Breaking News: LiLa to now go by LiLaCa (Re-post)

Before I even begin to delve into a super sweet interview with two of my favs, Lisa and Laura Roecker, I'd like to first give a big "Aww Shucks" to Matt the Cat who drew my name in an epic, momentous contest. To see my prize, CLICK HERE and read Tawna Fenske's hilarious post. Or HERE to read all about Matt and his furry, awesome name-picking.

Second, if you're curious about my face, (and I'm sure it's the ONLY thing you think about all day), check out my girl Sheri Larsen's blog to see an interview of moi. 

 Ahem. Now back to biznass. Around the blog-o-sphere there's a few familiar names that feel like family. Two of which, Lisa and Laura Roecker, are celebrating 500+ followers today, on their blog, Lisa and Laura Write. I'm told there will be prizes, so roll over and wish them a happy 500. After you read this, of course...

How did you know writing as a team would be better than solo?

It was never really an option for us to write alone. It just seemed about a million times more fun and a zillion times less scary to try it together.

And your process of writing is definitely a team effort. Who's the main idea maker? (Fight it out, if you must)

Lisa is known as the idea whore. Most of our concepts and plots are born in her very twisted brain. But Laura has been giving her a run for her money lately. The plot of Book 2 in the LIAR SOCIETY series stems from an idea Laura came up with. 

With small children, and I know what that's like, how do you maintain focus? 

Um...if you figure that out can you let us know? Honestly, we don't sleep much at all. And we have MommyFail days where we get lots of writing done, but are pretty crappy mothers. Of course the opposite is true too, there are days where we should be nominated as mother-of-the-freaking-year and we get zero writing done. Mostly we've learned that it's a give/take.

Was there ever a time where you thought, even for a second, “What a ridiculous idea. This will never happen?”

Oh yes. Lots and lots of times. But the great thing about being part of a team is that usually when one person says that the other person says, "Come on, we've go this. Let's just write another book."

Your book, LIAR SOCIETY, (Sourcebooks), is due out this spring. What will you do to celebrate?

We plan on eating lots of Twizzlers and drinking bottle after bottle of Prosecco. And then we're going to hang out in bookstores and force people to buy our book. It's going to be really fun as long as we don't get arrested.

What sparked the idea for LIAR SOCIETY? How long did it take to write?

The idea was actually sparked by Lisa asking herself, "What would happen if I sent an e-mail to someone who had died and they actually wrote me back." At first we thought it might be a story about a boyfriend and girlfriend, but when we started to get to know Kate we knew it had to be her best friend. The first draft took us under two months to write, and another couple months to revise.

Are either of you, uh, liars?

Lisa is the biggest liar EVER. Laura used to get so pissed when she'd get away with lies in high school, but no one ever believed her when she tried to rat Lisa out. See, the key is to being a liar is to be a really GOOD liar.

I'm pretty sure we were separated at birth. Had I grown up with you, what kinds of things would we have done together, as an awesome trio?

We are the queens of mediocrity. We played tennis well enough to land spots on the varsity doubles teams, but not well enough to play first singles. We managed to get decent grades, but nothing that was going to get us a scholarship or even honor roll. (Candlyland never made it either...)

We were funny, but too shy and insecure to be completely ourselves in school. (Me too) If you would have hung out with us in our formative years you would have ended up having a lot of late night sleepovers where we laugh so hard someone pees and we try to sneak out to see boys. (Candyland laughed so hard she peed too...this is getting weird)

You would have ended up going to all the cool parties, but spending a lot of time trying to look like you're having fun instead of actually having fun. (Hated those parties. Would rather have been home watching Golden Girls) And you would have been driven to school in one of our shitty ass cars where you had a 50/50 chance of getting there on time and a 100% chance of your car to emitting a foul blue smoke that flooded the entire parking lot. 

If you weren't writers, what would you be?

Depressed housewives.

Writing rituals?

We have this really annoying thing where Lisa plots out part of the book and Laura grills her with questions trying to poke plot holes. This almost always results in a fight.

How'd you snag your agent, Catherine Drayton at Inkwell Management?

Well, the first time we queried her she requested 50 pages of our manuscript and promptly rejected us. We were devastated because she was our dream agent. We'd both just read THE BOOK THIEF and as soon as we saw InkWell's website and read Catherine's bio we just knew she was the agent for us. Sadly, someone forgot to mention this to her. 

Anyways, by the time we wrote our second book Lisa had convinced herself that Catherine would never, ever be our agent, so Laura had to talk her into even sending the query. But we sent it. She requested our full manuscript, loved it and offered representation a week later. 

How long was LIAR SOCIETY on submission before the amazing Sourcebooks team picked it up?

5 LONG months. Being on sub to publishers is a very special kind of hell.

Favorite bands:

The Beatles, Glee (does that count?), Violent Femmes, Regina Spektor

Advice for aspiring writers?

Never say die.

Tune into to Lisa and Laura's blog to see firsthand who the stronger Roecker is. 
 I bet it's me...

Grab your copy of Liar Society 3/1

Introducing LiLaCa

Candyland. OUT.