Thanks for joining me for Sunday Speed Dates. This week I have the writing team of Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese!
Racheline Maltese can fly a plane, sail a boat, and ride a horse, but has no idea how to drive a car; she’s based in Brooklyn. Erin McRae has a graduate degree in international affairs for which she focused on the role of social media in the Arab Spring; she’s based in Washington DC. Together, they write romance about fame and public life. Like everyone in the 21st century, they met on the Internet.
Tell us a little about your latest project.
A Queen from the North is a contemporary royal romance set in a not-so-
united kingdom that’s still suffering from the wounds of the Wars of the Roses. The romance plays on marriage of convenience tropes and is between the 22-year-old daughter of minor Yorkish nobility and the 39-year-old Lancastrian Prince of Wales.
The book is funny, weird, and filled with everything from political intrigue to hints of witchcraft. Also, hot makeouts, of course.
Oh! That sounds interesting.
As kids, what did you want to do when you grew up?
Racheline: I’ve always been doing creative stuff. I even got into a creative writing course at Yale when I was in high school, so I guess I’m doing what I had planned!
You are so lucky in that regard. Very few people get to live out their childhood dreams.
Erin: I wanted to be a meteorologist. I thought weather maps were the coolest stuff. Not that that’s translated into my academic or my writing career, but I do still love hanging out at NOAA.gov!
Meteorologists are the closest we can get to predicting the future. Even if it’s only weather. ;)
If you could have any job in the world (other than writer), what would it be? Why?
Racheline: We both have day jobs, and I’m also in training to be a doula, so we already have all those other jobs. I think both of us have tried our hands at at all the stuff we’re really passionate about. That said, sometimes I do wish I had gone into politics.
That is very brave. I understand the necessity of politics, but they still intimidate me.
Erin: Well, I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I’d gone into meteorology instead of political science. But mostly I hate getting rained on, so I think I’m pretty happy where I am.
Ah, the great outdoors… Though I’m not a fan of extreme weather or bugs, so I totally understand.
What do your families think of your writing?
Erin: My parents think it’s the coolest thing. They always thought I would be a writer, and I guess it turns out they were right! My mom reads our novels, and my dad reads our crazy shifter romances for kicks and giggles. Inevitably, whenever I talk to my mom, she asks when the next book in a series is going to be out so she can read it!
Racheline: My mom actually just read one of our books for the first time. That’s The Art of Three, which is a low-heat MMF polyamorous romance. She loved it, but her email started, “it’s not my lifestyle, but…” We now joke that all her emails have to begin this way, so I’m waiting for her to read A Queen from the North and send me a review about how she’s not a member of the British nobility, but…
Aw, I love it! Fans and readers are great, but there is nothing like the support of family.
Individually you write such diverse and varied portfolio. How did you to meet and decide to write collaboratively?
Racheline: It’s all Erin’s fault.
Erin: So I knew Racheline vaguely through friends of friends online, in a fandom a long time ago and far away. I both thought she was awesome and was thoroughly intimidated by her, but I also really really wanted to have her thoughts about a work of fanfiction I knew we were both reading. So I emailed her this giant essay-like email and then kept pestering her about it. Somehow that turned into a conversation about how there weren’t enough stories out there of the kind we really really wanted to write, and eventually Racheline was like “Well, okay, let’s write one.”
So, really, it’s all Racheline’s fault.
That’s funny! It just goes to show that persistence pays off.
Can you describe your writing process?
Racheline: We write everything in Google Docs. We live in different cities, so while we do take weekends to work in the same room, we have to rely on technology. Our work isn’t broken up by character or chapter, we just write — and write over each other — as needed.
Erin: Chaotic conversations about three different books at once, in email, which somehow becomes an outline which somehow becomes a book. It’s alchemy and/or sheer luck and grit every time we get a finished manuscript!
Wow. That sounds… hectic. But it sounds like it works for you. Also, Google Docs is amazing for this kind of work. :)
What’s the most challenging thing about writing with a partner?
Racheline: We have really different neuroses. Both in terms of things we want in stories or want to be perfect in our stories and the things we stress about in the writing/submission/publication/marketing process. That can be great, because we have different strengths, but I would like Erin to learn how commas work and Erin would like me to calm down.
Erin: It’s unlikely I will ever learn how commas work.
I don’t think anyone really knows how commas work. They all just make it up as they go along…
A Queen From the North has a bit of an alternate history twist. What did you enjoy most about writing a book like this?
Racheline: I had a weird, fussy, very formal childhood that involved an education at an American school that had been founded to replicate British education. It hosted British girls fleeing WWII. I grew up saying the pledge of allegiance and also singing God Save the Queen on Friday afternoons before being dismissed early for luncheon with my parents. This has never been remotely useful to me until now.
Erin: I’m a massive history geek. The underlying political plot of the book — the Wars of the Roses that never really ended — was inspired by a trip I took to York in the UK a couple of years ago. I fell utterly in love with the city and with Yorkshire, and I absolutely loved diving into the history of the real world and creating our own fictional history to write this book.
I always find it so interesting to find out what triggered a story into existence. That sounds like the perfect scenario for you two.
What were some of the challenges in bringing it to life?
Racheline: The research was often really hard. And even when it’s not on the page we wanted to make sure all of our underpinnings were solid, so we got stuck doing things like redoing the entire genealogy of the British monarchy for the last 700 years.
I feel you on that. So much of the research done for historical fiction never gets seen.
Erin: There were a lot of post-it notes. And a lot of me listening to audiobooks of biographies of Elizabeth of York (King Henry VIII’s grandmother, for those who care) on my commute to work and emailing Racheline at six in the morning going AW MAN WE GOT IT ALL WRONG AGAIN BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.
Oh no! That’s the worse feeling ever. But it all worked out in the end.
A Queen From the North just made it huge – like 50 Shades huge – and is going to be made into a movie. Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead characters?
Erin: Emma Watson as Amelia. Total dream casting.
Racheline: There’s something very feline about our prince character, Arthur. If he were taller and less prone to playing antiheroes and creeps (and look, I love fictional antiheroes and creeps), Aiden Gillen would be a great fit.
I don’t think I have a strong casting choices for Amelia although I picture her so clearly.
I know that George, our genderqueer teen witch character, looks like a young Amanda Seyfried (particularly the eyes) or Saoirse Ronan, although it would be important to me that we had a non-binary performer in the role.
Mugdha Godse is a bit older than Priya, but is a good fit for her visually. She also has a playfulness in some of her appearances that I associate with Priya, who really does have a sense of humor about everything that happens in our story, even when it’s a little bit terrible.
That is such a wide cast of characters…I absolutely love it. And they all sound so fascinating.
What was one of the most surprising things you learned in writing A Queen From the North?
Erin: That the monarch of England technically owns all the swans in England. Who knew!
I had no idea! I love little tidbits like this. :)
Racheline: I totally knew that. I will say I thought everyone knew the legend of the Tower ravens, and I realized very quickly I was totally wrong.
I’m with you on this one. I thought they were common knowledge. Well…I guess it is to Anglofiles. Maybe? I love the Tower ravens.
If you could go to the past or future, where would you stay and why?
Erin: Georgian England, provided I could be a member of the landed gentry and also provided I got to take some modern medicine along.
A modern time traveler in Georgian England. How exciting!
Racheline: So there’s this bit in Doctor Who, where someone is asked this question and they answer that they want to go into the future to see if it (meaning earth, humanity) all works out. But they don’t really like the answer, and I think that’s very smart, in terms of storytelling. Not because we’re awful or everything is grim, but because what we want out of other times can’t ever be what they actually are.
So true. There are so many variables to take into account.
Who is your favorite literary villain?
Erin: Well, Racheline’s answer is totally going to trump mine, but I love Frank Underwood from House of Cards.
Racheline: But he’s not literary, is he, Erin? Anyway, Francis Underwood is as good a reason to say this as any: There’s no such thing as a villain, only someone who’s trying to get by and is stranded in someone else’s story.
Ha! That’s one way to look at it.
Favorite book to movie adaptation?
Erin: The Lord of the Rings. Love the books, love curling up with a blanket and three hours on a rainy Sunday and watching the movies.
Racheline: Right now, Arrival. It’s such a profound story about women and, to me, witchcraft.
I am familiar with Lord of the Rings, and totally agree. I’ll have to check out Arrival, it sounds interesting.
Do you have any advice for other writers who want to work collaboratively?
Erin: Finding a cowriter who works for you can be as hard as finding a partner who works for you. I think it’s worth “dating around” and seeing how you work with different people. But if it’s not working, be okay with ending that relationship too. Otherwise the work suffers — and you’ll be miserable.
Racheline: It’s a relationship, and you need to treat it like one. Whether that’s a business relationship or a friend relationship or a romantic relationship, it affects your life and the logistics of your life and how you structure your obligations and the shape of your chosen family. You can’t just be super casual about “let’s make a thing together.” Chemistry matters. So does where everyone involved stands on whether they are monogamous creatively or not. Communication. Conflict resolution. Recognizing you’re on the same team. That’s really important stuff.
That is really good advice. Thank you.
I know each of you works on your own projects aside from your joint efforts. What other projects do you have in the works both individually, and together?
Racheline: We have an F/F Hollywood romance due in to a publisher this summer. We’re also writing for some characters in a romance gaming sim. Additionally, I’m working on Season 3 of Ellen Kushner’s Tremontaine from Serial Box Publishing; I’ll be heading up the final episode of this season which will launch in October.
Erin: Next books out for us should be an M/F May/December romance about the publishing industry and book four in our Love in Los Angeles series. After which, we finally get to start the spy saga we’ve been loosely planning for the last year.
That’s exciting. It sounds like you’ll both be busy. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. :)
Where can we find out more about you and what you write?
We have a joint website, Avian30. You can also find us together on Facebook, and individually on Twitter as Racheline and Erin.
Wonderful! I can’t wait to see you around online. Thanks again for stopping by. :)
Thank you!
Queen From the North is available now on Amazon, and coming soon to all other e-book retailers.