Dating You / Hating You by Christina Lauren
acknowledgments
We often get asked how we write so quickly. Obviously, it helps that there are two of us, but even so some books come out faster than others. Wicked Sexy Liar, for example, seemed to almost fly out of us. Dirty Rowdy Thing, too, we wrote in a matter of weeks.
Alas, Dating You / Hating You . . . was not one of those books.
Our first draft was completed in December 2015 and looked almost nothing like the book in your hands. We had such a clear idea of what we wanted—two Hollywood agents fall for each other and then have to battle it out for a job—but the book that came initially didn’t look like the one in our heads. It was sort of like we attempted to bake a cherry pie and pulled a meatloaf out of the oven. And let’s be real: no one wants meatloaf when they’re expecting cherry pie.
Enter Adam Wilson, Holly Root, and a whole lot of tracked changes in a Word document. Seriously—there were times when this book looked like someone went to town with an entire box of crayons on it. Our editor and agent, respectively, have spent nearly as much time with this manuscript as we have. Hopefully they know that every time we sit down to write we realize how lucky we are to have such an involved and supportive group of individuals helping us.
Erin Billings Service reads every word about seven thousand times, giving feedback from the earliest terrible versions to the final polished one, and she still manages to help us find typos in the pass pages. Seriously, Smister, you are a rock star.
Kristin Dwyer, we dedicated this to you because the adventures we’ve already had seem unreal. Can you imagine the ones yet to come? This is our first book baby we’re doing with the new venture, and we are so excited for all parties involved. Let’s do this!!
Thank you to our Gallery team: Carolyn Reidy, Jen Bergstrom, Louise Burke, Paul O’Halloran, Theresa Dooley, Liz Psaltis, Diana Velasquez, Melissa Bendixen, the Gallery sales force that works their butts off behind the scenes to get our books in stores and with online retailers, and the wonderful art department who so perfectly captured the next step in the CLo look. You are all fantastic, and we hope you’re coming for dinner because we made extra lasagna for everyone.
We can’t do any of this without the romance community. Seriously—the strength and enthusiasm of this group is astounding, and we are so grateful for readers, bloggers, graphic artists, and anyone out there who takes the time to send us a tweet, email, or review. You keep us going, and we mean that with all sincerity. We love this job, and we love you.
Finally, to our husbands, who are both patient and lucky. Patient on the days when the words are flowing, and lucky on the days when they’re not and we decide to bake all day instead. Thank you for being so proud of what we do.
PQ, this one was a doozy, but I feel like it clicked something between us, made us even stronger. Holy smokes this is fun. Let’s do it again.
Lo, this book, man. Some books are easier than others and some are like giving birth. I’m pretty sure we both had to bite down on a piece of leather with this one. I love you like Bella loves McFlurries, and anyone who knew us in 2009 knows that is a LOT. Thank you for being the Lo to my C. Meet you in the front row.
