We chat with co-authors Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone about their latest holiday rom-com A Jingle Bell Mingle, which a delightful second chance romance and the hotly anticipated third and final standalone installment in their beloved Christmas Notch series
Hi, Julie and Sierra! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourselves?
Julie: Hi! I’m Julie Murphy and I like to say that I am the author of books from cradle to grave! I write everything from picture books all the way up to saucy adult romance. I’m probably best known for Dumplin’, which is a film on Netflix with a soundtrack by Dolly Parton. When I’m not writing, I live with my husband in Kansas (down the street from Sierra!) with our three cats who barely tolerate us.
Sierra: Hello, there! I’m Sierra Simone, and I write high-heat romance across multiple subgenres! In real life, I’m a depressingly uninteresting person, but I try to make up for it by hounding people with trivia about neolithic stone circles and fake Victorian illnesses.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Julie: My relationship with reading was very much on and off again until I hit my senior year of college. I fell in love with Twilight series and never looked back.
Sierra: I’ve always been an avid reader, so for me, the line between reading and writing was non-existent. (Which meant the line between reading Jane Eyre and then wanting to write my own problematically Byronic hero was also non-existent.) After a brief high-school stint thinking I might go into journalism, I jumped into fiction writing and never looked back!
A Jingle Bell Mingle is the final standalone installment in the Christmas Notch series! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Julie: Horny sad boy + sexy sunshine
Sierra: Randy roommates + a Christmas Miracle
What can readers expect?
Julie & Sierra: In every Christmas Notch book, we’re hoping to create the feeling of eating pie at 2 AM with a bestie, making embarrassing TV viewing choices and delirious with giggles. We hope we packed in all the fun, all the quirky details, and all the swoons that we made sure to layer into the first and second Christmas Notch books!
Where did the inspiration for A Jingle Bell Mingle come from?
Julie & Sierra: We’d known since A Merry Little Meet Cute that we wanted Isaac to have an incredibly steamy, incredibly feels-y story. He’s known grief, he’s known loneliness—but there’s a very tender heart under his grinchy reclusive armor, and we knew that Sunny Palmer would be the perfect character to crack that armor wide open.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Julie & Sierra: This is the final Christmas Notch book, and at the end of A Jingle Bell Mingle, there’s a scene where we see everyone in one place—happy and feral and totally goofy—and it was a little sniffle-making to write. These characters have been inside our hearts for four years, and to see them all existing in their silliness and their happiness felt like a real full circle moment.
How does the co-authoring process work? Do you dare to collab again?
Julie: We typically write on a web based platform like Google Docs so that we can both be in a document at one time. Sierra and I split our books into two POVs, so that’s a pretty equal division of labor, though we are constantly in each other’s chapters. My strength is dialogue and Sierra is the queen of setting a scene, so I’m always yelling at her to march into my chapter and describe upholstery or trees. As far as who writes which character, Sierra typically takes the angstier one and I write whichever one has a cat or a pizza obsession.
Sierra: We are collaborating again—now that we know how much fun it is to write together, there’s no way we can go back! Our next series won’t be a holiday series, but it will be just as raunchy and just as silly as Christmas Notch (and hopefully with the same number of grumpy pets).
What’s next for you?
Julie: Next year is a busy year! I’m launching Catty Corner, my first chapter book series. I also have a new YA out in the spring, which I can’t quite announce, but I promise that the surprise is worth the wait. Sierra and I plan to release the first book in our new series late 2025. And lastly, I’m putting the finishing touches on a solo adult project that will be out in early 2026.
Sierra: My gothic Thornchapel series has been picked up by a publisher and is re-releasing this coming spring! I’m so excited for that one, because it’s sort of like dark academia meets V.C. Andrews. And the last book in my Lyonesse trilogy, Bitter Burn, will come out in fall of 2025!
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
Julie: I won’t lie: I have been gobbling up fan fiction this year and it’s really helped me fall in love with reading again after being in a slump for a while. As for books you can go out and support with your dollars, I am obsessed with Julie Soto and her latest, Not Another Love Song. It is so dang good.
Sierra: For swoony contemporary, I’ve adored Marriage and Masti by Nisha Sharma and I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram! For singe-your-fingertips-while-you’re-reading, I devoured Our Little Secret by QB Tyler and Well Bred by Adriana Anders. The book I can’t stop thinking about is The Art of Scandal by Regina Black.
