feature image photo of Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick via Instagram
Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick are busy. They’re moms to a toddler, which would be enough, but Rachael is weeks away from giving birth to the couple’s second daughter. Oh, and they’re about to release their second co-authored book, the holiday YA rom com Make My Wish Come True.
I was able to catch up with the couple on Zoom, and we chatted about working together, motherhood, being a dual-creative household, and of course, the need for sapphic young adult stories.
Rachael Lippincott is the New York Times bestselling author of multiple young adult titles, including Five Feet Apart and most recently Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh. Alyson Derrick is the author of the great second-chance romance YA novel Forget Me Not. The two authors, who met while studying at the University of Pittsburgh, married in 2020. They released their first co-authored book, She Gets the Girl, in 2022. Things have changed since the last time they wrote a book together, so I just had to know how they keep it all together.
Alyson admits it’s “been a lot,” trying to manage their writing careers and raising their daughter Poppy. Their daughter isn’t in daycare, but Alyson’s brother will come over a few days a week to give them more time to work when they’re on deadline. “We’ve both learned to work much more efficiently,” Alyson says.
Rachael shares that she’s “pretty Type A” when it comes to working. “I would make a very strict schedule and kind of stick to it,” she says. But that changed when Poppy was born. She was about to begin revisions for Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh, and she started working at night. And since babies generally sleep on and off all day, even at night it was a lot of “holding and typing.”
When it came time to write Make My Wish Come True, Alyson says her brain was not working “in that way” after having a baby and raising an infant. In fact, Rachael wrote much of the book’s first draft. “I saw that she was struggling,” Rachael says. “I can write like the first draft, build the foundation,” allowing Alyson to “go into these chapters and make them 10 times better.”
Make My Wish Come True is the story of Arden James and Caroline Beckett who were childhood best friends. But now Arden is a Hollywood teen actor with a party-girl image that is getting in the way of her working with a big deal director. So she and her publicist concoct a lie to make her look good. They say she’s from a small town, which isn’t actually a lie, but they also decide to say her old friend Caroline is her girlfriend (a massive lie) and she’s going to prove it when she goes home for Christmas. Caroline, an aspiring journalist, only agrees to fake date her former bestie when Arden agrees to get her an article in Cosmopolitan magazine. After 12 days in an idyllic winter scene, it’s hard for the girls to tell if they’re acting anymore.
The process to write Make My Wish Come True was significantly different from when they wrote their first book together. Back then, they had the luxury of time, which is definitely not something you have with a baby who turns quickly into a toddler.
“I feel like back in the day, I had so much time to think and maybe spend a couple extra hours really dwelling on a chapter,” Alyson says. “And now it’s like you have like two hours, you better sit down and get started.”
“I think we also understand we both write differently,” Rachael explains. “I spend a lot of time thinking about it but then a lot of time I feel that to Alyson or, it seems like all of a sudden I’ll be like, ‘Well, I’m gonna write this story.’”
The December holidays and rom-coms go together like peppermint and chocolate. In the last few years, there’s been an uptick in sapphic rom-coms, so it’s no surprise that Alyson and Rachael would want to get in on that sweet holiday love action. If you ask Rachael, she claims Alyson came up with the idea with Make My Wish Come True, but apparently, Alyson doesn’t remember!
“It’s a great genre,” Rachael says. “I feel like every holiday season I always love watching the Hallmark Christmas movies or whatever Netflix Christmas movie.” The pair “wanted to run with that idea,” and of course, being in love with your best friend is a very specific kind of story we all know and love. The two were able to infuse parts of their own holiday traditions into the story. Rachael, who grew up with a Jewish mom, was able to include that in the book. “It was my first experience writing a character with a very similar upbringing to me,” she says. “There’s a family Hanukkah party in the book that’s very much based on my family Hanukkah party every year.”
Rachael and Alyson are already working on another holiday story: a holiday novella starring Alex and Molly from She Gets the Girl that releases in fall 2025.
Right now, the publishing world is kind of a dumpster fire, especially when it comes to stories for teens and young adults. Selling sapphic stories is hard, and both women feel the pressure to perform in an industry that is sink or swim. Rachael was very honest about the stress. “I need to have something new,” she says. “We wrote a book together, and it did hit the New York Times Bestseller List and a lot of people really enjoyed it, but there’s just such a thing in publishing where I’m already thinking about Make My Wish Come True marketing.”
“I’m not doing enough because I’m pregnant and I’m tired,” Rachael says. “It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do, come up with a TikTok, especially when it’s Saturday. We know we have to post a TikTok. We don’t know what we’re going to do.” She admits that promo is more her thing (if you’re not following her on social media, you should be. Her commitment to the story when creating content is truly inspired. And Alyson is a very good sport about it), but it’s still a matter of “what is going to hook people? Is the algorithm going to be in your favor? Did we not make the video long enough by accident?”
The amount of additional work that goes into being a published author is enough to make a lot of people not want to do it at all. But becoming beholden to the algorithm is unfortunately a crucial way of keeping relevant, especially when you’re writing for a younger audience. Teens don’t always just walk into a bookstore and browse to find their next read. They need the books to come to them.
At a time when a lot of young adult authors are jumping ship to write adult sapphic romances, I had to ask if Rachael and Alyson have ever considered doing the same. “I feel like I never really felt capable of it up until maybe having Poppy for some reason,” Rachael says.
Being a mom definitely makes you feel like more of an adult. If they do ever decide to move into the adult space, I’ll be reading.
Make My Wish Come True by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick is out now.
I loved She Gets The Girl and am excited for their holiday rom-com! Glad to hear the girls from She Gets the Girl are getting another book too!