sarah: – [whispers] – ‘cause they’re sneaking out!

Lauren: [Whispers back] They are!

[Laughter]

Sarah: What about you, ma’am?

Christina: It’s so funny, because sometimes when we finish a book I’m like, well – [makes a clicking noise] –

[Laughter]

Christina: – that’s it!

Lauren: That is so true, so fair!

Christina: Let’s see, I think one of the scenes, like, I don’t necessarily know if it’s, like, my favorite, but I think one that I felt really strongly is, you know, she’s trying to build this relationship with her father, and it’s – I mean, I don’t know how much to give away – she just is coming, ‘cause that, that thing where she’s talking about grabbing hold of the compliment is –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – her dad says something nice to her, and it, it happens so rarely that she is just, like, starved for it – is a scene towards the end when they’re in a diner and – or after the diner – where she realizes –

[Bell rings]

Christina: – oh, that’s –

Sarah: Come in!

[Laughter]

Christina: – where –

Sarah: I hope it’s Obama.

Lauren: I know!

Christina: I know. Oh God, please.

Lauren: Come on, God.

Christina: Please!

Lauren: You know us!

Christina: Where she realizes that sort of what she hoped was happening isn’t happening. That’s all I can say!

Sarah: Yeah. That’s a good one!

Lauren: That’s fair!

Sarah: Do you guys crack each other up while you write?

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: We – and that’s the, the joy of having a co-author is, like –

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: – I don’t have – I mean, I worry about what you all think. I want you all to love every single word we write, okay? But if I can make her happy, make her laugh, like, that’s, I’ve done my job, right? So that, I, and I’m being sincere. I’m not just saying that to be, like, trite.

Christina: When, when we first started writing, that was, like, the goal, and that’s usually the goal, is to, like, make the other person either laugh or tell us that we’re a piglet.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

[Laughter]

Lauren: If I make her shocked, then I’m like, yes!

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh my!

Lauren: I know. And then we have to dial it back, usually.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And when you read what the other one has written –

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: – if you remember this book or with other books that you’ve work-, written, or worked on together, has there been a moment where you sort of sat back and went –

Christina: Yes.

Sarah: – wow, she’s good?

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: She’s the most beautiful writer. Like, I always say that one of the best parts of this job is that I get to read her words before anybody else.

Everyone: Aww!

Christina: She really is; I’m serious.

[Laughter]

Lauren: Yeah, Christina’s really great at setting the scene, and so sometimes I’m just sort of blown away by opening her chapter and feeling like I can feel, like, the dew on the grass or the chill in the air or, you know, that kind of thing, and it just, I, I love it! I love reading her stuff. It’s, I’m always so excited, ‘cause we upload our chapters to Dropbox after we finish them, and so I know whenever we’re like, I uploaded the chapter, we both just, like, immediately, like, dive into it.

Sarah: It’s almost like when you get the email that your favorite fic has been updated? [Laughs]

Christina: One hundred percent!

Lauren: Totally.

Christina: One hundred percent.

Sarah: There is a new file in your Dropbox. Excuse me, I have to go right now!

Christina: Also, I’m like, even after all these books, I’m a super insecure writer, so anytime she compliments me, I am that, like, compliment monster.

Sarah: Oh!

Lauren: [Indistinct]

Christina: I just, like, I’m like, real-, really? And then that, like, just, like, gets me going to the next one.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh no, it’s, it’s absolutely true. You, I think, I, I think if you are a creative person who puts their work into the world, you’re always going to have this moment of, oh crap!

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: What if it sucks?

Lauren: And I mean, I think –

Sarah: What if I lost it?

Lauren: That’s one thing that’s funny. I mean, this is our twenty-fourth book, but it’s not like we have –

Sarah: Whoa, hold the phone! Twenty-fourth book.

Christina: Published.

Lauren: Twenty-fourth published. We have –

Sarah: Wow!

Lauren: – twenty-seven or -eight written. And I think, the thing is –

Sarah: Okay, Nora and Roberts

[Laughter]

Sarah: Which –

Christina: I am gobbling that down!

Lauren: Right?

Sarah: Which one of you is Nora, and which one of you is Robert? [Laughs]

Lauren: I, I don’t think there’s ever a point where we’re like, wow, we just nailed that!

Christina: Nooo. [Laughs]

Lauren: You know? I mean, we bo-, whenever you’re writing, you know!

Christina: Oh yeah.

Lauren: You put your words out, and you’re just like, oh, is this the point where they realize that we have no idea what we’re doing? Like –

[Laughter]

Lauren: – every time. Every time.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you ever go look at, back at older books and be like, I want to change that –

Christina and Lauren: Yes!

[Laughter]

Lauren: Yes.

Christina: Yeah. So –

Sarah: But you can’t.

Lauren: Nope.

Christina: No.

Sarah: ‘Cause you’d have to find a whole lot of copies and, like, start knocking – listen, hi, I know you bought my book, like, six years ago. Can I just come in and change, I just want to change one thing.

Christina: Yes.

Sarah: I won’t even use the bathroom.

Lauren: I’m going to fix this typo that fifteen people missed in thirty rounds of edits.

Christina: Yes.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Lauren: Yes.

Christina: In fact, today, today somebody tweeted that we had messed up, took us, time zones, man. Like –

Sarah: Oh. Where –

Christina: – between, between us and Kristin and then, like, we are in, like, three different time zones, and so we messed up a time zone when she’s like, it’s this time now, and it’s this time –

Lauren: Okay, but I’m just going to say, I don’t ever want to know what –

Christina: Yeah, just don’t tell us.

[Laughter]

Lauren: Don’t tell me about the typos, ‘cause there’s nothing I can do.

Sarah: There’s not enough white-out.

Lauren: No.

Sarah: You can’t fix it.

Christina: We got, we got, when we were in New York, yeah, day, this week?

[Laughter]

Sarah: Sometime this year.

Christina: We, we got to see galleys of The Honey-Don’t List, and Lo took one and she was reading it in the car, and she could only read it in the car because it’s far, like, it’s far away, but if she were to read this one she would freak out because it’s, like, right there; she can’t do anything about it.

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: In, in galley form, it’s still just between you and the publisher, and –

Christina: Yeah! And if we needed to, we –

Sarah: – it’s, it’s –

Christina: – could still make a change to, like, the e-book, so.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s like clay, but it hasn’t been fired yet.

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: Right.

Sarah: Now it’s a whole bunch of books –

Lauren: Now it’s like –

Sarah: – and pots and plates, yeah.

Christina: I know.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: Yep, sorry. Can’t change it. I know that feeling. I wrote a book in 2009, and there’s a couple things I really want to fix!

[Laughter]

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s, it’s been ten years; not over it. Nope.

Christina: Yeah. [Laughs]

Lauren: Nope. It’s a feeling.

Sarah: It is! It is a mood. It’s a whole mood. So this story – I promise no spoilers! Y’all in the back can hear me okay, right? You guys are doing – okay, listen, if you can’t hear? Just start yelling, ‘cause I will, we will – [drama voice] – we will use our drama voices, and we will project! [Normal voice] So the story is partially about forgiveness, and it’s also partially about – and I love this part – trying to control the narrative of your life.

Christina or Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Because the heroine is trying to avoid celebrity, her father is a celebrity, and they have teams of people who control or try to control the narrative about their lives and have some control over what is said about them. And even for, like, ordinary people, that’s really hard to do. Like, I struggle with that as just an ordinary person. I know I definitely struggle with that online too, ‘cause you really can’t control the narrative about yourself.

Lauren: When you have no, like, in-person connections, right?

Sarah: No, not at all. So how do you handle narratives that you can’t control?

Lauren: Well, I mean, when it, as it comes to our author life, I think fandom really helped us. We kind of grew up in the writing world writing fanfiction, and so you’re putting out these stories that are really raw. For the most part you write them and you just post ‘em, and people have really strong opinions about what you did –

Sarah: What?!

Lauren: – with these characters.

Sarah: On the internet?!

Lauren: Which are not yours.

Christina: I know.

Lauren: Right?! It’s a – it happens. And honestly, like, I think when we were writing fic it, you know, peop-, some people love what you’re doing and some people hate it because it’s not how they envisioned the characters that you’re writing this fanfiction for, and so you learn to take criticism, and you learn that not everyone is going to love your stuff, you know?

Sarah: And it’s instant, or it’s nine years later.

Lauren: Right, totally! And so when we first published and some people hated our first book, and we were like, that’s fair, and some people loved our first book, and we were like, that’s cool, I think from that point on, having a very polarizing first book kind of helped us learn that, like, it’s okay. You know what I mean? Like, write the story you want to write, write the book you want to write, and you can’t always control what’s being said about it out there, and I think that, you know, just from a professional standpoint, that, I think, has been the way that we deal with it. Is that sort of what you meant with –

Sarah: Yeah!

Lauren: Okay.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: You want to add anything?

Christina: Ditto.

Sarah: Ditto?

[Laughter]

Sarah: Roger that.

Christina and Lauren: Yep.

Sarah: Can confirm. So with the characters and their controlling their own narratives, all of them are trying to control different stories in this book – I swear, no spoilers! They are all trying to control different stories that are all happening at the same time. How difficult was it, or was it not difficult, to keep track of what everyone wanted to keep control of?

Lauren: Well, we had to rewrite it.

Christina: Yeah, we basically rewrote this book like –

Lauren: Two or three times.

Christina: – two or three times.

Sarah: Oh, piece of cake, yeah!

Christina: Yeah. [Laughs] We just give ourselves permission to – well, the thing is, so we’re a big believer – and this is, like, our motto, I swear – we often don’t know how to do something right until we do it wrong, which is super inconvenient, and, like, not the most fun.

Lauren: When you’re on two-books-a-year deadlines, but –

Christina: Yeah, so we, we rewrote this a couple times, but also we, I mean, one of the great things about having a co-author is that there’s two of us, so we get two perspectives, and if one of us is stuck we can, you know, give it to the other, but we just, like, revise and revise and revise, and sometimes it’s really funny that, like, you think you are, you know, know what you’re doing, and then all of a sudden it, you know, you realize you’re not, and, I mean, the great thing about working on – I mean, in, in fic, you publish it and it’s out there. With this, we, we have a chance to go back and change things and change things and see where we messed up and where something needs to connect and –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – you know.

Lauren: And I mean, for this one, when we first wrote the book, we wrote Sam kind of, so there’s a, he, he messes up, and in the first version we had him kind of pushing himself back into her life as adults. He came to find her; he started trying to do nice things for her. He was being very aggressive about trying to make amends, and when we stepped back and read that, we were like, you know, everybody is trying to live Tate’s life for her. They’re pulling her away from this culture she knows until she’s nine. They’re pulling her away – you know, her grandmother’s taking her to London and telling her, don’t tell people who you are! You know, Sam messes up. Like, she kind of comes back in, at – when we see her as an adult, we had to make sure that she got to choose when to forgive and whether she wanted to, so we had written Sam wrong in that way. You know, we made him way too kind of aggressive and pushy, and so we wanted her to control the narrative, so I think that that was, you know, an important change. It was a hard change, it was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

Sarah: And even in the very beginning of the story, the, the grandmother, she has a very specific itinerary. Have you ever traveled with people who are like, at this time we’ll be here!?

[Laughter]

Sarah: And at this time we will be here! And then at 12:35:04, we’ll be walking out the door, and then we will be going here!

Lauren: Yes.

Christina: Well, for anybody listening, I just pointed to Lo.

[Laughter]

Christina: She’s our, she’s our planner. Oh, and also Kristin, our, our publicist –

Lauren: Yes.

Christina: – but –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – but if it wasn’t for Lo doing those things, like, we would never eat. We would just wander around if it was up to me, and be like, that looks good!

Lauren: But it does dictate how your vacation goes, right, and so for Tate, she just wants to be out somewhere else, and her –

Sarah: Yeah.

Lauren: – grandmother is like –

Sarah: No, we have to go to tea, and then we have to go to the museum –

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: – and then we’re going to go to the store, and then we’re going to do this –

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: – and she’s like, I just want to look at this bush in the darkness with this –

Christina: It’s a hot guy!

Sarah: – hot guy –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – which to, to her grandmother is not only completely scandalous and dangerous, but, like, why?

Christina: Yeah. What’s interesting about this kid?

Sarah: Yeah.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: So she gets to choose just that one little part –

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: – of her itinerary –

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: – which is the start of her choosing what she wants to do.

Lauren: And what she wants to tell him and who she wants to be and share, you know?

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: And when you have that, like, you know, like, the, the things that you reveal to people really late at night or –

Lauren: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – through, through, like, a dark digital connection, like you text people things, then you look back and go, I can’t believe I said that!

Lauren: You know what? Even when we’re sober, we’re all a little drunk at night, you know what I mean? I mean, like, every –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh my God, it’s so true!

Lauren: Like, the morning light, you’re always like, ohhh, what did I say at the signing last night? Like, I’m going to do that tomorrow! It doesn’t matter what happens tonight.

Sarah: I will have a transcript shortly.

Lauren: Excellent!

Sarah: All right.

Lauren: Here, you can tell me exactly what I said!

Sarah: I will tell you exactly what you – you’re being brilliant; don’t even worry.

I have a question from Hanna and Elle, and they want to know who usually writes the opening the paragraph?

Christina: It just depends. Sometimes – we split it up, so sometimes, depending on which character write, we’re writing or which scene or which chapter, and not only that, but we revise so much that if I wrote it, she might have gone back through and edited it and vice versa –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – so there’s never any set thing. I usually flail when I have to write the beginning.

Lauren: I like writing the beginning ‘cause it dives me right into it, but it is in no way the case that I write it most of the time. It is pretty much fifty/fifty.

Sarah: Right.

Lauren: And even if, you know, like, she’s writing Hannah and I’m writing Will or she, you know, it, we al-, we always have our fingers in every single scene –

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: – so it’s, it ends up being both of us. Yeah.

Sarah: So the next is also a, a process question. This is from Soni Wolf. She says, they talked about this before. I know they alternate writing chapters, but literally, how does that work? Are they waiting for the previous chapter to be done before the next one starts? Are they writing concurrently? This is fascinating.

Lauren: So I’m going to be honest and say, it really depends on how much time we have, because we’re almost always working on more than one thing at a time. So for example, right now we just did the past pages, which means we looked at the proofs of The Honey-Don’t List. We turned in a book on Saturday –

Sarah: Woohoo!

Lauren: – that comes out next fall – yeah – and we’re doing promotion for Twice in a Blue Moon, and we have other stuff going on that’s not totally book-related, so it really depends on how many different things we have going on, who, how much each of us gets to draft and how quickly, because it’s sort of hard to split your attention. You know, any writers out there know that if you’re working on multiple projects, it takes your brain a tick to, like, switch over to that other thing –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: – and I have tricks for that if any of you guys want to talk about it, but that’s, that’s –

Sarah: Bring it on. Me too.

Lauren: Okay. So one of them is to make a playlist for each book, and I don’t mean a long playlist. I mean like two or three songs, maybe three or four songs –

Sarah: That’s fascinating!

Lauren: – that feel like the ambience of that book, and you play on a loop, and that way, when you go back to that project and you put that playlist on, you’re not hearing the words anymore, or if it’s a classical piece, whatever, but it takes you immediately into that mindset, and I mean, like, the literal, actual neurological mindset. The other idea is to have a place that you write each book. So, like, I usually have one book I’m working on at the dining room table, one that I’m working on out of my office, one that I take my laptop somewhere else, so that I go to that space, I put on that playlist, and I’m more in that place.

Sarah: So it’s, it’s a ritual, almost.

Lauren: It’s a ritual, but it, I mean, it is, like, you know, neurobiologically speaking, it’s –

Sarah: Oh, of course!

Lauren: – it’s a way to, you know, get that, your neurons in the right space for it!

Christina: I don’t do either of those things.

Lauren: Okay.

[Laughter]

Christina: Because brains are different.

Lauren: They are different. So I don’t remember what I was saying before that.

Christina: How we write.

Lauren: That’s. So sometimes, you know, we’re drafting and it’s like –

Sarah: So that’s kind of how it works.

Laure: Yes. [Laughs]

Sarah: I don’t remember what we were doing! What were we doing? Writing a book. Oh!

Lauren: And I mean, I tend to write a little faster. She writes –

Christina: Much faster.

Lauren: – writes a little slower, and so sometimes I’m ready to go on to the next one, and she’s still working on the one, or she’s ready to go on to the next one and I’m working on something else, and so, yeah, we like to alternate. Ideally, we do every other chapter, but it, it just depends on the project, and, like, we have done enough books now that it doesn’t throw us off if one of us is, like, doing two chapters in a row. You know, it’s like, it’s okay, we can handle it. We don’t like to do too much more than that, ‘cause then we don’t feel, like, super connected to what’s happening, but yeah.

Christina: Yeah. So we, we divide it up – we always outline in person, because there’s just something that happens when we’re back and forth, like, throwing ideas out and stuff, and we div-, so then we will divide it by chapter or point of view or, you know, scene, whatever. We go off, we write our chapters, we upload them to Dropbox so we can each reference them, and then at some point, always Lo compiles them together, and hopefully it looks sort of like a book.

Lauren: I mean, the thing is, though, like, I think I said it earlier, we don’t ever really feel like we know what we’re doing. Every single book we’ve done differently, because we don’t have a process. Like, outlining in person is the only thing that happens every time. Everything else is just like, well, what’s going to work this time? Who knows? Like, we just have to mess around with it a little, so.

Christina: You have to be flexible.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. So Nicolette wants to, says she’s a big fan of your work. Thank you for writing great romance novels for women. Do you think you’ll create another series in the future?

Christina: If the idea comes. The problem is that, like, we all love series because we love to, you know, see characters, but the problem is that sometimes people buy the first book, and then the second book sells fewer, and then the third book sells even less, and so right now we’re just really loving writing standalones where –

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Christina: – we, like, go in fresh. We don’t have, we’re not, like, connected or, you know, kind of tied down to anything. But yeah, I mean, we love writing series, because we love having a big cast of characters, so. We just basically write the story that’s in our head at the time.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: This question is about research, which I find really interesting, because each of your books has a sort of, almost like a nerdy deep dive into something specific. Like, with this one it’s the process of making movies.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: With other books it’s been the LDS church or –

Lauren: Fishing.

Sarah: – fishing. I mean, there’s lots of different sex in various locations. There’s a lot of –

[Laughter]

Christina: We do a lot of research for that.

Sarah: Yeah!

Christina: Just kidding!

Sarah: I would never ask that question.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Because that’s gross!

Lauren: I know.

Sarah: And I hate that question a lot!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Nan de Plume wanted to know, what do you do to do your research? Are you, like, heavy Googlers? Do you use the library? Do you have a, a database that you use? What are your specific go-tos for research?

Lauren: It sort of depends on what the research is about. If it’s science-y stuff, I tend to take more of that on, because I am a scientist and I love putting scientists in our books? I just don’t, we don’t want to do it too much so it’s like, you know, every female hero, heroine is a scientist. [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m okay with that? Anyone else okay with – [indistinct] – yeah, okay –

Lauren: I mean, I just, I feel like it’s inaccessible to, you know, I don’t want, I don’t want it to feel like we’re doing the same female over and over, but I really enjoy doing that, and I like bringing some of those elements into it? This one – and I’m pointing to Christina – loves doing research. That’s, like, her favorite part, and I think it’s because she really wants to get hers- – I’ll let you answer, but you really like to get yourself in the world and kind of en-, enmeshed in it to be able to write about it.

Christina: Yeah, like, I mean, I’ve lived in the same place almost my entire life. Like, we were talking about this earlier. I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart for twenty-five years, so, like, my life is a little smaller than some of the characters, you know, in the books, and so that’s why I love memoirs, because it, like, gives you this sneak peek into other people’s lives, but research is seriously one of my favorite parts of writing. I use Google, obviously, the internet. I love Google Maps because you can get just right down on the street.

Sarah: So nosy!

Lauren: I know.

Christina: Yeah. When we, when we wrote –

Sarah: They have a pool! [Laughs]

Christina: Yeah. When we wrote, when we were writing the Beautiful series, I’d never been to New York, and so I was able to, like, help write a book that felt like I had been in New York, and when we were writing Sweet Filthy Boy, we were able to just, like, get down, and we’d been there once before, but once, and I did remember details, right down to, you know, the brick on a store. But with, like, Dirty Rowdy Thing, it’s about, he’s a Canadian fisherman, so I read lots of books about, like, you know, the industry, and partly because I don’t need to know the specifics of every single thing, but when Finn is tying a rope and looking at the weather, he’s, like, he’s not just looking at the weather; he’s thinking about, like, how the weather is going to impact the things he has to do that day. Or, you know, when he’s doing something and talking, he’s thinking about how he’s tying a rope or how, you know, the fishing industry has, has changed his life and how that’s working in the story. So I love nothing more than when we get to write where somebody’s actually doing something?

Sarah: Competence porn.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Christina: Yes!

Sarah: I love competence porn so much!

Lauren: Yes. Oh yeah.

Christina: And I, when London’s teaching Luke how to surf –

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Christina: – in Wicked Sexy Liar, oh my – I watched so many, like –

Lauren: YouTube!

Christina: – surfing videos.

Lauren: I learn so much from YouTube!

Christina: So –

Sarah: So you surf now!

[Laughter]

Christina: Yes. Very competently. So yeah, I love research. And nothing, I think, makes a reader feel like they trust you to, like, kind of carry them through the story like if you really seem like you know your business, even though I really don’t know anything.

Lauren: This book, though, is funny: we had one of our – so we, I, some of you guys might know, some of you might not – we wrote the screenplay for the adaptation for the Roomies film? And so we, our, one of our producers, this woman named Betsy Sullenger, she’s amazing, and so we asked her, like, we have this book; it has some Hollywood elements to it; we know just enough to be wrong about most of it. Can we send you some questions, and you can help us, like, get it right? And so not only did she answer a ton of questions just really thoroughly in writing, but she had, like, a two-hour phone call with us, which was just a huge, like, gift of time. But then what happens sometimes when you have a lot of information about something that’s new to you is you put everything in there, and it’s just more information than you need, so it almost gets away from, like, the idea of, that you’re writing a romance novel? So we put it all in, and then we had to take a lot out, because we’re like, this is super boring right now! Like –

[Laughter]

Lauren: – nobody cares about who’s holding the boom mic or whatever it is, you know. So that part is fun, and I think it’s, you put a lot in, and then you kind of pare it down so that you keep the story.

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: One of the things that I love about the, the sort of motif that the, the book is about controlling narrative is that there’s a part in the book where they’re filming a movie, so there’s a story inside a story inside another story. It’s like the best nesting dolls ever.

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s really great. And there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes about creating a movie. Did you write the whole movie that’s in the book? Like, do you know that whole story of the movie that’s inside?

Lauren: We know their whole story, but the whole, we didn’t write the whole screenplay. So we, we chose certain scenes from what we know as character stories. We know their whole story, but we chose specific ones to go as, like, excerpts from the screenplay so that you can read what they’re shooting, ‘cause we didn’t want to be like, he picks up the something on the table, and the director calls, you know, action, and we wanted to, just to, like, say, and then we start rolling, and then you see the script there. But yeah.

Sarah: ‘Cause the, ‘cause the book is very much from Tate’s –

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – perspective. She’s also creating characters of, of herself –

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: – and of the characters that she’s playing –

Lauren: Right.

Sarah: – in, in the movie that she’s recreating. There’s a lot of interaction with people who are creating narrative right in front of you.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: It’s a really interesting way of layering –

Lauren: That’s cool.

Sarah: – narrative. It is pretty cool! Nice job!

Christina: Thank you!

Lauren: No, I mean, thanks for saying that! You’re smarter than we are! Good job!

Christina: It was an accident, I’m sure.

Lauren: No.

[Laughter]

Lauren: No, I’m glad that you, that you enjoyed that piece of it.

Sarah: I love – does anyone else love behind-the-scenes – competence porn, right?

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, when you take a really nerdy deep dive into something and you come out like, well, now I know how to fish!

[Laughter]

Lauren: Yeah!

Sarah: Going to set up a hole in the ice, feed my whole family; it’s going to be great. Are there books that you love that do that? Do you, do you, like, in addition to memoirs, is that something you –

Lauren: I mean, I’m a nonfiction lover. Like, I love nonfiction –

Sarah: Yeah.

Lauren: – just ‘cause I feel like, and it’s true, that truth is stranger than fiction, so I love – that’s where I go for my, like, decompressing after writing. After writing romance: this hard life of writing romance.

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: I love it!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Now, Zoe asked me a question, to ask you a question about romance versus women’s fiction, and it’s really interesting, because my perspective on this question is probably very different from a bookseller’s perspective, from a publicist’s, from a writer’s, from a reader’s, and it’s really interesting because we’re sort of watching the genre shift and change a little bit, and we use different words to describe the same thing. So Zoe’s question I thought was interesting. She asked, I’ve heard that this book is a bit of a departure in that it is categorized as chick lit, as opposed to romance, which I find really interesting, ‘cause I’ve heard it categorized as women’s fiction –

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: – instead of romance –

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: – which means, like, everyone’s deciding what this book is –

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: – which means I get to ask you. She, Zoe says – and I feel this statement – I definitely need escapism and HEAs right now. Can you comment a bit on whether you hold by this distinction, and what made you move in the direction that you’re in?

Lauren: So I would say this book is a romance. It’s not a rom-com. I think we’re kind of becoming known for rom-coms in this current, you know, rom-com renaissance. We’ve kind of always written books that we hope will make you laugh, but there’s a couple of our books that are a little bit more sincere in tone. Love and Other Words is one. Autoboyography is YA, but that’s certainly another, and –

Sarah: I would say that’s –

Lauren: Yeah, and we’re very lucky to be able to write – although I wouldn’t say Autoboyography is women’s fiction; it’s definitely YA. It’s not a female protagonist. But we’re really lucky to be able to write whatever story we have in our heads, so that’s something that is so great. We have a really good relationship with our publisher; we have a lot of support to write those stories. I think for us the distinction is, with romance, the romantic arc is the primary arc, okay? So the Happily Ever After is guaranteed; that’s the contract that we make with you, the reader. In women’s fiction, a Happily Ever After could happen, it’s not guaranteed, but the heroine’s journey is the, is the primary arc; romance may or may not happen. And so we are romance writers, so we might have some stories like Twice in a Blue Moon, like Love and Other Words, that have a more women’s fiction feel, because they’re not just sort of primarily lighthearted, but we’re always going to write romances, and so anybody who needs an HEA, you will find that in this book, so do not worry.

Sarah: Good to know!

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: Do you encounter reader comments about what book is this? What kind of book is this?

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: What is this one?

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: Yeah, I think when we wrote Love and Other Words and they were sort of calling it women’s fiction, a lot of people were concerned that meant that, like, there was no Happily Ever After.

Lauren: Or somebody was going to die.

Christina: Or somebody was going to die. I think that’s how a lot, I think that’s how a lot of people define –

Sarah: Fair concern!

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – like, women’s fiction.

Sarah: Right! Well, I mean, it’s, it’s a fair concern, because you could have women’s fiction with an HEA or –

Christina: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: – and women’s fiction where somebody dies, and they’re on the same shelf.

Christina and Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: We’re just always –

Sarah: It’s very dangerous.

Christina: – we’re always going to write a Happily Ever After, and so, like, I don’t actually technically know what, like, chick lit is. Like –

Lauren: I feel like it’s, like, lighthearted women’s fiction?

Sarah: Is that term even used anymore? Does anyone walk in and go, I’m looking for some chick lit? Does, is that – I, I feel like that’s a term from, like, ten, fifteen years ago, right?

Lauren: I think Bridget Jones’s Diary, you know what I mean?

Christina: I guess.

Sarah: Yeah. Like, I think Shopaholic and books from, different cartoon covers –

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: – from a bygone era –

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: – as opposed to the cartoon covers that we have now.

Lauren: Right.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: Those are different.

Christina: Yes.

Sarah: They’re different cartoon covers.

Christina: Like, like, when in my real life, if somebody finds out that I write and they go, well, what do you write? I say, this is my, like, answer now: Have you seen The Proposal? And they go, yeah! And I go, we, we write like that, and they go, oh, I love that movie! And so that’s usually what I say, but sometimes it’s a little bit more, like, heart-clench-y –

Lauren or Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Christina: – and sometimes it’s a little funnier –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – but hopefully when you read our books you, they still feel like our books.

Lauren: They’re still our books.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: Well, I think that it helps a lot to commit to the HEA. To say –

Christina and Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: – no, you’re going to get that.

Christina and Lauren: [Indistinct]

Sarah: Like, that’s what I want. I mean –

Lauren: Yeah, same.

Sarah: Yeah.

Christina: Like, take me on any journey. Make me cry, make me hate you for a few, like, hundred pages is fine – maybe not a few hundred!

Lauren: No, I don’t want you to hate me!

Christina: Maybe like thirty.

[Laughter]

Christina: But, like, give me a happy ending and I’m, you know.

Lauren: Yeah, we’re not going to, like, have the kiss and then, like, a bus comes up and –

[Laughter]

Lauren: We’re not doing that!

Sarah: And that was the end of the book.

Lauren: Yeah. [Laughs]

Sarah: So there’s a double-decker bus, ‘cause they’re in London.

[Laughter]

Sarah: All right, so you guys are traveling a lot for this book. Do you have travel tips that you swear by for, for travel when you’re promoting a book?

Lauren: So we have one that we sort of discovered for this trip, which is we realize, so I really like boutique hotels, but I have found that on, I found on book tours that I actually like sort of standard chain hotels for book tour. I want to be able to go down to the lobby and get an Advil if they have a little store. I want to have a big, wide counter so I can, like, open my, you know, cosmetics thing and then, like, throw it back up and throw it in my –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: – back together and throw it in my suitcase. Like, I feel like I need more space when I’m on a vacation? I like to have those little hotels? I don’t know if that means anything to anybody!

[Laughter]

Lauren: That’s the only one we’ve discovered!

Christina: Well, so I’m a terrible packer. My suitcase weighs forty-six pounds, whether I am –

Sarah: In it? [Laughs]

Christina: – gone for three days or ten days, and part of it is because I have so many toiletries. So many, and I –

Lauren: So many full-size toiletries.

Christina: Full-size toiletries. I think because when I –

Lauren: Like her hairspray thing is like –

Christina: – try and pare down I forget stuff.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: But this trip I put all my clothes on hangers, and then I just, like, laid them in my suitcase, and so, since we’re at a place for a night and then we leave and a place for a night and we leave, Lo had tried to, like, pack hers so that it was like, this is Monday, but I, she spreadsheets stuff and I don’t, don’t do that.

[Laughter]

Sarah: This is why you and I get on.

Lauren: I know.

Sarah: I have a, I have a spreadsheet thing too.

Christina: So basically – yeah, so I just, like, when I open my suitcase I just, like, grab my clothes, hang ‘em in the closet, and I’m done. Then when it’s time –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: So I did that. It weighs like –

Lauren: That’s a really good system for you.

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: Because I just, like, normally, in this, when Lo and I would share rooms, it just drove her nuts because she would hang everything up and, like, lay her shoes out, and I just –

Lauren: She, like, opens her bag and she’s like, poof! Like –

[Laughter]

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: It’s like, yeah. But now you’ve got the hangers! It works!

Christina: Yeah. Well, the funnier part, though, is that, like, it’s not necessarily a travel tip, but if you need something, there’s somebody very specific to come to. If you need Imodium or –

Lauren: Lip gloss?

Christina: – lip gloss, you come to me.

[Laughter]

Christina: If you need something, like, functional, then you would go –

Sarah: Like, I don’t know, I, I was, Imodium and lip gloss are pretty –

Lauren: If you need, like, pins are functional.

Sarah: – pretty, pretty high on the list of requirements.

Christina: If you need, like, pins and, you know, that kind of thing, then you, like, always go to Lo. But, like, I always have my backpack. I always have, like, a whole, like, medicine thing and, yeah.

Sarah: So you’re basically a walking Walgreens.

Christina: Yes.

Lauren: Yes, yeah.

Christina: Yes.

Lauren: I –

Christina: So if you need some Imodium –

[Laughter]

Christina: – I’m your girl.

Sarah: I hope everyone here is okay.

[Laughter]

Christina: I know.

Lauren: You just, you just, like, quietly raise a hand and we’ll see you.

Sarah: We’ve got you; no problem. So –

Lauren: Okay, but wait, spreadsheets?

Sarah: Yeah.

Lauren: I just got a T-shirt that says A Lady in the Streets, A Freak in the Spreadsheets, and I –

[Laughter]

Lauren: – love it so much. And so when you said that I’m like, maybe I need to buy Sarah this shirt!

Sarah: Oh my God. I have a, I have a spreadsheet for my family trips –

Lauren: Yes!

Sarah: – I have a spreadsheet for my business trips –

Lauren: Yes!

Sarah: – I have a spreadsheet for my personal trips, and I – so I, I recognize that my brain has a certain number of decisions that it can make in a day, and then I hit zero and my brain’s like, you get no more decisions. It’s chicken nuggets for days; that’s all you get.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, that’s all.

[Laughter]

Sarah: What’s for dinner? I have no idea. Air? Air is what’s for dinner tonight. So I pre-decide things –

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and I decide what I’m going to wear, because I know if I’m traveling, especially if on business, I’m going to be in a hotel room, I’m going to be un-caffeinated. The –

Lauren: Oh my God.

Sarah: And a not-caffeinated clothing decision on a business trip is a bad idea.

Lauren: This is so sexy right now, I’m just like, yes, Sarah!

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I pre-plane, I pre-plan my outfits, and it’s like –

Lauren: This is so hot.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I’m like, it’s –

Lauren: I can see a lot of people out there going, oh good, sounds terrible!

Sarah: – it’s Wednesday; what am I wearing? Okay, Past Sarah, thank you; now I can get coffee!

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: Like, it’s all about getting to the coffee with minimal hurdles.

Lauren: Decision fatigue!

Sarah: Decision fatigue is very real –

Lauren: It’s real. It is.

Sarah: – very real. My brain has a certain number.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: What – I didn’t put this on my list; I’m a terrible human – what is your favorite thing about each other?

Lauren: Oh my goodness!

Sarah: Just the one! You can only name one thing.

Lauren: Ohhh! Oh my God. She’s such a love! Like, I’ve been going through a really stressful couple of months, and I just, I, like, can turn to her any second, and she’s, like, the biggest cheerleader. Like, she is seriously the greatest, most supportive friend. I am just, I don’t know what I would do without her.

Christina: Aww –

Everyone: Aww!

Christina: – thank you! I, I think, like, Lo is, well, I mean, I would say the same thing: she’s, like, everybody’s cheerleader. Like, if you are a writer starting out, she is, like, the person you want, like, with you. I’ve seen her, like, read friends’ query letters, read their first chapters –

Lauren: I love query letters, though. Oh my God.

Christina: – read and just do anything she can to help them, and she, and sometimes I’m just like, I don’t know how you’re doing that, you know?

[Laughter]

Christina: And, and she just is, like, always there to, like, lift somebody else up, and I just, like, love that about her so much.

Lauren: [Indistinct]

[Laughter]

Christina: This is why people think we’re married.

Lauren: I know, I know, right?

Christina: People are like, oh wait! You’re married to other people?

Lauren: You’re not actually together?

Sarah: Aw! So what do you guys do to take care of yourselves and take care of your creative selves?

Lauren: It’s a good question, Sarah.

Sarah: I’ve been asking everybody that. I’m very nosy!

Lauren: I try and get a massage after every book. This one I needed a massage two weeks before the deadline, ‘cause it’s like, I’m done!

[Laughter]

Lauren: But I feel like that, especially writers, even if you have a standing desk, we get very, like, hunch-y and, like –

Sarah: Oh!

Lauren: – a lot of tension in our shoulders.

Sarah: Your shoulders are up here.

Lauren: Yeah, and I find that I’m having weird, like, arm numbness and, like, finger pain, and I’m like, you know what? We have to take care of our bodies, even though we’re not professional athletes. Like, we are using, like, specific digits all the time, so we, I try and be conscious of, of, like, muscles and joints and that sort of thing.

Sarah: When’s the last time you replaced your pillow?

Lauren: Oh, I actually am very good about replacing pillows.

Sarah: Okay, good. ‘Cause we just replaced our pillow, and it changed my flipping life!

Lauren: I know, I know.

Sarah: Oh my God!

Lauren: I try and get new pillows once a year.

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: You want a tip of what to do with your old pillow?

Lauren: What?

Sarah: Do you have dogs?

Lauren: Yes!

Sarah: Okay, so you can get a big zipper bag –

Lauren: [Gasps]

Sarah: – and you put your old pillows in the zipper bag –

Lauren: Ohhh!

Sarah: – and you turn them into a dog bed, because nothing smells more like you than your morning breath embedded in a pillow for a year!

[Exclamations, discussion]

Sarah: My dogs love our formerly, our bed pillows bed. Like, they just roll around in there.

Lauren: That’s awesome!

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: So right now, our, like, the sequence is I give, put them in my kids’ beds, ‘cause my kids end up not using a pillow anyway, and then maybe after that I’ll give ‘em to the dogs!

Sarah: Yeah!

Lauren: I like it!

Sarah: What about you?

Christina: Lo could answer this question for me. I’m, like, the biggest fangirl, and so I always have to have something to obsess about, and so, like, it was Twilight and –

Sarah: What?!

Christina: – like, then it was One Direction –

[Laughter]

Christina: – and now it’s BTS, and so, like, our friend Bree came, and she’s, like, my BTS concert friend – although Lo is going to Jingle Ball with me to see them; I’m very excited.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: I just need something, I think everybody needs something that makes them crazy stupid happy –

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Christina: – that has nothing to do with, like, anything else going on in your life, and they just give me such unbridled, like, squeal-y joy –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – and everybody needs something that, that makes them stupid –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – and that’s them for me.

Sarah: I found a, a line from a Mary Oliver poem earlier this year, and it really embedded myself in its brain, in my brain. It says you only, you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Christina and Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: Just don’t get in your way and give yourself a hard time.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: Just love what you love, and whatever it is, you just, that’s your whole job.

Lauren: Ugh, I love her so much.

Christina: My ability to fangirl is, like, the best and worst thing about me.

[Laughter]

Christina: It truly is.

Sarah: So you mentioned what you’re working on now: you have page proofs, you have another book, and you have another book coming out, and you have this one.

Lauren: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: That’s a lot.

Christina: We are very lucky.

Lauren: Well, when you say it like that!

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’s a lot. Do you want to talk about the next book?

Lauren: Yeah, we’ll talk about it a little bit. So The Honey-Don’t List is out March 24th, 2020.

Christina: Yes.

Sarah: Do you know what year it is right now?

Lauren: Nope!

Sarah: Okay. Me neither; it’s fine.

Christina: I don’t even know what day it is.

Sarah: No, I never know.

Lauren: I keep writing 2018 on things lately. I’m like, why did that happen in October?

Sarah: I had to write a check today, and I was like, do I put a nineteen or a twenty here? It’s nineteen – no, it’s two thousand and something now. Yeah.

[Laughter]

Lauren: I ask my kids what date it is so much, ‘cause they have to write it every day in school?

Christina: Yeah.

Lauren: So, I mean, I could just look at my Apple Watch, but no, okay.

Sarah: Oh no, they have to write it down; make them use that work.

Lauren: I know, it’s true.

Sarah: Come on now.

Lauren: So The Honey-Don’t List is, if you liked The Unhoneymooners, if you liked Josh and Hazel, you’re going to love this one. It’s the story of Carey and James, and they are both assistants to a kind of power couple in the home renovation world. So Rusty and Melissa Tripp are a very famous couple; they do home renovations, they have a TV show, and they have just recently published a book on successful marriage. But it turns out that Rusty and Melly cannot stand each other, and so Carey and James, our hero and heroine, are sent on the road with them for their book tour to try and keep this marriage from falling apart publicly, and in the process Carey and James might fall in love. And it’s so, it was really fun to write. I mean, it was really fun.

Sarah: There’s so much competence porn built in!

[Laughter]

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: There’s, like, power tool and –

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: – travel porn, and oh my God.

Lauren: And I love James because he was hired to be Rusty’s, like, engineer, but he’s basically been relegated to the role of assistant, which just, like, pisses him off, whereas, like, Carey is this incredibly capable executive assistant who’s been doing that since she was basically sixteen, and so it’s a really fun sort of classist dilemma between them?

Sarah: Yes.

Lauren: But also, you know, competence, and I just really, really love them! They, like, they make me laugh. There’s a couple scenes that I still laugh when I read them, which is good ‘cause, you know, when you’ve read your book forty times it’s, like, hard to see, you know – it is a new thing.

Christina: Yeah. That’s a book, Lo came out to my house, and she – so, you might have guessed it’s, like, sort of a Chip and Joanna Gaines-ish. She’d never watched them.

Sarah: No!

Christina: And so, and so she came out to my house in, like, February or something, and we outlined it, and she, we just watched tons and tons and tons of it, and – ‘cause we were just like, wouldn’t it be hilarious if they actually hated each other?

[Laughter]

Lauren: And they clearly don’t, okay, so this is – but we did, a few weeks ago he was on the cover of People or In Touch or something –

Christina: OK! or something.

Lauren: – and it was like, I’ve made mistakes, and I was like, oh no!

[Laughter]

Lauren: Like, what if it starts coming out in March that they, like, hate each other and we’re like, sorry! Like, you know –

Christina: But at least now it’s like, it’s just pretend. It’s not real.

Sarah: No, no, no, that’s when you set up a hotline and be like, look at what we can predict! Would you like lottery numbers?

[Laughter]

Sarah: What would you like us to tell you about your future?

Christina: I really love it though, ‘cause Carey’s the assistant, and, like, all of us have been an assistant, and we’re the ones who are, like, really running the show.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: And that’s poor Carey: just –

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: I was going to say, when, when you were talking, Lauren, I was an executive assistant on so many different levels: at a summer camp, at a Fortune 100 company, but the administrative management skill?

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Sarah: It’s a skill! Like, you don’t just roll up to that job and do it. You have to be able to organize mult- – I see all these people going, yeah.

Christina: It’s like your resume should just say, gets shit done.

Sarah: Right?

Lauren: Especially if you have to be private, but also public-facing.

Sarah: Yes!

Lauren: I mean, those are two very different skill sets, and –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Lauren: – it’s a lot, so.

Sarah: Oh yeah. And you have your phone voice and, and your, like, talking to the –

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – in-house caterer voice, and yeah, it’s – that, that is an underrepresented form of heroism –

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: – so I’m really –

Lauren: Well, not anymore!

Christina: [Laughs]

Sarah: Awesome!

Lauren: The Honey-Don’t List, out in March 2020!

Sarah: Dope! All right, before we open up for questions, I always ask, do you have any books that you want to tell people about? And if you want to name memoirs, I’m certainly here. I have a pen; I even wrote down Memoir Rec. I’m ready, just in case you have a few.

Christina: Well, I just read Demi Moore’s –

Sarah: Oh, what did you think?

Christina: – memoir. Oh, it was, it was awesome! I mean, I think because I don’t, I didn’t really know that much about her – I, like, knew who she was, but I didn’t know anything about her, like –

Sarah: Completely harrowing childhood?

Christina: Yeah! It was great. I really, I really liked it.

Sarah: Yeah?

Christina: Yeah. And then I’m listening, I started listening to Ali –

Lauren: Ali Wong’s.

Christina: – Ali Wong’s on the plane.

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Christina: There’s a lot of talk of ass eating.

[Laughter]

Lauren: She was saying that when we were getting off the plane, and, like, there was no, like, volume happening. She’s like, THERE’S A LOT OF ASS EATING IN THIS BOOK, and I was like –

[More laughter]

Christina: Well, I was listening to it through my headphones, and then, and then at one point I went to check, and I hit play on my watch after I’d olug my headphones in, and all I could just imagine was her talking about wilting boners and ass eating. Oh my, I hope there’s no kids in here. [Laughs]

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: And you?

[Laughter]

Lauren: I’m reading Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.

[Laughter, cheers]

Lauren: Yeah, and I’m into it. I mean, it took me a couple chapters to figure out what was going on, ‘cause I feel like, I’ve never been on the Yale campus, and I certainly wasn’t a, a student there, and I certainly wasn’t a part of a secret society, so a lot of it was just like –

Christina: What?

Lauren: I know! Rude! But yeah, so I’m, I’m really enjoying it.

Sarah: Awesome!

Christina: Oh, I’m almost reading Renée – how do you say it?

Lauren: Ahdieh.

Christina: – Ahdieh’s The Beautiful.

Lauren: Yes.

Sarah: Oh! Vampire romance.

Lauren: Vampires.

Christina: Yes, yes.

Lauren: I love the way you described it earlier, where you’re like, it’s like somebody giving me food I forgot I loved!

Sarah: Yes!

Christina and Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: Yes, it’s a vampire romance –

Lauren: Bring it back!

Christina: Selene’s –

Sarah: – in New Orleans.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: The heroine is French and a dressmaker who runs away from France and hides in New Orleans, ‘cause she’s done something that she’s running away from.

Bookseller: [Indistinct]

Sarah: She has two cop-, there are two copies over the starboard side of the store. And there’s a, there’s a secret society, there’s vampires, and I did an interview with Renée earlier today, and we were talking about it, and I’m like, it, the minute I read about the description of this book, it was like somebody telling me about a food that I forgot that I loved? Like, you ever find a recipe in the back of the cookbook, and you’re like, oh my God, this! I love this! I haven’t eaten this in, like, five years! I have to make it right now!

Christina and Lauren: Yeah, yeah.

Christina: ‘Cause we all have Twilight; you all have Twilight.

[Laughter]

Lauren: A lot of nodding.

Sarah: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

Lauren: Also, Renée’s really lovely.

Christina: Yeah, love her.

Sarah: Oh, and it’s beautiful.

Lauren: She is.

Sarah: It’s a beautiful book. It’s beautiful language.

Lauren: Beautiful book by a good person.

Sarah: Yeah! I like those.

Lauren: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: All right, who has questions? Who wants to ask things? I have more questions, but I yield the floor to all of y’all. Ma’am! All right, so first of all, you –

Lauren: I think we have the same jacket!

Christina: Oh my gosh!

Sarah: – you got the memo that we’re wearing burgundy today.

Lauren: But that’s literally the same jacket I have!

Christina: Nobody texted me.

Lauren: That’s Anthropologie, right?

Audience member: Yes.

Lauren: Uh-huh!

[Laughter]

Lauren: It’s the best jacket ever. I got it in the brown too, ‘cause it was such a perfect fit. I’m so sorry.

Audience member: I do usually get a lot of compliments on it.

Sarah: It looks great on you!

Christina: It’s very fall.

Lauren: It does.

Sarah: All right.

Audience member: You talked about the upcoming movie. Is there other movies coming up?

Sarah: Are there other movies coming up that you did things with?

Lauren: Yes? So right now we are working up the Beautiful Bastard series for TV, so we’ve been pitching that to networks, and it’s a –

Christina: What that means is we have to go in and do a little song and dance in front of –

Lauren: Some, like, executives.

Sarah: A whole bunch of guys.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: I hope that, like –

Lauren: Actually, it’s been all women, except for one meeting.

Sarah: Wow, really!

Lauren: Yep, yep.

Sarah: No khaki pants!

Christina: No, all women.

Lauren: No khaki pants.

Sarah: Fabulous!

Christina: And they’re like, most of ‘em are the decision-makers, which is –

Lauren: And the dudes that we met with were actually pretty great dudes, so it was like –

Sarah: Nice!

Lauren: – it’s, all around, it’s been a pretty good experience.

Sarah: I am very pleased to be corrected.

Lauren: And it’s been really fun because we’ve really updated the Beautiful word for this. You know, we’ve kind of altered the power dynamics a little and made it more a little, like, modern and present-day, and it’s been really fun! So that is something that we’ve been working on, and the Roomies movie is still alive and kicking. There’s a lot that happens once you turn in a script that is, like, totally behind the veil for us? Like books, you sign a contract; it says we’re going to publish your book on this date, and you have to turn in the draft this date and do edits this date and this, and the book will come out. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time the book happens, but with movies it’s like, you sell or option a film, and it may or may not happen. I mean, the odds are really low, and even if you get, right up to the point where it’s, you know, about ready to start, unless it’s green-lit, like, it could not happen at any time. So once it’s out of our hands, it’s sort of like we, there’s not a lot we can do, but we really trust the team, and everybody’s really passionate, so I feel pretty good.

And then there’s a few other things that are happening that we can’t talk about yet, but I hope that we’ll have some news soon, because we have a lot of things that are just, like, crazy exciting, so.

Sarah: Ma’am? Also –

Lauren: Milady!

Sarah: – burgundy!

Audience member: Yes, burgundy.

Sarah: I love it!

Lauren: Well done, team!

Sarah: Yeah!

[Laughter]

Audience member: So I’m co-writing a draft of a novel with a really good friend of mine, so basically my question is, what is your, like, advice for doing that, and, like, what do you hope other co-writers know?

Christina: You mean, so, like –

Audience member: Like, so we’re both, like you do, co-writing –

Christina: I, so number one: make sure that you trust the person, because not only is it, like, your friendship, but you’re entering a business. You’re creating a business with them. So you want to make sure that this is somebody that you want to, like, split money with and talk money with, which can be ucky for, you know, all of us and stuff. So make sure it’s somebody that you trust with everything. And also, like, we are friends every bit as much as we are business owners, co-authors, whatever. We spend, put as much energy into our friendship as we do our work life, but also you can’t be precious.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: Like –

Lauren: The whole point is to make the best book that you can, so, like, put your sort of delicate feelings aside as much as you can –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: – and learn how your partner likes to receive feedback. So, like, you might like really blunt, super honest criticism, but she might not, or she or he might not like that, and so you’ve got to kind of figure that out and be honest about how you need to receive it, because you’re not going to hear it if it comes at you in a way that doesn’t work for you.

And I think, you know, every partnership that we have encountered is really different. We’re lucky in that we started writing together before we knew each other very well, so our friendship has kind of grown out of the partnership, but I think if you’re coming into it as friends, just make sure that that piece always stays a separate thing, right. So do stuff together and take time together that’s not about the book but that’s about, like, you guys being friends.

Christina: And good luck.

Lauren: Yes. It’s so fun!

Christina: It’s seriously the most amazing thing. Like –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – we travel with our best friend; we have somebody to celebrate the good and the bad. Writing’s super isolating –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – so we always have somebody there.

Lauren: And email us if you guys run into something that you don’t know how to navigate. Seriously! Like, we’ll help you.

Audience member: We started by writing a book together. [Laughs]

Lauren: Awesome!

Christina: That’s great!

Sarah: All right.

Lauren: Blue scarf!

Christina: Yep!

Audience member: That’s a good –

[Laughter]

Audience member: You know, I think a lot of people can hear, like, movie deals on all these books and go, I want that. You know, aspiring writers say, I want that, not having a real, realistic sense of how much work, how hard you work. Do you have a team around you? Are you working with, do you have assistants, whatever? And then kind of how many hours a day, how many hours a week are you working?

Lauren: This is a really good question because, I mean, this, just in total transparency here? All of the movie stuff we’re doing so far is on spec. So with the exception of the Beautiful series, which has been optioned – it hasn’t been outright bought yet; that’s what a net-, network or a studio would do if they decided to make the show – the screenwriting, all of the other projects we’re working on have, for us, it’s been on spec, and what that means is, we are doing that work assuming that this project can sell. So it is a lot of time that we have put into this stuff without getting paid, and that has to be in the extra cracks, the nooks and crannies of our free time, because we’re also writing two books a year and promoting two books a year and touring and raising kids and all that stuff. So it is a lot, and I think, you know, the idea of having a movie made is really glamorous, and obviously we love the idea of it, but in a way we want to do that to support the books too, and to support readers who want to see the books they love in a different form, so it’s not because we want to, like, go Hollywood or be in LA more, because nobody really wants to be in LA more.

[Laughter]

Lauren: What it, what it is, is, it’s just a new medium, and it’s a new way to write and to express creativity, and so it’s been a lot of, like, time capital for us, and it’s, yeah! I mean, it’s really rewarding, but it hasn’t been financially rewarding in that way yet, if that makes sense.

So if you want to be a writer, be a writer to write. Don’t be a, don’t write a book to try and get a movie made, if that makes sense.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. The chances are so low.

Lauren: They’re so low! And even for us, like, we have multiple irons in the fire, but none of them might happen, and that’s okay! Like, as long as we can keep writing books, it’s okay. We’ll hustle because it’s fun and we’re enjoying it, but as soon as it stops being fun, we’ll just do books, you know.

Christina: And we don’t really have, like – I mean, we have a team. We have a publisher, which helps a lot; we’re not self-published. We could not, like, even remember our own, our own names without –

Christina and Lauren: – Kristin.

Lauren: Oh my gosh. So she’s our PR rep, and she travels with us and basically helps us remember, like –

Sarah: What day it is.

Lauren: – what we do.

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: What year it is.

Christina: But we don’t have, like, an assistant. So, like, if you tweet us –

Lauren: It’s us replying.

Christina: Yes.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: If there’s a typo –

Lauren: It’s her.

[Laughter]

Christina: I really love when people can – I tweeted something the other day, and it was a flail about something, and this reader Leslie, she was like –

Lauren: Calm down, Christina.

Christina: – calm down, Christina. I was like, how the hell did she know that was me? I even spelled everything right!

[Laughter]

Christina: So yeah.

Sarah: All right.

Lauren: Second row, yeah.

Sarah: Yes.

Audience member: Very important question about Honey-Do: on their travel, I want to know if they’re going to be sharing a bed.

Sarah: Ooh!

Audience member: – only one bed.

Sarah: Will there be only one bed?

Lauren: They, they do not share a bed in that way.

Christina: No, but I mean, they do.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Okay!

Christina: Yeah.

Sarah: Next question, IN THE VERY BACK!

Audience member: It’s actually not my question. She has a question, but I don’t.

Lauren: Oh, okay.

Sarah: Oh!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Thank you for your service to the, to the blind spot! Hello! Hi!

Lauren: I love women so much!

Sarah: Unfortunately, this person was too far back from the microphone to be heard. I’m sorry about that. What’s she’s asking about is reviewers and Instagram book reviewers and vloggers that Christina Lauren enjoys or recommends or likes to watch.

Christina: Smart Bitches is fantastic, actually.

Lauren: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Thank you!

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Christina: You know what, it’s really, so, it’s always such a weird thing, because reviews are not for writers.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Christina: They’re for readers, and if you go looking for stuff, there’s a chance you’re going to find stuff that you –

Lauren: Don’t want to see.

Christina: – are not going to make your day. I see lots of stuff, because I use TweetDeck and I have columns for everything, so I see lots of stuff that maybe doesn’t make my day. But we do, I love YouTube videos like the reviews? Yeah.

Lauren: I mean, the thing is, if, if people have a lot of love for a book and they tag us in the review, we love watching those videos. We’re not going to go searching for them though, because I just, like, my whole motto is don’t look for trouble, you know? And so that’s, that’s what I live by.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah, ‘cause if you link, if you tweet us and, you know, we’re going to watch and, and, ‘cause, I mean, don’t tweet somebody and tell them their book sucks, but –

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yeah, that’s not good.

Christina: – but you know, like, reviewers, sometimes they don’t like something – that’s tot-, that’s totally fine, you know. But we usually, people – I think I said it earlier – people, make sure you find the things you’re supposed to –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – find. We’re, we’re so honored when people, like, do a video because they loved our book. Are you kidding me?

Lauren: Oh God, so much time, yeah.

Christina: Or, like, have a blog and write a whole thing? That’s a lot of words, so yeah.

Audience member: Was there a specific author when you – I have two questions – was there a specific author growing up that made you, like, inspired you to want to write when you were younger?

Lauren: So I used to write Days of Our Lives fanfiction?

[Laughter]

Lauren: Into, yes, in notebooks that I left under my bed when I went for, to college, and my mom promptly changed my bedroom into a sewing room, and so I’m sure she found all of them and was like, what is all this humping? Like, this is so weird! So that’s not a writer, but –

Sarah: That’s amazing!

Lauren: I know. And we haven’t spoken about it too much, but she, she, I, like, brought it up once and she kind of laughed, and I was like, what does that mean? What does that laughing mean?

Audience member: [Indistinct]

[Laughter]

Lauren: If I could find it; I think she just, like, threw it out –

Christina: I’ll ask her.

Lauren: – but, but I did, you know, my, I grew up in Berkeley; my parents both went to Cal; and they were very, they, you know, my dad was into, like, very serious speculative sci-fi/fantasy, and my mom was a literary fiction reader, and they both sort of, like, thought of reading as this kind of like noble whatever, and so when I wanted to buy Danielle Steel books with my allowance, they were a little judgy, and I didn’t care! I was like, this is my jam; I want to read Palomino forty times. Like, you’re not going to stop me.

Sarah: Zoya.

Lauren: Yes! Oh my God, Zoya!

Sarah: Oh my God!

Lauren: So honestly, I think –

Sarah: Now I see where you get your competence porn from.

Lauren: Yes. So I think that –

Sarah: ‘Cause Danielle is all –

Lauren: She’s all about it.

Sarah: – deep dive.

Lauren: She is. So I think that for me, like, I discovered romance, and no one else in my family read it, and I just, I knew what I liked. I knew I wanted to write those kinds of stories.

Christina: My mom was a stay-at-home mom; my dad was in the Air Force – we weren’t very fancy – but my mom loved romance, so much so that we would go to the library and to the used book store, and my mom had bookcases in the garage, and when I was a little kid I thought Barbara Cartland was maybe the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.

Sarah: I can see that.

Christina: Do you know who Barbara Cartland is?

Audience member: Yeah!

Christina: Yeah, she, like, has her little, like –

Lauren: Little dog.

Christina: – fluffy dogs and her sparkles and, so every time I get something I’m like, and my transformation into Barbara Cartland –

[Laughter]

Christina: – is nearing completion. And when I was little I wanted to be Joan Wilder. But I didn’t start writing till I was in my thirties, because writing felt like a lot of work.

Sarah: Kind of is.

Lauren: Yeah, it is.

Sarah: It kind of is, yeah.

Audience member: And the second question is that, is there a reason you guys only write with your first names, ‘cause it kind of – I work at a different bookstore, and people constantly think you guys are one person?

Christina: Mm-hmm, a lot of people do.

Lauren: We get that a lot. We actually have people who’ve read all of our books, and they come up to us in a signing line and, like, she’ll sign it and then hand it to me, and they’ll be like, no, no, I just need her signature, and I’m like, well, I’m the other part. Like, you know –

[Laughter]

Lauren: – they don’t realize that there’s two of us. And I think, so when we were first talking about it, we wanted to make sure readers knew that we spend a lot of time making our books feel cohesive and like they were coming from one voice, right, and even though it’s alternating point of view, we don’t want it to feel disjointed or like you sort of feel like you’re pulled out of the book because one, you know, chapter feels smoother or less clunky or whatever. I think we are both equally strong writers, but that was always our concern, and so when we talked about it with our agent she was like, let’s have a pen name that’s just one name so that people know that this is a cohesive story, right.

Christina: Also, I mean, it’s a little like being Batman and, like, having –

Lauren: Mm-hmm.

Christina: – another name.

Lauren: It’s worked out really well.

Christina: And also, like, if somebody’s like, ugh, Christina Lauren, I’m like, I’ve heard that girl’s a mess, ‘cause –

[Laughter]

Christina: – because that’s not, like, us –

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: – you know, and so it gives you, it gives you a little bit of, like, separation.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: But also then we’re always working for, like, Christina Lauren.

Lauren: Yeah.

Christina: There’s never any, like, special feelings or –

Lauren: There’s two individual egos.

Christina: We’re just here –

Lauren: Just ego.

Christina: – we’re just Christina Lauren.

Lauren: Yeah.

Sarah: Shall we sign some books?

Audience member: Yes!

Sarah: We’ve got to get to the signing of the books part, right?

Audience member: Right!

Sarah: All right, how is this going to work?

Bookseller: All right.

Sarah: Wait –

Bookseller: First of all, I think another round of applause is –

[Applause]

Lauren: Thank you!

Christina: Thank you!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this conversation. If you came out to the live event last week, thank you! And if you were at the Sherry Thomas even two days later, I have audio of that, and that will be next week’s podcast! So next week, another live event, this time with Sherry Thomas!

If you would like to find Christina Lauren, you can find them on their website, christinalaurenbooks.com, and they’re on Twitter and Instagram @christinalauren.

If you would like to email me, you can email me at [email protected] or Sarah with an H at smartbitchestrashybooks.com [[email protected]]. Either way, all the email goes to the same place, and I love hearing from you.

This episode was brought to you by The Seduction of Lady Phoebe by Ella Quinn. Polite society has its rules for marriage. But for Ella Quinn’s eligible bachelors, their brides will show them that rules are for the faint of heart. Available in mass market for the first time comes USA Today bestselling author Ella Quinn’s first book in the Marriage Game series, The Seduction of Lady Phoebe. Can Lord Marcus convince daring, phaeton-driving Lady Phoebe that he is her perfect match? After all, all is fair in love and war. The Seduction of Lady Phoebe by Ella Quinn is on sale now wherever books are sold. Find out more at kensingtonbooks.com and ellaquinnauthor.com.

Today’s episode and the transcript are brought to you by All I Want for Christmas Is You by Miranda Liasson. If you like Jill Shalvis, Susan Mallery, and RaeAnne Thayne, you will love this holiday romance featuring – get your bingo cards ready – a sexy firefighter, a surprise baby, a fake engagement, and a cookie baking contest, all set against the backdrop of the charming small town of Angel Falls, Ohio. Kaitlyn Barnes and her longtime crush Rafe Langdon share a sizzling evening that delivers an epic holiday surprise: Kaitlyn is pregnant. And if that weren’t life-changing enough, everyone assumes they’re engaged – a charade they must keep alive through the holiday season. But Kaitlyn knows better than anyone that the chances of Rafe settling down are about as likely as Santa skipping Angel Falls this year. Rafe would rather Kaitlyn believe a lie – that their night together was just a fling – than face his own dangerous truth: that he’s falling for her, hard. Rafe swore he’d never risk his heart again, yet the longer they pretend to be engaged, the more Rafe starts to want the real thing. But now he has to convince Kaitlyn he wants to be by her side, and their baby’s, for all the Christmases to come. Publishers Weekly called All I Want for Christmas Is You “A scrumptious holiday treat.” And the book includes the bonus novel Christmas on Mistletoe Lane by Annie Rains and a chocolaty Christmas cookie recipe. All I Want for Christmas Is You is on sale now wherever books are sold, and for more information, find out all you need to know at mirandaliasson.com!

As always, thank you to the podcast Patreon community –

Wilbur: Mrow-wow!

Sarah: – and to Wilbur, who is chirping at something. I have to record downstairs today because Zeb, my smaller dog, hurt his leg, and I don’t want him climbing the stairs, so I have moved my portable studio, and all of the animals have something to say about this. So where was I? Patreon!

Thank you so very much for all of your support. If you are part of the Patreon community, your support makes such a difference, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. If you would like to have a look: patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges begin at one dollar, and you help keep the show going, and you help make sure every episode is accessible, so thank you, thank you, thank you for your support.

The music you’re listening to is from Caravan Palace. This is “Star Scat,” and you can find it on their album – well, it’s actually a double album including Caravan Palace and Panic. You can find it at Amazon and iTunes or wherever you buy your music, and I’m pretty much a fan of the whole double album, ‘cause all of it is music that I really like working to.

I will have links to all of the books we mentioned, and I will have links to find Christina Lauren and One More Page Books. If you’re looking for romance-friendly indie bookstores and you’re in the Virginia area – well, like, the Arlington, Virginia area; the rest of Virginia, there’s a lot of traffic! What is up with that? This whole are is, like, traffic. Anyway, if you’re in northern Virginia, One More Page Books in Arlington has a great romance section, and they host wonderful events.

And as usual, this episode ends with a terrible joke. I feel like I should put ominous music, because these jokes are so bad and I love them so much! All right, are you ready? Here we go.

Why do nurses carry red crayons?

Why do nurses carry red crayons?

In case they have to draw blood.

[Laughs] It’s so dumb! Love it! That is from 33billings on Reddit, where I find many, many terrible jokes. And then they land in my inbox, so coming up next week I have listener-supported bad jokes. It’s almost like the best kind of pledge drive, right? Like, please support your local podcast by emailing the worst jokes you know! I am so grateful when you do.

On behalf of everyone here, including Zeb, who just took a painkiller and is feeling very happy indeed, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend. We’ll see you back here next week.

This podcast is part of the Frolic Podcasting Network.

[stellar music]