Behind the best-selling novelist Ilona Andrews are two people who live, work, lift weights and take care of their pets under the same roof.
“Two chairs, one computer,” Gordon Andrews said in a phone interview.
“Two chairs, one computer,” echoed his wife and co-author, Ilona Andrews, whose name appears on the cover of their books, including their latest best-selling romance novel, “Ruby Fever.”
Talking to this pair was not unlike the old-school routine of chatting with both parents simultaneously — one weighing in from the olive green rotary phone in the bedroom, the other from the wall-mounted extension in the kitchen. The effect was a pleasantly chaotic verbal decoupage, including the story of their first meeting (it took a moment to nail down the time frame — January 1994 — but neither spouse disputed that their initial encounter took place in an English class at Western Carolina University); the number of years they’ve been married (27, and they realized they owed each other an anniversary dinner); and the number of books they’ve written, a figure that was not as readily accessible as you might expect.
“I would say, safely, 27,” Gordon said.
“Twenty-seven is a safe number,” Ilona agreed. “There’s probably some random novellas floating around.”
Their body of work includes several series — Hidden Legacy, Innkeeper Chronicles, Aurelia Ryder, Kate Daniels World and The Edge — plus books filed under “Other Fiction” on the team’s website. (“Alien planets and hidden monsters, stories of families and magic, here are things that don’t fit anywhere else,” the description reads.)
Ilona and Gordon Andrews live about 45 minutes south of Austin, Texas, with a menagerie of cats and dogs. Their days begin with exercise. Ilona explained, “You know how sometimes people buy workout equipment and then they put their clothes on it and it’s like a modified hanger? That’s not the case for us.”
“We have a home gym,” Gordon said.
“We are very sedentary because of our profession so we have to compensate,” Ilona added. (If you’re thinking of the long-married couples who pop up throughout “When Harry Met Sally,” you are not alone.)
As for the nitty-gritty work of churning out books together, they are in agreement about their disagreements: “We have argued about the fate of certain characters. Who lives, who dies,” Gordon said.
Ilona explained, “We are in the planning stages for the next trilogy and we have our romantic candidate for the heroine of the series and we do not agree.”
Her husband said, “People picture us throwing dishes at each other for some reason but that really doesn’t happen.”
Elisabeth Egan is an editor at the Book Review and the author of “A Window Opens.”
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2022-09-15 09:00:23Z
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