An Interview with Sarah Honey & Lisa Henry – #Interview #MMRomance #FanGirl

 

I read tons of romance, and to be honest, it takes a lot to impress me. When I read the first book of the Bad Boyfriends, Inc. series by Sarah Honey and Lisa Henry, I was well and duly floored. It was just so good, on so many dimensions: creative, funny, literate and romantic. The second book was even better. Now they have a third installment in the series out (on my TBR pile). I found myself really curious about this writing duo, and asked if they’d do an interview with me.

So please welcome Lisa Henry and Sarah Honey to Beyond Romance!

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How did the two of you meet? And how did you get started writing as a team?

Sarah — We ‘met’ through A03 and Tumblr, where I fangirled shamelessly over Lisa’s writing, and then she posted about how she couldn’t get a certain dog toy for her lab Daisy and I sent her some. And it kind of went from there. We co-wrote a couple of fanfics together and discovered that our styles meshed incredibly well, and Lisa suggested we co-write a book as proof of concept that I could write a book. My daughter , who was doing some art for Lisa at the time, made a throwaway comment about ‘a penniless scribe with a limp and a penchant for scarves’ and though a process of terrible jokes and discovering we both had a block of time off, Red Heir was born in a frenzied few weeks of writing. And it did stupidly well, so we wrote some more!

Lisa: Daisy still has a few of those toy elephants from the Reject Shop left! Yeah, we met through fanfic, and Sarah liked to say she wasn’t sure she could write a novel. I pointed out to her that she pretty much already was every time she posted a 60 000 fanfic. And then I bullied her into writing a novel with me to show her it was possible! And we had so much fun we kept doing it.

Tell us something about your writing process. Do each of you focus on writing a different character? Do you each do first drafts then pass them off to the other? What about editing?

Sarah— What normally happens is one of us (usually Lisa) will go “We should write this thing!” and I’ll go “Sure!” And then a doc will appear in my inbox. We write together and apart, depending on time zones and work commitments, but we both write both characters. Sometimes one of us will do a solid block of a chapter alone, and other times we’re in there together, bouncing off each other, while we chat in the comments and on discord about where the hell we’re going with this. (We’re both pansters by nature, so it can be a wild ride!)

There’s only one first draft, and 99% of the time I’m all for anything Lisa adds or changes, because she invariably improves on what I’ve done. I’m still a learner driver in the editing department, so usually I'll take a pass at it and send it to Lisa to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

Lisa: It’s very casual! We don’t write a character each or a chapter each. Depending on who’s online, we just jump in and carry on wherever we left off last time.

What was the genesis of the Bad Boyfriend series? Did you expect it to be a series when you started? After Tristan, are there more Bad Boyfriends waiting in the wings?

Sarah—Lisa thought it would be a fun, one off project to write about a guy who’s a deliberately awful date. And when we were, I want to say, 80% of the way through, we decided it would be fun to pass the mantle to the other housemates.

We don’t have any more Bad Boyfriends per se planned, but there have been mumblings about a series featuring the staff and patrons of the Palace, which is the drag bar/nightclub featured in Terribly Tristan.

Lisa: It was definitely one of those times when Sarah thought we were writing a single book, and I started yelling “trilogy!” at her. But the books were a lot of fun to write, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t mind too much.

Who is your favorite bad boyfriend, so far, and why? (I realize that Lisa and Sarah may have different answers to this.)

Sarah—I love them all for different reasons, but I adore Tristan, my glorious slutty butterfly most of all I think. His character evolved through the books and wedged himself firmly centre stage with no permission from us—which is Tris in a nutshell, really.

Lisa: I have a lot of fondness for Harry, because he’s adorkable. But my favourite has to be Tristan. In the beginning, he was just this slightly outlandish background character, but he started stealing every scene he was in, and it was pretty clear he had to have his own book, and his own turn at being a Bad Boyfriend.

One of the things I love about the series is its strong sense of place. Are the settings (for instance, Liam’s family winery) based on experience, imagination, or a combination?

Sarah—the winery was partly a throwback to my days picking grapes when I was younger and had better knees, but it’s also based on a real place in the Hunter Valley. I will say, Lisa is the queen of settings.

Lisa: I was just about to say I am terrible at settings, lol. I don’t know much about wineries, but I am very much a fan of their work!

Do you have any new book ideas simmering on the back burner? If so, can you share?

Sarah—we have ideas! There’s the series set in the Palace, and possibly a follow up to the Adventures in Aguillon series that follows the Callier Travelling Players on the road, and there’s a whisper involving werewolves. For me, I’m 90% of the way through writing a historical romp featuring a king, his irreverent groom, their secret affair, and a smidge of spanking, which I’ve penciled in for a January release.

Lisa: We have so many ideas, it’s just a matter of finding the time to get to them! I have a few solo things lined up, and some co-writing projects with J.A. Rock, and a couple of exciting shared world books with other authors, and I have just signed a contract for a three book Ancient Roman murder mystery series with a publisher. But I definitely want to write the Callier Travelling Players books, and also The Palace books, with Sarah!

Thanks so much for sharing with my readers.

Anyone who’s interested can read my review of Awfully Ambrose here:

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2022/06/review-tuesday-awfully-ambrose-by-lisa.html

And Horribly Harry here:

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2022/08/review-tuesday-horribly-harry-by-lisa.html

For a sneak preview of Terribly Tristan, see last Friday’s post.

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2022/10/he-doesnt-do-repeats-gayromance-humor.html