Q&A with Rachel Lynn Solomon, author of Business or Pleasure
By Julia DeVarti
When ghostwriter Chandler has a disastrous one night stand, she’s ready to leave it in the past… until she finds out that her next client, Finn, is that very one night stand! The steamy and sweet story that follows has so much to love—sex lessons, incredible banter, cross country travel, fan conventions, mental health rep, and so much more. I’ve been a fan of all of Rachel Lynn Solomon’s romances, and Business or Pleasure absolutely delivers!
We caught up with the author ahead of publication day, and she gave us the inside scoop on her swoony new book.
Books Are Magic: For those who haven’t read Business or Pleasure, can you give a quick elevator pitch? What can readers expect to find inside?
Of course! Business or Pleasure is about a ghostwriter who has a disastrous one-night stand with a C-list actor, not knowing who he is, only to learn she’s been hired to work on his memoir—a partnership that grows even more complicated when he asks for help in the bedroom. It was born from flipping two of my favorite tropes: the one-night stand, which usually involves mind-blowing sex, and the “teach me” trope, which usually involves a man giving intimacy lessons to a woman. So the premise definitely doesn’t hide that it’s a steamy book, and I hope it feels both tender and empowering, too.
In Business or Pleasure, we as readers get to travel across the country and to various fan conventions with the characters, which I absolutely loved. What kind of research did you do to approach Chandler and Finn’s cross-country adventures?
Tons—I had maps, I had con schedules, I had Google street view. Prior to Business or Pleasure, I’d only ever set books in Seattle, where I’d spent my whole life until I moved two years ago. At first it was a bit scary dipping a toe outside that comfort zone, so I mainly picked places I’d been while trying to keep things geographically balanced, so to speak. The fact that Chandler and Finn are usually flying as opposed to driving made that easier!
As for the conventions themselves, the pandemic sadly prevented me from doing any in-person research, but there was a period where I was going to Emerald City Comic Con every year, so I drew a lot from those experiences. I also watched some convention documentaries to help fully visualize those scenes.
All three of your adult romance novels take place within the world of journalism (public radio, tv news, and ghostwriting). Can you share a little bit about what excites you in exploring these various media worlds?
I’ve joked that these books are my “women in journalism doing unethical things” trifecta. My degree is in journalism and I worked in public radio after I graduated, but I hit burnout much sooner than I anticipated, and that was largely because I pushed myself so much (too much) to take on every internship, every freelance opportunity, anything to try to get an edge in a competitive and changing market.
Journalism has long been a go-to career for women in romantic comedies, and I think part of the reason is that it can be such a high-stakes field that there’s tension baked right into it. But even in some of my favorite journalism-set movies (Never Been Kissed, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days), there’s an element of realism missing. Exploring the changing journalism landscape in my books has been a way of processing the fact that this thing I used to love, this thing I thought I would do forever, was no longer part of my life by the time I was 25. It’s letting go of the person I used to be because I am so much happier now than I ever was in a newsroom—but I still have all the respect in the world for journalists and the work they do.
I loved how sex positive this book was! Chandler in particular has such a wonderful and empowered relationship to her sexuality, and I found her candor and active communication so incredible to read. How did you approach writing that?
Thank you so much! That was a conscious choice that felt like a natural extension of tweaking the sex lessons trope. If Chandler was going to be the one teaching Finn how to improve his bedroom skills, she had to have a certain sense of confidence. She could be nervous, of course, especially as her feelings for him start changing, but she had to be able to communicate what she wanted. I was definitely not like Chandler growing up—I was so terrified of sex and my own body that I asked my parents to write a note excusing me from sex ed in high school. In fact, most of my sex education took place inside romance novels, because they center women’s pleasure in a way little other media does.
A lot of research went into Chandler’s character—podcasts, essays, videos, and the wonderful book Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. Throughout the writing process, I found it so freeing to live inside Chandler’s head. So maybe in more ways than one, this book was a long overdue catharsis for me.
Business or Pleasure really beautifully deals with Chandler and Finn’s anxieties around success and fulfillment. What do you hope readers take away about these themes?
This is something I’ve grappled with in my own career, so it’s no accident that Chandler and Finn are dealing with the same thing. Eight books in, I find that my idea of success is constantly changing, but I also know that no one is harder on me than, well, me. I’m not great at celebrating my own accomplishments—to the point where I shared one in therapy once and my therapist told me to buy myself a cake on the way home. These days I do genuinely feel content and stable, though I’m knocking on every wooden surface in my apartment as I type that!
I hope readers can see through this book that success is not a singular tangible thing and that it’s okay if it changes once, twice, a hundred times. For me at this stage of my career, success simply means looking forward to waking up in the morning because I get to keep doing something I love.
What cult classic tv shows or movies do you love? Are there any in particular that inspired Finn’s character?
Finn’s TV show in the book, The Nocturnals, is about a werewolf navigating college life, and Finn played a human friend of the main character. Even though this would have been slightly before Finn’s time, I am a huge Buffy fan and drew a lot of inspiration from it. So there’s probably a bit of Xander in Finn, although Finn is much nerdier.
What’s on your summer reading list?
I’ve been looking forward to The Daydreams by Laura Hankin, which just came out, and I think it would actually pair well with Business or Pleasure because it centers on the reunion special of a popular teen show. Also, The Celebrants by Steven Rowley—I adored The Guncle and he balances emotion and humor so well. And The Art of Scandal by Regina Black—I read this one early, but I know I’ll be highlighting my copy to death once it’s released in August because the writing is STUNNING.
Thanks for chatting with us, Rachel, and congratulations on the upcoming release!
Business or Pleasure is our Monthly Magic Romance Subscription pick for the month of July! If you love the sound of this book as much as we do, click here to join our subscription.
