Backstory Archives - Sterling & Stone

Johnny and Sean (AKA Aubrey Parker) discuss books 7-9 of the Tillionaire Boys’ Club. They discuss the origin of the characters, their writing process, and where they plan to go next with their stories.

Curious about how No Hope, book three in the No Justice series was made? In this episode of Backstory, Dave and Sean share their personal commentary on a story of justice and redemption.

Join Dave and Sean as they discuss writing No Escape. The cultural landscape that the story interacts with and the emotional tax of writing a story that feels immediately relevant has given this series a flavor that stands out from previous books in the Collective Inkwell library.

Tomorrow Gene was intended to be 5 books long, right on the heels of the 7 book Invasion. But it ended up being only 3 books – a very different scope that what they began with. In today’s Backstory, learn about the process the guys went through to trim down their fiction, as well as […]

Karma Police claims 6 episodes of blood, sweat, and tears for Dave, and puppy enthusiasm from Sean. Dave’s inspiration comes from David Levithan’s Every Day. This is a story Dave wishes he wrote, and so he and Sean wrote Karma Police instead. This was an interesting project that almost became a superhero story. Plus, listen […]

Cursed was designed to be an episodic experience, but things changed along the way. The guys talk about the experience of writing the series, how they decided to close it, and some of the plot changes and world-building scrambles they had along the way. Discover the thought behind each of the characters, how they bridged […]

WARNING: THIS EPISODE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE GURU AND THE TRILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB SERIES. We haven’t been able to do any Backstory episodes for the Trillionaire Boys’ Club for one reason: Johnny wasn’t ‘out’ as Aubrey yet. But now that’s behind us, and we can talk The Guru. Learn about the one throw-away decision that […]

La Fleur was never meant to have a Back Story episode, but there’s something very special about it. Today, Sean and Johnny talk about the inspiration for La Fleur de Blanc, which comes from Sean’s real world experience in a flower shop in California. They discuss how it nearly ruined the Lexi Maxwell brand, and […]

This is one book that’s difficult to talk about without revealing some shocking spoilers. Today, Sean and Johnny discuss the process of writing Devil May Care, one of Sterling and Stone’s passion projects. While this literary work won’t necessarily be a best-seller, that wasn’t the purpose. Find out what was cut and the struggle of […]