Elizabetta interviews Lisa Henry and J.A. Rock for the Blog of Sid Love

 

The blog of Sid Love welcomes authors Lisa Henry and J.A. Rock today. So glad to have both of you here with us! Congratulations on the new book, Mark Cooper versus America.

JAR: Thanks for having us!

LH: Hello!

 

First off, you both have birthdays this month — Happy Birthday to both of you!!  Any special plans, other than the release of Mark Cooper versus America?

 

 

LH: Oh, just the usual drunken debauchery. That’s actually a lie. My plans for my birthday involve lying on my bed and only getting up when I must. I think JA was intending to take over the world though.

 

JAR: Did not go so well.

 

LH: But I made up a banner and everything, proclaiming you god-emperor.

 

JAR: I’ll still take the banner.

 

I have to say that I’m a big fan, I’ve so enjoyed your past work…  Your ‘Boy’ series: The Good Boy, it’s follow up The Boy Who Belonged and The Naughty Boy short, have been very successful, popular reads. Let’s jump right in… I believe there was a little buzz about the ‘puppy play’ in the first book.  In fact, you like to portray the kinkier side of sex-play in your books and we see this again in Mark Cooper… So, we’ll start off with a big question… why is this so essential to your characters?

 

 

LH: I don’t know that kink is essential to all our characters. I think we could have written Derek and Lane from The Good Boy without the puppy play. But what’s important to us is that when we include kink, it’s not just for titillation. It becomes an integral part of that character. I think kink is fascinating. I actually think all relationships are fascinating, in that new period of getting to know one another and negotiating what you both want, but add some kink in there and a lot more has to work to come together. And that can be really fun, and really rewarding, to write.

 

JAR: I love writing kink. I think you can reveal a lot about a character by what they’re willing–or unwilling–to explore in the bedroom. I know there’s some backlash against the idea of BDSM-as-healing or portraying emotionally damaged or mentally unstable characters as kinky. But I think there’s an important distinction between suggesting that a character likes BDSM BECAUSE they are in some way psychologically wounded–and portraying a character who is psychologically wounded and also happens to be kinky. No, BDSM is not therapy–but it can be a way for partners to communicate and meet each other’s needs on a very deep and intimate level. In THE GOOD BOY, Lane is definitely suffering. And kink can’t fix that–but it does help him open up to Derek. It helps him want to get stronger. With the boys in MARK COOPER, nobody’s traumatized–a first for us!–but the kink still becomes a form of communication and self-revelation.

 

How did you two hook up for your very first collaboration, what brought you together?

 

JAR: We’d been email pen pals for a while. I had wanted to try co-writing, but I was too nervous to ask. Then I got a random burst of courage while I was on vacation and sent Lisa an email, then shut the computer and ran away. But luckily, when I got up the nerve to check my email again, she’d said yes.

 

LH: It was like getting one of those emails telling me that I’d won the Spanish National Lottery — and the crazy thing was, I’d never even entered the Spanish National Lottery. That’s how incredibly lucky I felt!

 

How do you do this magic? Is it easy banging out the work or is it a process each time? What is the process?

 

LH: JA, have we refined this into a process yet? *whispers* I don’t think this is a process. We come up with an idea, one of us starts, and we take turns until we’re done. If it had to be more complicated than that, we’d probably have given up by now.

 

JAR: We can’t do complicated.

 

But I would say it’s pretty easy to get the first drafts out. We both have a lot of ideas, and we get really excited about them and have to get them out as quickly as possible. I always worried I’d suck at co-writing because I thought I was more of a work-it-out-in-my-head person and probably a bad communicator. But it turns out I LOVE talking through the rough spots with someone. So much easier than trying to do it all alone. Like, to the point where I now become angry when I’m working on a solo project and get stuck and Lisa’s not there to tell me what to do.

 

Do you both work on each of the main characters or do you pick one?

 

JAR: We share the characters pretty equally. If we alternate, it’s by scene, not by character. Sometimes one of us will have the seed idea for a character (in this case, Lisa had the idea for Mark), but through the brainstorming process they all end up becoming both of ours.

 

I’m assuming in Mark Cooper that Lisa, since Mark is from Australia, that you took on developing him and J.A., you did Deacon?

 

JAR: Mark is Lisa’s brainchild, but like I said, we’re good at sharing! With Mark, I think I finally sort of understood how it must feel for Lisa writing American characters all the time. It’s not a huge difference or anything, but there were definitely moments when I felt insecure about what Aussie word Mark might use to describe something, or what his hometown looked like. But as of November, I have BEEN to Bundaberg Australia! And Lisa has used enough Aussie words on me that I at least knew Mark would call the trashcan a bin.

 

LH: I’m especially grateful to our publisher, Loose Id, for letting us use “arse” instead of “ass” when we’re in Mark’s POV.

 

JAR: That was nice of them.

 

With Mark, what did you want to say most about his character in the story? What does he represent? (I ask because he has so much anger in him, and it’s always bumping up against a softer, more vulnerable side… I found this very interesting.)

 

LH: I’m going to claim a little bit of Mark. When I was a kid, my parents moved every two years because of my dad’s job. And by the time you’re a teenager, the worst thing your parents can do is take you away from your friends. Anyway, I got pretty good at being the new kid in school. You have to walk that line between “I don’t even care what anyone here thinks of me” and “Oh god, please, please, please talk to me, I’m lonely!” And as much as you try to bluff your way through when you’re homesick and you have no friends, you really just want someone to be nice to you. Mark is older than I was when I did most of my moving, but I think he’s acutely feeling the same way. And when he runs into guys like Bengal who want to put him in his place, that just makes him more determined not to give an inch.

 

JAR: I love angry characters with a vulnerable side. That is all.

 

 

 

Deacon’s mom has a serious illness. Her OCD (especially the fear that her sons are always near death) weighs heavily on her family, and in particular we see how it affects Deacon’s life. I always wonder how an author chooses to highlight something like this in a story. Any comments about this?

 

JAR: It’s a disorder that really interests me, since several people in my family have it to varying degrees. There are a lot of ways it manifests, from germ phobia to compulsive behavior to catastrophic thinking. Deacon’s mom is a pretty extreme case–she kind of has all the manifestations. I’m always interested, as a reader and writer, in compassionate portrayals of mental illness. There’s still such a stigma attached to mental disorders. As a writer, you don’t want to shy away from exploring the hardships of either having a mental illness or loving someone who has one. But you also want to give those characters a life and an identity outside of what’s “wrong” with them.

 

 

Who’s idea was Blake? (For our readers, Blake is Mark’s big brother in the frat house.) He’s a nice guy, if a little slow… he has issues with getting locked in bathrooms… frequently. I think he’s my favorite secondary character because he breaks from the stereotype of the footballer frat boy. How did he come about?

 

LH: Blake started this whole thing. Once upon a time, in the wilds of Alabama — JA, stop me if I’m telling it wrong — JA used to tutor football players. And once we were emailing when she mentioned one of them had gone to the bathroom and not come back. We figured he was either skipping class, or he was stuck in there for days. And the Legend of Blake was born.

 

JAR: That is exactly how it happened.

 

LH: On the plus side, thanks to JA’s emails, I now know that the Crimson Tide is not just the name of a movie with Denzel Washington in it.

 

JAR: IS that a Denzel Washington movie? “Crimson Tide” is such a disconcerting phrase. Alabama is crazy into football. Even the laundromat was called Crimson Tide Laundry or something, and the sign had a giant red wave on it. Every time I drove by, I’d feel like, “Holy fuck, get that wave of blood away from my whites!”

 

LH: Waves of blood should be reserved for horror movies. Anywhere else and they are not a selling point.

 

JAR: There was also a Crimson Care hospital. Because that’s comforting.

 

What lead you to the Greek system, wanting to write about that? Does anything like this exist at Australian University? How is it looked upon there? J.A., have you experienced Greek life/any thoughts about it?

 

LH: This is completely foreign to me. At university here, if you want to be in a club, you join one. Like if you want to hang out with the kids who row, join the rowing club. If you want to hang out with the theatre kids, join the drama club. The only thing we have that is anything like fraternities would be the rivalries between the residences. And that’s more of a lottery than anything, since you apply for a few and hope to get accepted by one of the non-church run ones who will, you know, let you have alcohol and fornication and stuff. But it seems to be a big deal in America to live on campus as well. Most Aussie kids don’t do that. We either still live with our parents, or end up sharing houses together. It’s amazing how many uni students you can fit into a standard 4 bedroom home.

 

JAR: I have no experience with Greek life, except for that one time in college I agreed to go to the ZBT formal as my friend’s date. I spent a lot of time eating other people’s mint chocolate mousses. So this book required a lot of research. But it was really interesting. Greek life wasn’t a huge deal at my undergrad campus, but where I went to grad school, it was BIG. And tended to look kind of stereotypical, from an outside perspective. We tried to be careful in MARK COOPER about stereotyping. We weren’t looking to attack Greek life.

 

LH: Agreed. We decided early on that some of the Alpha Delts would be those kind of frat boys, but not all of them. And we made Phi Sig the sort of fraternity that anyone would actually be proud to join.

I thought it a nice touch having the feuding frat houses and then the set up for a ‘star-crossed lovers’ relationship between Mark and Deacon as they get dragged into the feud. If you had to pick a frat house, Alpha Delt (Mark’s) or Phi Sig (Deacon’s), which one would it be and why?

LH: Phi Sig. I like Risk even though it takes sixteen weeks to play a game.

JAR: Phi Sig. I’m such a nerd. And they have a dog.

These guys are very in tune to their inner kink (the sexual adventurousness was so fun!) even though it was awkward for them at first. We talked about this earlier in the interview, but in terms of how very young both these guys are… what made you want to bring this out in them?

LH: What can I say? I’d have discovered kink a lot earlier if any of my partners at that age had suggested it. I think kinks are so entwined with our sexuality that it’s impossible to separate them. The only difference between Mark and Deacon here, is that Mark and Deacon figure it out a little earlier. I think it’s all down to Mark’s brashness. Because he pretends not to be intimidated by anything, and because he’s so cocky, I think he was always going to be the sort of person who stumbled on his kinks from a young age. What surprises him, I think, is how meaningful they are to him.

JAR: I think coming of age kink is still a pretty untapped genre. Most kinky people I know have known since they were like, five or six, even if they didn’t fully understand what their desires would mean in an adult context. I came out at 22 to my partner. And yeah, you don’t necessarily have the experience or knowledge to be able to articulate exactly what you want at that age. You just have to figure it out. And show the other person passages in books you’ve read and hope they won’t run for the door. Getting to write about that discovery process is very rewarding.

LH: Right. Why else would the game of doctor have involved ropes?

JAR: And enemas.

That scene on the mechanical bull with Mark dressed up as a French maid (readers, you HAVE to read this)… soooo, hot! um, I seriously had to take a breather after that one… How did that come about? Who’s idea?

LH: I think that was JA’s idea. Maybe the French maid outfit was mine, but the mechanical bull was definitely hers. And it was a great combination.

JAR: I love mechanical bulls. It’s the West Virginia in me.

I loved the ribbing at American culture… and Mark’s fear of snow and bears, his disdain for s’mores, that all-American campfire tradition… Lisa, are these personal bugaboos? LOL! Do you not relate to snow? Let me try again… is this a general Aussie thing or…?

LH: We have snow here. Just further south than I live. The first time I saw snow I was 14 and on a school ski trip. We got there at 9 am, and our first ski lesson wasn’t until midday. But we figured out pretty early on that you stopped by screaming and throwing yourself sideways. And I have seen television programs about bears. JA and I got into an email argument once about what was scarier — bears or crocs — and then a bear walked across her driveway. Say what you will about crocodiles, at least I have to go to them if I want to get attacked.

JAR: Yeah, but crocs can get you on the land or in the water. With bears, just run for the nearest body of water.

Wait…can bears swim? I feel like I saw one swim in Milo & Otis.

And s’mores… thumbs up or thumbs down?

LH: Thumbs up!

JAR: Duh.

I thought Mark Cooper wrapped up nicely in the end but… can we expect anything more from these two? Any more frat adventures?

LH: I don’t know. I think we had a lot of fun writing Mark and Deacon, but I also feel like they got to ride off into their kinky sunset. But maybe we can revisit Prescott with a different cast one day. Although it would be fun to dump Deacon in Australia…

JAR: Can he fight a kangaroo?

LH: Only if the kangaroo wins.

JAR: ‘Kangaroo Versus Deacon Holt’?

If this is it for the guys… Where do you see Mark in ten years? Deacon?

LH: Deacon will be gainfully employed in his chosen career. Mark will have become a pro snowboarder, and credit his first Olympic gold to the day Deacon forced him out into the snow. He will have flunked out of college. Of course, all my answers change depending on the date of the zombie apocalypse.

JAR: The Mayan calendar says the zombie apocalypse won’t happen for another hundred years.

LH: Did they adjust that for leap years?

JAR: Shit…I dunno.

What can you tell us about your next project together?

For a complete and utter change of pace, we have When All The World Sleeps, coming from Riptide on March 24. It’s dark, and it’s angst-filled, and we both love it so much!

Daniel Whitlock is terrified of going to sleep. And rightly so: he sleepwalks, with no awareness or memory of his actions. Including burning down Kenny Cooper’s house—with Kenny inside it—after Kenny brutally beat him for being gay. Back in the tiny town of Logan after serving his prison sentence, Daniel isolates himself in a cabin in the woods and chains himself to his bed at night.

Like the rest of Logan, local cop Joe Belman doesn’t believe Daniel’s absurd defense. But when Bel saves Daniel from a retaliatory fire, he discovers that Daniel might not be what everyone thinks: killer, liar, tweaker, freak. Bel agrees to control Daniel at night—for the sake of the other townsfolk. Daniel’s fascinating, but Bel’s not going there.

Yet as he’s drawn further into Daniel’s dark world, Bel finds that he likes being in charge. And submitting to Bel gives Daniel the only peace he’s ever known. But Daniel’s demons won’t leave him alone, and he’ll need Bel’s help to slay them once and for all—assuming Bel is willing to risk everything to stand by him.

 

A big Thank You to Lisa Henry & J.A Rock for visiting our blog

They graciously offered a GIVEAWAY of  copy of their upcoming release

To enter leave a comment below and don’t forget to add you email ID.

Contest will end feb 2 nd

Check out Elizabetta’s wonderful Pre release review here :

http://sidlove.com/2014/01/27/pre-release-review-marc-cooper-versus-america/

 

Good Luck