Lauren Billings
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:36]You can learn more about me at zibbyones.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors, and that is what we're going to do.
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[0:58]Also just a quick note that submissions for the zibby awards are open, and we'll close on September 15th.
[1:04]Go to zibbyowans.com and you will find the zibby awards, open submissions where we celebrate all the under-celebrated parts of a book, like the Best Spine, the Best Authors Note, the best table of contents,
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[1:28]Lauren Billings is part of Christina Lauren, the pen name. There are two of them.
[1:34]Christina and Lauren, and I interviewed Lauren whose real name is Lauren Billings. Did everybody understand that?
[1:40]So Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of long-time writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings.
[1:47]As a number one, international best-selling co-authored duo, they write both young adult and adult fiction.
[1:53]Together they've produced 18 New York Times best-selling novels.
[1:57]They're published in over 30 languages, have received multiple star reviews, one both the Seal of Excellence and Book of the Year from RT Magazine.
[2:05]They've been inducted into the Library Reads Hall of Fame, named Amazon and Audible Romance of the Year.
[2:10]They were a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and were nominated for several good choice awards categories.
[2:16]They've been featured in publications such as Forbes, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, People, Oh Magazine, and More.
[2:23]Their third YA novel, Auto Boyography, was released in 2017 to critical acclaim, followed by Rumi's Love and Other Words.
[2:31]Hi, everybody. My name is Zibi Owens, and I am so excited to be at the Gloss Book Club today for this bookcase, which is an amazing term that I will steal.
[2:43]Well, not steal. Use. I will use really now because I love it, and I'm delighted to be here with Lauren Billings.
[2:51]So on the screen, you can see our bios, but just as a hot as top highlights, so you know who I am, I host a daily literary podcast called Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[3:01]So if you are interested in hearing from an author 365 days a year, tune into my podcast.
[3:07]And I also am an author myself, and I have a book called Bookends coming out in two weeks, a memoir of Love, Last and Literature, and a children's book, Princess Charming.
[3:15]And I also started publishing company called Zibi Books, and we have a content site where launching called Momstone Have Time to.
[3:22]Anyway, that's all you need to know about me. Basically, I'd love interviewing authors, and that is what I'd love to do more than anything else.
[3:28]Aside, I guess, from reading, which is also my great love.
[3:31]Lauren is half of the New York Times best-selling duo, Christina Lauren.
[3:37]That is a pen name, if anybody didn't know and sadly, Christina cannot be here today, but Lauren is representing for both of them.
[3:43]And they are the New York Times USA Today, and number one, internationally best-selling authors of the beautiful and wild series, dating you, hating you, autobiography, love, and other words, roommies, Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating.
[3:55]My favorite half-night stand, The On Honeymooners twice in a blue moon, and the soulmate equation, Lauren also goes by low.
[4:02]She has a PhD in neuroscience.
[4:05]Before she made writing her full-time job, she spent her days doing nerdy research-type things.
[4:10]This is her judgment, not mine.
[4:12]She has a silly mommy to two littles wife-to-one mountain biking, home-brewing scientists, and an unabashed lover of Hawaii, and romance.
[4:23]They've also written, I feel like they didn't have some of the books on the website in your bio.
[4:27]But anyway, there are other books, including something wilder, and the soulmate equation are the two most recent books, and that is where we'll start.
[4:36]Welcome, amazing.
[4:37]Thank you.
[4:38]Thank you for having me. This is so fun.
[4:40]This is so fun.
[4:41]So first of all, where are you zooming from today? Where in the world are you?
[4:45]Okay, so I live in California.
[4:47]I live in Southern California specifically, Christina lives in Salt Lake, just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.
[4:52]She is a recuperating from surgery, and she sends her regrets. She really wishes she could be here today.
[4:57]All right, well, I live in New York, but I am currently in Nashville, Tennessee.
[5:02]If you hear loud groups of bachelorette screaming, which is basically all over the space, that's what's going on.
[5:09]So, this is not my amazing.
[5:11]A lovely hotel called the Tom's book, which I highly recommend.
[5:14]Anyway, let's talk books.
[5:16]So your latest book, Something Wilder, let's start with that.
[5:20]What is that book about and what inspired you to write it?
[5:23]Okay, so something wilder is, it's sort of like our homage to romanceing the stone.
[5:29]It's loved, by the way.
[5:31]Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas fan.
[5:33]I've watched the movie about a hundred times.
[5:35]It's so fun.
[5:36]It's seriously so fun.
[5:37]And, you know, Christina and I grew up on movies like Indiana Jones and the Goonies and National Treasure and obviously romanceing the stone.
[5:45]And we really wanted to write a romance novel that kind of embraced some of that action adventure.
[5:51]And so something wilder is a story of Leo Grady.
[5:55]He's our hero and Lily Wilder.
[5:57]That is the nod to John Wilder from Lansing, the stone.
[5:59]And their former lovers, they've been split apart from circumstances that she'll learn in the book.
[6:05]And they're kind of thrown back together when Leo's group of guide friends,
[6:09]books and expedition with Lily's adventure company.
[6:12]And she, she hates what she does, but, you know, that'll make sense in the book.
[6:16]And she sort of has to rely on her father's maps that take tourists out on these fake treasure hunts in the Canyon lands of Utah.
[6:24]And everything kind of goes sideways and they realize that there might actually be real treasure out there.
[6:29]So they have to decide if they trust each other enough to go after it.
[6:33]Justing.
[6:34]I love how you talk about her reluctance, Lily's reluctance to leave groups with like proddish you guys.
[6:40]You know, big city folks who try to come out to the wilderness to relax or whatever it is they're doing.
[6:45]Exactly.
[6:46]I mean, Lily at her heart is just, she wants to own a ranch and have horses and have people come and stay at the ranch.
[6:52]And her father was never there.
[6:54]He was this sort of really big treasure hunter who loved going out into the desert and trying to find relics.
[7:00]And it was what he was saying this for, but she always resented it.
[7:03]So it's sort of a bummer for her that now she has to make her living using his maps.
[7:07]But yeah, I mean, it's a real man.
[7:09]So everything is, it's happily ever after.
[7:12]So it's a fun one.
[7:13]It's a really fun one.
[7:14]Yeah.
[7:15]Can we go back a little bit and hear about how you got your start writing and how you became this power duo, how you linked up with Christina.
[7:22]Like the whole story.
[7:23]Yes.
[7:24]So I've written my whole life just for fun.
[7:26]I think I was writing fan fiction before I knew that it was fan fiction.
[7:30]I would like watch days of our lives and then like write stories about the characters that like they weren't giving us on screen.
[7:37]And I did that for Buffy and alias.
[7:39]And eventually I was writing in the Twilight fandom just for fun.
[7:43]And Christina had this really popular story there.
[7:47]She had millions of readers.
[7:49]And so I invited her out in the summer of 2009 to San Diego Comic-Con.
[7:54]Where I was putting on a panel on fan art and fan works.
[7:58]And we met in person and we were like, let's write a story.
[8:01]And we wrote a little one shot fan fiction together.
[8:03]It was really fun.
[8:04]And then we just thought like let's write a book together.
[8:06]Like that's the obvious next step.
[8:08]We were so naive.
[8:09]Like we had no idea what it took to write a book.
[8:11]But we're like, let's do it.
[8:13]And yeah.
[8:14]And now 28 books later here we are.
[8:16]28 books.
[8:17]Okay.
[8:18]So what is the, what process?
[8:20]I'm assuming it's changed over time as technology is shifted.
[8:23]How did you start out collaborating and how do you do it now or hasn't not changed?
[8:27]I mean, it's changed somewhat.
[8:29]We, you know, we initially were using like Google Docs and the thing with Google Docs is when we were first using it.
[8:34]There wasn't a very good collaboration feature.
[8:36]So there was no way to track changes.
[8:38]But yeah, we just, we, we always outline in person.
[8:41]We usually alternate chapters, but it sort of depends on how much else we have going on.
[8:46]Like if we have a lot of stuff that we're juggling, one of us will take over drafting and the other one jumps in it edits.
[8:51]And we draft usually alternating chapters and we create a document as we go.
[8:56]And we try not to edit it too much at first because we know the first draft is just going to be messy.
[9:02]And once we have a draft, we dive in and we really go through it a lot so that each one of us has touched literally every sentence.
[9:10]We don't want it to feel like it's been written by two people.
[9:12]We want it to feel really cohesive.
[9:14]So I think the magic for us comes in revisions.
[9:18]And how do you pick what your next project will be or all these projects to date.
[9:22]How did you decide or where you just on the same page about topics and everything.
[9:26]I mean, I think she and I are really, I'm really lucky that I met her.
[9:31]She's sort of the perfect partner for me.
[9:34]We have, I mean, our working relationship came first, but we're very, very close now.
[9:39]She is my best friend.
[9:40]She's almost like a sister or spouse.
[9:42]I don't know.
[9:43]It's like a combination of the two.
[9:45]And so I think we're really lucky to be on the same page a lot.
[9:48]And the conversations that we have about the ideas are very fun.
[9:52]It's just like shooting things, you know, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks and just like building the stories from there.
[9:58]So we usually have...
[10:00]A handful of ideas that we've been tinkering with in our minds for like a year or two before
[10:05]we really dig and write it. When we were publishing or so 2013 we had six books out and then we
[10:10]had I think like four or four or three and so initially it was just so many books that it was
[10:16]almost like we were starting to scrape the bowl like trying to get ideas. We've slowed down now
[10:21]which has been nice in terms of our like mental health but also it means now we have so many
[10:27]ideas and we want to get to them really fast so it's kind of like you know you either are like
[10:33]exhausted mentally or you feel like you want to move faster that's sort of where we're at right now.
[10:39]What does the mental health look exhaustion and all that look like when you're trying to launch all
[10:43]these books because part of launching books are things like this and having to be on and having to
[10:48]meet people and talk about the book and if you're so busy writing all the books how do you keep
[10:54]that together and have kids and like what does that look like? What does a bad day look like
[10:59]and do they look like? I mean we only have mostly good days now because we really have slowed down
[11:04]to about one book a year and that has been a huge change when we first in 2013 I had a three
[11:11]and a five-year-old and I was working full-time as a scientist and we had six books out and it just
[11:17]felt like nothing was getting a hundred percent you know and so a bad day would be the day where
[11:25]we beat ourselves up you know and it's usually the mom's side where we're like oh you know like
[11:31]I'm not giving my kids what they need I'm not doing what my family needs whatever and so that's
[11:36]usually what a bad day looks like for me it's just a lot of guilt. How did you even end up with
[11:41]six books coming out in a single year? That's like unheard of. I think what happened was so because
[11:47]okay so this is a little like I'll try and do the Cliff Snout version of this but so 50 shades
[11:52]came out in 2012 and that was a story that had been in the Twilight fandom so Eric I had like
[12:00]rework that and published it as 50 shades of gray it was initially a story called Master of the
[12:05]Universe and what happened after that published was every publisher wanted their own 50 shades of
[12:11]gray and so they started coming to fandom writers and being like what stories do you have that we
[12:16]can very quickly rework and publish and we were working on other things at the time Christina had
[12:22]taken her flick called the office and kind of just like shelved it it was the first thing she ever
[12:26]wrote and she was like oh you know but we found out that somebody was that a couple people actually
[12:31]were trying to sell that fanfiction to a publisher as their own because Christina had written
[12:36]under pending oh my gosh so we with our agent we're like let's just rework it and posted on
[12:42]mine but when we reworked it we rewrote it almost entirely it's like very little is similar to the
[12:46]fix so our agent sent it out to a few editors and it sold in like 12 hours and our other book had
[12:53]been on exhibition for like six months so we were like oh okay I guess we're gonna do this so
[12:59]that was beautiful bastard and then the thing was the in 2012 the market was moving so fast and
[13:06]romance so we're just so many people put self publishing there were so many books coming out and
[13:11]we just wanted to like dive in and like build a backlist and build a following and it was so
[13:16]much fun we like didn't feel tired then it was like writing was just like this creative just
[13:23]excitement so I think that both the momentum of the genre the pressure we had to kind of get
[13:29]this story out and then also the excitement of it just meant that we were able to write really fast
[13:34]I know that was a really long answer I'm sorry but I think that is to hear from you I would
[13:39]talk the whole time go ahead I just think that time was really exciting for romance and there was
[13:44]so much going on like now we have stories that came from fandom like Allie Hazelwood's book
[13:49]The Love Hypothesis had been a Ray Lowfic there are other stories that had been fake but it was sort
[13:54]of like not talked about back then you know it was this sort of weird thing that like people weren't
[13:58]sure they were comfortable with and now it's just it's been so interesting to see the genre of all
[14:04]in that way well so how tell me about the romance part how are you a romantic at heart like
[14:12]where is this coming from for you I know the market was sort of requesting it but you know you picked
[14:17]that ball up and ran with it and here you still are you know yeah going so what what fuels that
[14:23]for you so Christina and I have always been romance readers like in our own spaces obviously we
[14:27]didn't need until we were adults but she would read her mom had this garage full of Harlequin's
[14:33]and Christina wasn't she wasn't supposed to read that but she would like sneak out and read these
[14:36]books and I had very intellectual parents they my girlfriend Berkeley and they were UC Berkeley
[14:43]alums and they were very much like you will read literature you will read literary fiction like
[14:48]these are things and I would like take my allowance and go to these bookstore and buy Daniel
[14:51]Steel and so I just wanted to read what I wanted to read and I think there's so much value in
[14:57]that now I have so much to say about like the way romances treated and fiction in general but
[15:04]I like and say is that I just have always gravitated to love stories and whether it's in film
[15:09]whether it's in books whether it's you know watching people you know and being like oh there's
[15:15]so key together what if they're in love you know I mean there's just this I think that if you're
[15:18]a romantic at heart it's sort of just the way that you see the world and these are the stories
[15:23]that we wanted to tell like we just really love writing love stories it's so fun what did you
[15:28]mean that you could talk a long time about the way romances treated you have to get that you can't
[15:32]just throw that out there yeah I mean I think you know pretty much every romance out there when they
[15:39]when they tell somebody what they write there's always that internal like bracing where you're
[15:43]not sure how somebody's gonna react and and there's a lot of little like aggressive things people
[15:48]can say that they don't necessarily mean to be insulting but it's like oh like you know like
[15:53]with the Fabio covers or oh are you writing your fantasies I mean we've been asked things in
[15:58]interviews like what do our husband think of what we do did we ever let our fathers read our books
[16:04]which for me is just like a very patriarchal view of it like why wouldn't matter what if my dad
[16:09]reads my books like he could be my book if he wants to it's totally you know that kind of thing
[16:13]and also like my husband is just proud of me I wouldn't marry a man that had like opinions about
[16:17]what I was writing but you know to all the way to meeting somebody at a soccer game that's
[16:22]like oh you write romance oh my gosh I just love trashy books it's that kind of stuff and I think
[16:27]people you know they think that it's they have this image of what romances when in fact it's
[16:32]just it's an incredibly empowering genre of fiction to read and it's written primarily by women
[16:39]primarily for women and I think it's just it's a really progressive space to live in so I think
[16:46]one thing people don't realize is that publishing exists because of romance it's like the highest
[16:52]selling genre in all fiction and I think because it publishes so quickly like what I was saying about
[16:58]2013 and having so many books out that year that's not uncommon I mean romance authors are very
[17:04]prolific and I think because of that and because we care about having these really important
[17:09]cultural conversations we're able to move the conversation forward in a way that a lot of other
[17:15]genres maybe art do you feel like there's a blurry line because I kind of do between what's
[17:23]a regular novel women's fiction even literary fiction that has a romance has a love story
[17:29]like what what what is the defining separating line between a romance novel and a love story that's
[17:35]not a romance novel so the only the only contract that we as romance authors make with our reader
[17:44]is that there's a happily ever after so if there's no happily ever after it's not a romance
[17:50]there can be a story that is a sci-fi fantasy novel that has a romance in it but if the romance
[17:58]arc is not the primary story if it's not the a story then it's not considered a romance so
[18:03]there are love stories everywhere we have so many love stories and all of our favorites I mean
[18:08]Game of Thrones even has a bunch of love stories they're very tragic but they have them
[18:12]there's a lot of really popular fantasy novels that have a love story but that tends to not be
[18:17]the primary story arc so romance promises that the romance is the primary arc and there's
[18:23]aptly ever after women's fiction does not promise a happily ever after and but women's fiction
[18:29]does center the female as the primary arc so her story is considered like that is the main story
[18:36]there might also be a love story but interesting yeah can it be you then learn something
[18:43]do every day so when you read do you still gravitate to reading romance yourself or what
[18:50]what are the some of the types of books that you like to read or books you read lately that you've
[18:54]loved or your habits in general yeah I tend to read nonfiction for fun I think I am continually
[19:03]amazed and as is the cliche and it like truth is stranger than fiction this there's some stuff
[19:08]in nonfiction that you just you cannot believe that it exists and narrative nonfiction for me
[19:14]is really a joy I'd say my favorite nonfiction authors Mary wrote if people haven't read Mary
[19:20]wrote she is a delight but I do read a ton of romance I mean I think my relationship has changed
[19:26]with it somewhat since we first published because we get sent a lot of books now to read
[19:31]as I'm sure you do I'm sure as if you get books every single day which is wonderful
[19:37]like it is one of those embarrassment of which is things but it does change a relationship to it
[19:40]when you read it for work so yeah I do read romance and I have romance authors like Sarah McLean
[19:47]and Ali Hazelwood and Sally Thorne and Rebecca Weatherspoon and Snali Dev there are certain authors
[19:52]that I read like I just get so excited to have them in my hands that's excellent do you feel like your
[19:59]life's
[20:00]The fire has had a happy ending.
[20:01]Oh yeah.
[20:02]Yeah, I'm very lucky.
[20:03]I have a very good marriage.
[20:05]I married my, the man I married is,
[20:08]he was my crush in graduate school.
[20:10]I saw him like my first week in grad school.
[20:13]And I called him my boyfriend for a year
[20:15]before I was able to like work up the nerve
[20:17]to talk to him.
[20:18]I would just be like, hey, there's my boyfriend.
[20:20]And then we played supple together
[20:22]and we ended up just really hitting it off.
[20:24]So yeah, I'm super lucky.
[20:27]And Christina married her high school sweetheart.
[20:29]They've been together since she was 15.
[20:31]Wow, yes, that's impressive.
[20:33]So have you and Christina ever had like,
[20:37]has there ever been a thought of each of you going off
[20:39]on your own or you're just like,
[20:41]this is the secret sauce we're gonna keep doing this?
[20:43]I mean, I think, you know,
[20:45]if there was something that one of us wanted to write
[20:47]that the other wasn't interested in,
[20:49]we would be our biggest cheerleader for each other.
[20:52]She's always wanted to write a thriller.
[20:54]I'm like, go, write your thriller.
[20:56]Like that would be amazing.
[20:58]I love the idea of writing fantasy.
[21:00]And I'm sure she would be super excited for me.
[21:02]The thing is that we just,
[21:03]we really love doing this together.
[21:05]It's still even like what almost 13 years later
[21:10]doesn't feel real that we get to do this for a living now.
[21:13]So I don't know that there was any joy for me to be found
[21:17]in like a different situation.
[21:19]I mean, there's joy to be found,
[21:20]but there's no more joy to be found, I should say.
[21:23]It's interesting to me too,
[21:24]that you are a neuroscientist.
[21:27]And yet focus your career on love,
[21:31]which is a neuroscientific phenomenon,
[21:34]but one that perhaps can't be explained,
[21:37]or maybe you have some insider science knowledge
[21:40]that makes it less of an unknown mystery
[21:43]and more of some sort of a fact-based something
[21:45]that maybe the lay person doesn't know.
[21:47]Could you talk about that?
[21:48]I mean, I think, you know,
[21:50]objectively there are a lot of different arms of research
[21:55]that are involved in looking at like love responses,
[21:58]attraction responses, emotional responses,
[22:00]that like create that early infatuation stage
[22:04]and how that morphs over time
[22:05]and what those sweet your systems are doing
[22:07]to express that kind of feeling.
[22:09]So I think that area is really interesting,
[22:11]but I sort of always like the,
[22:13]I was not the person that was studying a motion for research
[22:17]that I think would have not been fun for me.
[22:20]I don't know why.
[22:21]Maybe you would have taken a little bit of the mystery out.
[22:23]My research was always in movement disorders
[22:26]and cognitive disorders like Alzheimer's disease
[22:29]and neurodegeneration.
[22:31]So I love the idea of studying a motion,
[22:33]but I think I want to study it more from like,
[22:36]you know, the fan girl side where I'm just like gazing fondly
[22:39]people falling in love.
[22:40]Oh my God.
[22:43]So what are some of your favorite love story movies?
[22:46]Well, I love, I mean, Princess Bride
[22:48]is one of my favorite movies of all time.
[22:50]I just, I find it so funny
[22:53]and romantic and just, I don't know.
[22:55]That was some, I can watch that every day.
[22:58]One movie I think was great is the proposal.
[23:01]And the thing I found really interesting about that
[23:03]is when Kristina and I were first getting ready to adapt
[23:06]our book roomies for the screen,
[23:09]we were reading a bunch of different romance
[23:11]like romcom scripts.
[23:13]And I felt like the screenplay for the proposal
[23:16]wasn't that amazing,
[23:18]but there was something about the characters
[23:21]when they came together and like,
[23:23]did the lines for each other?
[23:24]And they like, you know,
[23:26]were there acting it out that just completely transformed it
[23:29]for me.
[23:29]And so I think that was such a revelation
[23:31]is just that like the words on the page
[23:34]and how, and like what a skill acting is.
[23:36]And it isn't just like reading lines, you know?
[23:38]And so I love always be my maybe,
[23:41]I think that's adorable.
[23:42]Let's see.
[23:43]I would say those are probably my favorites.
[23:45]So I was struck on your Instagram account,
[23:47]how you were saying that you both try to engage
[23:51]in everything that's going on.
[23:54]How, how, just how?
[23:56]Well, I'm not on Twitter anymore.
[23:58]I find Twitter to not be a like useful space for me.
[24:01]It just ends up getting me riled up.
[24:03]Like I get really irritated either with people like,
[24:06]I don't know, Twitter is just a mess for me.
[24:08]But Kristina is very good.
[24:09]She'll post our stuff over there.
[24:11]And I mean, we're just,
[24:12]we're both on Instagram.
[24:13]I think that's a place we really enjoy being
[24:15]because it's just like every,
[24:17]I think every author has a meeting
[24:18]where they're most comfortable.
[24:20]And so that works for us.
[24:21]But it's not a ton.
[24:22]And honestly, like every author's on there
[24:24]who has an Instagram account is doing it.
[24:27]We're actually doing half the work
[24:28]because there's too much.
[24:30]So it's nice, you know?
[24:32]Interesting.
[24:33]Yeah, we get to share.
[24:34]I happen to love Instagram.
[24:35]I'm like, this is so bad.
[24:37]But I do.
[24:38]I set like a little timer that's in love with it
[24:40]in an hour a day, but then I'm like,
[24:42]okay, I had an hour.
[24:43]Yeah.
[24:45]I know.
[24:45]I love it.
[24:46]I know a lot of people are getting sucked into TikTok
[24:48]and I get it.
[24:50]That's not my place.
[24:51]Like, it feels, I love like when people send us stuff
[24:54]and all that, but like we're not going to be on TikTok.
[24:56]Nobody needs to see Kristina Lauren on TikTok.
[24:59]Don't look at my TikTok.
[25:00]I think I have to delete it.
[25:01]I'm so embarrassed by everything.
[25:02]I've tried and tried, but I can't.
[25:05]Yeah.
[25:06]We actually, I do have co-host to Fadka's called
[25:08]Sex Talk with Zimbe and Tracy.
[25:10]It's three anonymously sourced questions
[25:12]like relationship and sex questions.
[25:14]Cause she's a sex expert.
[25:15]I also lay person asking her the questions
[25:18]that come in through our website.
[25:20]But yeah, I don't even know why I'm talking with it.
[25:23]But TikTok, I'm going to go see now
[25:27]because you're a girl.
[25:28]TikTok.
[25:29]And I did kind of go viral for a little bit on TikTok
[25:31]because my social media manager put like these huge letters
[25:34]on top of my head like, I can't even say it.
[25:36]I shouldn't even say it on this, but like,
[25:37]why can't I, you know, and like my husband cheated on me
[25:41]and people were like talking to my husband like,
[25:43]I can't believe you would do that.
[25:44]And I was like, oh my gosh.
[25:46]Like this is not me.
[25:47]Like you do that.
[25:49]Anyway, it was mortifying, but that was the only success.
[25:51]And it was not even mine and it was very reluctant.
[25:53]Oh my gosh, it's actually so funny.
[25:55]It's not that you could check it out.
[25:57]I can't remember what it's called at with Zimbe and Tracy
[25:59]or something if you want to see how I mortified myself.
[26:02]In fact, even my son who's now 15,
[26:04]his friend from boarding school was like,
[26:06]you showed up on my for you page on TikTok.
[26:08]And I was like, oh my gosh.
[26:11]So terrible.
[26:12]I don't even know what to do with my, but yeah, I love this.
[26:17]Such as like, so what is your next,
[26:19]what are your next few projects that are coming up?
[26:22]Okay.
[26:23]So something where I'd just came out in May.
[26:26]And then for anyone who read the soulmate equation last year,
[26:29]there was a best friend character named Fizzy.
[26:32]And she, we actually had never planned to write her own book,
[26:35]but when we were doing the book tour for that last year,
[26:38]every single event like without fail,
[26:39]somebody would say as busy going to get her own book.
[26:41]And we were like, maybe.
[26:43]And then in the fall, we had this idea,
[26:45]which is the like brain bubble.
[26:47]We got so excited to write it.
[26:49]So we just finished Fizzy's book.
[26:51]So that will be coming out next year.
[26:53]I don't have a release date for it yet.
[26:55]And we're writing, we're hoping to write two more this year.
[26:57]So we've just started another one
[26:59]that we're hoping to finish by September.
[27:01]And then we have a book that we're like insanely excited about.
[27:05]It's got unhoneymooners vibes,
[27:07]but it's like totally different.
[27:09]And we're writing that one at the end of the year,
[27:10]and I can't wait.
[27:11]So, so busy.
[27:13]When you were getting your start writing,
[27:17]I know you said you mentioned Danielle Steele,
[27:19]but did you have a model for success
[27:22]in terms of being an author and having the career
[27:25]of an author of an author?
[27:26]Because it's not just the books,
[27:28]it's that you have to manage so much else
[27:30]when you have writer, full-time author.
[27:33]Did you have a model for that?
[27:34]And how did you learn to do it well?
[27:37]What like, what surprised you about it?
[27:39]What was really hard for you to learn?
[27:40]And yeah, I mean, I think,
[27:42]because I had a very successful science career
[27:47]before I published,
[27:48]and we only left once we had a number of books out
[27:51]and we could like support ourselves with that.
[27:54]And I knew going in that supporting yourself
[27:57]as a writer is very hard to do.
[27:59]It should not be the plan A,
[28:01]because making a living as a writer
[28:03]is just, it's hard to make Enzi.
[28:04]Most writers have day jobs.
[28:07]And so I never had a mental model for like,
[28:10]okay, this is what it looks like to be a full-time author
[28:12]because that just was never an expectation I had.
[28:15]And even once we started publishing,
[28:17]I didn't plan to put my job.
[28:19]It was almost like that decision was forced upon me,
[28:21]which it's now looking back.
[28:23]I'm so grateful for the time it was very stressful,
[28:25]because I didn't wanna leave science.
[28:27]So I didn't have a model in terms of like,
[28:30]how to be a career author.
[28:34]But I did have a model in terms of the kinds of books
[28:37]that I wanted to write,
[28:38]and the way I wanted to make readers feel.
[28:40]And the moment that I read,
[28:43]and I had, I always loved to write,
[28:45]but when I sort of crystallized for me
[28:47]that I wanted to write romance, it was when I read,
[28:49]and then the French kiss by Stephanie Perkins.
[28:52]Even though that's a weighing awful
[28:54]and a lot of our stuff is much steamier than that,
[28:56]it was so, it was just the way it made me feel.
[29:00]Like that sort of the swoon, the way you're like heart
[29:03]sort of swoops and like the excitement
[29:04]and you don't wanna stop,
[29:06]I was like, this is what I wanna do.
[29:09]And I think what I found to be hard about writing was,
[29:13]the industry is really hard to navigate.
[29:15]And there's a lot of like inside tricks
[29:18]that you don't know if you're coming from the outside.
[29:21]I don't know how anyone did it before the internet.
[29:24]I really don't.
[29:25]Before there were websites that could tell us
[29:28]like how to write a query letter
[29:30]and how to find an agent.
[29:31]And before there were podcasts,
[29:34]talking about like how authors started,
[29:38]how they got started,
[29:38]how they pushed through hard times.
[29:40]What are they doing to get stuck?
[29:42]How do they find beta readers?
[29:43]I mean, there's just, there's so many things
[29:44]that make the journey really challenging,
[29:47]but it's so worth it too.
[29:49]So.
[29:50]And when you're not busy writing and marketing your books
[29:53]and doing all the stuff,
[29:54]what are some of the things you love to do on the side?
[29:57]I love to cook.
[29:59]I really...
[30:00]love to cook. I'm trying to like to garden. I want to be better at it because I like being
[30:04]outside of my garden, but it's like ugly if I don't do anything with it. My sister and
[30:08]Christina are both amazing gardeners. I'm trying to learn some of them. And I love to travel.
[30:13]I mean, I that was one of the things that I think was this is a very privileged way to frame
[30:19]the pandemic, but it was hard not being able to travel. And I think I just like being with my
[30:24]family. My daughter is a very avid equestrian. So we just, we got her a project horse
[30:29]last year, which sounds very fancy. This horse needs a lot of work, but she's very sweet. So
[30:33]I love going down to the barn and watching my daughter ride her. Yeah, it's really fun.
[30:40]Oh, so thank you so much to the gloss for having us on this vacation. My favorite travel
[30:46]experience lately without any go anywhere. Although I actually am definitely so thank you to
[30:52]everybody and Erin Woodward and everyone for having us. Yes, thank you so much for hosting.
[30:57]And thanks for moderating. City. This was so fun. It was so nice to see you face to face. Finally,
[31:02]I've been following you for so long. Oh, yeah. And so I hear that. Thank you. Bye.
[31:09]Thanks for listening to this episode of moms. Don't have time to read books. Don't forget to
[31:13]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at moms. Don't have time to read books. Also sign up for
[31:18]my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on
[31:23]Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan. Heck, texture sound for the sound editing.
[31:28]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.