Interview with Author Ali Hazelwood

My interview with author Ali Hazelwood is today, and I’m thrilled! Can you tell? I first discovered The Love Hypothesis on Booktok. Then, I heard about Love on the Brain and needed to talk asap with Ali all about it. I think she is the queen of steminist novels, and today we are getting all the details about her latest release.

Ali Hazelwood! Welcome! Love on the Brain is your latest novel set to release. Tell readers more about what they can expect!

LOTB is the story of Bee, a neuroscientist who has the opportunity of a lifetime when she’s tasked to lead a prestigious NASA project—and then finds out that her grad school nemesis, Levi, will be leading the engineering part of the project.

Like in The Love Hypothesis, the protagonist in your latest rom-com, Bee Königswasser, is a scientist. What made you want to have Bee also be a scientist?

A big part of the reason I write about women in STEM is that it’s what I’ve been experiencing most closely for the past few years. I’m, first and foremost, a very lazy writer, and the one good thing about having Bee be a neuroscientist like myself was that I didn’t need to do much research into what her job entailed.

Levi Ward is Bee’s love interest. What was your favorite part of crafting the romance between Bee and Levi?

There are two cats that make up a small but very important part of the story, and I really loved integrating them into the narrative and writing about how they managed to bring Levi and Bee together.

Do you have a favorite chapter in Love on the Brain?

Probably the one in which Bee gets stuck in a cemetery late at night and has to ask Levi to come to extract her.

I love how The Love Hypothesis has a similar cover to Love on the Brain. Did you design the covers or always want them to compliment?

I did not! The illustrator is @lilith_saur on Instagram, and she’s an old friend and a fantastic fandom artist. The design of the covers was handled by the art department at Penguin Random House, who are amazing. I have adored all my covers so far, the characters and the colors, and the general vibe, and if it’s up to me, I’d love to keep working with this team forever!

Is there one part of writing a rom-com book you enjoy most? For example, is it when you get to the developmental stage or the line editing stage?

I really like it when I’m drafting the last, maybe 70% of a book. That’s where I’m starting to get pretty familiar with the characters, so I kind-of-sort-of know what I’m doing, but I’m still discovering the story and the exciting parts as I go. I looove writing emotional scenes between the characters and, of course, sex scenes!

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Walk us through a day in your life when writing.

I wake up in the morning and cuddle my cats against their will. Then, while I wait for my brain to start working, I put on a K-drama and watch it as a crochet. Unfortunately, K-dramas are soooo good. Once I start watching them, I cannot stop. A few episodes/hours in, I remember that, contractually, I should be writing, so I open my Scrivener document and guiltily type in a few miserable words. Then I receive some publishing-related emails and take care of replying, and that makes me feel like I just did a ton of work even though it only took me like, thirty-five seconds, so I reward myself with some more K-drama episodes.

I snack throughout the day because, sadly, I “write” in the living room, which is very close to the kitchen (there is literally not even a door separating them, sadly). In the late afternoon, I realize that I have not met my daily word goal, not even close, and I start panicking. I frantically jot down a few unusable sentences, and then I’m famished, so it’s time for dinner. I’m not much of a night owl, and I can’t write well at night, so I just resign myself to watching some more K-dramas. Then I go to bed. The end.

Total word count for the day: 17.

Did you always want to write a rom-com novel centering around scientists?

Not really, but when I started writing (with fanfiction), I was working on my dissertation, and I had lots of gripes with STEM academia that I worked out through fiction. That’s how I got into the habit of writing in science settings.

Before I let you go, what is it you hope readers take away from Love on Brain?

A few hours of entertainment, I hope!

Finally, where can readers find you on social media?

My Twitter is @eversoali, my Facebook is @alihazelwood, and my TikTok is @alihazelwood, but these days I’m mostly on Instagram @alihazelwood

That concludes my interview with author Ali Hazelwood!

Thank you for joining us Ali! Drop a comment below what your favorite part of Ali’s interview is! If you want to see other authors join me or if you want to schedule an interview contact me today!

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