Talking To: Christina Lauren

We caught up with TikTok’s fave romance authors (and rightly so), Christina and Lauren! Their latest release ‘Something Wilder’ was the hot topic, and if you haven’t read it yet, READ IT! We gave it a 5 star rating, and we thought it was absolutely perfect. Read on to find out all the amazing stuff we spoke about, it was an absolute honour and dream come true to speak to the pair!

You both just came off tour, how was it?

Lauren: It was amazing, kinda unexpected how many people showed up. I think people are very excited after the pandemic to get out and do book events or any kind of event again. But a lot of the venues had sold out, so it was offsite. It was really fun, we got to see readers and talk about books, and we went to like 10 different places, and it was wonderful. We missed seeing readers, it's the most fun part.

Christina: Yeah. We had a tour scheduled right before the pandemic, but it got cancelled because of it. We wondered whether people would come to events, and it was really unexpected and amazing.

Tiktok was quite shocked to find that Christina Lauren was in fact two authors who worked together. How did you both come to work with each other?

Lauren: We met in 2009, and we had both been writing fanfics at the time and reading each other's stories. And Christina had a really big story online that had like millions of readers. I invited her to be on the panel at San Diego Comic Con that I was organising to do with fan works. That's when we first met in person, and we really hit it off. And we thought we’d see if we could try writing a little one shot, which is kinda like a single character fanfic together. And it was really fun and did really well in the community, so we thought the natural transition would be to write a book. We were so sweetly naive we didn't realise what was involved in writing a book. But we did it, and here we are 28 books later!

What was your first book?

Christina: Our first book we wrote was like Greek mythology, but that has never been published. When we started writing about the things we love, like kissing and skinny dipping, it just started rolling from there. Our first published book was ‘Beautiful Bastard’.

How do you split the writing process?

Christina: It depends. Every book changes. We always meet in person to outline. Usually we do that in California because I'm in Utah, and Lo is in Southern California. We spend a couple days talking about the book, outlining it. And then we go to our respective homes, and divide the point of view or scene or however we're gonna do it, and at some point start combining them. We upload them to dropbox so we can both see them. And then we go in and edit at the end like a ton, and you can't even tell who did what.

You're like 2 different brains put together as one.

Christina: Yes! Because we both have different strengths. Lo is really good at the super emotional stuff, and I'm better at the action and atmospheric stuff. So it works out perfectly.

‘Something Wilder’ is your latest release. Can you give our readers a synopsis?

Something Wilder is the story of Leo Grady and Lily Wilder, and her name is a homage to Joan Wilder from ‘Romancing The Stone’. And they are former flings and have been separated due to circumstance you'll find out later in the book, but they're thrown back together when Leo’s group of friends booked an adventure with Lily’s expedition company, where she takes tourists out into the canyonlands of Utah on these fake treasure hunts looking for treasure. And when it goes sideways, in a funny way we hope, Lily and the whole gang have to figure out whether they trust each other enough to go after the treasure. There was romance in there but it was also an action adventure, and it was just super fun to write.

I know Christina is from Utah. Was there any inspiration from this?

Christina: When we published “In A Holidaze” it was our second book during the pandemic. So we quarantined for a little bit and then we met in Utah to do the virtual tour because it was so much easier. We did it in St George which is surrounded by this beautiful red rock, and we were looking out over the balcony and it was gorgeous. We started talking about the book then. I always say there's an opening scene in ‘Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade’ where it's young Indiana Jones, and it's this beautiful scene of red rock where they are doing the adventure, and we wanted it to feel like that when you read the book.

I really enjoyed the book. It was literally my first 5 star read of the year!

Christina: Aww! That means so much, thank you.

I really liked how it combined romance as well as action and adventure. I wouldn’t usually read an adventure book, but this gave me a really good glimpse into it, whilst also providing the best romance content! There were also so many twists and turns, and you wouldn't see it coming at all. What inspired the book?

Christina: We found this guy named Phillip, and his job is kinda like what Lily does, in that he takes people to the red rock canyons, and he's a movie scout. And he takes rich people out on little adventures. We originally planned to write a screenplay, but when the pandemic happened we couldn’t imagine writing something in an office or a coffee shop or something like that. So we called Phillip, and he mentioned Butch Cassidy and a lot of people still believe his treasure is out there and still go out trying to find it. As soon as we had that piece all of it came together, and it fit perfectly with Lily's job and the location. He gave us so much information and what they would need and take, he gave us maps, and pictures of different areas and it was so helpful.

Did you go on one of his tours?

Christina: No, unfortunately.

This needs to be added to your bucket list!

Christina: I can see it, I don’t know, I’d need my tents to have a chandelier.

Lauren: I would love to go

How was the process of writing a romance novel with adventure aspects? Did you find it hard writing the treasure hunt elements of the book?

Christina: No it was the most fun we have had drafting a book. The parts that were hard were balancing the adventure aspects with romance, and some of the riddles were hard. We did a bunch of research on code, and riddles and cyphers. And Lo’s husband is very smart so he helped us a lot with that.

There was a lot of code and riddles in there. I feel like it was good because I learned so much there, just from reading the book. Did you do any prior research into code?

Christina: We researched as we wrote. Lo did most of the code and the cyphers. I still read some of them in the book and wonder how on earth they came up with it. And It makes me so happy when people read them and are surprised by them.

This book had some INSANE twists, how did you find writing them? Do you ever spontaneously plan to add them in?

Christina: The plot twists were some of the fun parts. I can't remember if it's chapter 7 or 10, but we know exactly where the reader is when they tweet/post “omg” because that's when everything goes terribly wrong. We had the moment in our minds at the very beginning and when we started writing. And it was fun to start working to write up to that point and then there was a big twist involving someone towards the end that we knew was going to happen and we couldn’t wait to get to that point. And I always get excited when people get to that point and ask them if they saw it coming.

Yeah I know which twist you’re talking about, and I was just as shocked as Leo was.

Christina: We’ve never had a book where we’ve had to say “please don't post spoilers”. We haven't had a book where the ending could be given away, because in a romance you see it coming. But this one has spoilers.

Lauren: It's like ‘Love and other words’.

Christina: We don't know what made them break up, and it's a big twist.

Who is your favourite character?

Lauren: Leo.

Christina: Leo was pretty great

Leo was hot.

Christina: I love Lily, she's such a badass and so strong, but she's so tender inside that you kinda wanna protect her. Nicole and Walter are such scene stealers. Walter is so funny in such an accidental way. There's a scene with a big twist that really makes me laugh.

Walter really reminded me Ross from ‘Friends’

Lauren: Interesting. I feel like everyone has their own Walter.

Friendships, betrayal, and heartbreak are key themes in the book, not just between Leo and his friends, but in some sense between Lily and Leo with their love story 10 years back. What would you say is the message the book offers on these kind of themes?

Christina: How we have circumstances that we have no control over. And also about forgiveness, they both make mistakes because they're young and lost in their own heartbreak. When they get back together they have to agree it happened in the past.

Lauren: It's about fighting for the life that you want.

Christina: You have to go and find it, it's like a treasure one might say.

The book is one big metaphor i guess

‘Something Wilder’ has a lot of men, some sweet, some hot, some irritating. Do you ever fall for your male characters? If so, who caught your eye in this book?

Christina: It's funny because there were more male characters in this book, and they all played a lot of specific roles, and Leo's group was larger in the beginning but there were a lot of names and juggling but we had to cut some and it was hard because we really grew to love them. I would say l]Leo is so dreamy because once he makes his decision you can't change his mind. He knows what he wants, he is all in, and you can't stop him. He's really easy to fall for.

Lauren: I really love the nerds. Or the quiet ones like Leo. My favourite heroes to write are the ones that are head over heels for their girl and cannot even keep their stuff together because they want her so badly. I love pining.

That sounds like a dream!

Nicole and Lily have an amazing relationship, they’re more sisters than friends. What inspired this relationship? Are you giving your readers an insight into the Christina Lauren relationship?

Lauren: We always said Jess and Fizzy in ‘The Soulmate Equation’ have a very Christina Lauren relationship, just like playful and silly and I think Lily and Nicole’s relationship is much more like our functional working relationship. We get our job done, we are capable at our job, we are confident about our job, and we love writing to women who are confident about their jobs. And I think that's one of the nice things about writing Lily and Nicole, it's sad they only have each other but they are each other's ride or die and they will be there for each other no matter what they need. They're constantly checking in on each other and they're in it if the other is, and even though Lily is the boss, they're both partners in all things that matter. So I think their work function relationship definitely comes from us because this is the healthiest relationship I have in my life, and I have a really great marriage but this is the best in terms of functions.

Christina: It's like there's different kinds of love stories and sometimes plutonic, and I love when it happens between 2 best friends. Lo and I always laugh about this, but Ryan Reynolds and Dwayne Johnson have a movie, and their dynamic and their bickering is just like watching an enemies to lovers happening.

If ‘Something Wilder’ was to become a movie, who would you cast?

Lauren: We’ve heard people want Henry Golding for Leo, and I'm not gonna be mad about tht. I would have Lily as Monica Barbaro, the female fighter pilot in the new Top Gun movie.

Christina: We had some fanart done, and we had models that we had found. We wanted it to feel like a romantic poster. If these actors are out there we’ll take them.

What are some of your favourite reads?

Lauren: The books that got us into wanting to write romance are Stephanie Perkins books, especially her ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ series, it's very sweet and beautifully written. Current romance novels, I really love Ali Hazelwood, I have a background in science and she just writes STEM so perfectly.

Christina: Sally Thorne and Kennedy Ryans. Sally has a book about Frankenstein's sister going to the morgue and making a husband. It's so funny.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Lauren: For anyone who read ‘The Soulmate Equation’, we just turned in fizzy's book and we’re about to start edits on it. That was such a blast, she's a really larger than life character and really fun. We’re working on a project coming out in 2024, and it's really exciting. We have so many ideas and not enough time, which is a good problem to have.

I am so excited!

Lauren: It's been really fun, we love doing this. It's nice to slow down to one book a year, but also we get time to flesh out one book, so that's been nice.

You can get a copy of Somethind Wilder here.