{Tour} Sublime by Christina Lauren (Interview!)

***AUTHOR INTERVIEW***

The original idea for Sublime came from a conversation Lauren (Lo) had with her boss. Lo has a PhD in neuroscience, and one day they were discussing the lack of creativity in disease research: every early-stage drug people were getting excited about worked, in essence, because they shut down cell functioning. This looked great in cellular models of disease but would never work in humans.

He brought up a story of a boy that fell into a lake, saying, “It’s like that urban legend of the kid up in Nova Scotia who fell in a frozen lake and stopped breathing from the shock. The story says he was revived a few hours later, but because everything had sort of shut down, he was totally fine. We just can’t put the system in a frozen lake to protect it.”

So what if a daredevil of a boy did fall in a frozen lake, and it shut his body down just enough that he was in this world, and that one, too. Just enough that he could touch someone who was also in that world: a ghost.

Add to that the Legend of the White Lady, the Lucy poems by William Wordsworth and one of Lo’s favorite scientific concepts—sublimation—where a solid turns to a gas without ever going through a liquid phase, and you have Sublime.

We think Sublime is some of our best writing, and that one of our favorite parts of the story became the atmosphere. The world in Sublime is cold, covered in frost and snow and clouds that could open in a winter storm at any minute. We wanted the atmosphere to almost feel like a character itself. One of Christina’s favorite moments comes from that. The scene where Colin is looking out his window after the first big snow storm, and sees the shriveled tomatoes on the forgotten vine. That scene was just so vivid in her head at the time that she could literally see it.

I’m (Christina) taking over, and going to answer this one for Lo, too. The scene where they’re together and run into the shed, and share those few moments. I still remember her sending me that section, and reading the words, “He curses under his breath, a sound of wonder, cupping her face and kissing her so hard, so hungry, and then he’s walking her backward, around, helping her down onto the air mattress, shoving aside the pile of blankets. Dust clouds up around them, leaves crumble beneath, but the setting doesn’t matter. His skin, her skin, it slides and presses, hot and smooth. Not too much, not too little. Perfect.” I would have gone to the mat if someone would have changed a word of that.

Christina: I’d love Chloe from Beautiful Bastard to meet Delilah from our next YA book. They’re both such badasses.

Lo: I’d love Colin to meet Harlow’s dad, Alexander, in Dirty Rowdy Thing. One, because it would get Colin away from Saint Osanna’s, and two because Alexander is so nurturing, I love the idea of him being Colin’s adoptive dad and showing Colin how big the world is.

People always ask us who writes what etc, but nobody really asks HOW we do it. We rarely write together. First of all, we live in different states, so geography plays an issue. But also, we’re totally different writers, who require completely different environments to get the creative juices flowing. Lo can write pretty much anywhere as long as she has headphones and music. She will listen to the same song on repeat while she writes, and once her brain gets into Writing Mode, watch out (This is Christina so I can totally brag my girl up). She also writes on her phone A TON. She’ll write down lines or ideas–sometimes in the thousands of words–as they come to her.

Christina basically needs to be in a cave with no sound, no light, no internet, and no social interaction whatsoever.

I think we’d both probably say Joe Fontaine from The Sky is Everywhere. He’s a musician, funny, loving and genuinely wants to make Lennie happy again. Plus he calls her John Lennon and how cute is that?? And of course, let’s not forget about his eyelashes. BAT BAT BAT.