Five Questions with Selena Laurence

by Julie Tetel Andresen | January 28, 2016 |

Five Questions Series

I’m having so much fun connecting with all the smart authors and bloggers I’ve met online. This is the latest entry in my series of conversations with other romance authors, who join us to share about their creative process, their habits, their inspiration, and more. Our guest today is Selena Laurence, a USA Today bestselling author of edgy contemporary romance.

Every author has an interesting story about what drew her to first reading and loving romance. When did you start reading romance, and what drew you to appreciate and love the genre?

Selena Laurence: I’ve read and watched romance virtually as long as I’ve been alive. I can remember watching soap operas with my mom when she would clean the house when I was in preschool. I found my first Danielle Steele novel when I was twelve and someone had left it behind in the hotel room, then I went through high school reading Jane Austen and watching things like Room With a View. I majored in English in college and my senior seminar was on Jane Austen. I think it’s programmed into my DNA or something!

You write contemporary romance that spans a lot of different categories: Multicultural Romance, Hispanic Fiction, Urban Fiction, Military Romance, and Romantic Suspense. How do you draw inspiration for stories in such a wide range of categories?

Selena Laurence: Categorization is in large measure just a technique for helping retailers and readers cull through the endless numbers of books out there. They can say, “Oh I like soldiers so I’m going to look for a military romance.” For me, I just have concepts, settings, characters, etc. that are in my head and so I work to get them out. Then we (me and/or the publisher) categorize them as best we can within the constraints the retailers give us.

Your catalog of books includes the Lush Series, the Hiding From Love Series, and the Foreign Exchange Series. What attracts you to writing complete series? What are the pros and cons of writing multiple books as opposed to one story?

Selena Laurence: When I write series I always write each book within the series as a standalone, so there are never cliffhangers or major storylines that you have to read multiple books to get through. By doing that I avoid one of the biggest pitfalls of series which is not providing a happily ever after in one book. Series have a lot of advantages in my mind–you can build a world over time that readers get comfortable with and want to return to, you can show more complex relationships between people (extended family members, several members of a group or club, etc), and they work very well in terms of sales. People like series, and once they find one book in a series that they enjoy they’re pretty likely to buy more in that same series.

Do you have a writing routine that helps you write so many books?

Selena Laurence: I’m the anti-routine. I’m not a terribly structured thinker, and so it’s hard for me to say, “Oh yeah, I do this and this, in that order.” One thing is that I do this full-time, it’s my job, just like someone going to their law office or bank cubicle all day. Another key is I love it, so I couldn’t NOT do it even if I tried. And, I won’t lie, I care about earning money, so if I don’t get new books put out regularly, I don’t earn as much. That’s a major incentive.

What advice would you give to a new writer starting out in the romance genre?

Selena Laurence: View it as a two-pronged endeavor. You’ve got the writing and the business (and yes, even if you’re with a traditional publisher there are lots of business things to take care of). Make sure that you’re working on both of those things all the time. You might focus more energy on one or the other alternately as you go along, but at the end of each year you need to be able to look back and see that you put a roughly equivalent amount of effort into both tracks. Writing the world’s most beautiful book won’t be of much use if you don’t know what to do with it once it’s written. Conversely, you can be a fantastic marketer and promoter, but if your product (your book) sucks, you’ll only get so far.