Love Bytes says hello and welcome to authors Tia Fielding and Lisa Henry joining us today to talk about their co authored series
Check out the fabulous interview these two came with!
A Conversation Between Co-authors
Tia Fielding: So hey I reserved this blog space from Dani and I’ve no clue what we should do with it so… let’s just talk about the books we’ve written together and what we’re writing next or… something? Or just like… start from somewhere and end up wherever, because we start rambling? In any case, yes. That reminds me, I still need to see Knives Out. (Don’t ask how it reminded me, I have ADHD.)
Lisa Henry: Rambling is good! I also still haven’t seen Knives Out and it’s on my list! But first, books!
Family Recipe is the first book that Tia and I wrote together. It wasn’t even that long ago, but I already can’t remember whose idea it was to do this thing. All I remember is that it was a pretty crazy time with me. I think I was travelling through part of it! But somehow, despite the fact that both of us should have been working on different things, and kept warning the other that there might be a delay with getting the next chapter written, the words kept coming. I won’t say the book wrote itself, but I think we were both so motivated to see what happened next that we just couldn’t slow down.
And then, the moment we were finished, instead of taking a break like I feel most people would have, we both said, “You know who needs his own book here? Wyatt!” And we dived straight into the sequel, Recipe for Two.
Family Recipe is Justin and Del’s story. Recipe for Two takes a time jump, and Justin and Del take a backseat to Justin’s little brother Wyatt, who was only four in the first book. So it can absolutely be read as a standalone, but it was a lot of fun seeing where a gap of about 15 years had left all the characters from the first book. It’s like going back and checking on Justin and Del’s happy ending through a different character’s eye. And their happy ending is very much a work in progress, I think, because every relationship is, but they’re still very much in love and devoted to each other and to their family.
It was also fun to flip the script a little. In Family Recipe, most of Justin’s challenges are external: his mother has died leaving him custody of these kids, he’s got no money, no job, and he’s drowning under the weight of all the stress. They’re mostly practical things. Whereas in Recipe for Two, Wyatt’s conflicts are mostly internal. He’s struggling with his identity, and with how he sees himself as opposed to how others see him. From the outside he lives a very privileged life, nothing at all like Justin’s at the same age, but he’s very much drowning too.
Tia: Oh I remember that! First of all we wrote the two books Really Fast compared to what we thought we would. It’s one of those things where the timezones worked for us really well. Unlike with trying to get this thing written….
But yeah, I think it was me who, once we’d finished writing Family Recipe, went “Do you think Wyatt needs his own book?” because we’d sort of set it up that way without really thinking about it. I remember giving Wy some tiny characteristics that fed perfectly into who he ends up being in Recipe for Two.
And I love the Abbots so much! It’s been fun to hear from readers who have loved the epilogue of Family Recipe, because it’s already like a continuation or a glimpse from another POV but still within the family. I feel like Recipe for Two is more of that, even if it revolves around Wyatt and Izzy.
Lisa: Yes, I think it was you who said Wyatt needed his own book. And I jumped at the idea, because I’d been thinking it too! Maybe it’s because in Family Recipe Wyatt is the kid who is the hardest to read? Harper says exactly what she thinks, and Scarlett yells when she’s not happy, but Wyatt was just this silent little kid who observes everything. When he interacts, it feels a lot bigger than when his sisters do it, because he’s just so shy. All the little kids are traumatised by their mother’s death and the way they were treated before that, but Wy is the one who internalises it. I think we were both curious as to how he’d grow up and what his path would be. And when we meet him again as an adult, it’s clear he’s still very much excruciatingly shy and terrified of the world.
I think what’s fun too is that we gave Justin and Wyatt such different partners. Del, of course, is pretty much the perfect guy, right? Not that he doesn’t make mistakes, but generally speaking he knows what to do. He’s very much the solution to Justin’s problems. Whereas Izzy, Wyatt’s eventual boyfriend, seems like a terrible match on paper. He’s an ex-con, he’s a drug user, and he’s the kind of guy who hurls verbal barbs first and thinks about it later. And yet despite all this, he’s the right guy for Wyatt. And I think it’s because he’s a fighter, and he absolutely acknowledges his past mistakes, and he’s trying to do better. And most importantly, he accepts Wyatt for who he is, even if it takes him a while to wrap his brain around the idea of gender fluidity. And that’s what Wyatt really needs in a partner.
Tia: I think one of us went “you know we can’t give him someone like Del, right?” And we sure didn’t…. Yeah, as soon as I figured out exactly how much of a “go with the flow” type of person Izzy was when it came to Wyatt’s identity, I felt oddly reassured that he really was going to work with the Abbots too. Like of course we control stuff (to a degree, hah!) when we write, right? But sometimes you just don’t know if something or someone works until you really get there or something clicks.
At some point I think we had this conversation about how do we get Justin to accept Izzy and well… once the book is out on the 21st, everyone gets to read how that came to be! I’m so excited about it. I feel like our readers really connected with the characters and that’s, ultimately, what we’re trying to do.
Lisa: Just personally too, these books, for both of us, were about rediscovering our love of writing in this genre after months where a lot of the joy had been sucked out of it by issues with a certain press. Ongoing issues, as it happens, but writing this series was a huge step at getting some momentum back, and taking some joy in writing again.
Tia: Oh yes! Now I remember. I think the initial conversation went something like “would you like to attempt writing something completely unrelated to anything with our former publisher?” And because we were in such a slump, we decided to just run with it. Look at us now!
Sure, some of the issues are still ongoing and will be for a while, but at least we managed to kickstart our muses in the best, most productive way. And we’re kind of continuing that again… We wrote the first two so fast that I almost thought we might burn this co-author thing to the ground, but luckily it seems like we didn’t. It just took the right new idea to get us going again.
Of course we’re writing our solo projects but there’s something really freeing about writing together and it seems to work for our muses really well. Keeps them going.
Lisa: I’ve said before that collaborative writing is like a mix of “Look at all this momentum! Where did it come from?” and “I don’t want to be the one who drops the ball, so I have finish this chapter today!” It works for me that way, anyway!
Tia: With my ADHD and everything else going on, keeping a consistent rhythm in writing can be super tricky. Even though I don’t have a day job, it’s still hard for me to keep the momentum going. The tricky bit is that the momentum, writing consistently, really feeds itself.
So with the timezones I still found myself writing on most days, because on most days when I woke up, you’d written your chapter my “overnight” and I could continue from there. Somehow it all worked and let’s not look that particular gift horse in the mouth, eh?
Lisa: Absolutely! And it’s a lot of fun to wake up to a new chapter, and see what direction the story has taken while you were sleeping, and where you can take it from there! We’re both pantsers instead of plotters, so we only have a vague map when we start out, which leaves a lot of wriggle room.
Tia: Oh yes… I mean, I try to outline my stories and sometimes pretty carefully too nowadays. But it’s been so freeing to go back to that “well do we think this thing should happen now or later? How about that other thing? We’ll see when we get there, eh?” and then the final result might be that something we thought was Really Important when we were talking about it never even made it into the story because it was waylaid by something completely different and, to be honest, better.
Lisa: It’s a fun way to write! And it takes a lot of pressure off too. Sometimes on a solo project when I hit a wall it can stall me for months. But with someone else also playing in the world, it’s a lot easier to push through and find a solution and keep going.
Tia: Definitely! By the way, I asked one of my regular readers if she could guess which one of us wrote which character in Family Recipe and she couldn’t say. I did tell her, and she said she would’ve never been able to guess because we write so similarly. Which worked really well for us. I find it jarring occasionally with co-written stories when the author voices are very different. At least we sound similar? But then again I guess our boys are always like… we make these plans and notes and combine them into a file and one of us goes “which one do you want to write?” and the other is “well, I don’t really have a preference” and it goes from there? So maybe that kind of explains it too in some weird way.
Lisa: We’re writing another collaboration at the moment, and I’m so glad that Tia decided which character she wanted to write, because I kept flipping back and forth and couldn’t make my mind up. I wanted them both, I think! But I’ve got my guy now, and he is, of course, a miserable mess at this point. But we’ll get him to his happy ending eventually!
Tia: Yes, because mine is so stable and not at all problematic… lol… geeeeez. Erm, where was I? Oh yes, I was thinking about this just now, and my first thought was “the new story is SO different from the Abbots” and then I realized it’s… really not? In a way? Because isn’t this a family story too? Just in a different way?
Lisa: It’s definitely a lot darker than Family Recipe and Recipe for Two. But it’s also about finding your family, even if they’re not where you expected! And I think that’s something most of us can relate to as we navigate our way through life. I’m really excited for this story. These guys are both so damaged, and they have so much history they need to untangle. They’re going to work really hard for that happy ending!
Tia: Yes, while we screw them over every step of the way, mwahahahah….
Lisa: Guilty as charged! It’s our take on a Romeo and Juliet story, set in a modern small town in Nevada. The elements of a tragedy are all there, but of course it’ll end much more optimistically than the source material.
Tia: Right, I think it’s going to be “well this ended up so different from R&J…?” in the end. But the themes are very similar and I think drawing inspiration from it has been interesting. Then again, most of the time when we write ANYTHING it’s based on the thought of “if I wrote this thing I just saw/read, this is how I’d do it My Way.” So… borrowing from the Bard might not be that different to what we do normally anyway?
Lisa: Also, our version has a cat in it, so it’s already better than Shakespeare’s, right?
Tia: Well obviously. Duh. Have we rambled long enough? Probably too long. Hi you who are still reading this! Thanks for hanging out!
Lisa: Thanks for hanging out, and thank you so much Dani for inviting us along today! It’s been a blast! (And my apologies to Shakespeare!)
Family Recipe
Justin O’Dwyer is 19. Four days ago, his mother died of a drug overdose, and now Justin is back in Enterprise, Oregon, trying to figure out how to raise the younger siblings he’s afraid of losing to the foster system. Justin is completely out of his depth. Harper is six, and hates him. Wyatt is four and doesn’t remember him. And baby Scarlett, at fourteen months, has never even met her big brother before. When Scarlett gets sick and won’t stop screaming, and when Harper runs off in the middle of the night, Justin is at the end of his tether. In desperation, he knocks on a neighbor’s door begging for help.
Del Abbot is 38, and living in his grandparents’ old place in Enterprise after his marriage broke down and he lost his restaurant in the divorce. He’s a chef, even had his own show on cable for a while, but now he’s looking for a new start, if he could just figure out what exactly that entails. When the O’Dwyer family barrels into his life one night, Del can’t refuse to help. What begins as a trip to the hospital becomes a regular child-minding gig while Justin struggles to find his feet. And the more time Del spends with Justin, the more they both want more than friendship. But small town life comes with its own bigotry, and, in Justin’s case, that bigotry has always been close to home.
When an act of violence threatens to destroy the small family they’ve built, both Justin and Del need to put aside their pasts and reach for their future together.
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Recipe for Two (out March 21st)
Wyatt Abbot is 19. On the outside, he lives the perfect life. He has a loving family, he’s wealthy, and he has just been given the opportunity to travel to Paris and train under one of the world’s best pastry chefs. But underneath all that, Wyatt is struggling. He’s battling anxiety, he’s scared of the future, and he’s struggling to come to terms with the fact that he’s genderfluid.
Izzy Kostas is 28, and on parole. When he gets a job at Abbot Organic Produce, it’s a chance for a new start. Izzy has his own demons he’s trying to overcome, but meeting Wyatt throws even more complications his way. Izzy has always thought of himself as straight, and certainly didn’t expect to fall for his boss’s little brother.
When Izzy is blamed for putting the Abbots at risk, it jeopardizes everything he and Wyatt have begun to build together. Izzy knows how important family is to Wyatt, and he doesn’t want him to have to take sides. But when it comes to found families, nobody is perfect, and there’s always room for another seat at the table.
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Tia Fielding:
Tia Fielding is a Finnish author who loves witty people, words, peppermint, sarcasm, autumn, and the tiny beautiful things in life.
Tia identifies as genderqueer but isn’t strict about pronouns. Why? Because luckily, in her native language there aren’t gender-specific pronouns.
These days, preferring to live in the middle of nowhere with her fur babies is as big of a part of her psyche as writing. Tia likes to recharge in nature and tends to watch where she’s going through her cell phone’s camera.
In 2013 Tia’s novel Falling Into Place was recognized by the industry’s Rainbow Awards in the Best LGBT Erotic Romance (Bobby Michaels Award) category.
In 2019, her novel Four (Love by Numbers #2) won a Rainbow Award in the Best Transgender Contemporary category.
Facebook Reader Group: facebook.com/groups/spoondrawer/
Twitter: @tiafielding
Email: tiafielding@gmail.com
Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/tiafielding
Lisa Henry:
Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters. Lisa has been published since 2012, and was a LAMBDA finalist for her quirky, awkward coming-of-age romance Adulting 101.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
Live SM links:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5050492.Lisa_Henry
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lisa-henry
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisaHenryOnline
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisa_henry_author/