We recently had the pleasure of chatting to Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich, whose first co-authored YA contemporary novel If This Gets Out releases December 7th. Both Sophie and Cale have written some stunning books on their own (Only Mostly Devastated & Perfect on Paper, and The Love Interest & The Friend Scheme respectively) and have now ventured into co-writing an unputdownable story following two members of a boy band falling in love. We got to ask them about their favourite boy bands, co-writing struggles and so much more!
Hi, Sophie and Cale! Thanks so much for joining us! Why don’t you tell our readers a bit about yourselves?
C: Hi! Thanks so much for having us, I’m a huge fan of The Nerd Daily so I’m so happy to be here! I’m a writer from Brisbane, Australia. When I’m not writing I’m generally playing video games, watching Drag Race (or Dragula!) or looking up kittens or puppies online because I really want to get my first pet soon.
S: Hi, so glad to be back! I’m Sophie, and I’m a young adult author based in Adelaide, Australia. I am a dog-and-cat person, and my passions include drawing, singing, PC games, musical theatre, running, and—recently—getting back into ice skating! My bio is a little old, and it’s sort of a lie to keep ice skating in there after the break I took, but I’m weirdly comfortable with that. I guess you could argue my passions also include lying.
Lightning round: What was the first song you can remember listening to, the first book you’ve ever read and a lyric or quote that stuck with you till this day?
S: True Romantic by Kate Ceberano, Where’s Spot, “One man can build a bomb, the other run a race to save somebody’s life and have it blow up in his face. I’m not the only one who finds it hard to understand. I’m not afraid of God, I am afraid of man.”.
C: It’s not the first song I listened to, but I have a vivid memory of listening to When You Were Young by The Killers for the first time. I had discovered them on a compliation CD, then bought the Hot Fuss album and loved it. I remember being so incredibly hyped for it to come out, and I bought it on iTunes the second I could, and I remember loving it. The first book I’ve ever read was probably Goosebumps? I’m not super nostalgic about childhood so I can’t recall much honestly. As for a lyric: can I just put all of All Too Well? I’m not just saying this because of the ten minute version, I’ve always loved it. I think about the lyric: “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it” all the time
Now, onto If This Gets Out! What can readers expect?
S: NOT A ROM-COM! Drama, romance, a tour of Europe, high stakes, an oppressive management company, forbidden love, and especially a scathing look into the abuses directed at vulnerable artists in the entertainment industry.
C: KISSING. DRAMA. ANGST. BOY BAND SHENNAIGANS. Also, a deep dive into the music industry and the way it controls queer artists! I hope that it’s a fun, cinematic book with romance and spectacle but also a lot of depth – that’s what we were going for!
You faced two challenges with this book: writing during a pandemic and writing as a duo! Can you tell us a bit about your drafting and writing process and what challenges you faced? And how did you two even decide on writing a book together? Walk us through it!
C: So Sophie and I have been friends for AGES and talk all the time. I had the idea of a queer boy band rom com from two POVS, and Sophie was a no-brainer to ask. But I was so nervous! So I sent her a DM casually asking what she thinks of this idea and she thought it was great! I said I was thinking of doing it as a collab, and she said if I did it with anyone else I was dead to her (jokingly, obviously). That’s how that happened! Basically that day we had a giant talk, and actually figured out a lot of the stuff that is in the final book. After that was a lot of DMing and we made a bunch of Google Docs and a Pinterest board and went from there!
S: We actually wrote several chapters and sent it over to our agent, who said she loved the concept and characters, but (rightly) we were starting in the wrong spot. So, we started from scratch, with a great idea of the backstory and what these characters were like. Once we sold the novel based on the first six or so chapters, we sat down and worked out a detailed synopsis, which was super tricky actually, because we had to try and work out the beats so the best character was narrating the best scene for them, while making sure we took it in turns and one character didn’t hog the spotlight, while taking our strengths as writers into account. To this day, I count it as a miracle that it worked out.
On the upside, what was your favorite experience or moment while writing this book together?
C: It was honestly so exicting when her chapters came in! We planned everything out, so I always knew what was going to happen, but getting to actually read it was amazing. I still remember reading chapter five, which is the first kiss chapter, and being totally blown away. That was probabably my favorite.
S: HAHAHAHA the first kiss chapter was a very different experience to me. I stared at the word document for days and days, then admitted to my friend Becky, who’s done many collabs before, that I was struggling writing the scene because it felt like I was writing about kissing Cale. To make it clear, NO OFFENSE INTENDED, but I simply do not want to kiss Cale any more than he wants to kiss me, so thinking about that FREAKED ME OUT. I was then assured that this is a normal and common—if not commonly discussed—part of co-writing. When you can see parts of a person you know in the character they created, it does weird things to your ability to imagine properly. Eventually I got over the mental block, and managed to remember these are fictional characters—even if one of the characters was born from my friend’s mind.
Zach and Ruben, the protagonists of If This Gets Out have quite different journeys – one is firmly placed in the closet time and again while the other is just beginning to figure out who he really is. How did you go about creating their individual struggles and interweaving their eventual romance?
C: It just made sense with the characters we created, I think. Both of us we got a sense of who these guys are pretty early on, so it just made sense for me for my people-pleaser character to still be figuring stuff out, taking longer than the more assertive Ruben.
S: Yeah, and actually, Ruben came much more readily than Zach. At the start of the story, Ruben’s confidently gay and struggling with being closeted and oppressed by management, and Zach thinks he’s straight, more or less. Ruben’s sexuality is a really huge part of his arc, but Zach’s sexuality arc sort of culminates a lot earlier than Ruben’s. I remember many, many conversations, together and with our agent, before we realised that Zach’s arc is actually around his personality trait of being a people pleaser, and we rewrote some of the synopsis to reflect that. Funnily enough, a lot of the reviews highlight this arc as their favourite part of the story, so clearly it was the right call for the character! As for Ruben, I really wanted to parallel these two abuse-of-power situations, that with an emotionally abusive mother and an emotionally abusive management team. He wasn’t able to overcome one until he’d learned how to start navigating the other. So it’s the change within him, and what he is willing to accept, that helps him negotiate both of these echoing challenges.
I loved the way you addressed the downsides of being a celebrity and explored the deeply heteronormative structures that still pervade the music (and many other) industry. If in an alternate universe, you’d get to be part of a band, what do you think would be the highlights and the disadvantages of that extraordinary life for you?
S: I love attention, I love pretty hair and pretty makeup and pretty clothes and big houses and spacious seats on planes, and I love singing for an audience. I would love insider knowledge to know the perfect people to give you the best eyelashes and the world’s most natural lip injections. I would love to hire a personal masseuse who just follows me around massaging my shoulders whenever I’m still. I would not love long long work days, the pressure to look perfect, the pressure to present my personality a certain way, hours and hours in the gym, tabloids constantly making up stories about you, and strangers hating you when you’ve never heard of them or done a thing to them in your life.
C: I mean, money would be a highlight! Maybe that’s shallow but money makes things a lot easier and I would really like that. But honestly being that famous sounds like a total nightmare to me, so I don’t know if there are many advantages other than the money for me.
You probably get this question all the time with the premise of If This Gets Out, but who are your favorite boy bands? And on that topic, if you had to create a Spotify playlist with your favorite boy band songs on it, which three songs would have to be on there?
C: I like One Direction and Backstreet Boys best! My favourite boy band songs are No Control and (Everybody) Backstreet’s Back. I also love Windows Down by Big Time Rush.
S: One Direction is the boyband I like the *most* songs of, but I think Backstreet Boys had the biggest impact on my life as a 90s kid. I would have to have I Want it That Way by the Backstreet Boys, and All Rise by Blue, and Drag Me Down by One Direction (or maybe Kiss You? Both).
With If This Gets Out releasing soon, are you already working on other projects (separate or together)? If so, can you share a sneak peek with us?
S: I’m finishing edits for THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, which is my next sapphic YA rom-com. It’s about a girl called Maya whose cheating ex boyfriend becomes famous when his sister marries royalty—ala Pippa Middleton—and then goes on a reality show in which he re-dates all his exes to find “the one that got away”. Maya reluctantly agrees to sign up with an ulterior motive in mind: make it to the end of the show, expose him on television, and break his heart. To pull it off, she has to team up with one of the other girls on the show—who just so happens to be the girl he cheated on Maya with. It’s due out at the end of 2022!
C: I sure am! My next book is called THE PLEDGE and it’s my horror debut and I’m ridiculously excited about it. It’s about a guy called Sam, who was staying in his boyfriend’s lake house with some friends when they were attacked by a masked killer. When the book starts it’s been two years since the attack, and he’s basically been a shut-in. He decides he wants to get his life back, so he goes to college and pledges a fraternity because a really cute guy invites him to rush. But then someone wearing the killer’s mask arrives on campus and starts killing Sam’s new frat brothers, making It clear he’s saving Sam for last. My publisher calls it SCREAM meets THE TAKING OF JAKE LIVINGSTON which is such an honor as I love both of those.
Last but not least, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
C: I’m reading HERE’S TO US at the moment and it’s SO GOOD. I loved WHAT IF IT’S US and I love this one just as much. I think fans of the first are going to be so happy.
S: All That’s Left in the World by Erik J. Brown (m/m romance set after a flu wipes out most of the earth), These Deadly Games by Diana Urban (girl’s sister is kidnapped, she’s blackmailed to hurt her friends more and more seriously to save her life), Some Girls Do by Jenn Dugan (sapphic enemies to lovers!), Primal Animals by Julia Lynn Rubin (sapphic summer camp cult horror)!
