Regina Black on Soap Opera Romance Tropes and Writing Authentic Character Choices

How much do your childhood experiences or the way you were raised dictate the choices you make as an adult? This week, I am sitting down with the incredible Regina Black, author of The Art of Scandal and her latest paperback release, August Lane. Regina has a masterful way of creating fully fleshed characters who make deeply human, interesting choices based entirely on their past structures. We discuss how growing up on daytime soap operas influenced her angsty voice, her winding path from writing online fan fiction to securing traditional publication, and the complex real-world realities she weaves into her small-town romance settings.

Regina Black is a former civil litigator, current law school administrator, and life long romance reader who has always been passionate about the depiction of Black women in popular culture. She currently resides in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband and daughter.

In this episode, we're discussing:

• How her childhood of watching summer soap operas shaped her love for forbidden romance tropes.
• Why Regina chose traditional publishing because she preferred staying in her creative writing cave over running a business from scratch.
• When she learned how to revise a manuscript through the Pitch Wars mentorship program, which led to thirty agent requests.
• How she combined her Arkansas upbringing with the musical history of Helena-West Helena to construct a claustrophobic small-town setting.
• Why Regina intentionally writes through the heavy real-world realities of intergenerational trauma, recovery, and invisible illness.

CONNECT WITH REGINA BLACK:

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BOOKS/AUTHORS MENTIONED:

Charish Reid (Episode | Website)

Denise Williams Website

The Art of Scandal by Regina Black (Amazon)

August Lane by Regina Black (Amazon)

The King of Scandal by Regina Black (Coming in 2027 in trade paperback!)

Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

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Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in these show notes are affiliate links. If you make a purchase or borrow a book through these links, I may earn a small commission at zero extra cost to you.

Connect with Alesia:
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Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

This podcast was produced by Galati Media.
Proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Transcript

Intro: Meeting Regina Black and Her Winding Author Journey

Alesia Galati 0:00

So much of the choices that we make throughout our lives have to do with the way that we were raised or our childhood experiences. The same goes for the characters that Regina Black writes. She has such an incredible way of creating fully fleshed characters who make a lot of interesting choices based on how they were raised that led them to this point where the stories start. She shares about her writing process in getting her debut book, The Art of Scandal, out there, as well as her new paperback release of her latest novel, August Lane. Then we go into what to expect next from her, and I can tell you I am very excited. Listener discretion is advised. This podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only. Hello, Regina. I'm so excited to have you on. If you could start by telling everyone, if they don't know you, shame, but who you are and a bit about your author journey.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah. So I'm Regina Black and I am the author of The Art of Scandal and August Lane, which just came out in paperback recently. So if you haven't got that, please go get it. My debut came out in 2023, but I have been writing all my life. So I've been writing since I was a kid, and I came up through like fan fiction and posting kind of installment type stories online. So before my debut, I'd written like 11 novels, maybe more. I don't know. The Artie Scandal was my debut, and then August Lane was my second book, and it is about a black country singer who lied about writing his only hit.

Alesia Galati 1:47

So which I think is such a good like, oh yes, I want to know more here. But getting into the writing your whole life, right? Because you are a you went to law school, you're a litigator, you are or previous litigator, you're a professor or no admin edmonds.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah, dean of students. So yes.

Alesia Galati 2:11

Wild. What a journey. Like, I wish I could just like, okay, let's have a whole episode about your life journey to that point. But the writing for so long, I think it's so interesting because we see, oh, you came out with your debut, and it was this huge hit, at least in like all the circles that I'm running in. Everybody's talking about this book. Yeah. But who is this person who we don't really know in the romance space? Just jumps off of here's this incredible book, and everybody read it, and everybody's five-starring it. And so I think so often we see that, and we're like, oh, this person came out of nowhere and they had instant success.

Online Serials vs. Traditional Publishing Revisions

Alesia Galati 2:47

And it's like, no, no success is just instant. You were creating and crafting on the back end. What are some things that maybe in the serial writing helped you as you were mapping out what the art of scandal was going to look like?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

I've read romance my entire life. So I always tell people my origin story are like category romances, historical romances, and daytime soap operas. If you read The Art of Scandal, you will see the bones of daytime soaps all through that book. And it really influenced my voice. So the wonderful thing about serial writing and just writing a section, posting it, getting instant feedback, it's almost like that same kind of storytelling device of soap operas where every single day was a new episode, right? And I imagine working on as a writer on a soap, you are getting feedback in real time about how people are responding to your storylines. And so it's great data for what people like, what they respond to, what gets people's attention. So it's great in that way. It's not so great because it doesn't actually really prepare you for the revision side of traditional publishing. That is something I had to learn a lot later because that installment writing, like you write it, you revise it, you add it, you throw it out there, and you're like, that's it. You never touch it again. And writing a book and publishing a book is like a whole different thing. So that has been a journey too. But yeah, definitely writing that way was very educational for me when it came to, oh, this is what people latch on to emotionally about your writing. And the series I wrote was one of those romance series we love that has this big family, and everybody gets their own romance and that sort of thing. And people would get so attached to that family. And I saw that kind of playing out in real time. And so that was wonderful for me.

Choosing the Trad Route Over Starting an Indie Business

Alesia Galati 4:55

Yeah. Oh my goodness. So why did you go the trad route, right? No wrong answers here. Why go that route instead of indie publishing or serial publishing it?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

So when I started writing the art scandal as just a way to reteach myself how to write because I had stopped writing for a long time. I got married, I had my daughter, I did all these things, and I came back to it. And then when I was done, I wasn't posting online anymore. So I kind of looked at it and I was like, I don't know what to do with this anymore because I don't have that platform. So I immediately started researching indie publishing because it was the closest to what I had been doing before. And I came to the conclusion that I did not have the bandwidth or the entrepreneurial spirit that you need to take on indie publishing. I really think people that succeed in indie publishing, you have to really love that process of building this book from beginning to end and packaging it and finding your readership and doing all these things. And it energizes people that do well in that place. I'm one of those people that are like, can I just write? I just want to go into my cave or whatever and just like pound that story to just throw them out into the world. And so I really kind of quickly realized that it would probably be better for me to see if the traditional route works because just the part of writing that I'm most passionate about and the part of this industry I'm most passionate about was on the writing side and the grading side, not necessarily on the business side. So that's how I ended up choosing Trad.

Alesia Galati 6:34

That makes a hundred percent sense. I even think about like I'd always been doing side hustle stuff for the last like 10 years. And then when COVID hit and I lost my job, my husband, he's my house hussy for seven years. He was my house hussy. He was a stay-at-home parent with our two boys, just went back to work, which like saved me, please. Just went back to work recently. And I'm like, You sure you want? You don't need to make money. Come on, stay home. But losing my job, I was like, I gotta figure something out. But I'd been side hustling so much. I did not want to be a business owner. That was never something I want to do. And I kind of out of necessity had to do it. And so I can't imagine choosing it. This is the path that I want to take. And I want to be promoting and writing and marketing my book and working on collabs and working on the taxes and working on all of that stuff at all times.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

No, no, thank you. That is, yes, that is exactly it. That's why when querying traditional publishing is rough, it's very rough. It's difficult, it's slow, it's all these things. I could go on. But when you communicate that frustration and someone goes, well, just self-publish. That is not the answer, particularly if you are someone who like you, the thought of owning your own business does not appeal to you, then that probably won't work for you as an author if you feel that way. When someone says, Oh, start your own business from scratch. If you craned your recoil, maybe self-publishing is not the best route for you.

Alesia Galati 8:07

Yeah. And here I am, six years in. Ridiculously. There's also if you're good at it, you're just so you just gotta do what you gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Alesia Galati 8:21

So

The Reality of Querying and the Pitch Wars Mentorship

Alesia Galati 8:22

true. And I think life has seasons and reasons and all that stuff. But back to the querying, what did that process look like for you? I know you said you didn't love it, which I can definitely understand. Did you go, all right, I'm going to query myself, or did you get an agent first, or what was that process like?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

So my process was not normal. It was not the average querying process. This was back in 2020 when we were all at home. And there were so many resources that had popped up online because everyone was online. So there were a lot of mentorship programs, writing groups going on. Writing Twitter was huge at that time. And so I did a few kind of writing groups where I got to exchange my manuscript with other writers and get feedback. And then I stumbled over a program that I had never heard of, but it was Pitch Wars, which was a huge mentorship program for writers. A lot of really big names came out of Pitch Wars. And so I said, hey, I'll enter this because like it was a huge mentorship program. And they had an application process where you submitted a query, a sample, all of those things of your book, and you submitted to four potential mentors, which were published authors. And so I read that if you submit to them, maybe even if they don't choose your book to mentor, you could get some feedback. And that's basically what I'm thinking. I want feedback from a published author. So I submitted, and like 4,000 submissions for like maybe 100 spots. And surprise, I ended up getting one, which shocked me because that was not even my expectation at all. And my mentors were Denise Williams and Cherish Reed. I don't care if she's on your show. Yeah. She was one of our mentors. And so we worked together for a few months. And that is where I learned revision, because I had never done real revision of a manuscript before. They were wonderful. And then we got it ready. And then that manuscript was in an agent showcase where the agents look at your pitch and then a really short sample of your writing and they decide whether they want to request your book. And again, I was like, maybe an agent will request my book. If I get one agent that even wants to see it, that's huge. And anyone that's query knows how big that is. It's very difficult. I got 30 requests from different agents. Then I got eight offers of representation out of those requests. And I signed with my current that I've been with my agent ever since. She was the first one to offer on it. Sharon Pelletier. She's wonderful. But that is how I got my agent. And we went out on submission and a month later we sold Thartis Gandalf. Wow. Yeah. So it was not normal.

Alesia Galati 11:19

That's so incredible though. Like, I can't imagine having that type of mentorship with published authors to have that behind you, I'm sure helped so much. Nobody gets to the top alone, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:32

No, you really do not. And that is one, if someone were to ask me, what's the best advice they can give people doing this? It's like everyone says you need your writing friends. You really need writing friends. And it's a combination of people who understand you and support you, but also mentorship in the way I had walking through okay, this is how

The Art of Scandal: A Love Letter to Daytime Soap Operas

SPEAKER_00 11:54

the tried publication process works, but also it just kind of creates a network that kind of spans out because those mentors have their crew and then those people know you. And this business is so heavily based on relationships. It was a wonderful opportunity. It really made me sad when they discontinued running that. It was a completely volunteer run program for years. But yeah, it was a wonderful opportunity. I'm so lucky that I got to do that.

Alesia Galati 12:23

That is so cool. And so when you sold Art of Scandal, were you thinking, I got the next one in me, let's go? Because you released in Hardback first or hardcover first, and then released in paperback, which is different than the typical genre romance release. And so were you thinking, all right, hardback's out, let's get started on the next one, or were you already like, I have another one in me?

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Oh, the second one I initially started while I was on submission with the first one because the way I cope with that kind of stress of rejection is I'm gonna work on the next thing and it's gonna be completely different from this first thing. So if you don't like the first thing, I don't even care because I have this other thing. It's nothing like that thing. You just reject it.

Alesia Galati 13:07

Not even attached anymore. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

So it's just like it's fine, rejected. It's okay. I've got something completely different. And that's what August Lane was. August Lane was my kind of slow burn music, completely different setting, completely different types of characters. And so I started writing that in 2021, is when I started working on that. And then I saw the art of scandal and I put it aside and started working on that. And then once the artist scandal was done, I was done with edits and all that stuff. I went back to August Lane and picked that back up. And my agent and I went to my publisher and was like, hey, do you want this one? Right. And they said yes.

Alesia Galati 13:48

Oh, that's so cool. All right. So for people who have not read Art of Scandal, what can they expect? You it's a daytime opera or like daytime soaps, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

The art of scandal is definitely my love letter to all of us that kind of got raised by daytime soaps. So I am kind of a very young Gen X elder millennial, right, on that cusp. And so, like young and restless, days are lies, all my children, Dow was my summer. They were on nonstop in my house during the summer. It's very much kind of my love letter to the types of tropes that you often see there. So soaps were big with forbidden romances are huge in soap operas. So the characters are you're like, they're not gonna put them together. They absolutely put them together, right? Which is like how I think of romance. I want a couple that you look at and go, how in the world is that gonna work? With the artist scandal, you have Rachel, who is married to this politician with guys on the White House, and then she finds out he's cheating in the worst possible way you can find that out. And he needs her to stay, which is this classic kind of political scandal setup. And she's like, Okay, I'll stay, but you gotta pay me a million dollars and give me this very expensive house in DC. And he says, sure, bet. But she ends up meeting this very young artist who just reminds her of who she really is and who she was before she got caught up in this whole rich politician's wife, trophy wife type world that she's in. And then she kind of has to do some soul searching, like what is important to me? She also has an adult daughter that she has to keep in mind and who's gonna be impacted by all this. The artist scandal is definitely my soap opera setting, soap opera setup, but deeply human people inhabiting this larger-than-life plot in this larger-than-life

Reflections on Midlife, Motherhood, and Sleepwalking Through Life

SPEAKER_00 15:51

setting.

Alesia Galati 15:51

Yeah, what I love is that it feels like a just such a great reflection of the midlife experience. I'm not midlife, I'm in my mid-30s, but several of my podcast clients talk about midlife. They talk about perimenopause, they talk about menopause. I mean, there's two that I can think of specifically, where one is more menopause adjacent, like living your best life. Her tagline is pretty much what are you gonna say fuck yes to? Those are the things you want to chase. And then the other one is more about sexual pleasure and all the different hormones and ever like more medical doctors and stuff like that, but finding pleasure in the pause, perimenopause, menopause, the pause of life, right? And then so I think you kind of get to a point in that 40s, 50s, early 60s where you're like, am I where I want to be? I have way less fucks to give now. I don't care about any of this stuff. What am I doing for me? I'm halfway through my life. What am I doing for me? And I think that the art of scandal is such an incredible reflection of that midlife experience.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

It is. And the wonderful thing about, because I always knew I wanted her to be a mother. And she had her daughter when she was a teenager. And so some of her choices, her life are a reflection of the fact that she was thrust into this very adult position very quickly. She also experienced housing insecurity and all of these things when she was very young. And that can make you make decisions out of fear. One of the things I think people grapple with this book questions is why did she marry this man who on the surface seems so terrible? And my answer is always, people aren't all bad, and they also evolve and change over the years. You are not the same person when you're turning 40 that you were when you met this woman you married and you're in your late 20s or something like that. And being married, life happens, people change. There's also the scripts, you make these choices, and then it becomes your life. And you just go, okay, this is my life. Then you blink, and you're 38 years old. And your husband is sending you a text that's meant for another woman. It wakes you up. And that's how I think of Rachel's journey is that she was just sleepwalking, accepting this as her life, as her penance for the mistakes she made in the past. And this moment, this text, and this realization that oh, this man has been out living a completely different life than me, just completely wakes her up and makes her realize this is my life. This is the only life I have. What am I doing? So that's how her journey starts.

Alesia Galati 18:39

So I love it. Everybody go read that

August Lane: Small Town Arkansas and Country Music Tropes

Alesia Galati 18:41

one. But like you said, August Lane is completely different. It is, yeah. So Ella's all about that one.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

August Lane is both of these books are personal in different ways. August Lane is very personal for me because you can hear I am Southern. I have lived in the South my whole life. And this book is set in Arkansas, and it's set in small town, Arkansas, which I was raised, I grew up in small town, Arkansas. And so the setting is based on my hometown, a combination of my hometown, plus a town in Southeast Arkansas called Helena, West Helena, and that has this really rich black history, black music history. There's a blues festival down there every year. So I combine that kind of cultural richness of Helena West Helena with the small town I grew up in, which is where you get the claustrophobic nature of small town life. And it's about Luke Randall, who is a one-hit wonder black country singer. He got famous on this American Idol type show for country music. And he sang this one song, and it's his only hit. It is the only song anyone wants to hear him sing. And when we meet him, he is at the rock bottom of his career trying to sing covers, and the audience is just get to the song we want to hear. But he hates that song because no one knows he did not actually write that song. And the person who actually wrote it was August Lane, and she is his high school first love. And so when he gets a chance to revive his dead career, it requires him to go back to his hometown and face August for the first time in over a decade.

Alesia Galati 20:26

Love it so much. Okay. So with him making those choices of I'm gonna use this song, I think so much of it ties to what you said. We have situations in our life, he has a really rough childhood. His mom is an addict, which happens in the first 10% of the book. It's not a spoiler. This is a very important part of his story of the lack of security. And so it would make sense that he would make the choices that he made, knowing his childhood of what can I do to make sure that I am never like that,

Survival Mode, Intergenerational Grief, and Alcoholism Recovery

Alesia Galati 20:58

that I can get out of this town, that I can be something. And so I think it all ties to like our child has such a huge impact on our story.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

It is. And I think of Luke as a character who has always been in survival mode. If you were to look at that character and say, why does he make these decisions? It's because his instinctual reaction to conflict, to any sort of hardship is, I have to survive this. I have to survive this. That's what you see him doing constantly. And that is what gets him into a place where he's singing this song and pretending that, yeah, I wrote the whole thing and continuing to do that because it is a constant just survival method for him. And so his happy ending, I think, is handbreaking that cycle and being able to make choices from a place of healing and hope instead of okay, what's the next thing I have to do to survive this? Life.

Alesia Galati 22:00

Yeah. And then you have August Lane, who is your female main character, and she is the teen pregnancy daughter of a star country singer. And so much of her relationship with her mother, we get through the story. And I just found it so interesting because, again, her choices and the things that she does in the staying in the hometown and being like, I'm gonna cause a ruckus because everyone's gonna look at me a certain way anyway. So who even cares? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

That is honest to AT.

Alesia Galati 22:36

And so, like, you get into her story as you have flashbacks of them as teens, which I absolutely love. You have her in current very interesting situations that she's put herself into, but from a place of grief, right? At the beginning of the story, you have her grandmother had recently passed away, but also had dementia. And so was already in decline for so long, which I think no one, when we talk about grief, a lot of people think that instant grief of, oh, you lost someone in a car accident or you lost someone this way. But so often, especially being in midlife and caring for your parents, it can be like they're declining slowly and it's a long process of grief.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah. Thematically, it's where August is with regard to all the people in her life have left her in some way, right? Her mom left when she was very young, and then Luke disappeared, he left her. And Bertie, her grandmother, who loved her, slowly left her. Right. And there is this also the theme of being remembered and being forgotten and being invisible is there. When Luke left and erased her, kind of from the story of that song, she became invisible and felt forgotten by him. And the same thing with her mother, like leaving her behind, and Bertie's dementia is feels like the slow erasure of August from her life. So that is where we meet August, where she feels like she's just being constantly left, constantly abandoned, constantly forgotten and erased.

Alesia Galati 24:20

So yeah, which I think so many, especially women, can relate to that feeling of your coworker taking credit for something that you did, or becoming a parent and feeling invisible, like your body is just to sustain these little minions who literally suck the life force out of you.

Shifting Perspectives: Writing Through Postpartum Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 24:41

You're not supposed to say that. I know.

Alesia Galati 24:44

You're not supposed to I had postprom depression. I will say all the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Me, it was postpartum anxiety, which no one talks about that. I got all the brochures about postponing depression. No one said, Hey, you might be so anxious you can't put your shit down. It's a lot. So yes.

Alesia Galati 25:03

Oh my goodness. I'm so sorry you went through that. It is uh people don't talk about it. We have my kids go to MMA five times a week, and two of the parents there just had babies. I was like, walked up to them as soon as they came back, and I was like, How are you doing? And they're like, No, I'm good. And I was like, no, fuck the baby. How are you? How are you? I don't care. Everybody's gonna be like, How's the baby eating? How's the baby sleeping? No, how are you? Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to support you in this time?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Everyone's asked me why I write about motherhood so much. I'm constantly writing about motherhood. And I'm like, I don't know, maybe because I'm in it, because I'm a mother and I had a mother, and it's just one of those very complicated experiences. And I write through some of those uncomfortable feelings that you have as a mother and those difficult choices you make as a mother, and that feeling of being like, I used to be a person, now I'm a mom, where did that person go? Those sorts of feelings. Yeah, that definitely came out in August lane.

Complex Supporting Characters and Invisible Illness Representation

Alesia Galati 26:13

Yeah. Which I love though. I think even with Luke's mom, there's this like I told you before we hit record, but my mom had fibromyalgia, which is like the disease that's nobody really knows what's happening. It's the nerves, maybe neurological. Who even knows? You're just in pain constantly. Yes. And I remember her like the best explanation I can give is her calling me and being like literally tears in her voice. And she's like, I can't button my pants because my hands hurt so bad. And she was a registered nurse, she knew like the physiolog, like physiological stuff, the things that could be happening in her body. And she's like, I don't know what's happening, and I am just in so much pain every single day. And when you mention that again, it's in like the first 15-ish percent of the book. So I'm not giving any spoilers here. Yeah. That you find out that his mom has fibromyalgia, her addiction when they were younger makes a lot of sense. And it's not like, oh, I'm just gonna choose to do this thing. I my mom was an addict for the majority of her life. And I remember one time I asked her as a teenager, I was like, Why do you choose to do this? I don't understand that you're making these choices, which then again, as me as a parent, made me make very different choices with my life and be very like gung-ho about those choices. Yeah. And she was like, It's not like I just wake up and say, I'm gonna do drugs today. It's a culmination of things that lead me to that moment. And I'm like, I don't get it. But reading other people's experiences, I think, has shown me so much and allowed me to open my mind to the lived experiences of other people and why they might make those choices. So why was having, I know Luke being in survival mode was an important part of the story, but why was having his mom go through those things or what was like the impetus for, all right, I'm gonna write this story with this mom having these specific conditions?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, fibromyalgia. I have family members that have had fibromyalgia. And when I was conceiving Luke, Luke was conceived backwards from the premise of what does it do to a person that they lied about writing their only hit? The worst thing he ever did was to the person he loved most in the world, right? So that's my starting point with Luke. And then you start filling in those gaps of who is this man? And then I get to what makes someone leave this town after doing this and refuse to go back. And there has to be something there he's running away from, right? And as someone who comes from a small town, I know what types of things you run away from. And I wanted it to be his mother because I feel like that is something that we don't see as often. And it's also something that in a small town would be one of those things that either you didn't talk about or people knew, but they didn't know where to put it in their mind, right? And it's not that traditional image of child abuse that we're used to seeing, which makes it a little more insidious and less likely to go detect that sort of thing. And it also complicates his relationship with that parent because she is his mother. And if he's aggressive with her in any way, it's different than if a daughter pushes back against her dad, or if a son pushes back against his father, right? And so when I started thinking about that, it was interesting to me. And then I started developing Ava as a character because I'm one of those people that's like supporting characters have to have their own interior lives. I know because we read my books, like, who are all these people? Everyone's real in my head. And they're all the heroes of their story. And so when I started developing Ava, I started thinking, like, okay, what makes a person get to this point where they can't control themselves around their son, or all their anger and all their vitriol is directed towards the sun? And that's where I developed that backstory of this man that she loved and lost, and the fact that this is the result of that relationship and how that ended, and why Luke is the target. And then I started thinking about what is a person sitting with that would cause them to self-medicate in this way. And that's how I arrived at the fibromyalgia diagnosis, because I was thinking of the time period and how back then no one would have known what was going on with her at all. And just thinking, what is it like to just be in pain all the time, every day of your life, and what does that do to a person? And being in pain constantly, no one can tell you why or what's going on. You react kind of one or two ways. You fold inward or it goes outward. And so she was self-medicating with whatever she could get her hands on, and that frustration and that anger was constantly directed at the closest target, which was the son that reminded her of the man she loved and who died. So that's Ava in a nutshell.

Alesia Galati 31:54

Which I think too leads to that idea of our childhood. He saw what was happening with his mom and her self-communicating, which then led to him self-medicating with alcohol and alcoholism and recovery is a big part of Luke's journey. Why that? And why do you think that was important for his character? And especially in a very like, I don't know, I feel like with a lot of the musician or celebrity type romances stories, the typical arcs we see, it's either they have no problem with addiction or with alcoholism, or it's like the complete opposite, and it's like a huge point of their story. But he's in recovery at the beginning of the book. So why was that part of your all right? This is where I want to place him in this story.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

There's like a story kind of archetypal justification, but then there's also kind of a logical progression of the character. So stemming from Ava's situation, and we know the fact that Luke is always in survival mode.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

I just really thought, like, how do you cope with this? And we do model our behavior after our parents. So in my mind, Luke started drinking when he was very young, and he was still in a stage where what his parents did, his mother did, was really imprinting on him. And he was raised in a house where you self-medicated with whatever worked. And for him, it was like once he starts socializing in things, beer becomes like super easy. It's right there. We use alcohol to self-medicate a lot of things. He suffers from complex PTSD, anxiety, he has panic attacks, things like that. People drink to self-medicate those things. And I also started thinking of how I am one of those people that does not romanticize fame whatsoever. I actually think it sounds terrible, absolutely horrible, like a nightmare. So I started thinking if I ever wrote a book just focused on fame, it would be a horror novel. I'm sorry. But I just imagine like that person thrust into the spotlight. It's just gonna get worse. So that drinking too many beers at the parties and staying home and that sort of thing is gonna spiral into everything he has access to, and he's not going to be able to function with all that attention and all that pressure and in that world without escalating. And so that's what happened with him. The other reason from a story kind of archetypal is the book is structured like a country song, country music, drinking, too much drinking, whiskey drinking, like that is so country. So it was a little like thematically, it fits this. But it I definitely think it was a natural evolution of the character that is what happened to him.

Alesia Galati 34:48

There's this quote that I remember hearing when I was younger, like maybe 15 years ago, where it's like a drug addict's parent and they had two kids, and one kid is an addict and the other one never touches it. And both asked the question, Why do you do drugs? I watched my father. Why do you not do drugs? I watched my father. And I feel like this is exactly how Luke and his brother are, right? Where they're just they went completely different paths and coped with their childhood in very different ways, which I think is a reflection of just the cute you write the human experience so beautifully.

Integrating a Podcast Transcript Narrative Into a Novel

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Thank you. I try. There's also another element of I I have a lot of siblings.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

And so I had an older sister. And so I would add to that, I watched my sister. Yeah. Right. Because Luke is the oldest child. And he is parenting his younger brother as well. And so it's a lot easier for the younger child to watch the older child. And it's different from just being the oldest child and the only person you have to look at is your parent. Right. Right. And for me, it was more, oh, I see my sister doing these things that my mother did, and this is the outcome. And it was like more instructive for me. And I was like, oh, don't do that. Got it. There's also that element as well.

Alesia Galati 36:17

Yeah. I'm the oldest of five. It's very interesting watching the different dynamics of how each of us coped with my mom's addiction and her loss and all the things that happened over the course of our lives. And even though we had very quote unquote similar experiences, like I'm 10 years older than my youngest sibling. And so I'm 18 at college, and he's eight in the thick of it. And so he had a sober mom for the majority of his life, whereas I did not. So our choices are completely different. And so yeah, it's always very interesting. The psychology. Why do we do the things that we do and make the choices? But I think that you reflect that so interestingly. So everybody go check out that book for sure. I think that it's such a good reflection. Like you said, like I said, I think you write the human experience in such an impactful and beautiful way of explaining the reasons behind why these people do the things they do and giving them fully fleshed characters. But I, as a podcaster, I would be remiss. I work in podcasting, produce them. We gotta talk about podcasts. So throughout the story, you have Jojo, who is August Lane's mom, giving a podcast interview and talking about being uh not wanting, I should say, to talk about being a black woman singing country music. Tell me about how that ideation came through.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah. So originally that was not in the book. I actually originally put these sections that were like a Greek chorus type section of just the action stop, and you'd hear the thoughts of the different people in a town, that sort of thing. And I sent it to my editor and she was like, These are so well written, no, they don't work. So I was like, oh, fine. And so I cut them out, but I knew I wanted to have some element of the world and the industry that we're dealing with, and that reaction. And so I wrote this podcast transcript that was between the host Emma and this other guy. And I was like, oh, it's gonna be a podcast episode where these people that comment on the music industry are just talking about these things as they happened. And then I wrote one of those, but then I wrote the second one, which was an interview with Emma and Jojo, and it just broke the story wide open. I was like, oh no, this is it. This runs through the whole book because I knew I wanted JoJo to be this specter hanging over everything, but I didn't want her there. It worked perfectly for that because you had her voice in your ear, right? Like a podcast. Yeah. She's this disembodied voice talking to you, but she's just not there. She's not on the page, she's not engaging as much. That is how that kind of came to be. I interviewed three women, black women country singers when I was doing research for the book, and they just said such great things about their industry, but I did not want to just throw it on the page as this lesson and country music. And so I took what I got from them and put that in Jojo's mouth as well, like some of their experiences, and use that as inspiration to create that character. Those were the most fun.

Alesia Galati 39:46

I can imagine, and I think it really gives you, because, like you said, she is this kind of disembodied voice throughout this story. You get snippets of her reasoning and snippets of maybe like without the podcast, maybe why she might have been pushing her daughter to not go into the industry and leaving her daughter with her mom for all of her childhood and not going back for the funeral. Like so many things that you're like, why, why, why? But I think by getting that podcast throughout, you get more of her, I guess that kind of midlife. All right, I'm gonna do what I need to do to survive this.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

Yes. And it very much is that. And I tell people all the time, they say, oh, it's dual timeline. It's actually like three timelines in the book. And so with Jojo, when she's giving this interview, it's after everything in the book has happened. The journey that happens in the main action has already happened. So she's way more reflective. And also you're getting Jojo in her own words instead of through the eyes of her daughter, particularly the eyes of her teenage daughter at one point, and then her adult daughter, where they're estranged. And so I liked kind of comparing August's take on Jojo versus Jojo in her own words, and you see there's some differences there, and there's a gap in August's knowledge and understanding of her mom.

Alesia Galati 41:11

I thought it was so cool. And again, as a mom who had a mom, right? I guess that as a teen, especially, you don't understand why your parents are making the decisions they're making. You're like, I would have done this totally different. I'm even just imagining how my boys are teens and how they're gonna feel that way too. And it's fine, right? You do the best you can with what you got. And so, yeah, I just I love that you had that integrated throughout and thought it was just such an incredible way to showcase her voice and her story. Seeing the behind the scenes of all right, August didn't get the full picture because she was so heavily impacted by it and by the choices. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Before we move on to your next book that you are working on, which I'm so excited about. What do you think is the one song that encompasses

The Ultimate Song Soundtrack for August Lane

Alesia Galati 42:07

August Lane for you?

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Oh my god, that's so hard. My playlist soundtrack so long. Okay, I'm gonna cheat and I'm gonna say two. One of the songs I listened to on repeat was Dumb Luck by the War Intrigue, who is a black country duo. If you haven't heard of them, go listen to their stuff. It's a married couple, and she was actually one of the actors that was in Sister Act, the movie Sister Act. So go find them. The song is called Dumb Luck. It is a duet between them. And when I think of August and Luke singing together and the vibe, and what that song is about, is very August lane coded. The other song I always think about is my classic all-time favorite country song, which is Aff All the Pieces by Patsy Klein. It's the saddest second chance romance country song in existence. It's the intro to I'm gonna get the name, is Sweet Honey Bucking. I think that's the name of that song on Cowley Carter, Sweet Honey Bucking. So it's the intro to that song. She sings that part of At Fall the Pieces. But I am obsessed with Affall the Pieces and I listened to that and made myself cry when I was reading this. That's the song.

Alesia Galati 43:23

I love it. That's so interesting. I'm always curious, what's on repeat? What is that soundtrack to as you're thinking and writing and creating? Because I feel like most people, even as they're ideating, maybe not while they're writing because they can't think and write and listen at the same time, but while they're like mapping things out or creating the characters, what are those things that come to

Sneak Peek: The King of Scandal and Moving to Trade Paperbacks in 2027

Alesia Galati 43:47

mind? Okay, getting into you have another book coming out next year, correct? Yes, and 2027. Do you have high-level tropes? Maybe an idea coming.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

So the ninth. But this coming out is called The King of Scandal. It is a follow-up to the Art of Scandal, but it's a standalone. So if you want to read it out of order, it's totally fine. I always conceived the artist scandal as this world of characterist. So I'm super excited that I'm getting the chance to write the second book that was always in the back of my mind when I wrote that one. The main character in the artist scandal had an older brother. And so many people that read that book sent me messages and made comments about that older brother. And I'm like, yes, yes, he's coming back. So The King of Scandal is about a single mother who is struggling financially. And she finds out unexpectedly that she has inherited a large stake in the company, the billion-dollar company of her ex-fiance's family. So they've been apart for over a decade. And so just one day she received this inheritance, but she can't take those shares unless she is a member of that family. So there's a restriction on those shares. Her ex-fiance shows up at her door and it's like, How did you convince my dad to leave you all of this money? And it takes off from there. Tropes, obviously, second chance, but I think you could probably guess that one of the big plot lists is to get that money. She has to become a member of his family. It's angsty, it's soapy. There is a historical mystery involved where the seeds were planted in the first book. So that's an Easter egg for the people that have read that book. But we're diving into the history of this town that they live in. And so that is the book I'm working on right now. It's called The King of Scandal.

Alesia Galati 45:50

Oh, that is so exciting.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

It's very fun to write. And this is the first time I've done The Mystery Element. Hopefully it works.

Alesia Galati 45:58

Nice. That is so cool. And will that one be released hardcover first and then paperback, similar to how you've released the last two? So, as far as I know, this one is actually going to be trade paperback.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Okay. First, the other ones, the way I write stories, I think when I debuted, rom coms were king everywhere. And I wrote this kind of romantic rom drum, as I saw that in the New York Times. This reads, it gives kind of book club fiction because it has all these themes. And so it was released in hardback, and then the paperback came out the next year. And I'm on an every other year publication schedule, which I prefer because it takes me a long time to research and write my books. Usually the heartback will come out and then the paperback will come out, and then the heartback, that's how it's been. With this one, as far as I know, it's coming out in trade paperback first, which I'm actually happy about because heartbacks cost a lot of money. At the end of the day, you're an author, you want people to read your book. And that paperback is just so accessible from a price point and just reading the physical book. So I'm really excited about the idea of that paperback coming out and people just being able to go out and grab that when the book comes out.

Alesia Galati 47:14

So yeah, that'll be exciting and definitely have to catch back up as it gets closer to that release. Regina, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much for being on Where Can People Connect with You? What's your favorite place to connect with readers?

SPEAKER_00 47:31

Most of my book announcements and things, I'm on Instagram at Regina Blackwrites, and you can find me at that same handle on Threads. I don't post there quite as much. My main place that you can find my thoughts about things is Substack, and it's Regina Blackwrites. My newsletter is called The Critical Heart, and I talk just about all things romance focused. So craft stuff, being a romance reader, romance film, just whatever comes to mind, that is where you will find that.

Alesia Galati 48:01

So awesome. And we'll have links for all that in the show notes and the YouTube description for anyone doing other things as they're listening to us. You can grab those links below or in your app. Regina, thank you so much. This was an absolute blast.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

Thank you. I had such a good time. Thank you for having me.