We chat with author L.C. Rosen about You’ve Goth My Heart, which is a blood-curdlingly spooky and darkly funny romance about how falling in love is scary AF, perfect for fans of Wednesday and Heartstopper.
Hi, Lev! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! Thanks for having me. And sure – I’m Lev, I write books for all ages, my YA rom-coms like Camp and Emmett are under L.C. Rosen and my adult stuff like Lavender House and the Evander Mills series, are under Lev AC Rosen. I’m a born and raised New Yorker and I have a very tiny cat who features prominently on my Instagram.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Oh this is one of those hard questions because the answer is always. I made up stories with my he-man and she-ra dolls, I was writing stories soon as I could write. My first word was book. It’s always been there.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Mercer Mayer. I still have my old copy.
- The one that made you want to become an author: I don’t know. I’ve just sort of always wanted to be an author. But I remember the first book that made me think about what kind of writer I wanted to be – The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Oh there are so many. I love Robert Jackson Bennett’s Tainted Cup series – I’ve been wondering when the third one is. And then when I think of recent books that just did something extraordinary, Dahlia Adler’s Going BiCoastal to me was just so audacious and fresh and is something people should be talking about always.
Your latest novel, You’ve Goth My Heart, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Original title: You’ve Goth Mail.
What can readers expect?
It’s my YA rom-com take on that classic story – Parfumerie, The Shop Around the Corner, She Loves Me, You’re Got Mail – two goth boys end up texting and fall for each other anonymously because of a mistaken text, but unknowingly also kind of hate each other and are competing the the town Halloween decorating contest. It’s got dark goth humor, real silly boys, misunderstandings galore, closeted exes and a serial killer!
Where did the inspiration for You’ve Goth My Heart come from?
Of all those stories I mentioned above, She Loves Me is the one I love the most and grew up with, so that was the big inspiration. I think I was joking once about writing something like that with texting and as a former/sometimes-still-current goth, I thought of the Halloween constest idea as something fun to make their competition, and then You’ve Goth Mail came to me. It started as a joke, though. I didn’t think I was going to write it, but then I did. But they did ask me to change the title because they felt ‘You’ve Got Mail’ wasn’t a reference teens today would know.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved getting to do my darker humor, for sure. Jokes about dying and murder and falling for serial killers aren’t usually what you find in rom-coms. As I wrote it I often thought to myself it was a book for an audience of like, me and my friends only. I also loved writing Lenore, the crafty one and the Marilyn. You know how in The Munsters there’s the normal sexy one, Marilyn? I maintain most goth friend groups have a Marilyn, who looks like an All-American person, until up close you see they have red contacts in and that cute plaid sweater is actually a pattern of bones or something. I was that person, so I loved writing her. And she just has such fun dialogue.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
The big thing I kept running into with my editor was this idea of it being a guessing game? The story is told totally from Grey’s point of view, but I never wanted it to be a question who he was texting – just like You’ve Got Mail, She Loves Me, etc, that should be pretty obvious and with an early reveal. But because those are movies/plays, it was hard to get that distance, and going double POV didn’t make much sense because Malcolm’s plot was conveyed in all the texting. But everyone seemed to think it was “too obvious” who he was texting, and I didn’t understand that because of course it was, it was supposed to be. So I ended up just putting a little opener being like THIS IS ABOUT GREY AND MALCOLM. Which is my way of saying “do not try to guess! This isn’t a mystery, it’s just ridiculousness.” Which isn’t to say Grey has any idea who he’s texting. Why would he? He’s not reading the book. I’m honestly not sure I fixed it. We’ll see!
What’s next for you?
Well, the fourth book in the Evander Mills series, Mirage City, comes out next month, and then I have a new adult mystery series starting in June – it’s called The Disaster Gay Detective Agency, and I think it sort of bridges the gap between my adult mystery and my YA ridiculous rom-coms, so I hope everyone will like it.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
I really enjoyed Tom Ryan’s We Had a Hunch, which is coming out next month I think – teen detective all grown up and all messed up.
