Amanda Diehl

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The days leading up to my interview with romance phenom Lucy Parker are fraught with nerves. Not only have I read and enjoyed all five of her published contemporary romances, but I will be placing a call from the U.S. to New Zealand, many hours ahead. Pretty much every worst-case scenario I can imagine joins a list of possible obstacles that will keep this chat from happening.

It all goes fine, of course. (Pretty fantastic, in fact!) Parker has a soft voice and bubbly demeanor. She is gracious about my praise for her London Celebrities series, which deals with real-life problems but still manages to feel warm and welcoming. When asked what it feels like to publish her fifth romance in five years, “surreal” is the word that immediately comes to her mind. 

“I wanted it to have that fast-paced vibe of old screwball comedies.”

She admits that her first book in the series, Act Like It, was written in a bit of a frenzied blur. “Things happened quite quickly. I sold it . . . quite fast, and even leading up to its release [in 2015], I really had no expectations. I don’t think anyone had,” she says, laughing. 

The London Celebrities series is set amid the U.K. theater and entertainment industry and has thus far featured actors, directors, theater critics and makeup artists as romantic leads. (When asked to pick a favorite book from the series, Parker says, “I love and despise them in equal measure, especially when I’m on a deadline.”) There’s an insular quality to the setting that appeals to Parker, who notes that it very much feels like a “play within a play,” with all the forced proximity and community such a form implies.

The highly anticipated fifth book in the series, Headliners, builds on events from Parker’s previous novel, The Austen Playbook, but with formerly supporting characters—two rival TV presenters—now in the spotlight. After Sabrina Carlton and Nick Davenport both experience career setbacks, they are forced to co-host a struggling morning TV show. If ratings aren’t higher by the end of the year, they could both be out of a job.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Headliners.


But working together isn’t easy. Both Sabrina and Nick are used to harder-hitting assignments than showcasing the hottest holiday toy of the year. And without spoiling too much, Nick has a lot of groveling to do to get back into Sabrina’s good graces. 

“[Nick] does begin Headliners with some serious apologies to make and an emotional journey to travel,” Parker says. “It was important to me that he acknowledge that some of his past behavior was wrong and that he is genuinely regretful about that and would never make that mistake again. He does work to win back the trust that he broke.” 

But Nick’s not the only one with issues to address. “Sabrina, too, has to work past some preconceived notions she has about Nick,” Parker says. “Both have known each other for a long time, but neither has seen beneath the public personas they’ve built through their careers. They have to peel away the layers of their professional masks.”

This is one of the many reasons Parker’s romances resonate: Her characters’ communication styles evolve to allow them to truly understand each other. She knows how to bring characters together in ways that show how they complement each other, rather than having them change for the sake of love. The result is a smart, kind, witty romance that is a balm to the soul. 

“I think the book deals with some severe subjects but overall is a positive, feel-good read,” says Parker. “I wanted it to have that fast-paced vibe of old screwball comedies, combined with things that are more affective and romantic.”

There was one element in particular that Parker knew she wanted for Nick and Sabrina, and that was for them to remain childfree. She wanted to push against the idea that “happily ever after” means raising children together.

“They both have children in their lives who they adore, but they have no desire to be parents,” Parker says. “It’s not the path they want in life. I think they will enjoy every moment of their full and happy life together as a nuclear family of two, or three if you count Nick’s dog.” (Parker also doesn’t rule out the possibility of them getting a cat at some point.)

She continues: “There are so many people that either do not want children or are unable to have children. In any forum, whether fictional or otherwise, I don’t think their lives should be considered any less full. A person’s right to happiness isn’t dependent on anyone else, whether it’s a child or a partner. You are a whole and complete person within yourself.” And that’s an absolutely perfect Valentine’s Day affirmation.

The days leading up to my interview with romance phenom Lucy Parker are fraught with nerves. Not only have I read and enjoyed all five of her published contemporary romances, but I will be placing a call from the U.S. to New Zealand, many hours ahead. Pretty much every worst-case scenario I can imagine joins […]
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Twenty-five books is a milestone that few writers reach, and doing so in little over a decade is nearly superhuman.

The partnership between Lauren “Lo” Billings (pictured above, left) and Christina Hobbs (right) began over fan fiction but quickly transitioned into a whirlwind publishing career under the name Christina Lauren, which both the authors and their fans affectionately abbreviate as CLo. “We didn’t have time to think or do anything besides keep our heads down and write,” Billings says, laughing about those early publishing days. “We were just drinking from the fire hose at that point.” 

A “fugue state” is the best way to describe their original expeditious schedule, which saw them release four novels and two novellas in the span of just 10 months, beginning with Beautiful Bastard in February 2013. Hobbs quips, “If there’s anything I’d tell early CLo, it’s to not eat at your desk. Take care of yourself more.”

The Honey-Don’t List follows a hero and heroine who are roped in to playing mediator for a golden couple of home-renovation reality TV.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked with CLo. I’ve interviewed them several times and attended a few of their signings. They once even located the house keys I didn’t know I’d lost at a book convention. Billings is the more talkative of the two, while Hobbs interjects with a one-liner or funny aside. Their conversation flows easily, and both take turns acting as either wingwoman or playful provocateur to the other. When I tease Billings about her bemusement at Adam Driver’s heartthrob status, Hobbs is quick to note that she’s indifferent either way but won’t miss a chance to rile Billings up. This push-pull also appears in their books, keeping readers laughing whether it’s between friends, siblings or lovers.

Their latest novel, The Honey-Don’t List, follows a hero and heroine who are roped in to playing mediator for Melissa and Rusty Tripp, a golden couple of home-renovation reality TV whose once loving relationship has totally devolved. Carey Douglas has worked for the Tripps for years, and the downward spiral of their marriage has taken a toll on her. Engineer James McCann was brought on to help with the Tripps’ new show but is quickly pushed into the role of babysitter for the philandering Rusty. Put them all in close quarters during a stressful book tour and show launch, and it’s a powder keg waiting to go off.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Honey-Don’t List.


Dedicated fans of the authors’ work may notice a pattern of forced proximity. “We make their worlds stressful and small. . . . It’s like putting them under a microscope,” Billings says, though she insists they “don’t do it by design.” 

But Carey and James were created by design—specifically, the way they complement one another. “When we’re writing romance novels, we want to think about why this person is perfect for this other person,” Billings says. “[James] is really perfect for Carey, and that pairing comes through really clearly. You can see why he is perfect for her.”

CLo wanted to show the layers of Carey’s vulnerabilities, both in inhabiting a toxic workplace and living with dystonia, a movement disorder that affects the muscles. Billings speaks candidly about her experiences with movement disorders, a chronic condition that affected her late father and currently affects her sister. 

“Dystonia was part of Carey’s story from the get-go,” she says. “I think the reason why we put this in the book was not necessarily to shine a light on dystonia, although that will be a nice side effect to have more people aware of it. . . . When I look at my sister, she’s this incredible person who just happens to also have a movement disorder. It doesn’t define her or change the deep romance she has with her husband.  I think sometimes we forget that people are not their illnesses. Dystonia isn’t who Carey is; it’s just part of her day.”

“When we’re writing romance novels, we want to think about why this person is perfect for this other person.”

While the authors establish some things early on, like characterization and setting, their process changes from book to book. It also never gets any easier. “We were outlining our 27th book, and we just had this feeling of, ‘What are we doing?’” Hobbs says. “‘Maybe we should use Post-its and just put them all over the windows. Do you think we need dry erase markers? Oh, my God, we could just write on the windows!’”

Billings adds, “I think that when people ask us how we write together, they expect to hear a bulleted outline of how a book gets done, but we honestly don’t know. We do it a little bit differently every time. Part of that is because we have different things in our lives going on when we start a book, and our process has to be a bit fluid. And part of it is because I think we are 80% idiot, and we just don’t know how to write a book.”

With their 26th book publishing in October (a holiday romance titled In a Holidaze) and their 27th in the editing process, it’s clear that Christina Lauren has plenty more stories left to tell. And despite Billings brushing off their planning process as luck, their partnership is undeniably something special. “We put in just as much time making sure our friendship is strong as we do our business partnership,” Billings says.

“Lo is my best friend and my favorite person in the world, aside from the one I’m married to and the one I gave birth to,” Hobbs says. “We love each other as friends, as much as we love each other as co-authors.” 

Authors Lauren Billings and Christina Hobbs—better known as Christina Lauren—talk about collaboration and the secret to creating the perfect couple.
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When ex-model Katrina King’s coffee shop visit goes viral after two other customers live-tweet her conversation with a cute guy, she flees to her bodyguard Jas Singh’s isolated family home. We talked to author Alisha Rai about mental health, Twitter ethics and her latest romance, Girl Gone Viral.

Girl Gone Viral was partly inspired by the viral #PlaneBae debacle. For readers who are unaware, can you briefly summarize that cringey moment in Twitter history?
It was a situation where two strangers’ conversation was live-tweeted by a third party. It went viral as a “feel good” meet-cute, but not that many users initially seemed to care whether the “couple” had asked for or consented to the whole phenomenon.

Did this second book in your Modern Love series have a different setup before #PlaneBae happened? Did you always want to incorporate the downside of social media fame?
Nope! The premise was always the same. Having a date live-tweeted has long been a fear of mine, so I’ve been wanting to write about this intersection of social media and consent for a while. I think social media has created a world where we see people not as people but as characters for our entertainment, and if someone is a character, I probably won’t feel like they have much of a right to privacy as someone I consider a real live human. As technology grows and expands, I really think it’s important for our society to continue to have conversations about what we owe to each other in terms of privacy and consent and the impact being dragged into the spotlight can have on a person’s life.

You recently had your own personal experience with Twitter fame following a dating faux pas involving a cake pop. (Totally on your side, by the way.) The backlash was toxic enough that, for a period of time, you locked down your Twitter account. Did this affect the book at all? Were there any edits you wanted to make, or was it too late in the game to change anything?
Oh, it was way too late. The only thing I might have changed is that now I feel like maybe I can better understand how panic-inducing it can be to be the focus of all of that attention. Katrina has PTSD and panic disorder and retreated to a farm; I have neither of those, and I was ready to run away to the moon.

“Jas and Katrina’s love story was tough to write, but only because mutual pining is kind of a pain.”

Both Katrina and Jas are living with different types of trauma. What do you think is key to understanding these types of experiences and communicating them to the readers? 
My main goal when I write is for the reader to understand where my characters are coming from, so I do spend a lot of time thinking about what makes them tick. I honestly think the key is to walk into their heads armed with a ton of research—book research, but especially interviews with mental health professionals and people who have dealt with similar trauma—and sensitivity and kindness.

Jas and Katrina’s love story was tough to write, but only because mutual pining is kind of a pain. For me, at least. When the story is hate to love (one of my favorite tropes) you kind of have a natural internal or external conflict, i.e., you have to get over the “hate” bump. Why would two adults who have crushes on each other not be together? (You have to read the book to find out the answer to that.)

One thing I appreciate about your books is the important of mental health, and how your characters navigate struggles in that area. What motivates you to include this in your romances?
I try to write characters who are as realistic as possible, and in reality, people’s brains are wonderfully unique. It’s a part of a person that makes up the whole and if you see a character as a whole person, it’s hard not to be sensitive to them. Plus I love therapy, it’s helped me a lot, and I’m always looking for ways to destigmatize it and mental health care.

You’re my go-to recommendation for people who love a hot, angsty romance. What draws you to those sorts of emotions? Do you ever see yourself flipping the switch and writing a completely fluffy, closed door love story?
Sure, anything could happen. Changing things up is how I keep my writing as fresh as possible. I actually think Girl Gone Viral has a slightly different vibe than even the first book in this series. It’s sweeter, quieter and a little simpler. I don’t know how much of that is the story, the characters or the idyllic peach farm setting.

Maybe it’s an aspirational universe, but if it is, it’s an achievable one.

Issues that affect communities of color and especially women of color have played a large part in both this book and The Right Swipe. How do you find that balance of “the world is garbage and unfair and racist” and swoony love?
In the real world, people often have to battle systematic injustices. That doesn’t mean they don’t fall in love. I like to think that my characters make a space for each other to navigate a world that may not have ready spaces for them. They help each other achieve whatever it is they want. Maybe it’s an aspirational universe, but if it is, it’s an achievable one.

What’s next for you? Can I selfishly expect a romance for Lakshmi (Rhiannon’s assistant from The Right Swipe) in the future?
I’d love to write Lakshmi’s book some day! Right now I’m working on my little influencer, Jia, the heroine of book three of the Modern Love series. It’s like a catfish via DMs that works out really well. It’ll make sense when you read it.

I so miss your paranormal/dystopian romances like Hot as Hades and Night Whispers. Will readers see a return to those genres eventually, or should we go ahead and pour one out for those books?
I miss them, too! Someday zombies will be hot again, and I shall return triumphant.

Are there any books you’re reading and loving right now? 
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn was my most recent five star read. I’m also currently reading and loving Suzanne Park’s Loathe at First Sight, and it’s out in August.

 

Author photo © Alisha Rai.

We talked to author Alisha Rai about mental health, Twitter ethics and her latest romance, Girl Gone Viral.

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After winning near-universal acclaim for Uprooted and Spinning Silver, two romantic, fairy-tale inspired fantasies, Naomi Novik is turning to the dark side. Her Scholomance series, which begins with A Deadly Education, takes place in a supernatural death trap of a school and follows El, a young woman who seems destined to become an evil sorceress. But if you know Novik, you know it’s all going to be a lot more complicated than that.

I’m so excited to get to talk to you about A Deadly Education! What can readers coming in fresh to your work as well as those who are longtime fans expect for the first installment of this new series?
I think that one consistent element is that my work is always in conversation. In this case, there’s an old folk legend of the Scholomance, a hidden school of dark magic where wizards spent years studying in the dark, without teachers, and when they left, the last graduate’s soul was taken in payment for their education. I read about this legend back when I was about 10 years old, and it’s stuck in my head ever since, and in this book I’ve worked it together with the magical boarding school trope that we all know and love from Harry Potter and A Wizard of Earthsea and the Worst Witch books and so many others.

Like Uprooted and Spinning Silver, there’s also a first-person female narrator. El, the main character of A Deadly Education, is very different from Agnieszka or Miryem; she comes into the story already knowing a lot about magic and the magical world. Also, she’s fundamentally a modern girl who has grown up in our recognizable world despite having magic herself, as opposed to being in a more historical era.

But like Agnieszka and Miryem, she’s also going through the coming-of-age process and grappling with her own power and working out who she is and who she wants to become. She’s also trying to find community and connection.

How does it feel to return to writing a series, rather than standalone fantasy?
I did my best not to return to writing a series! I wanted the story of the Scholomance to be in separate books, because the rhythm of the school year is important to the magic school story. I wanted the power of that rhythm in the narrative—punctuating the end of one year, crossing from one year to another. But I wrote most of the trilogy before I paused to get book one actually ready for publication.

"When you start from a place where your reader has expectations . . . what that gives you as a writer is a way to tap into your reader’s brain."

Your previous books are nestled into these wonderful subgenre niches—alternate history (with dragons!), romantic fantasy and now dark magical schools. Do you feel like you approached them all differently or are the bones of creation largely the same? What appeals to you about setting a story and writing in the dark academia world of the Scholomance?
When you start from a place where your reader has expectations, where your reader knows something—whether that’s because they’ve heard the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin, or they’ve read a biography of Napoleon, or seen a Harry Potter movie—what that gives you as a writer is a way to tap into your reader’s brain.

What you get from working with source material that’s already in your reader’s head is the combination of the pleasure of a new story, and the pleasure of recognition in a story they’ve seen before. “I know that trope! I’ve seen this before!” And you also get the pleasure of the unexpected. Letting your reader have expectations gives you a more interesting way to move around your reader and with them.

The truth is no story stands on its own. Some stories may be more self-conscious than others about letting you see where they’re coming from, but I'm not, because I’m not worried about it. If I didn’t have something new to say about magical schools, then I wouldn’t be interested enough to write it myself. So I’m not shy about using tropes or other stories as inspiration, or history or any other inspiration.

Your previous books—Uprooted and Spinning Silver—are a bit lighter and more hopeful in terms of magical systems, settings and tone. I had the opposite reaction when reading A Deadly Education. It’s so tense and mysterious! How did you feel about that shift? Is a story with much darker magic elements something you’ve always wanted to do? If so, is this how you always imagined writing it, or did you have a much different idea in mind at the start?
The legend of the Scholomance paints a truly horrible place. The idea that you would spend years locked up in the dark, with answers to your lessons appearing in letters of flame, with no teachers, no contact with the outside world. It’s a horrible idea! Who would do that? What would drive somebody to go into the Scholomance? That question was one part of the root of the idea.

The other part of it was taking the glaring flaws in school safety at Hogwarts a little too seriously. If you look at Hogwarts from the objective standpoint of a parent considering whether this institution is really a good place to send your young child—you might have some questions about the choices that the administration is making. Does the school really need to have a locked chamber with a basilisk in it? Do the staircases really need to fly around to different locations?

The Scholomance series is basically taking that a step further, and acknowledging, “Yes, this school of magic is absolutely horrible. The school is, in fact, deadly.” So you have this terrible school—What makes people go there? What makes them send their children there? How do they survive it? Who comes out of it, and how do they come out of it?

El is biracial—Indian and Welsh—and I’d love to know what sort of research or sensitivity reading you did while writing about her identity and lived experience.
My specific research for any novel is guided by the work itself as it goes. I don’t decide a character's backstory in my head and then dole it out; I find things out about my characters as I write them down. And when I do write a line where a character tells me and the reader something about herself, that's where my research begins, making sure that what I'm saying works and makes sense and is true.

But I don’t mean just fact-checking—it’s not the single line; you have to chase the single line you’ve written and follow where it leads you. Once I spent a week researching whether there were sidewalks in Edinburgh in 1806. It didn’t actually matter, I could have just tweaked the line and avoided the question far more easily, but in chasing that question I learned a lot of things that I didn’t know I needed to know. So I do that and I find and pack the information away in my head, and then it is there and ready to come out when it’s relevant.

For one example with A Deadly Education, early on I wrote a line where El was irritated about having been taught Marathi instead of the more practical Hindi. That’s the moment when I learned her dad was from India and specifically the Mumbai area. And it was clearly right when it came, because the Scholomance was taking shape in my mind by then as a British Empire construct, this sort of Titanic-scale industrial project, and therefore intuitively connected to the massive exploitation of India. At that point I needed to do a chunk of reading and research to understand what that line told me about him and about her.

And then in turn, one of the things I found while doing that research was a terrific online course by HarvardX about Hinduism Through Its Scriptures (I highly recommend, it’s free to audit), and what I learned there informed the backstory of the Golden Stone sutras later on in the book.

I did also ask my publishers to get me a sensitivity reader on this book as well, someone who wouldn't feel inhibited about giving honest feedback because they could stay anonymous and weren't working for me. I found the feedback they got for me really useful. I do think a good general rule for any author is that when you want honest feedback on a topic where people routinely react defensively, you have to go out of your way to make it really safe for someone to give you that feedback.

And you also just have to listen to the feedback that is out there in the world already. It’s there to be read and heard and taken in.

El’s also a bit prickly, which I personally loved. Were there any moments in writing her that surprised you, where a scene took a completely different turn than what you had planned simply by way of staying true to her personality?
El didn’t surprise me quite so much because I felt very clearly from the beginning that she wasn’t being completely honest with herself—that mentally she was working really hard to survive the experience and as part of that to convince herself that it was both survivable and worth surviving.

The prickliness, the dark humor, the sarcasm—that’s how El is surviving, and also how the reader survives, because I don’t actually want to give the reader the direct visceral experience of being in the Scholomance. The Scholomance is not a nice place! But I do want to pull back the curtain every so often; those scenes are the true moments. When those scenes happen, that’s what’s real. They tell you something true about the place and about El.

The side characters surprised me more often, because going in, I didn’t know who all of them were and which ones would be important. Several of them became important over the course of the book. Yi Liu in particular was an interesting surprise for me but I don’t want to spoil why.

I always let the characters lead me. So I don’t have a preconceived plan for any scene. I start to be able to see what’s going to happen a certain distance ahead, but that’s only because I know that’s where the characters are going.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of A Deadly Education.


There’s a hefty cliffhanger at the end of A Deadly Education and I certainly don’t want to give anything away. But when can we expect to pick back up in the Scholomance and do you have an expected number of books in the series? I’m already clamoring for the next one!
It’s a trilogy. It was supposed to be a duology, and then the first book ended where it ended—unexpectedly—and I realized I had to write three books instead of two. Book three is already under way; book two is basically done.

I feel I should share, in the interest of giving fair disclosure: When I sent book two (The Last Graduate) to my editor, she replied with a subject line of all AAAAAAAAAs that was longer than the width of my (very) large screen. And that’s generally been the reaction of most readers at the end of book two. I’m sorry! I don’t actually mean to torture people!

But that’s where the books needed to end. As a writer, sometimes you write a scene, and there’s the end. It’s done! When that happens, you have to accept it. You can’t fight an ending. When your brain gives you an ending, you have to nurture it and pet it. Like a small, fluffy mouse.

If you weren’t writing fantasy, which other genres would you like to try? Something similar or completely new?
Fiction is a subset of fantasy, as opposed to the other way around. Fantasy is fiction where, as the author, you use your power over the stage your characters are on, the stakes of their situation. I would never give that power up just to be able to say I wasn’t writing fantasy.

I know people think fantasy means there’s got to be elves, magic, dragons, wizards, something, but those are just fantasy genre tropes that people recognize and so when you use them, it gives you those expectations to play with. I do love all those tropes, and I use them freely, but to me the real value of fantasy is that my world and my characters grow together.

I will always try new things, though. A Deadly Education is very different from Uprooted and Spinning Silver, which are in turn quite different from Temeraire. My short stories have been wildly all over the map, and I’ve written hundreds of fan fiction stories that are as well.

My mantra is just that I write what I can write, when I can write it.

Lastly, I always like to ask authors what they’re reading and loving now. What books have really captured your attention lately or are books you're looking forward to?
Lately I can read three pages at a time before I get interrupted, and then another six pages two days later before I get interrupted again. But I am currently reading Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi and really enjoying it even though I’m crawling through it like a small snail. It’s very good and every time I come back it’s still in my head despite the interruptions, so I continue to crawl.

I also recently had the opportunity to read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab in advance, and it’s really lovely! Faustian bargain stories are often bleak, ticking time bombs of impending doom; without giving away too much, she’s turned it into something very charming, and I think readers will be quite surprised.

 

Author photo © Beth Gwinn.

After winning near-universal acclaim for Uprooted and Spinning Silver, two romantic, fairy-tale inspired fantasies, Naomi Novik is turning to the dark side. Her Scholomance series, which begins with A Deadly Education, takes place in a supernatural death trap of a school and follows El, a young woman who seems destined to become an evil sorceress. […]
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Author Uzma Jalaluddin deploys romance tropes to expand the boundaries of the genre.

After updating Pride and Prejudice with her debut romance, author Uzma Jalaluddin turns to a more modern but no less beloved classic: You’ve Got Mail. Her sophomore novel, Hana Khan Carries On, is a retelling of the beloved Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks rom-com that swaps the film’s duelling bookstores for halal restaurants. The titular Hana helps run Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, a community staple that’s owned and operated by her family. Unfortunately, sales are down, and an upscale halal eatery opening nearby could put them out of business for good. 

But Hana’s heart is not in the restaurant business. She launched her own podcast while interning at a local radio station and recently formed a flirtation with an anonymous caller. Add in a fearsome, scene-stealing aunt and a cousin so compelling he seems destined for his own spinoff novel, and Hana has her hands full. 

Hana Khan Carries On was dozens of drafts in the making, and Jalaluddin freely admits to reworking the story several times over. “The book itself took me many, many years to write. Like a lot of people, I wear a lot of hats,” she says with a laugh during a call to her home outside Toronto. Not only is she a mom, but she also writes a column for the Toronto Star and teaches high school English. Her love of language is evident in every sentence of Hana Khan, as is her gift for precise plotting and clearly defined, immediately lovable characters.

“You don’t usually see a woman in a hijab having agency and being the star of her own love story.”

A lengthy crafting process isn’t new for Jalaluddin. Her first novel, Ayesha at Last, also took a long time to write, beginning in 2010. “I wasn’t writing every day, but it did take me around seven years to reach a final draft,” she says. She describes that story’s Jane Austen connection as a “happy accident,” as it was some time before she noticed Lizzie and Darcy reflected in the novel’s characters. 

“I know that sounds ridiculous looking back on it,” Jalaluddin says, “but I also feel like I was writing in a vacuum.” Jalaluddin’s parents immigrated to Canada from India, and she seldom saw an experience like hers represented in the type of books she wanted to write. “In the early 2010s, there was so little South Asian representation in romance or comedies, especially South Asian Muslim representation,” she says. “Part of the reason why I decided to turn my head toward Jane Austen in my first book was because I was a little bit scared that people wouldn’t know how to deal with my story.”

Jalaluddin’s concerns were justified. Even with the Austen hook, Ayesha at Last was rejected countless times by publishers who didn’t know how to sell a novel that featured characters and storylines outside of the industry’s narrowly defined expectations for a Muslim romance.

“You don’t usually see a woman in a hijab having agency and being the star of her own love story,” she says. “You expect a story about her arranged marriage where she runs away, takes off her hijab and dates a white boy. That’s the story we usually hear—not one where she falls in love with a conservative Muslim man who changes a bit but still has his beard at the end of it.” 

By adopting familiar frameworks, like the beats of a rom-com or the slow burn of an Austen novel, Jalaluddin artfully deploys classic tropes to give happy endings to characters from backgrounds that are rarely represented in the works she is referencing. And those happy endings aren’t just about romantic love. Jalaluddin also addresses other aspects of her heroines’ experiences such as community, identity and honoring your faith in a secular society. 

Though both of Jalaluddin’s novels contain similar pleasures, the author sees differences between her debut and Hana Khan Carries On, which was written during a time of political and social upheaval. “In the past few years, I was more aware of the storm clouds gathering, and I think that comes through in Hana Khan Carries On.” she says. Within the course of the book, Hana and her community must deal with microaggressions and hate crimes while pursuing their dreams. 


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Hana Khan Carries On.


But passion flows through it all, from the devotion of Hana’s family to keeping their halal restaurant afloat to Hana’s excitement and ambition in launching a podcast. It’s similar to the passion in Jalaluddin’s voice when she’s discussing her path from reader to writer. 

“When I was growing up, I wondered, where is the Muslim Bridget Jones? Where is the Muslim Meg Cabot?” Jalaluddin says. She has become what she sought as a young reader, and if another young girl has those same questions now, hopefully she’ll discover that the answer is Uzma Jalaluddin.

 

Author photo by Andrea Stenson.

Author Uzma Jalaluddin deploys romance tropes to expand the boundaries of the genre.

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With an appealing new love story set on the Q train, the bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue is poised for a swift return to the bestseller list.


If you’re looking for an affordable and romantic date, Casey McQuiston thinks the New York City subway is the perfect setting. “The Q is the most romantic line,” she says. “From Midtown to Coney Island is a picturesque ride.” 

From the gleaming skyline to the architecture of the Brooklyn Bridge and the calm waters below, the Q offers several romantic views for riders to enjoy. From there, McQuiston imagines her date’s next steps: “Hop off at Prospect Park to do a little pedal boat ride. Hop back on and take it all the way out to Coney Island, where you ride the Wonder Wheel and put your feet in the ocean. Get a hot dog from Nathan’s and then get back on the train.” Where are you going to eat that hot dog? On the train, of course, because as McQuiston notes, you’ll have a lot of downtime waiting for the Coney Island train to leave the station. Plenty of time to gently wipe a smudge of ketchup from the corner of your partner’s mouth with a napkin, if you’re so inclined.

McQuiston’s love for NYC (where she now lives, though she grew up in Louisiana), and specifically its subway system, is clear on every page of her sophomore novel, One Last Stop, which she describes as “a public transit crush romance with a time slip twist.”


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of One Last Stop.


Its protagonist is August, a “lost and confused 23-year-old who moves to New York [City] because she’s lonely and cynical and she wants to live in a lonely and cynical city, as she sees it,” McQuiston explains. “She gets there and discovers friends and family and love in all of these weird, broke, early-20s, New York types of ways.” Despite her cynicism, August quickly finds her people, including a trio of quirky, smart roommates. She also finds a potential romantic connection in Jane, an alluring young woman she meets on the subway. 

After Jane gives August her scarf to hide a particularly ghastly coffee stain, August can’t stop thinking about her, even though she knows the odds of seeing her again are incredibly slim. But Jane’s reality turns out to be much more complicated than August realizes: She’s been, somehow, displaced from the 1970s into the present day and is now stuck on the Q train, with no memory of how she got there. Because Jane is unable to leave the subway, the romance between her and August is a little challenging. But throughout their burgeoning relationship, McQuiston makes certain that no bare body part touches a subway seat, a detail that, if it had been overlooked, surely would have made any New Yorker cringe.

The time slip element of One Last Stop has been present since McQuiston first began working on the novel. “The first flicker of an idea came to me when I was on a trip to New York and had ridden the subway a bunch,” McQuiston says. “There’s something super romantic when you’re on the subway and another train passes you, and you can briefly see into the windows of the other train. It feels like such a liminal space, and it’s inherently magical to me.”

As she tried to decide what time period Jane should be from, McQuiston realized she wanted to create a character who had a connection to the subway before getting stuck on it, which meant that eras before its invention were definitely out. The author also notes that since there’s already so much going on in the story, “we don’t have time to also explain to Jane what being gay is,” so she also wanted Jane to be fully out and as queer as she could be during her time period. A historical event triggered Jane’s time slip, and though McQuiston doesn’t want to spoil it, she says that once she landed on that moment, it became easier to write Jane and her ’70s punk aesthetic.

“The ’70s were such a rich time for social movements, and I love the idea of this girl who is this punk rocker who also was deeply involved in different activist movements, like the antiwar movement, the Asian American movements, post-Stonewall uprisings around the country,” McQuiston says. “All of these things fell into place to tell me that the ’70s were the sweet spot for this character.” 

Although August isn’t a time traveler, she’s also a bit of a mystery to the reader and to herself—just as she was to McQuiston at the beginning of the writing process, as she struggled to create a character who is a bit prickly and wary of others, while still pushing them to advance the plot and making them compelling and lovable on top of it all. “August was hard to nail down,” McQuiston says. “The first draft, I really struggled because I tried writing in first person, which I hadn’t done in a really long time. During revisions, I realized that on a meta level, I wasn’t really clicking with her because I was too close to it. I couldn’t see her from the outside and figure out how she fits into her own life. I went through and changed the entire draft to third person, which was fun for me,” she says, laughing.

“For a lot of queer people, coming out is not the end of a story, it’s the beginning.”

With its time slip mystery and more contemplative, thoughtful tone, One Last Stop is a markedly different read from McQuiston’s debut. Compared to Alex Claremont-Diaz, first son of the United States and the main character in McQuiston’s bestselling 2019 novel, Red, White & Royal Blue, August is a shift in the opposite direction. Whereas Alex was “extroverted and extra,” August is more internal and reserved. 

August also carries some baggage due to her unconventional upbringing, which McQuiston says was partly inspired by the mother-daughter duo of Lorelai and Rory in “Gilmore Girls.” Although August and her mother embody the “us against the world” vibe of Rory and Lorelai, McQuiston also wanted to explore the darker side of how that type of codependent relationship can affect a person in adulthood.

August’s mother, who’s a bit of a conspiracy theorist and hoarder, has been obsessed with the disappearance of her brother, August’s uncle, since August’s childhood. “August’s mom is just complicated, and that’s how a lot of our parents are. Early adulthood is about figuring out who you have grown into and then being like, ‘Oh no, it’s my mom!’ Or, ‘It’s my dad!’ The thing about generational stuff is that with every generation, you do it a little bit better than the generation before you. You can have absorbed these personality traits and these habits and these interests from your parents, [but] maybe do it in a way that works better for you,” McQuiston explains, pointing toward August’s love of puzzles. Whereas her mom lets unknown answers consume her, August sees them as opportunities to challenge herself. 

Which is exactly why Jane intrigues August so much. Their attraction begins as a “fleeting moment of connection between strangers in a big city,” so August certainly doesn’t expect to see Jane again in the exact same subway car or to eventually find out that she’s not from this time period. Once she learns the truth of Jane’s situation, August becomes determined to use all her puzzle-solving know-how to help her.

Another critical difference between McQuiston’s debut and One Last Stop is that August and Jane are fully out, both to those around them and to the world at large. Although coming-out narratives are a crucial part of queer identity (and played a large role in Red, White & Royal Blue), McQuiston says One Last Stop is “the story that comes after coming out. For a lot of queer people, coming out is not the end of a story, it’s the beginning. I don’t necessarily want to rehash my coming-out story again and again, because the richest experiences I’ve had as a queer person have come after that.”

Those who are beginning to explore their queer identity might feel as though coming out or putting a label on how they identify is like putting a period on their journey. But in actuality, that initial discovery gives way to a lifetime of new experiences. The themes of found family and figuring out who you are as an adult, separate from whatever familial environment shaped you, wind through both of McQuiston’s novels. The importance of “finding your people and letting them guide you” is one of the more powerful messages she imparts, knowing that shared communities are integral for many queer people who may feel misunderstood by family or even openly derided. 

As McQuiston gradually builds a welcoming backlist for queer readers, it’s hard not to wonder what her younger self would think of One Last Stop. “I had to be at this point in my life to write [this book], because it’s so personal in a way I’ve only become secure enough to write about in the last couple years,” she says. “I think a young me would be floored that I had the nerve to write something so personal and think, ‘Oh my God, this is what we get to do? We get to write books? That is so cool!’ They would read it and be stunned that they could be this gay in public.”

With One Last Stop, it’s clear that McQuiston has come into her own as a person and an author. Whatever direction her work takes her next, McQuiston is unstoppable.

 

Author photo by Sylvie Rosokoff.

Stand clear of the platform and the closing doors as the bestselling author explores what comes after coming out.

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The first adult novel from YA superstar author Julie Murphy (Dumplin’, which was adapted into the hit Netflix film) is both right on trend (Rom-coms are big, have you heard?) and timelessly appealing. If the Shoe Fits takes its cues from the iconic fairy tale Cinderella, but its buoyant humor and good-hearted outlook are all Murphy. She talked to BookPage about the liberating experience of writing grown-up characters and why her version of the wicked stepmother is more complicated than conniving.

How does it feel to have written your first adult novel? Did the writing process feel different at all?
I am so incredibly excited to be dipping my toes into the adult waters. It's something I've hoped to do for quite some time, and this seemed to be the perfect crossover project to start with. Of course If the Shoe Fits is an adult book, but I think it's a really good first step into adult romance for teenagers as well. The romance is exciting and steamy while still maintaining a lower heat level, so I've really found it to be the perfect access point for new romance readers. 

As I was drafting, I had this really great lightbulb moment. As a YA and middle grade author, I spend a lot of time on the page working with and sometimes around adult characters, but this time my main character is the adult. There's no curfew or grounding to stand in her way, but that also means the safety blanket of turning to someone older and wiser is pulled out from under her in some ways. I actually found the process to be really liberating and exciting!

This is the first installment of Meant to Be, a series of Disney princess retellings, each written by a different author. Are you able to tell us more about what’s coming up?
I can promise exciting things ahead! Each book will reimagine a different Disney princess, and while I can't tell you exactly who is writing the next book or which princess it will be, I can tell you that you will not be disappointed. The next author is one of my all-time favorites, and it's been really hard for me not to completely fangirl over this princess-author pairing.

“I never got the chance to see a chubby girl get swept off her feet by Prince Charming.”

Was Cinderella your first choice for this romance? Why did you want to revise this fairy tale? (I love the nods to the source material on the cover!)
Yes! The moment this series was pitched to me, I told my agent that I had to have Cinderella. The story of Cinderella was so iconic to me growing up.I spent so much time in a make-believe space pretending that my mom was forcing me into child labor (she wasn't, I swear!), that my older sister and cousins were my mean stepsisters and that I could talk to birds and small, adorable rodents. But the spell of my childhood imagination always broke the moment I looked in the mirror and didn't see a tall, thin blond girl staring back at me. Later on, I discovered my love for Ursula, and that really helped me reshape how I felt about myself, but she was also the villain. I never got the chance to see a chubby girl get swept off her feet by Prince Charming. Even though Cinderella wasn't the first Disney princess, she was my first Disney princess, and that's why it was so important to me that I reinvent her story with a plus-size lead for a modern audience.

Would you want to adapt another, non-princess fairy tale or Disney property in the future? If so, which one?
Are you kidding?! I would love to! This process has been such a joy from beginning to end. Though The Little Mermaid is a princess fairy tale, I would love to see a contemporary retelling from Ursula's point of view. I'm a kid of the ’90s though, so I keep finding myself thinking of Heavyweights and how amazing an updated version of that might be. I also think a modern Peter Pan set in a skate park would be so fun and—I might be going out on a limb here—but I would absolutely die for a chance to see a Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog rom-com.

A common theme in your books, including If the Shoe Fits, is plus-size main characters and body diversity. From the standpoint of a writer who's been in the industry for several years now, do you feel acceptance of larger body types and plus-size main characters has increased? Are there places where you think publishing still needs to improve?
I can definitely feel the shift, but as with all important changes, it doesn't feel like it's happening quickly enough. I think it's happening more readily in contemporary spaces, but I'm ready to see it happen in fantasy and sci-fi and all other types of genres, too. We also need to see a more diverse lineup of plus-size characters from race to sexual identity. I also just want to see more plus-size people behind the scenes as editors and designers and publicists. Lastly, I want to see space for stories with plus-size bodies that aren't issue books and that create space for body size to be a fluid part of a story and a character's identity.

Cindy becomes a last-minute contestant on the reality dating show "Before Midnight." Are you a fan of reality TV? Are there any shows or TV moments that inspired you?
I was a huge fan of “The Real World” and “Road Rules” growing up, but I was only a casual viewer of reality television dating shows. So beyond rewatching every version of Cinderella I could find to prepare for writing this book, I also had to beef up on shows like “The Bachelor.” Thankfully my editor, Jocelyn Davies, is a huge fan and was able to guide me through the many, many seasons. And now I'm a devout fan. In fact, I'm currently deeply invested in the newest season of “The Bachelorette.” (Is anyone else a little weirded out by the cat guy? And I like cats!)

Making Cindy’s stepmother, Erika, a producer on "Before Midnight" was a genius idea, given that there’s often a stereotypical, meddling executive behind the scenes in depictions of reality TV. But she's more than just a one-dimensional villain. Why did you want to complicate the figure of the wicked stepmother? At what point in the writing process did you start realizing there was more to unpack with her character?
From the beginning I knew that a really compelling way to complicate this story would be to give Cindy's stepmother some more dimension. Without even adding in the other elements of the traditional Cinderella story, the relationship between a stepchild and stepparent is already so interesting. I also really loved the idea of Cindy knowing a slightly softer side of her stepmother than the rest of the world does.

The thought of being Cindy's age, where you're technically an adult but still turning to your parents in many ways, was an added layer that I was really excited to dig into. Cindy's parents are gone. The only parental figure she has is a woman her father married a few years ago. All of those ingredients made the relationship between Cindy and Erika really thought-provoking without even having to go for the more obvious villainous tendencies.

In addition to TV production, If the Shoe Fits also explores the world of shoe design, which is Cindy's dream career. Was there any research involved in getting the details of both those industries just right?
Spending time on the set of Dumplin' really primed me for the reality TV aspect. It also gave me easy access to lots of people who could give me some great insight. I also found Amy Kaufman's book, Bachelor Nation, immensely helpful.

As far as the design aspect, it really came down to good old-fashioned research. When I graduated high school, I was actually accepted at and planning to attend the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising but had to back out at the last minute because of a family financial crisis. Even though I never did make it to design school, I had a really strong understanding of the expectations and what that sort of career path might look like. So making Cindy a shoe designer ended up a really natural fit.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of If the Shoe Fits.


Cindy’s appearance on "Before Midnight" throws her into the spotlight and makes her a body positivity icon. Do Cindy’s experiences and insecurities around becoming this de facto spokesperson of a movement mirror your own as a writer who focuses on body positivity and diversity?
There are so many incredibly talented and creative voices out there addressing body positivity and fat positivity (because they are truly two different things), but in some ways the success of Dumplin' did make me and my work some people's first interactions with the idea. That does come with a lot of pressure and responsibility, but it's also so, so important to remember that there's no one single fat experience. Every plus-size person out there sees and experiences the world through a different lens, and I think that's important for creators and public figures to remember, but also audiences. If someone learns about body and/or fat positivity through me, I hope that I'm only the first step and that they continue to learn more and experience more. I'm only one fat white lady from Texas, and I can't and will never speak for fat people as a whole. All that said, if all my work amounts to is widening a path for more plus-size creatives, then I'm happy. Lord knows someone came before me, and someone came before them.

What can we expect from you in the future?
It's been a really exciting time in my career. During the pandemic, I found myself writing even more, because it's my passion and I find it so comforting. This year, I released the third and final book in the Dumplin-verse, titled Pumpkin. I also have the second half of the Faith duology, Faith: Greater Heights, coming out in November. Next year, I'm launching a really different and exciting project, and I can't wait to talk about it. I'm literally bursting at the seams! And lastly, I'm currently working on an adaptation of my middle grade novel, Dear Sweet Pea, for the Disney Channel. I'm happy! I'm busy!

Julie Murphy dishes about the liberating experience of writing grown-up characters and why her version of the wicked stepmother is more complicated than conniving.

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Helen Hoang’s debut romance, The Kiss Quotient, was released to universal acclaim in 2018. Quan Diep, a tattooed bad boy with a heart of gold, nearly stole the show, and fans clamored for him to get his very own love story. But the pressure of creating a match for Quan weighed heavily on her. We talked to Hoang about how her artistic burnout led to The Heart Principle, in which Quan meets his match in Anna Sun, a classical violinist.

Romance fans have been so excited for The Heart Principle, and now it’s finally out! How do you feel?
This was an extremely difficult book to write, and one of the reasons is how personal it was. Anna’s story was inspired by recent events in my own life. Her emotions and thoughts, especially, are things that I personally felt and thought. Now that I’m sharing my experiences with readers, one of the biggest things I’m feeling is vulnerable.

While many readers will be familiar with the first two books in the series, this may be the first Helen Hoang romance for others. What would you tell those new readers to expect from The Heart Principle?
This is not the most lighthearted book I’ve written, and I recommend picking it up when they need catharsis rather than a fun, feel-good experience. I suspect this is the kind of book that will make people cry. It’s also, in my opinion, very steamy.

"I had to fight for every word. . ."

What is your typical writing process like? Was there anything different about crafting this book in particular?
Before I was published, I used to daydream my books in their entirety before I wrote them. My stories were an escape, somewhere I could go when real life became too much. The Kiss Quotient and The Bride Test were “daydream” books, and because of the way publishing works, I finished writing them both before my debut. The Heart Principle is the first book that I had to write after being published, after people had developed expectations of me, and the pressure to meet those expectations made it impossible to daydream. Honestly, the pressure, combined with life events, made me mentally ill.

Like Anna, I compulsively started this book over again and again. Nothing I wrote was good enough, and I couldn’t see where the story was going. I completely lost confidence in my ability as a writer, and I second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-guessed myself with every sentence, which led to panic attacks and burnout. Writing this book was a real journey for me. I had to fight for every word, and I had to fight for my mental health as I did so. In the end, I can’t quite say I managed to regain trust in my writing, but I do accept my writing. This is what I have to give. It’s not perfect. It’s not the best. It’s not what every single reader wants. But it gets to stand, it gets to be—just like each of us gets to be.

Quan was a fan favorite pretty much from the moment he was introduced in The Kiss Quotient. Did you expect that at all? How hard was it to write a heroine to match him?
Truthfully, I didn’t anticipate Quan would be a fan favorite, and yes, I had a hard time creating a heroine to match him. But I tried my best to give Quan someone who saw him, truly loved him and felt real at the same time.

Anna gets a boost of viral fame on YouTube but experiences some heavy burnout while trying to make lightning strike twice. Was this part of Anna’s story always present, or did it become more prominent as you were writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people became burned out in work?
When I first pitched this story to my publisher, it was supposed to be a fun, gender-swapped Sabrina and had nothing to do with burnout. Clearly, things changed during the writing process. My first book, The Kiss Quotient, did far better than I imagined it would, and when I tried to reproduce the magic with The Heart Principle so I wouldn’t disappoint readers, my efforts led to burnout, which in turn inspired that aspect of the book.

The worst of my burnout happened right before the COVID-19 pandemic. Ironically, quarantining under stay-at-home orders was a relief to me. Being on the autism spectrum, social interaction is extremely stressful and demanding work for me, and I haven’t minded social distancing at all. That said, like for most people, the off-the-charts levels of anxiety and uncertainty during these times have been a challenge.

What’s been getting you through the past year? Any wonderful books that brought you comfort? A new, calming hobby?
Hands down, the books that provided the greatest escape for me over the past year are Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians romances. (There are 22, plus an adjacent series with another 15 books, and I read them all.) They’re as far from reality as you can get (they literally don’t take place on this planet), there are no politics or impeachments or elections, and the conflicts revolve around basic survival. The heroes are blue aliens (most of them, anyway) whose greatest goals in life are to make their human mates (they come in all body types and ethnicities and are each the most beautiful person in the world to their alien) happy.

When I was writing and struggling with frequent panic attacks, it helped to have coloring books on hand so I could calm down and reset my mind before getting back to work. I also got really into Rubik’s cubes and such. My current favorite is the Gigaminx. It’s a dodecahedron with five-layered sides. I spent hundreds of hours (not exaggerating) solving, mixing and resolving this puzzle as a form of meditation. The algorithms are ingrained in my muscle memory now.

Complex emotional arcs are always prominent in your romances. Without giving away too many details, Anna deals with a family tragedy in this book. How do you balance tough subjects (anxiety, grief, trauma) while still moving the couple toward a happily ever after?
When I write heavy topics in romance, the key for me is finding the emotional connection between those things and the conflict keeping the lovers apart. Once that’s done, the story seems to fall into place and balance itself very naturally. In The Heart Principle, for example, that emotional connection is Anna’s helpless desire for external validation.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Heart Principle.


Out of the three books in the Kiss Quotient series, which hero is your favorite—Michael, Kai or Quan?
I really can’t pick. It would be like asking me to say which of my kids I love more!

One of the things I’ve loved most about your books are your author’s notes. They’re very cathartic to read, and you really give readers a peek at your inspiration for each specific romance. How did that become a tradition for you, and do you think you’ll always write one for each book?
When we were preparing to release The Kiss Quotient, I remember thinking that I had more to share than just the story in the book, that I wanted to talk about my late autism diagnosis. It changed my life, and I hoped that by bringing attention to the underdiagnosis of autism in women, I could help lead other women like myself toward greater self-understanding and improve their quality of life. I asked my editor if I could add an author’s note to the book, and she supported the idea.

For The Bride Test and The Heart Principle, on the other hand, I didn’t originally plan to write author’s notes, but when my editor asked if there was more I wanted to say, I realized that there was. I think she could see how personal these books are to me and wanted to provide the opportunity for me to share the stories behind the stories. I’m not sure I’ll always write author’s notes like these. It’ll depend on the book. If there’s something important I left out or if I feel I can bring attention to issues close to my heart, I imagine I’ll ask readers for those extra minutes of their time before they shut the book.

 

Author photo by Eric Kieu.

Helen Hoang’s third book was the hardest to write. It also might be her best one yet.

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