Twisted in All the Best Ways with Colleen Hoover

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Speaker 3 Welcome to the shit show.

Speaker 2 Things are going to get weird.

Speaker 2 It's your fave villain, Kale Lower.

Speaker 2 And you're listening to Barely Famous.

Speaker 3 Well, Miss Colleen, Mrs. Colleen Hoover, thank you for joining Barely Famous podcast.
I heard that you don't typically do podcasts.

Speaker 4 I don't. I don't do a lot of interviews.
They just make me nervous and I don't sleep very well leading up to them.

Speaker 3 Oh, I was going to say before or after?

Speaker 4 Before. No, after I'll be completely fine.

Speaker 3 Okay, I'm the opposite. I get nervous.
Yeah, like I'm like, oh, oh, should I have said something differently? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 You know what I mean? Start like going over everything that, yeah, well, I do that too. But once it's out there, I'm like, whatever.
It's the yeah, leading up to it for sure.

Speaker 4 But I'm excited to do yours. They asked me, and I was really, truly excited because, you know, Teen Mom fan.

Speaker 3 You were? Yeah. You watched Teen Mom? Absolutely.
Shut up.

Speaker 4 That's why I said yes. I was so excited.

Speaker 3 Oh, my gosh. That is so.
I'm like, people don't know who I am. So like, I, that's just what I think.
Do you have imposter syndrome ever?

Speaker 4 Every second of my life So we have that in common.

Speaker 3 Yeah, okay, because I thought I was the only one I'm like okay I'm the only one in like a public present sort of situation where I question my own

Speaker 4 No, you're not the only one. So you have it too? Absolutely.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Did you ever have it with It Ends With Us?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah. You do? Still to this day.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Your trailer got like 25 million views.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And I'm like, why? Am I being pranked? Was it, is it bots? Are they going to like put out an article and be like, no one actually watched the trailer?

Speaker 3 Everyone watched the trailer.

Speaker 3 How did this movie even come to fruition?

Speaker 4 Oh, man.

Speaker 4 I don't know. Did it? Is it out yet?

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 4 I still have imposter syndrome.

Speaker 3 We watched the movie. Kristen and I went to the screener yesterday.
Yes. And what'd you think? Well, so I read the book a while this year, actually.
And

Speaker 3 so I kind of already knew like what to expect, but Kristen hadn't read the book. And we both sobbed.
So you've got reactions from people. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, the first time I saw it was in a theater where no one knew that I was there and they weren't even readers. It was just a random, like very early, early screening before edits.

Speaker 4 And the people next to me hadn't read it or didn't even know what they were watching. And she was crying the whole time.
So I was like, that's good. That's a good sign.

Speaker 3 Oh, for sure. We were like, okay, one, two, three, sniff.
So nobody would hear us because we were sobbing and we were like, no, we don't know if anyone else can hear us.

Speaker 3 So it's like, I don't know what to do. And then

Speaker 3 there were a lot of parallels to the book and the movie, to my personal life. And so I think I connected on that level.
And I mean, also Brownie Points for having Post Malone's music in it.

Speaker 3 I'm a huge Postie fan. Me too.
So immediately I was like, did she have something to do with this?

Speaker 4 No, that was probably mostly Blake. She has the best taste on music.

Speaker 3 She does.

Speaker 3 I love it. And you got an executive producer credit, which is incredible.
That's awesome. So what was it like to be a part of a movie production versus a manuscript for a book?

Speaker 4 Completely different. Two completely different worlds.

Speaker 4 You know, we were just talking about imposter syndrome and I had it the entire time. Like, I wasn't on set a whole lot.

Speaker 4 A lot of it had to do with like, it was filmed during the writer's strike, the director's strike, the actor's strike.

Speaker 4 It was just a bunch of like what probably should have taken less than two months took them over a year.

Speaker 4 So, yeah, it wasn't your typical filming experience. So, I wasn't, you know, there all the time, but

Speaker 4 completely different. So many people involved.
So many people. I remember showing up on set the first time and just being extremely overwhelmed.

Speaker 4 200 people just walking around. Everyone has a job.
And I'm just standing there like, this is insane. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I can't even imagine. And what was it like working with Blake?

Speaker 4 I have never met anyone with such a fierce work ethic in my life. Like that woman does not rest, does not sleep.
It's just constant work, work, work. Mother, mother, mother.

Speaker 3 Like

Speaker 4 watching her as a mom probably impressed me even more than

Speaker 3 even when we were at the movie, Kristen was like, she has four kids. And we were like, I didn't realize, I thought she had two or three maybe.
And she was like, she has four kids. I said, what? Yeah.

Speaker 3 That's incredible. I honestly think, okay, we need to talk about the controversy that is aging the characters up.

Speaker 3 I didn't really think it was a controversy because in the book, I know that they were a little bit younger, but I always pictured them exactly how they were casted.

Speaker 3 So even though I knew knew they were younger,

Speaker 3 it just felt natural to me.

Speaker 4 I agree. I,

Speaker 4 when I wrote the book, oh God, it was like eight years ago. I think yesterday was the anniversary of when it released.
No, today, August is today the second.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
Today's the second.

Speaker 4 So when I wrote it, new adult was a big genre, and that is college-age characters. And so I was contracted to write new adult books.

Speaker 4 And so no matter what the storyline at the time, I would just make them around like 23, 24, 25. And I got away with like pushing Rawl's age up a little bit more than Lily's, but same.

Speaker 4 Like I, when I even wrote the book, I think I was probably like 35 at the time. I was thinking, oh yeah, they're about my age.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 4 so when the controversy came out about, you know, the characters' ages,

Speaker 4 I guess I just.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I didn't know if it was just blown up just for the, because it was my page and I see everything related to my books or if it was actually an issue, issue, but I just didn't really care because I was happy about it.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. And I also loved, so I watched Gray's Anatomy and then Owen's character made a cameo.
I loved that. I love him.

Speaker 4 I was so excited.

Speaker 3 How much involvement, if you're allowed to say, did you have in the casting? Like, were you able to submit a list or like?

Speaker 4 I didn't really have any involvement in the casting, to be honest with you. I wasn't super involved early on because I had other deadlines I had to meet writing-wise.

Speaker 4 And, you know, you sell these film rights. That was probably like the 10th one I'd sold.
And then most of them revert back to you as an author because they never get made.

Speaker 4 And so I really started off like, okay, yeah, if it happens, it happens. And not putting a lot of energy into it.
Right.

Speaker 4 So I can't take a lot of credit for, you know, the casting or anything.

Speaker 4 I know that Justin and I had talked when he bought the film rights about him.

Speaker 4 potentially playing Ryle and I thought that was a good idea but obviously you know if if you have him playing Ryle, you're gonna have to age up Lily.

Speaker 4 You can't have a 25-year-old playing that character. So when he said that they were talking to Blake, I was like, yeah,

Speaker 4 like that's gonna happen.

Speaker 3 That's cute, Justin.

Speaker 4 That's real cute. And so when it actually happened, like, I was, I was kind of stunned.

Speaker 3 No, I, the casting was incredible. I think all the characters really fit into it.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 They did such a good job. They did.

Speaker 3 I mean, all of you guys did such a fantastic job, but where do you specifically get the names for your characters?

Speaker 3 Because I'm obsessed and no book I've ever read, I think I've read 56 or seven books this year and none of the names compare to yours.

Speaker 4 Oh, well, thank you. I feel like I get a lot of shit for my names.

Speaker 4 Can I say that?

Speaker 3 Oh, of course, but I'm just shocked because like I think there was a surge in the name Atlas after Agent Us came up.

Speaker 4 No, I mean, I feel like when something's popular, it also gets a lot of hate. So I'm used to it.
But

Speaker 4 yeah, I have noticed. And there were actually two girls in line today that were in front of me at the airport.
And one of them has said something about her daughter, Lakin.

Speaker 4 And I wrote Slammed was my first book, and Lakin was the main character.

Speaker 4 And they were, both of them had daughters named Lakin, and they were freaking out with each other and talking about the spellings and stuff.

Speaker 4 And I've wanted to say so bad, like, did y'all read my book by chance? But I just kept my mouth shut because that would have been embarrassing. They would have loved that.

Speaker 3 If they read the book. But then they would want to go read it.
That's true. You know what I mean? True.

Speaker 4 I probably should have said something.

Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Speaker 4 But no, I usually use like, I go through baby books, like I'm naming a kid, which your kids have great names.

Speaker 3 If you ever want to use one, you have my full permission.

Speaker 4 Probably.

Speaker 3 Valley is a good one. Verse is a good one.

Speaker 4 I love verse of Valley. Like, I saw that and I was like, oh my God, those are so cute.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I just, one thing for me as a writer, like, especially when I started out, social media is so big, especially like getting your books out there and when readers talk about your characters.

Speaker 4 So I always try to have one unique name. Yeah.
I try to make them up a lot that I haven't heard before. And then one kind of normal name.

Speaker 4 So when readers talk about characters, people kind of know, like, oh, that's that book. And yeah.
So I always do try to use names that haven't been used a whole lot.

Speaker 3 Ryle's the first time, and It Ends With Us, the first and only time I've ever heard that name, but it's not like so far off that you're like, okay, that's weird. It's a cool name.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's really cool. I honestly don't even remember where that one came from.
Maybe a baby book. Maybe.

Speaker 3 I love it. Because I've heard Lyle.
Yeah. Kyle, but Ryle is exquisite, truly.
I love it.

Speaker 3 Also, all of the names in Reminders of Him, which is one of my favorite books of yours, the names in there are fantastic.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 3 there's usually some differences from a book to a movie adaptation.

Speaker 3 How do you feel about any of the changes or

Speaker 3 lack thereof?

Speaker 4 I'm not super married to books when it comes to the movie, even as a viewer and a reader. Like when they change things, I kind of understand it.

Speaker 4 You know, there have been times with other things that I'm passionate about that I get angry about. But with this one, like, you know, I was kind of in on most of the changes.

Speaker 4 And so I was like, oh, yeah, I get that.

Speaker 4 You know, like changing the name of the restaurant from Bibbs to Root, it just fit the storyline better because we didn't have time to include like every single aspect of their childhood like the specific magnet and the better in Boston and all this stuff plus bibs sounds kind of funny you know for a grown man to have as a restaurant name when you when you see it on a big sign in a movie it just has a different feel than um it does in the book so yeah there's definitely things that changed but um yeah i'm not i'm it doesn't bother me i feel like it but betters the plot in the film that they're two different forms of art so it's necessary well i also think that books are, I would say, longer, right?

Speaker 3 So you have to do what you can to kind of tell the whole story and make it.

Speaker 4 But you're condensing everything from, you know, 300 and something pages to 120 pages, centered one line down the middle. And so it's like you're getting a fraction of the book.

Speaker 4 And not only that, but you're not getting any internal dialogue in a script.

Speaker 4 And so every single piece of internal dialogue, which there was a lot from Lily in this book, has to be somehow turned into dialogue or expression or written into into the movie in a different way.

Speaker 4 Like it's just extremely hard to capture a book completely, but I thought they did a phenomenal job. They did.

Speaker 3 And I did like the little

Speaker 3 scene with Ellen. You still added that.
And then the journaling with Ellen. I loved that because that was a huge part of the book.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I was glad that they got that in there, even though it was more like a nod.
It wasn't like a huge theme in the movie. But,

Speaker 4 you know, it just shows that they cared about making the readers happy, I think.

Speaker 3 For sure.

Speaker 3 And I know that events in your personal life kind of inspired aspects of it ends with us so do you pull inspiration from your own personal life for all your books never never this was really like maybe twice i have i try to avoid using anyone i know in real life yeah um

Speaker 4 but i have three boys and and sometimes they're really funny so you know when they were little i would include things that they said or yeah especially in my earlier books um because they were just at such a funny age you know now they're all grown men and it's like you know learn is funny i'm not gonna to put you in this book.

Speaker 4 But yeah, I try not to. I don't want anyone in my hometown getting mad at me if they see themselves in a book or something.

Speaker 3 I mean, I would be flattered. So if you ever want to write a book about me.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 I guess it depends on how I write them in.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
For sure.

Speaker 3 So what is your writing process? Because I feel like some of your books are so different, but they can be so realistic, especially It Ends With Us, Reminders of Him.

Speaker 3 But then you have books like Verity.

Speaker 4 verity and so what is the writing process and are they different for like a more so love story than maybe a thriller i think it just depends on my mood okay um i'm very much a writer that has to only write when i feel like it i can't set a schedule i envy the writers who could sit down and have a word count every day like

Speaker 4 yeah oh there's a lot of writers that are like okay i want to sit down and write 3 000 10 000 words today you know and i'm just like

Speaker 4 yeah i just you know, hope I remember to put on a bra. Like I am the most chaotic human.
If there's anything on my schedule, I start to panic.

Speaker 3 Like, okay.

Speaker 4 I can't even sit down or write if I don't have like two weeks of nothing. Okay.
And then I will sit down and I will write for 18 hours straight a day.

Speaker 3 So it's sort of like mood reading, but mood writing.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 3 Do you take a notebook and pen everywhere you go?

Speaker 4 I use my notes app on my phone. Okay.
I have hundreds and hundreds of random notes that make no sense.

Speaker 3 I mean, I love you know what they mean.

Speaker 4 Sometimes.

Speaker 4 Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and write random notes. I used to share them with readers.
I need to do that again. It was, it was pretty funny.

Speaker 3 Have you ever written a book and just scrapped it and never take it to publication or even try?

Speaker 4 Not really. I mean, I've had ideas that I loosely outline that I maybe haven't gotten to yet.
But if I'm not feeling a story,

Speaker 4 I'm not going to get very far on it. Yeah.
Yeah. So if I get far enough to even call it a book, I'm going to finish it.
Yeah. Because that means that like I'm thinking about it and obsessing over it.

Speaker 4 And that's my problem is the last couple of years, I haven't really written much because I don't have an idea that I'm obsessing over. And I refuse to just write for a paycheck.
Right.

Speaker 4 So I feel like the readers can tell.

Speaker 3 I would agree.

Speaker 3 There's an author that I absolutely love, and some of the work,

Speaker 3 it more so felt like you're pumping them out just to pump them out.

Speaker 3 And I'd rather

Speaker 4 stick to that.

Speaker 4 Well, absolutely. We all need to work.
I just, I'm fortunately in a position to where I can just write when I feel like writing. And,

Speaker 4 but yeah, I just, I wish, I wish I could do that. Just sit down and kind of pump it out.
And spin it out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Do you think that you would ever write another book like Verity?

Speaker 4 Absolutely. Oh my gosh.
That was probably my favorite writing experience.

Speaker 3 Are you serious? Yeah. I mean, that book is top tier.
I'm obsessed with it.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And my mom and sister read that book. They were like, there you are.
Oh, it's where does this romance come from? Like, this is you. You're fucked up.

Speaker 3 Like, I love that.

Speaker 4 I watch like car crashes to fall asleep at night. Like, I'm very dark.
And so Verity to me was like, oh, this is so much fun. But I don't know.
I also enjoy writing romance. I don't know why.

Speaker 4 I'm not a romantic person.

Speaker 4 My husband buys me flowers. I get angry.
I'm like, that's 75 bucks, dude. They're just going to die.
Like,

Speaker 3 yeah. So I don't know Lily.

Speaker 3 No, not Lily. Alyssa.
Yeah. Because she was like, wait, I don't love this.
That's so funny, though. I'm also dark and twisted.
And I just wonder, like, why are we obsessed with death in this way?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 4 But do you also love to read romance?

Speaker 3 I love your romance novels. Well, thank you.

Speaker 3 I'm not typically a romance girly. So I'm just also dark.
You know what I mean? We're twisted in all the best ways, right? That's true.

Speaker 3 What was the hardest book to write?

Speaker 4 Probably Layla.

Speaker 3 Why?

Speaker 4 I don't believe in ghosts.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 And it's paranormal. I just really wanted to take a stab at paranormal.
I was like, I've never done this before. I want to try it.

Speaker 4 And it was very hard for me to finish that book.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I didn't enjoy the writing process of that one.

Speaker 3 So no no more like paranormal ones?

Speaker 4 I'd probably never write a paranormal again. With Verity, I loved it.
I considered it a very different book than Layla because I feel like it could have happened to me.

Speaker 4 Like, if something can happen to me in real life,

Speaker 4 that scares me. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Ghosts and demons and witches and things like that don't scare me in real life. And so, to me, I don't enjoy writing them.

Speaker 3 We are very aligned in that. I typically, yeah, I would say the same.
I typically don't fuck with for lack of better words, like the paranormal in real life and things like that. But

Speaker 3 in any of your books, or maybe it ends with us specifically, movie, whatever,

Speaker 3 do you feel like any of your personal qualities have seeped into your characters?

Speaker 4 That's a good question. I don't think that there's a way to keep pieces of myself out of it.

Speaker 4 You know, like I'm writing these characters and they have a lot of internal dialogue and and a lot of times like the humor even like I'm very sarcastic, and I tend to put that into my books.

Speaker 4 I like levity in moments of like pain. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And so I think that in itself is a lot of me.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 I don't know. I don't know that I really truly

Speaker 4 live similar lives to any of my characters. No.
Or maybe I do. I don't know.

Speaker 3 Maybe just... some qualities.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Do you have a least or favorite character from any of your books?

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 3 do you remember all of them? That's the better question. Because I don't remember my podcast after I say it.
I typically don't.

Speaker 3 I have anxiety a little bit, it errs, and then I forget about the conversation. Right.
So, do you remember all your characters?

Speaker 4 I, if someone brings it up, yeah. But if you were like to ask me, like, name all your characters, there's no way.
No, absolutely.

Speaker 4 My sister yesterday asked me if I had ever named a character a certain name, and I was like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I would have to like literally go in and search every book that I've written and I'm not doing that for you.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 she was like, come on. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I think that I, this is so bad. I don't know if you've read too late, but I had so much fun writing Ace's character.
He's probably the most disturbing character I've ever written.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 And even over Verity? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And oh, wow. Okay.
And so I had a lot of fun writing his character, but he probably is the character I hate the most.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 4 So I guess it's a different different answer, but the same. Okay, I guess I enjoy writing characters that are the most unlike me.

Speaker 4 Like, I really feel like I get to be free and make them do, you know, yeah, whatever.

Speaker 3 I love that. I absolutely love that.
Also, loved Ledger and a reminder. I keep bringing up reminders, reminders of him.

Speaker 4 I'm so happy you love that one. That's the one I recommend to everyone.

Speaker 3 Really? Yeah, that one and Heartbone.

Speaker 4 I was just fixing to say, reminders of him and Heartbones are probably the two I'm the least embarrassed of. Is how I

Speaker 3 why would you be embarrassed of any of your books? Oh my god.

Speaker 4 Like when people, I get so embarrassed to even tell people, like, if they ask me what I do for a living, and then when they're like, well, what book should I read? Um, Taryn Fisher? I don't know.

Speaker 3 That one was good. I have that one too.
Um, uh, you did one with Taryn Fisher, right there. Yeah, Never, Never.

Speaker 4 That one we wrote, I think. So, Taryn and I are best friends.
We've been best friends for about 14 years, and we're both very dark, and our readers know that.

Speaker 4 And when we wrote Never Never, we wrote it with like 14 year olds in mind. Like for us, it was like a fun, young book.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 But I think they all expected this really dark thriller because that's what she usually has.

Speaker 4 And so

Speaker 4 we really want to give people a dark thriller someday.

Speaker 3 Do you want to use my life as a plot?

Speaker 3 No, I'm just kidding. But also

Speaker 3 Heartbones was...

Speaker 4 I say Heartburn all the time.

Speaker 3 I mean, I had a lot of it in my pregnancies, but Heartbones was the first Colleen Hoover book I ever ever read. Oh, really? And I just has, I connected with Beaus.

Speaker 3 So is that, did I pronounce it correctly? Okay, because I know on audio, if you ever listen on audio, as you know, I'm sure some of the names

Speaker 3 aren't always pronounced the way that we say them.

Speaker 4 It's probably my fault because I think we're supposed to approve those files, and I never listened to them.

Speaker 4 And it ends with us, I think it's Elisa, and it's supposed to be Alyssa. There's certain ones that probably it's my fault.

Speaker 3 Well, it's not just, I haven't, I don't think I've ever listened to your audiobooks, but just I've read them, but other ones that I've listened to, and one of my girlfriends texted me was like, is that how you pronounce it?

Speaker 3 And I was like, I don't know, that was on the audio. So that's why I, okay.
But so it's supposed to be Alyssa, but you wrote Alyssa? Or it was...

Speaker 4 No, it's Alyssa. So a reader won a contest to have their name in that book.
And that's how she spelled her name. And it's Alyssa.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 it is spelled different than you usually see Alyssa spelled. And so I think that's where the confusion came in with the audiobook because I think most people were reading it as Elisa.
Okay.

Speaker 4 And I just didn't even know until like a year ago that it's completely pronounced different.

Speaker 4 And I think it was actually when they were filming because they were like, how do you pronounce this character's name? Because it's different

Speaker 4 in these two different areas. So.

Speaker 3 Well, I felt very connected to Marshall as well because I named my son Lincoln Marshall. And so I was like, oh, like she totally got the inspo from.

Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 I'll let Lincoln know.

Speaker 4 Well, you know, my middle son's name's Kel, and I know a lot of people call you Kale. Kel, but he's, he's 20, so that probably comes from you.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Usually people from the South or like the Midwest, they always say Kel.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 How do you say, like, how to, do they call you Kel instead of Kalin or Kale?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I go by Kale, but like Leah from Teen Mom, she would always say Kel. Oh, yeah.
And so it's always, it's always like Texas too. Yeah.

Speaker 4 He spells it C-A-L-E.

Speaker 3 Oh, so it's not Texas. Is it Kale?

Speaker 4 I just, I'm from the South. So you can.

Speaker 3 Oh, his name is not Kel.

Speaker 4 It's Kale. Kale.
Kale. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Oh, so we have the same name. Yeah.
Oh, I love that. I love that.
And he's a boy, too, so that's cool. You can, like, if anyone wants inspo for names, Colleen and I have that in common.

Speaker 4 It's going to be Caleb, but then my oldest couldn't say Caleb. So he always called him baby Kale.
And so we just dropped the B and named him Kale.

Speaker 3 I love that. Wait, so did you name him after he was born? I mean, wait.

Speaker 4 I get what you're asking me. No, I think we dropped the B before he was born.
Oh, okay. It was when I was trying to decide.

Speaker 4 And and then when my son, because we would talk about the baby, you know, and then I was like, oh, that's even cuter than Caleb. I think I'm just going to go with that.

Speaker 3 If you named your kids so long after they were born, I would say we were aligned there too. So I just was wondering.

Speaker 4 What's the longest it took you?

Speaker 3 63 days.

Speaker 4 Are you kidding me? Is that legal?

Speaker 3 Yeah, you have 90 before you get fined. Wow.
In the state of Delhi. Which one? Lux.

Speaker 4 Oh, you ended on a good one.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 we struggled with that name. I loved it so much.
And I think it's kind of popular maybe in like, I think it was like Ireland or something for girls.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 one of my other girlfriends loved that name.

Speaker 4 And mostly boys, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I have six boys, one girl. And

Speaker 3 so we couldn't decide. I was just like, well, I'm going to go with what my gut says, which was Lux.

Speaker 3 And truly, if anyone else named their kid Lux, I just don't think it would fit anybody the same way it fits mine. You know what I mean? It's just like the original, the OG.

Speaker 3 Do you have any characters in mind that have changed

Speaker 3 just the most changed character from conception to final manuscript?

Speaker 4 Well, that's a good question.

Speaker 4 In Ugly Love,

Speaker 4 I finished that book and turned it in.

Speaker 4 I don't know if you've read that one.

Speaker 3 I have it also.

Speaker 4 Do you know the old guy, Cap, that was the elevator attendant? Okay. His name was, they called him Cap, but he was, he was like, who,

Speaker 4 I'm trying to remember the characters because it's been so long since I wrote that book. Tate, the girl, would like stop and talk to him, you know, all the time.

Speaker 4 And he ended up being like a confidant for her. He wasn't in the book at all when I turned it in.
And then I was like, man, she needs a friend. This is missing something.

Speaker 4 And then I made her friend, an 80-year-old man. So

Speaker 4 that one, like, I have instances like that where I'll write the book and then be like,

Speaker 4 oh, this is missing an entire character. You know, and then I'll just go in and like rewrite portions of it or

Speaker 4 slammed the first book I wrote I don't want to spoil anything but if anyone wants to read it but Will he he worked at a grocery store then in the first part the first outline right and then

Speaker 4 have you ever read that one I didn't okay I don't want to say what he is in case you ever read it but it's very different he ends up his job is very different from being working at a grocery store so he might be one of the more changed ones.

Speaker 3 Okay, cool. That's really cool.
How do you, when you're writing the novels, like, how does that, how do you line up the dialogue, I guess, like the series of events and things like that?

Speaker 3 Like, do you write a script for one character and then turn around and write the other one and then try to match them up? Or how does that, how do you even?

Speaker 4 I've noticed, like,

Speaker 4 I feel like writing books is kind of like raising your children. You raise them all differently.
You know, they all need certain things.

Speaker 4 And so it's very hard when people ask even for writing advice because it just depends on the book. Like some books I've written, depending on how they're written,

Speaker 4 I'll write all the past chapters first and then all the present day. Most often I write in consecutive order.
Like I have to start from the first scene, page one,

Speaker 4 and then get chapter one perfect. Sometimes I'll write 20 chapter ones.
Like chapter one's the hardest for me. But then once I feel confident with my chapter one,

Speaker 4 then I'll go to chapter two, but I can't start chapter two until I read chapter one. Then I can't start chapter three until I read chapters one and two, and then move on to three.

Speaker 4 And so it gets very like painstaking the further along I get in a book because I have to go back and like make sure everything's lining up.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 4 So when I'm done with the book, it's pretty much done.

Speaker 4 I don't do a lot of rewrites, I don't do a lot of edits because I do so much of it as I'm writing that I don't really change anything when I'm by the time I finish that last chapter because I've reread each chapter so many times

Speaker 4 but I don't think you you can really find two writers that do it the same way no that makes sense yeah yeah

Speaker 3 I um I had a really hard time I wrote a book in 2014 and I it took me like two and a half years maybe three years.

Speaker 3 Just like write. And then it's out of your head once it's written down.
My head. It's out of my head once I write it.

Speaker 3 And then I'm like, okay, now I have to go back and figure out where does this fit in the timeline and what if the timeline is off. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 So I didn't know if it would be the same for fiction.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it is. And I get timelines off sometimes.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So what happens then? You just have to like kind of just edit it and tweak it.

Speaker 4 Well, the publishers are really good about doing like

Speaker 4 detailed edits where they keep notes and they'll have like any time you mention a day has passed or something, they'll do a timeline while they're editing it. Right.

Speaker 4 And so sometimes when I know I'm off, I'll be like, oh, they'll figure it out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 That makes sense. Yeah.
Did you always want to be a writer? Or were you doing that?

Speaker 4 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 I, that's all I've ever wanted to do with my life. But when I was like 20, I would say 19 or 20, I was actually in college for writing.
and found out that the average writer makes 10 grand a year.

Speaker 4 And I was pregnant with my first kid. And I was like, there's no way I can live off this.

Speaker 4 And it was hard. Like I was majoring in journalism and then had him and there was like, I just couldn't do the work.

Speaker 4 Like you would have to do interviews and all this stuff outside of your regular class hours. And I'm like, I need, you know, I have a babysitter.
I got to go pick my kid up.

Speaker 4 And so I changed my major to social work and did that for about seven years. I didn't even start writing my first book until I was 31.

Speaker 3 So there is hope for the listeners of this podcast that are aspiring writers. Like you don't have to do this

Speaker 3 straight out of high school, straight out of college.

Speaker 4 I did not go to school for writing.

Speaker 4 I went to school for social work, which may be, you know, why a lot of my books are so, you know, messed up and dark.

Speaker 3 But that's really

Speaker 4 with heavy subjects because that's what I did for a living, too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Do you have you pulled any inspo from like social work?

Speaker 3 Not really. No.
No. I mean, Verity has to be something of the imagination.

Speaker 4 Verity, do you want to do you want me to tell you a little about where that came from?

Speaker 4 So I was, my mom and I were at the movies and we were watching this scary movie that we were about halfway through it. And I was like, this is the most, and I'm not going to say what it was.

Speaker 4 Maybe after this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, when it moves rolling.

Speaker 4 It was the most brilliant, scary movie I'd ever seen. And I loved it.
And I almost made a Facebook post. It was like, everyone needs to go watch this.
Well, then the last quarter of it was like.

Speaker 4 demons or witches or something. And I'm like, why? Why didn't they just keep it realistic? And why'd they have to end it with this weird, weird ending?

Speaker 4 And like the whole way home, I was griping to my mom. And she was like, yeah, I don't know why you write romance.
Like, just write a thriller. Write something that can happen to you.

Speaker 4 Because I was saying, like, that can never happen. It doesn't scare me.
Like,

Speaker 4 anyway, so I'm the same. Yeah, I went home that night and I outlined Verity based on.

Speaker 4 my husband who cannot read my books because he finds it very he's very concrete he has very little imagination love the guy but he gets very upset with my characters because he can't separate them from me and there he can't separate their actions from me and so i kind of took that and created Jeremy, who was kind of the same way and was like, you know, if my husband ever found a manuscript I'd been working on that kind of seemed like a biography, he'd be like, he'd believe every word of it.

Speaker 3 And so are you team letter or team manuscript?

Speaker 3 I think they're all messed up.

Speaker 4 I do. Like, there's not a character in the, especially after you read the extra chapter in the hardback, like, there's just not a character you can even root for

Speaker 4 but i i truly think verity's the most evil of them so i would say that i'm

Speaker 4 which one is that does team letter mean you believe the letter no i don't believe the letter

Speaker 4 i don't even i don't even know they're all i'm team manuscripts yeah i am so i i don't know the truth honestly like i would have to dive into that book from verity's point of view because i wrote it from loan's perspective and when she

Speaker 4 when i finished writing the book, she was confused and didn't know the truth. And so me as a writer was also confused and didn't know the truth.
And so, like,

Speaker 4 if I were in Lohen's shoes, I would absolutely believe the manuscript. I would be team manuscript.

Speaker 3 That's another good name. Loewen was so good.
And if my last name wasn't Lowry, one of my kids would be named Lohen.

Speaker 4 Oh, that's cute.

Speaker 3 Loewen Lowry. So mouthful, though.
It is. I mean, so is Valley Lowry.
Like, that's crazy. Yeah.
But I wasn't thinking about the last name when I named her.

Speaker 4 and i was just dead set on that name so i was like well if she marries a man and wants to take his name someday she'll have a different last name or she can keep it forever it's i think it's a um it's a strong name

Speaker 3 oh well thank you i'll let her know you sent something that you said how old is valley uh that she's nine months

Speaker 3 about babies three of them and i'm like one of my uh so my son's stepmom and i we have a podcast together she came over

Speaker 3 yeah yeah i mean we've come a long way and so she came over the other day and she all the babies were in the high chair just like in a line and she was like what the

Speaker 3 and i was like i know i this is every day and it was just like i was just kind of feeding them and doing whatever and she was just like what is going on are your other kids pretty helpful with the babies you know i don't i really don't like to ask them for help because i feel like it's not their like job but

Speaker 3 they have really expressed interest in like entertaining them. So I'll let them do that.
So I'm like, okay, if you're going to entertain them really quick, I can go make a bottle.

Speaker 3 I can get clean clothes.

Speaker 4 That was my least least favorite part of mommy was having to play. Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know what? I feel like I can't talk about that to anybody because they're like,

Speaker 3 but I really don't love to play.

Speaker 4 I don't like it.

Speaker 3 I don't. I'll do it.

Speaker 4 Oh my God. Please don't play another cartoon.

Speaker 3 Well, also, just like the action figures. I'm like, what do you want me to do? You want me to be violent with them? Like, I don't,

Speaker 3 you know, I just don't know. Like, what do you do? So, what did you do?

Speaker 4 Left it to my husband.

Speaker 3 You're like, just do this.

Speaker 3 no they were very entertaining and you know all three of my boys were pretty close in age so i did luckily i didn't have to yeah play a lot with them they entertain each other they'd entertain each other but i can't imagine like having an only child and having to be that only child's like sole source of entertainment yeah i was an only child and it was rough it was so rough and if you don't have like cousins that are in your age group or like friends that you're always with it it's even harder so i love i knew once i had one kid i was like i have to have more so um but I did hear rumors that Verity is also being picked up.

Speaker 3 It is. Oh, that's exciting.
Are you allowed to talk about any of it?

Speaker 4 I think so. Okay.
It actually got sold like four years ago. Yeah, it's been a long time in the works.
A lot of things take a long, long time. And I think the momentum of It Ins With Us has helped

Speaker 4 Verity take off. But they finished the script on that one.
And we're in talks on cast and director and everything right now. So hopefully they'll start filming soon.

Speaker 3 That's really exciting. Do you think you'll cast any of the same, that you or them or all of you collectively would cast any of the same characters from It Ends With Us?

Speaker 3 Because who, who? Nicholas Sparks was the one that casted Rachel McAdams for like all of his movies. Was it him?

Speaker 4 He was there for quite a few.

Speaker 3 I think it was him. I'm not entirely sure.
Don't quote me on that. But there was an author that was like pretty much consistent with the.

Speaker 4 I don't know that I would want to do that. Like, I obviously would love for a lot of these actors because they did such a good job and I love them to be in a lot of it.

Speaker 4 But to like, that would even confuse me if it were my books and my characters to see the same actor playing two different of my characters. Like, I would agree.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think as a view, I'm not super familiar with Nicholas Sparks' works, but I did see the notebook. Um, and I don't know that I would love to see that.

Speaker 4 Yeah, not just that one, like then going to watch another movie with her as the lead.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think that would be a little bit hard for me as like a consumer of it. But but um

Speaker 4 so i'm i'm glad to hear that that's all happening i'm so excited for for verity i loved it ends with us so so so so much and how do you feel about the um all the cover i didn't realize how many covers there were for it ends with us also oh are there a lot yeah so there's two here and then i have i guess what would be the original one where it's like um like this oh yeah because they put it in hardback finally so it's it was out several years before they put it out in hardback and so there's the the original cover with the that looks kind of like similar to this one similar to that one then they put it in hardback and then of course they always do a tie-in edition with one of one or two of the actors on it so um

Speaker 4 but like one of my favorite things about being an author is getting the foreign covers in the mail because every foreign contract you sign they they have to redo the cover because they don't own the same like you know picture rights and stuff okay and so almost every book from every country that's translated has a different cover and so I love getting those in the mail and seeing what they did with it.

Speaker 3 What do you do collect your own? Like, do you have a cover of each book?

Speaker 4 I do.

Speaker 4 I save one for myself and then they usually send five. Like they're contracted to send five to the author.

Speaker 4 I think that's how it works.

Speaker 3 You're like, I don't know. We just go with the flow.

Speaker 4 And I usually get five in the mail. So I'm just assuming.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 yeah. And so sometimes I'll just have giveaways for foreign covers.

Speaker 3 Yeah. For sure.

Speaker 4 Because there's a lot of people out there that collect like their favorite books in different languages.

Speaker 3 That's really, that's a cute idea, actually, to like start a collection in that. Yeah.
That's a really good idea. Also, is there going to be any sequels of any books coming out?

Speaker 3 Maybe Heartbone sequel, House Bay,

Speaker 4 I don't know. Never thought about doing a Heartbones sequel.

Speaker 3 We could collab.

Speaker 4 We could.

Speaker 4 You could totally just give me all the ideas. I bet you think about it.
You have them mapped out, don't you?

Speaker 3 I do. You know what? I almost got a Heartbones tattoo because I, but I don't know if I want the pinwheel.

Speaker 3 Is that the original cover the pinwheel one

Speaker 4 No no okay so my little sister this is an interesting story maybe

Speaker 4 my little sister is a cover designer she got into book editing and cover designing after I wrote my first book and so she did the original cover to heartbones which was like flower it was a white with flowers and two skulls okay on it

Speaker 3 and when we sold it to a publisher because I self-published that one okay and then when I sold it to a publisher they changed the cover but she also did the pinwheel cover okay okay i just didn't i couldn't decide if i wanted the pinwheel or because i have a skull but it's not the same so i'm like i don't i don't know but i love that one um i i kind of want a pinwheel tattoo yeah we could go get them together yeah

Speaker 3 i don't know maybe um we talked about social media and book talk but how do you think that that's impacted you as an author do you think that it helps do you think it hurts do you read oh okay

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think book talk is kind of nice though because I feel like it puts underrated books on the map. Absolutely.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Yeah. No, Book Talk, I think I can absolutely credit Book Talk for what's happened to my career in the past few years.
Really? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Which is just crazy because the entire time I've been publishing since day one of self-publishing my first book, every single day I'm like, oh, this is as good as it's going to get.

Speaker 4 I better enjoy this. And so really like.
maybe like four years ago, I literally did not think it could get any bigger. I was like, this is great.
I've made this great career.

Speaker 4 You know, my books hit the New York Times. Like, I had this great fan base.
And then COVID happened and TikTok happened. And it was insane, like how much it blew up, like almost overnight.

Speaker 4 It was crazy. So book talk absolutely changes.

Speaker 4 authors lives.

Speaker 3 I've definitely discovered authors that I wouldn't have otherwise, you know, maybe discovered from social media, which I love. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's just also very different. Like before

Speaker 4 people started,

Speaker 4 you know, and it's not just book talk, it's just social media in general. You know, you get kind of rewarded for negativity now, like you get more views.

Speaker 4 If your videos are negative, you get paid more money, and so it's kind of like this reward system. Like,

Speaker 4 and so it's harder, I think, for me to be online now because I just would rather not see that stuff. So, I just stay away from it.
So, I miss it. I love social media.
I loved being online.

Speaker 4 I loved being interactive. But just probably during the pandemic, it all felt very different and still feels very different for me.
So I just don't partake in it very much anymore.

Speaker 3 I got on TikTok during COVID.

Speaker 3 We were all bored. I didn't know what to do.
But I didn't actually discover book talk until

Speaker 3 probably the last 18 months.

Speaker 3 I'm fairly new to it.

Speaker 3 And it's changed my life. I really don't scroll as much.
People are like, where do you find the time? Where do you, and it's just like, I don't, I try not to scroll because it's so negative.

Speaker 3 And if I scroll, it's on booktop to find new books. Yeah, so it's it's really changed my life in a positive way.

Speaker 3 But I could totally see like the negative and not wanting to stay on because, yeah, and that's just social media, but um, it's chewed me up.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 4 book world in general and how much it took off during the pandemic has been incredibly awesome to watch. And I have so many friends who benefited from it career-wise.
It's it's it's insane.

Speaker 3 Do you have a dream collab for maybe like, I know you, you did a book Never Never. Would you have a dream collab with anybody else or you just wanted to keep it with that one?

Speaker 4 It's very hard. to write a book with someone.

Speaker 4 It's very hard to write a book by yourself and then to try to match you know your um energy and your timing and your writing style with someone else it is super hard i'm not going to say it was the most enjoying i think taryn and i would both say it was probably the hardest book we've worked on because you're not only like

Speaker 4 disappointing yourself if it doesn't turn out how you want you feel like you're disappointing the person you worked with i don't know it's it's weird it almost feels like double it it should feel like half the word, but it feels like double the word.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 So I really enjoy writing by myself.

Speaker 3 I could see where that would be.

Speaker 4 Unless we do our sequel for heartphones.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I'm always available for you, Colleen Hoover.

Speaker 3 Do you have a favorite author?

Speaker 3 I have a lot, I think.

Speaker 4 Tiffany,

Speaker 3 okay,

Speaker 4 she's my friend. I should know how to pronounce her last name.

Speaker 3 We can edit this too. Like, if you.

Speaker 4 I mean, she probably would think it's funny that I still don't know.

Speaker 4 Forever I kept calling her dad by the wrong name. Um, and her dad has the same name as mine.
So,

Speaker 4 Tiffany De Bartolo or De Bartolo.

Speaker 3 I don't know. So, Tiffany.
We love Tiffany.

Speaker 4 Love her books so much. She's such a fantastic writer.
And then Taryn, of course, I just think her sentences are art.

Speaker 4 I love Kennedy Ryan. I love Lisa Jewell writes good thrillers.
Like, there's just so many that could go on and on.

Speaker 3 I just read my first Kennedy Ryan book. Her words, I mean, just the way that she

Speaker 3 tells the story. I was so impressed and just, I loved it.
So I have her next book on my, it's, this could be us on my August TBR.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And then I saw that she was submitting her.
third one and like so it would be like a trilogy so I thought that was cool um but I absolutely loved her.

Speaker 3 That was the first book that I read of hers. So you've done the books.
You've done the movies. What other endeavors do you have going on? Are you just sticking with the books and the movies for now?

Speaker 3 Do you have a publishing house coming out? Like, no,

Speaker 4 I'm just trying to catch up on my Bravo shows.

Speaker 4 I'm two seasons behind on below deck.

Speaker 4 I really want to learn how to play the guitar. Okay.
But I would never play in front of someone. I just want to learn for myself.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah.
And you could also maybe down the road create a character that also learns how to play the guitar. Yeah.
That would be cool. That would be.

Speaker 3 I feel like the guitar would be the hardest instrument. I don't know.
I've tried it and it just, I'm just not.

Speaker 4 I agree. I'll give it a shot every now and then and I'll make it like five minutes.
Yeah. And then I'm like, no, not for me.
But then I always regret not sticking with it.

Speaker 4 My son's learning how to play the banjo and I'm getting really jealous because I hear him upstairs when I'm at his house and I'm like, oh, it actually sounds like music. Yeah.
I don't want to do that.

Speaker 4 That is so funny. But yeah, like stage fry, no way could I ever.

Speaker 3 So, you don't like public speaking? No. Same.
I also failed that when I went to community college before I got my degree,

Speaker 3 you couldn't pay me to get up there and talk to people. Like, I wasn't doing it.
No. So, I don't know how I ended up here, but.

Speaker 4 And I bet people try now. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 They want me to publish. And I'm like, to do what? Embarrass myself?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 3 That's not for me at all.

Speaker 4 But isn't it weird? Like, you, I know you're very good at podcasts. I love like situations like this and QA's.
I could do a Q ⁇ A where readers are just firing questions at me all day long.

Speaker 4 But you get me up there to talk about a particular subject. I will forget my name.
I get such stage fright. Like it's a whole different vibe.

Speaker 3 I think we just never get used to it. There's some people that it's, they're okay with it, but I'm just not, it's not for me, for sure not.

Speaker 3 Okay, so possibly new. thrillers in the future.
It's possible. Possible.
Verity is in the works.

Speaker 3 Did you ever have specific intentions for the ending of Verity before readers kind of put their input? No, you didn't. It was just kind of like.

Speaker 4 No, I was two weeks away from publishing it.

Speaker 4 It had a different ending.

Speaker 4 And I woke up one night and was like, that's not how it ends. And I got up and rewrote the ending two weeks before it released because I self-published that one.
So I could do that.

Speaker 4 Like I could rewrite it and then put the new file in there. You couldn't do that if you were with a publisher.

Speaker 3 Oh, I know. I wanted to change the cover of my books and he's like, absolutely not.
I'm like, but they're outdated. And I, no.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But I had people, so I wanted to read Verity for so long. It was on my TBR.
And everyone was like, you need to wait until you're not pregnant with the twins because.

Speaker 4 Yeah. I'm glad they told you that.
Did you wait?

Speaker 3 I did wait because I, I, the twins made me weak. Um, and so it,

Speaker 3 I don't know what happened in that pregnancy, but I like, I couldn't stomach anything. Yeah.
So once I had them, then I, it was actually the first book I read after they were born.

Speaker 3 And then I understood why. They didn't really even give me too much detail on why.

Speaker 3 I think they might have mentioned like, oh, there's twins, like just chill out for a second.

Speaker 3 And then I got it. Yeah.
And then I got it. And I was like, okay.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it's a very dark book. I get so uncomfortable when teenagers email me and like, I just read Verity.

Speaker 3 I'm in ninth grade. I'm like, that's awful.

Speaker 3 You're like, wait a minute. That's not for, that wasn't my target audience.
That's so funny.

Speaker 3 It's not funny, but it's funny um but so my i have a book club and i brought you some stickers and bookmarks that with my book club stuff um if you are reading anything what are you reading anything right now no okay i'm not i i almost bought a book at the airport today but um i've just been so in movie mode yeah that i haven't had time how do you even come out of that like how do you adjust like I don't know.

Speaker 4 I got an email today about

Speaker 4 Verity about like they were needing me to give feedback on

Speaker 4 a list of casts or something. And I'm like, I can't.
I can't even open that document. Yeah.
I can't get out of like this mode and these interviews that I'm doing all weekend.

Speaker 4 And then, you know, I don't know. That's just me.
I'm not a multitasker.

Speaker 3 And not everyone is. I've learned over the years that my ADHD just fully takes over, but I'm also not a multitasker, but it's out of my control.
So I completely understand that.

Speaker 3 I so appreciate you coming on Barity Famous.

Speaker 4 I appreciate you inviting me. I'm so excited.
I'm so excited to meet you. I hope you let me take a selfie with you.

Speaker 3 Oh, absolutely. Will you do it? It's like a literal 15-second TikTok.

Speaker 4 No, I'm done. Okay.
I'm just kidding.

Speaker 3 I was like, you know what? I'm going to shoot my shot and hope for the bus.

Speaker 3 All right, you guys, it ends with us. The movie is out now exclusively in theaters.
And if you haven't already, go get all of Colleen Hooper's books. Let us know what you guys think of the movie.

Speaker 3 It ends with us. And let us know on our socials if we should get the pinwheel tattoo or the skull tattoo.
And should we collab on a sequel to Heartbones.

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