We chat with Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka about Heiress Takes All, which is The Inheritance Games meets Ocean’s 11 in this thrilling YA adventure about a teenager determined to pull off the perfect heist in the midst of her father’s wedding.
Hi, Emily and Austin! Welcome back! How has the past 18 months been since we last spoke?
It’s so wonderful to be back! Has it really been 18 months? Time really flies by! Probably because we’ve been keeping ourselves busy publishing more adult romance, YA, and venturing into some new genres too. Of course, our three year-old German Shepherd named Bronte also occupies much of our time.
Your latest novel, Heiress Takes All, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Fun, fast-paced, twisty, swoony, thrilling.
What can readers expect?
Heiress Takes All is about a vengeful ex-heiress who assembles a crew of classmates (and one former teacher) to help heist her father’s fortune at his third wedding. It has everything we love in heist stories—an eclectic crew, romance, elaborate plans, and plenty of twists. While the heist is fast-paced—the whole book is set on the day of the wedding—there is still plenty of time for humor and banter. Olivia is out for revenge, and she’s not going to let anyone stop her…especially not her ex-boyfriend who has come to the wedding in hopes of reconciling with her in the midst of her high-stakes heist.
Where did the inspiration for Heiress Takes All come from?
We’ve wanted to write something more action-oriented for a long time. Like all of our ideas, Heiress Takes All came from our joint brainstorming. One of us suggested a heist taking place at a wedding, and the other suggested that wedding be the main character’s father. From there a revenge plot was born! We pulled from our love of movies like Ocean’s Eleven and Knives Out as we constructed our heist from within this horrible wealthy family. Of course, we come from romance, and we love putting romance into all of our books, so we made sure to build in a very inconvenient love interest for our mastermind.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
We love to write young women who are overlooked and underestimated. Olivia is bitter and smart and uncompromising. It was a ton of fun to let ourselves give into her worst instincts while falling for a cinnamon-roll love interest. That said, there’s one member of Olivia’s crew—Kevin—who blackmails his way into the crew simply because he wants to hang out with them all. He was a blast to write—someone who is basically the epitome of the “wait, you guys are getting paid?” meme.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing Heiress Takes All?
This was our first time writing a heist! We knew it would be a challenge for us, and it was. We wanted to make sure our twists were surprising but also fit the story. We’ve always been heavy outliners, and this book was no exception. We started from a place of knowing the major reversals and twists in the story, and we outlined the shape of everything in two weeks, totally swept up in the fun. Then, though, we returned to our outline and asked ourselves, what more can we do here? We added in more complications, more complexity to our villains and heroes. We pushed ourselves to pick apart every aspect of Olivia’s plan until we were satisfied.
What’s the process like when brainstorming future works?
Generally, we each come up with the beginnings of ideas. Sometimes they are more complete, and sometimes they are just a world or a character. From there, the other one of us adds to it. We’ve found that no matter how finished we might think an idea is on our own, the other one of us will always add some deeper dimension or clever twist. Sometimes we even combine two halves of story ideas we independently had together. Once we have what we consider the one-sentence pitch for the book, we come up with who our characters are—what they want, what is standing in their way, what their romance looks like. Only when we have the broad strokes in place do we get into actually outlining the story.
What’s next for you both?
Next we actually have an adult cozy romantasy that we wrote with Bridget Morrissey under the pen name E.B. Asher. It’s called This Will Be Fun and it’s out September 10. It’s about a group of friends who saved their magical realm together but haven’t spoken since, until they’re forced to reunite on the road to the queen’s wedding.
Lastly, are there any books you’ve enjoyed picking up this year or releases you can’t wait to get your hands on?
We’re very much looking forward to Heist Royale, the sequel to Thieves’ Gambit. We are such fans Kayvion Lewis’ thrilling and epic series, and we can’t wait to see what is next for Ross and Devroe after that ending!!
