Sarina Bowen chatted with us about her new release Brooklynaire, mold-breaking characters, and writing a boss/assistant romance during the #metoo era!

Related: Brooklynaire by Sarina Bowen book review: You don’t want to miss Nate and Rebecca’s epic love story

About ‘Brooklynaire’ by Sarina Bowen:

You’d think a billion dollars, a professional hockey team and a six-bedroom mansion on the Promenade would satisfy a guy. You’d be wrong.

For seven years Rebecca has brightened my office with her wit and her smile. She manages both my hockey team and my sanity. I don’t know when I started waking in the night, craving her. All I know is that one whiff of her perfume ruins my concentration. And her laugh makes me hard.

When Rebecca gets hurt, I step in to help. It’s what friends do. But what friends don’t do is rip off each others’ clothes for a single, wild night together.

Now she’s avoiding me. She says we’re too different, and it can never happen again. So why can’t we keep our hands off each other?

‘Brooklynaire’ by Sarina Bowen Q&A:

There’s been a high demand from readers to get Nate & Rebecca story, did you feel any added pressure while writing because of this?

Sarina: Yes and no! I knew that Nate and Rebecca’s book would be an epic love story. That part was easy.

Here’s what was harder: 1) I knew I wanted to make this book a stand-alone. No experience necessary. So I took a lot of care to make it perfectly accessible to new readers. Lauren Blakely told me she didn’t even know there were other books until she got to the end and saw the links.

2) On the other hand, somewhere along the way I’d decided that this book’s timeline would be intertwined with that of Pipe Dreams, the third Bruisers book. So I had to write this novel sitting next to a hand-scrawled calendar listing where each character was on which day. Meanwhile the settings included D.C., Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bal Harbour, Detroit and Dallas. No big deal, right?

What was the hardest, easiest, and most fun parts of Brooklynaire to write?

Sarina: Those brutal timeline issues! I’m still scarred. The fun parts are the quick little flashback scenes to when Nate and Becca met. Those were a joy to write. Nate at twenty-five, before he became important? Priceless.

Rebecca likes to joke that she’s a bad feminist, but then she goes on to do some pretty badass things by the end of the book (let’s not spoil them). This kind of reminds me of how Braht bended the ideals of a romance hero in Man Card. Why is it important to you to show characters that break the typical mold?

Sarina: If I didn’t write mold-breaking characters, they’d be dull. Archetype-blasting makes for great character development. And Becca declares her fantasies antifeminist (at least at one point) but her actions never are.

One thing that I just loved about Nate was how careful he was to make sure he was on the same page with Rebecca and not to pressure her into anything, specifically because of his place of power as her boss. Can you discuss crafting male characters while keeping women’s rights in mind?

Sarina: It was fascinating to write a boss/assistant romance during the #metoo era. I struggled and struggled with it before realizing that it had to be part of the story. I wanted to find a way to let them have their epic romance without Nate crossing ethical boundaries. He’s all man. But a real man can stand back and take a breath and wait for the love of his life to catch up.

I think fans will be excited to learn about how Nate and Rebecca first met. Did you always have their history in your mind while you were writing about them in the Brooklyn Bruisers series, or is it something you started exploring while getting ready to write Brooklynaire?

I… I… can’t remember when I conceived their history. Before I sit down to write a book I play through a lot of it in my head. Some of their story occurred to me while I was still writing the Bruisers books, and some of it after. When I was working out the plot, though, there was this one night when I had to call Elle Kennedy and whine about how stuck I was. I was drinking a beer and walking on the treadmill and complaining when I figured out what to do. She was super helpful but some of that help was letting me rant and saying “uh huh” in all the right places.

Seeing Nate in a serious relationship with someone else was kind of weird to read, though it made sense to explain some of his insecurities. Was it strange to write that part of Nate when you’d always had him obsessed with Rebecca in previous books?

Sarina: We want our heroes to be full of confidence and heroic. But without a fear or a flaw Nate would have been too plastic. So I gave him a college sweetheart who’d twisted his understanding of himself. And since Nate and Becca don’t meet until he’s twenty-five, there was plenty of room in his history for… Readers will have to turn the pages to find out who!

Everyone needs a Bingley at their service! What gave you the idea to incorporate a smart speaker into the book, which almost because a character all by itself? And does Nate ever get around to telling Rebecca about that little incident with the recordings?

Sarina: I’m not a fan of (real) smart speakers so I invented one that I’d actually like. I thought—what’s the point of writing a technology wiz if he doesn’t have super cool toys? Et voila, Bingley was born. And he’s flawed, too! ;)

Can you talk about what other projects you’re working on now?

Sarina: I have to write True North 5 fairly soon because I already sold it to my German publisher. I haven’t announced the characters yet just in case the story doesn’t pan out.

Brooklynaire (Brooklyn Bruisers #4) by Sarina Bowen is available now! Order your copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, or Kobo! And don’t forget to add it to your Goodreads!