STEMinist romance queen Ali Hazelwood sinks her teeth into the paranormal with “Bride”

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Katie O'Connor: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Katie O'Connor, and today I'm excited to be speaking with bestselling author Ali Hazelwood. Ali is beloved for her STEMinist romances, and recently debuted a YA romance and is now following that up with her paranormal romance debut, Bride. Welcome, Ali.

Ali Hazelwood: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

KO: So, Bride is about a Vampyre, Misery, who's used as collateral in a tenuous alliance with the Southwest Werewolf Pack. She is to marry their alpha, and hopefully keep the peace between the two groups with their union. What was your originating idea for this story?

AH: I think I really just wanted to write a story that had fated mates, but also a forbidden love element. So, I made them different species. I guess I really went with what felt like the most over-the-top kind of ridiculous setup, and the setup that I thought would be the most fun for me to write.

KO: You can tell while you're listening to it that you had a lot of fun writing it, I will say that.

AH: I'm so glad. Honestly, it's the best part. I feel like I really enjoy reading books where I'm like, "Wow, the author really went nuts and did whatever they wanted to do." So, I'm just glad it comes through.

KO: That's actually a great segue to my next question. Paranormal romance, particularly vampires and werewolves, do come with a long history of classic tropes. How did you decide on the world rules and lore that you wanted to keep versus where you wanted to deviate?

AH: It's such a difficult question for me to answer because I know that there are a lot of people who create these huge worlds that have very detailed world-building and a lot of rules and a lot of lore. In my case, I am very much a romance writer, so I wanted to write this love story, and then I sort of tried to figure out, as I was writing, what kind of internal logic and what kind of rules would be in the world [that] would best serve the love story.

So, for me, it was very much the relationship between these two people, and then everything else kind of came after. Generally, I didn't really want this to be a story about magic. I wasn't really sure that I could pull that off. It wasn't what I was interested in writing at the moment. I kind of wanted the world to be sort of grounded in science, in a way. So you have different species, and it's not like these species have mystical powers, it's more that, because of their genetic differences, they have different strengths and different weaknesses, of course.

KO: And it wouldn't be an Ali Hazelwood novel, of course, without some STEM components, and our heroine, Misery, is a tech genius. Did you have fun juxtaposing the gothic themes in this paranormal romance with those sort of new-world technologies?

AH: So, the truth is that I came to this book with a lot of knowledge of the paranormal romance writers that came before me. I grew up reading Nalini Singh—she is probably my favorite author, or one of my favorite authors. I was reading J.R. Ward and Christine Feehan and Kresley Cole. A lot of urban fantasy authors who, like you said, they mix—you have vampires, but instead of living in this weird, gothic [world] or dark castles, they have technology, because a lot of stories are really set in the contemporary world.

"I get bored with myself and what I write very easily."

So, it didn't feel that weird to me. It didn't feel like I was doing anything that was new, but then I remember my editor telling me, "Oh, this is so new and different," and I was like, "Wait, have you read Nalini Singh?" So, I guess for me, it felt natural. I started writing this book with this tradition of paranormal romance in my head, and it felt like just something that a lot of authors had done before, and something that I wanted to play with as well.

KO: Yeah, and I do enjoy getting to see how these types of paranormal creatures can just live alongside humans. It wasn't a secret world, it wasn't like they were hidden. Everyone's sort of aware of each other, even though there are territorial tensions and whatnot. Everyone is, theoretically, coexisting.

You are much loved for academia-set STEMinist romance novels, and then we got to enjoy your YA/new adult debut, Check & Mate. And, of course, Bride is paranormal. Can we expect even more subgenres from you, more explorations? Is your goal to just conquer them all?

AH: Okay, so the truth is that I come from fan fiction, right? And with fan fiction, you just kind of write what you feel like and then you post it on the internet. And you don't really have to run it by anyone. You see a show that you like and you're like, "Oh, my God, I really want to write in this world," and you do it. I guess traditional publishing is a little bit more about brand and about being consistent, and about sales and cultivating your readership. But I think I'm just not very good at that kind of stuff. I get bored with myself and what I write very easily. I hope to be able to write what I feel like writing in the future. And I got really lucky that my publisher was like, "Yeah, you know, whatever. Sure. Write a paranormal romance if you want." They definitely are taking a risk, and so I appreciate it. I definitely hope that if, in the future, I want to write something else, I get to do that in one way or another. So, we'll see I guess.

KO: Well, I think you're proving that your fans will follow you. I personally can't wait to see whatever you want to try that's up next. So, I was curious if you have a favorite trope as a romance fan and if it's different from your favorite trope as a romance author?

AH: You know, it's interesting. There are definitely tropes that I enjoy reading but I can't see myself writing. One is friends to lovers, as in people who have been friends for years and then somehow they fall in love. It's just such a hard trope to write and to create tension with, and I really enjoy reading it, but I cannot see myself writing it ever, just because I don't know that I would be able to sustain the tension and create any sort of compelling narrative for a reader. So, that's definitely one of them. I know that it's my favorite, but it feels completely different as an author to tackle it and as a reader, for me.

KO: That's really interesting. Yeah, I could see how it would be hard, as you said, to sort of maintain that tension when there is that established bond from the very outset.

AH: Though a lot of authors do it so well, and whenever I read their books, I'm like, "Wow, this is so effortless. You are obviously great at this. You make it sound so easy." But then I think about writing a friends-to-lovers story and I'm like, "No. No. There's no way. I wouldn't be able to do it."

KO: Do you have a favorite as an author? Is it enemies to lovers or rivals to lovers?

AH: I guess enemies to lovers is sort of my default. I would say it's very easy to bring two people from hating each other, or to take two people that have some animosity or a rivalry between them. This sort of stuff implies a lot of emotions and so a lot of heightened tension, and it's easier, I think, to bring two people who are enemies or rivals to a place where they can fall in love than many other starts. So I guess I really do enjoy that. I really loved writing fated mates in Bride. I had written it a lot in fan fiction, but writing contemporary rom-coms, it's not something you can really write. So that was really fun for me, and I hope to be able to write it again.

KO: Your bio mentions that you were born in Italy and that you also lived in Germany and Japan before coming to the United States. How do the different places you've lived impact your approach to storytelling? And do you ever find yourself maybe thinking of a joke in Italian or something, and being like, "Ooh, what's the best way to translate that little idiom?"

AH: Yeah, I am constantly googling words in Italian, like, "How do you say this in English?" That's, like, constantly. And sometimes the words that I use as early as an hour earlier, I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait. I have this in my head. What was it? What was it?" So yeah, it's a constant thing. I think the hardest part is that I write mostly for a US audience, and sometimes there are either things that I don't know how to say, like literally yesterday, now I know what it's called, a gang plank—is that what it's called? The thing that comes out of a pirate ship. So, I did not know what it was called. And I tried googling it and I could not figure it out, and so I ended up physically finding a comic that had it and I screenshotted it and I sent it to my bestie and I was like, "What is this in English? Tell me what, what is this in English? I am going crazy." It was like a 20-minute process.

"It's easier, I think, to bring two people who are enemies or rivals to a place where they can fall in love than many other starts."

So definitely the fact that I'm not a native speaker doesn't help in terms of how quickly I can write [laughs]. In terms of cultural things, again, it's a bunch of cultural references that when I'm writing about characters who are born and raised in the US, I am like, "Okay, so what would they have done from age five to 15?" Because I have no idea, you know? My experience was different. What is a US high school like? What is a US middle school like? Those are definitely things that I have to put some thought into, and usually I have friends that I ask, and I'm like, "Does this translate? Do you guys do this when you are young?" Or things like that.

KO: Do you think you will ever set a story in Italy?

AH: You know, it's so hard. I have thought about it and I have like half an idea, but I think especially in a romance, there is this tendency of seeing Italy as this beautiful, romantic place. There's a lot of romanticizing of Italy, and it's very hard for me to kind of vibe with that because I grew up in Italy and I know the good and the bad. I have lived through Italian bureaucracy, for example, so it's very hard for me to see it as like this dreamy country with good food and good wine. Those are definitely true things about my country, and there are things that I really love about my country, but I also know the bad. I think if I were to use Italy, I would probably use it in maybe like a sort of fantasy part or a [setting], but not necessarily in a contemporary romance.

KO: That makes so much sense. I mean, you could make it not in a romanticizing way, but just like a "Here's what it's really like," you know, falling in love over there.

AH: Is that what the people want to read though? [laughs]

KO: [Laughs]. I'm your population of one over here. I will download that.

AH: I would have to think about it.

KO: Thérèse Plummer does a beautiful job narrating this audiobook, and we do get some vignettes from Will Damron as our hero, Lowe Moreland, throughout the story, but they're really just bites—and the pun is very much intended there. Do you think you'll ever write more from the male point of view?

AH: My next book, actually, it's another contemporary romance, so not paranormal. It has dual point of view. And I think it's equally male and female. It's a little bit of a different kind of book, so it made more sense to have both his point of view and hers. We'll see how that is received and what that does.

KO: What was that process like for you? Did you approach it the same way, writing from the male point of view versus the female point of view? Did you find it difficult or easier in certain ways?

AH: It was tricky. I feel like a lot of my stories rely on miscommunication, which I know is a much-hated trope, but I like it. And it's very hard to write a dual point of view book where so much relies on miscommunication and on not knowing what someone is thinking. Or maybe the reader knows it, but if you are being told explicitly, then as the reader you get a little bit frustrated with the character who doesn't know. So, if your story is based on one of the characters not knowing something, it's a little bit hard to write dual point of view, for me. That's just my opinion.

But my next book is kind of different. The conflict doesn't really rely on miscommunication, it just kind of relies mostly on two people being very emotionally unavailable and falling in love but not wanting to be in love. I guess it wasn't weird for me to write dual point of view. It felt natural for the story. And I kind of had fun with it. Again, it's such a new thing. I can say I had fun with it. I guess we'll see how readers respond. Maybe I made a mess. So, who knows? [Laughs]

KO: I'm sure that's not true. I can't wait to listen now. So, not to give anything away, but the ending of Bride certainly made me feel like there's more to come. Can we expect another story in this world?

AH: I think it depends a lot on, again, on whether the book does well. I am finishing up my contract now with my publisher with another book, another unrelated book. I guess we'll see how it goes and whether there's interest from readers in a sequel. I definitely ended the book like that, thinking I would write another book, but things change and I guess we'll see. But I think if it doesn't happen, maybe I'll write some kind of novella or something that wraps everything up.

KO: What's next for you?

AH: Right now, I am drafting like a madwoman. I have a book due in a little over a month, so that is really all I can think of right now, the fact that I have my book due. My book after Bride is going to be Not in Love, which is the dual point of view book I was talking about, and it's coming out sometime in the summer. I forgot when. I want to say June.

KO: June.

AH: June, yes. Yay [laughs]. And after that, it's probably going to be the book that I'm currently writing. And then who knows. That's the end of my contract, so I guess we'll see. We'll see what I want to write afterwards.

KO: Well, whatever it is, I can't wait to listen.

AH: Thank you.

KO: Thank you so much for your time today, Ali. I really appreciate it.

AH: Thank you so much for having me.

KO: And listeners, you can get Bride right now on Audible.