Behind The Books – A personal note from Christina Lauren about tomorrow’s release, “Beautiful Player”…

Ohhh look what I just received! A special message (and a little “Behind the Book” insight) from authors Christina Lauren about tomorrow’s highly anticipated release, Beautiful Player!!

“Our third full-length BEAUTIFUL book, Beautiful Player (the fifth in the series overall) comes out tomorrow, Tuesday 10/29. This morning I fell into my little day-before-release neurotic freakout routine and started flipping through it, trying to see it through readers’ eyes.

And . . . I got sucked back in again.

I don’t know if I can say this one is my favorite (it really does feel like choosing a favorite child and I’ve loved writing each of these books) but I have a fondness for Will & Hanna that feels fiercer, more tender somehow. Maybe it’s that they’re also scientists, or maybe it’s that it takes them a while to get together and they’re both such dorks about it, but whatever it is, I can’t wait for this book to be out in the world.

In my memory, the process of writing PLAYER seems like it had been so easy. I could swear Christina and I sat down, outlined it, and just hammered it out. It was one of the craziest times of my life—we had turned in BOMBSHELL at the end of May and PLAYER was due on July 8^th. Between those times we had a few trips (including Book Bash—whee!), I was still working fulltime and, although she was off for summer break, Christina had her daughter and nephews with her during the day. I seriously don’t know how we managed to get it done, but we did, and it ended up being nearly 100,000 words to boot. It just seemed to fly out of us.

But that’s a total lie. That’s only how it seems in hindsight, when I’m holding the book in my hand and reading through it and just feeling the relief of oh man, I am really proud of this book. Because if I look back to June and July, I remember thinking I was literally taking years off my life because I was so stressed. I probably ate all of my feelings in the form of chips and got about a million grey hairs. Also? We had to rewrite the first two chapters five separate times, and I don’t mean edit them, I mean literally sit down and start over with a blank page. We just couldn’t get the beginning right.

Then of course there was the point when it was all drafted and we looked at it and both groaned, thinking, this manuscript is a hot mess. What is the point? Where is the cohesion? How are we ever going to send this to Adam when it’s like this?

Of course we fixed it by working our tails off for a couple of weeks, and ended up with a draft that we were really happy with.  Then, working with Adam, we made it into a novel the three of us truly love.

So, I’m thinking about all of this while we’re working on a new book, with new characters and a new setting. After writing six BEAUTIFUL books in under a year, I wouldn’t say that it’s been hard to do something different, exactly, but there are the occasional moments that I give my computer the middle finger or cry into my coffee. (Not to be too dramatic or anything.) For the past few weeks, as we’ve been posting quotes from PLAYER and putting out audiobook clips, I keep wondering whether we can make this new book as strong as I believe PLAYER is.

But you know what? I think that fear comes from the false memory, the one where writing PLAYER was easy and the words just poured right out of us. The truth is that it didn’t come effortlessly, but when I look at it now, it sure feels like it did. That’s how I know it’s complete and ready to live in the world (alongside my new grey hairs.)

I hope you all love it as much as we do!

Happy PLAYER day!!”

And a happy PLAYER day to you, too!!! 😀 Have a GREAT release day, girls!!