Interview with Western romance authors Lauren Sevier and Abbie Lynn Smith

Co-authors Lauren Sevier and Abbie Lynn Smith join me today to chat about their new dystopian western romance Leather & Lace.

During their virtual book tour, Lauren and Abbie will be giving away a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for your chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit their other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bios:
Lauren Sevier & Abbie Lynn Smith Smith are longtime friends and co-authors from southern Louisiana. Guns & Smoke, their first joint publication, began as a “short” story after having too much wine on girl’s night. Nine years later it is now the first novel in a Dystopian/Western Romance series. The duo has plans to publish several series together in the future. A. Smith spends her time with her two rescue dogs and rescue cat surrounding herself with books and Labyrinth paraphernalia. Lauren Sevier collects antique tea cups and tries to stay sane, though as the mother of a toddler she fails brilliantly most days. She also has a growing collection of crowns and tiaras and likes to act silly on Tiktok. Look for more thrilling novels from The Fools Adventure series in the future!

Welcome, Lauren and Abbie. Please tell us about your current release.
Leather & Lace is the thrilling follow up to Guns & Smoke. At the end of Guns & Smoke, lovers Bonnie & Jesse are ripped apart by a madman. When Leather & Lace begins, three years have passed and Jesse hasn’t found Bonnie yet. We learn he’s spent all of that time searching for her while participating in the seedy fighting pits of this ruined world. Conversely, when we meet Bonnie again, she’s not the outlaw Jesse fell in love with in Guns & Smoke. Along with the help of sarcastic Will Ellis and a new, sassy friend, Jesse has to infiltrate New Orleans high society to try and get Bonnie back.

What inspired you to write this book?
With the cliffhanger ending of Guns & Smoke, we knew readers may be dissatisfied, so we wanted to tell a story that brought these characters back together while giving them plenty of trouble getting there. We also added in two new perspectives, and let me tell you, Savannah and William Ellis decided that this was going to be their book, even though their story was meant for book three.

Excerpt from Leather & Lace:
Staring at her now, knowing that I’d desperately fallen for her all over again sent a stark jolt through me. This feeling between us wasn’t some average infatuation. Most people could live a lifetime and never experience the raging, all-consuming need to be close to another person, no matter whether you knew why.

My soul called out, and hers answered.

Everything that I’d lost three years ago was suddenly before me. In the span of a breath, I closed the distance. I clutched her hips, a smile curling over my lips at the little gasp she let out as her back met the steel door and my mouth covered hers. I reached behind her, flicking the lock. Too many times we’d been interrupted. I’d be damned if I let it happen now. Not when she loved me again.

What exciting project are you working on next?
We have several things in the works! First up is book three in The Fool’s Adventure series, which will be published next year! This series is planned to have four books, but we have so many spinoffs and other stories from this world that we can’t wait to tell. Then we have a dark fantasy romance series that will hopefully be slated for the near future.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Abbie: When I was a teenager, I really wanted to be a writer, but I was discouraged from pursuing that in college. It really wasn’t until I moved back home and started my adult life after college that I thought to myself I could really do this.

Lauren: I don’t know if I even really consider myself a writer now, and this will be my third published novel. I think in the past my answer has been different but I’ve been doing a lot more self-reflection lately and I think I’d more accurately label myself a storyteller. My medium is the written word, but for many years my medium was really different. I’ve been an actor, done oral poetry recitation, written songs, and drawn (very poorly). I just like to tell stories, I always have. I think I realized really young that stories are how we experience the world and share that experience with others. I’ve always been a really empathetic and guarded person so for me, this communication was the way in which I could express myself to the world. So, I guess that’s a long-winded answer for really young. LOL!

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
Abbie: Not right now, no. That’s the dream! I work for a large insurance company in their legal department. As far as finding time to write, I usually jump into that once my day job is done and definitely on the weekends.

Lauren: I don’t do anything full time. LOL! I used to work full time, but have since transitioned recently into a part-time position working in Cardiology. I’m home now, which means I mom, and run a home, and work part-time, and garden, and support my husband, and play with my dog, and somewhere in all that chaos I still find time to write. My days are all about prioritizing living in the present and finding peace in simplicity. I wake up to get my son ready and take him to school, grab a cup of coffee and go outside with it to work in the garden. This is something I’ve enjoyed immensely, just getting outside for a few minutes before I start my day. Then I log in and work for a while until lunch, make sure I’ve got dinner stuff prepped, then go back to it until it’s time to go get kiddo from carpool. Then we come home and enjoy some downtime, playtime, and family time until I get up to cook dinner. Which I’ve been doing a LOT more of since the transition and I realized I LOVE cooking. Especially Asian cuisine, specifically Korean food. Then I spend time with my husband in the evenings, or if he’s at work I will write or read or watch a TV show. Nothing special, just a simple everyday routine that seems to work for us.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Abbie: I am the queen of backstory. I can bring a new character into an established world or story and they are already fully formed. I spend a lot of time thinking about my characters and what they’ve gone through (finding their wounds, really), so that when it comes time to write them, there isn’t a lot to discover.

Lauren: Writing is actually super hard for me. I have a bad case of ADHD and was diagnosed when I was four years old. I’ve tried every medication, stimulant and non-stimulant, and it’s been a lifelong battle with my brain. I realized about fifteen years ago that medication wasn’t managing my condition and sort of became obsessed with how to hack my executive dysfunction to be more productive and for all intents and purposes… It worked. The problem is that writing isn’t about throwing all your effort into solving a problem. It’s creation. Pure and simple. And so drafting is incredibly difficult for me because it’s not logical, it’s not formulaic, it’s not something I can categorize or quantify. Editing is what I’m best at. So usually I blitz through a horrible zero draft and then pick apart my own work when I edit until I’ve beaten it into submission and made it something resembling a half-way decent book. LOL! Abbie helps me a lot to maintain momentum and balance. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Abbie: I really wanted to be a storyteller. It didn’t matter what medium. I was always drawn to the arts!

Lauren: A mermaid. NO LIE. I wanted to grow fins so badly. Sun myself brushing my long hair on a rock. Collecting shiny things. Singing songs and luring men to their deaths. All of it. I wanted SO BADLY to be a mermaid when I grew up. I was OBSESSED. Literally you can ask anyone.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Abbie: I am incredibly proud of Leather & Lace. This book was a hard one to finish (there’s always that dreaded second book syndrome, but I am really excited to get this book into reader’s hands!

Lauren: I think I want to leave on a note of gratitude. After all, Thanksgiving was only a little while ago. I’m so grateful for our readers who engage with our stories and have been humbled by some of the responses we’ve gotten from them. I’m also incredibly grateful to have gone on this journey with my best friend. Abbie is an incredibly beautiful person. She’s strong, independent, fiercely loyal, and the most considerate person I’ve ever met. She’s been my friend for longer than I’ve known most people and I am continually amazed by her resilience and kindness. Being able to create this world and these characters together. To see them bound in pages and put on shelves. To have people relating to them and caring about them as much as Abbie and I have… I can’t even explain how much it touches my heart that our friendship has birthed such a beautiful community of people. So just… thanks, I guess.

Links:
Lauren Sevier

Website | Newsletter | Facebook | YouTube | Bookbub | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok

Abbie Lynn Smith
Website | Newsletter | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok | Bookbub | Amazon | Goodreads

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