The best friends and authors on mixing business with pleasure ...
1. How do you work together and how has it evolved? Having met studying media in college, we always liked the idea of working together, but our careers pulled us in different directions. We were both working full-time (Emer in online journalism, Sarah in magazines) when we were approached by a publisher who had been following our Facebook group Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling. They asked if we would be interested in doing a book and we said ‘yes’ without actually thinking about the logistics of it.
Writing a novel is generally a solitary endeavour, so we had to come up with our own slightly chaotic system. We sketched out a rough plot and then flipped a coin to see who had to tackle that first blank page. Sarah lost. We decided what would happen at the beginning and end of the first few chapters, and each went away to fill in the gaps. We would meet once a week to keep the story inching along. The system, as bonkers as it sounds, worked and this is how we’ve co-written six novels. Despite all the fancy software available, we have stuck with Word and Google Docs, and we’re almost afraid to change that in case we lose whatever magic we’ve created.
2. Has it ever affected your friendship? If anything, working together has strengthened our friendship. We see each other at least once a week and are in contact multiple times a day. Sometimes we arrange work meetings and never get around to talking about work at all because the gossiping takes over. Emer has been very open about her struggles with mental health, she was admitted to hospital in 2020, the same year we were contracted to deliver the third Aisling novel. When it became apparent that we simply could not meet that deadline, we had to break the news to our agent and all the relevant stakeholders. We had a private conversation that went something like “it’s just work, our friendship is more important”. Thankfully, everyone was very understanding.
3. How do you combine your inspiration into your books and has the writing process changed? We spend a lot of our time brainstorming ideas. We’re constantly adding words and phrases to our Notes apps that could make a good title or scene. We have been friends for more than 20 years at this stage and grew up in similar backgrounds, so we have a lot of shared experiences. Too many to mention! For Our Deadly Summer, we drew on one or two that happened to us both in the early 2000s. That was our jumping off point. Then we devised our characters, Dee and Laura, and decided to throw some challenges at them and see what happened. Although the structure was more ambitious than an Aisling novel, there is a dual perspective and time jumps, so we didn’t change the actual writing process. If it ain’t broke!
4. How’s the editing stage – is one more cut-throat or do you tend to be on the same page (pun intended!)? The editing stage is where things start to get complicated for us. We come up against a lot of continuity errors where people are walking up stairs and then coming out a lift or we have the wrong days or dates. But we both have a similar approach: make this manuscript the best it can be. And we’re not precious about our writing in the slightest. The first draft is always absolute nonsense anyway, so we’ll both rewrite swathes of it. And then the professionals weigh in and we do it all again.
5. Do you handle conflict similarly? I would say that we are both similarly conflict avoidant. We haven’t had an argument since we were in our 20s when one of us brought back a gang late at night and the other had to be up early for work the next morning. We generally don’t have time for it anyway. If one of us feels strongly enough that something needs to be changed, the other will always acquiesce. So far anyway!
6. What do your family and friends think of your career trajectory? Our family and friends are very supportive, always the first to hit pre-order when we have a new novel out. They also know that we never want to talk about how a book is going. We are very good at compartmentalising and are big on work-life balance – with the emphasis on life!
7. Our Deadly Summer is about the J1 experience – what do you remember about those times? Emer did her J1 in a country club on Long Island, just like Dee and Laura, so we were able to draw on some amazing real-life experiences and encounters. She was trained in silver service, had to carry a dinner tray on her shoulder and served countless shrimp cocktails while she was there. One thing she remembers vividly is how being so far away from home affected her attitude and mindset. It was far easier to be reckless and make bad decisions when there were no mobile phones around!
8. Noughties nostalgia is back – what are the trends you want to keep or lose? Let’s keep being offline and Carolyn Bessett’s entire wardrobe in Love Story. Let’s lose misogyny and stalking celebrities for clicks.
9. What advice do you have for friends thinking of working or going into business together? Our agent suggests drawing up some kind of legal document that would protect us in the event of our friendship going sour, which we never actually did. So maybe do that. And be clear about boundaries and not letting work chat seep into social time.
10. What’s next? We hope to continue working together, but also have a couple of solo projects in the mix. We spent a couple of years developing OMGWACA for the screen and, although it never got picked up by a broadcaster, we have been bitten by the screenwriting bug. So more of that too.
Our Deadly Summer by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen is out on May 21.
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