Whatever book-minded conspiracy theorists on the internet may say, American novelists Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White – or Team W, as they call themselves – were already friends when they met up in a bar at a writing conference and started commiserating about the lonely lives of authors on tour. How great would it be to co-write a book and publicize it as a pack? What if they could convince a publisher to fund a girls’ trip – uh, book tour – to somewhere fab? 

Team W’s credentials are undeniable: Connecticut-based mom of four Beatriz Williams has written more than a dozen historical fiction novels, including Our Woman in Moscow ; Southern women’s fiction writer Karen White, who lives in Atlanta, Ga., has more than two dozen titles to her name, most recently The House on Prytania ; and New York City-based historical fiction novelist and mother of two Lauren Willig has published more than two dozen books, including Two Wars and a Wedding .

The wine flowed as the joke went on and on: They’d write Fifty Shades of Plaid, a sexy historical romantic murder mystery set in the Scottish Highlands. (Outlander and its hot protagonist, Jamie Fraser, were popular at the time.) In the morning, Fifty Shades of Plaid was re-thought, but the motivation and genre remained the same. Despite reservations from publishers that a three-authored novel would sell, The Forgotten Room, set in a Gilded Age Manhattan mansion, became a surprise bestseller in 2016 and Team W was here to stay. 

Almost a decade later, the fifth collaboration from Williams, Willig and White is about to hit the shelves, with the three female novelists writing about three female novelists in The Author’s Guide to Murder: Erotica writer and single lady on the prowl, Kat de Noir ; Southern mom of six and cozy mystery author Cassie Pringle; and critically acclaimed historical fiction writer Emma Endicott, a New England blueblood. These imaginary personas are on a writer’s retreat to a haunted Scottish castle, where they have to solve a murder between cocktails. Who is the dead man, stabbed with an antler in the back? It’s literary superstar hack Brett Saffron Presley, their mysterious host. 

Kat, Cassie and Emma are what web gossips like to say Williams, Willig and White are: A fake friendship trio, set up by greedy publishers, who secretly hate each other. In reality, Team W are great friends currently having a blast trolling critics with their hilariously meta new book. This lucky Zoomer interviewee got to crash their party on a lively Zoom catch-up with all three writers. 

Rosemary Counter : I just finished The Author’s Guide to Murder last night and absolutely loved Kat, Cassie and Emma. It’s very, very tempting to ask who’s who. 

Beatriz Williams : They’re not our avatars. Even though we’re writers, too, none of us are actually like them. Not much, I mean. Maybe a few bits here and there…  

Karen White : Kat de Noir is 100 percent Beatriz. She’s actually wearing patent boots right now. 

Beatriz : I swear I’m not. We’re all women who write books in female-led genres that tend to be seen in very disparaging terms by the mainstream. 

Lauren Willig : Fifty Shades of Plaid was us poking fun at that. We were three authors drinking together at a conference saying, “OMG! We have to spend more time together! Let’s write a book! The publisher will pay for our bar bill!” We thought it was hilarious at first. Then we started to think it was a good idea. 

Beatriz : Some people out there think we’re clever enough to create a fake origin story. Who has time for that? 

Karen : Our jobs are hard enough. 

Lauren : Or they say this is all a commercial proposition. The impetus was the highly noble goal of having a publisher pay for our girls’ trip. That’s all we wanted. 

Beatriz : The bar bill can get staggering for the three of us. 

Lauren: Our agents and editors were like, “This is terrible, you can’t do this. Nobody buys a novel with three names on the cover. That’s even worse than an anthology.” Thank goodness Penguin was really in love with Karen, so they pity-bought us to keep her happy. Then the book was really good and hit all the lists, so they’re like, “do you guys wanna write more?” 

Beatriz: We wouldn’t have to do all that had Brett Saffron Presley written the book. 

Lauren: We need a fancy three-name handle. We could be Karen Beatriz Lauren. Or the gender-neutral Lauren Beatriz Karen.  

Karen: But it should be Lor-en, with an accent. 

Beatriz: Obviously we’re always having to think about the industry and how to maximize book sales, but we’re making fun of it a bit, too. 

RC: There seem to be all these dumb rules, but a bestseller trumps them all. How’d you do it?

Beatriz: We just trust each other. We’re all professionals and we all appreciate and enjoy and admire each other’s writing. I like to write quickly and then go back to add to it or fix it. That’s my method, and Lauren and Beatriz know my method, and they have their own styles.

Lauren: Together though, we stumbled onto a new method. For the first book, we met up for tea to throw some ideas around, but we ended up plotting a whole novel. We had a complete outline, which we created together. You forget who came up with what, because it’s such a joint effort. After all that, we each claimed one of the three characters and divided chapters up that way. 

Beatriz: Then it was a round robin. If I have character 1, I’ll write my first chapter and pass it along. Whoever’s next will read through chapter 1 before they write chapter 2. Each chapter’s from the viewpoint of a particular character. This book is the first one where all our characters are in the same place at the same time, so this time we got to write each other’s dialogues. That was fun. 

Karen: If it wasn’t fun, we’d have stopped after the first book. 

Lauren: I think because of the round robin, even though we have distinctive voices, we all have adaptive ears and our voices change. We all meld together to make a whole new voice. Our editor can’t tell who wrote what. Neither can the readers … most of the time. 

Karen: We call it the Unibrain. One brain, three bodies. 

Lauren: I have an image of a cranky brain in a jar.

Beatriz: With coffee siphoning in.  

Lauren: Guys, we’re doing that thing we do again and not letting Rosemary ask any questions. 

RC: I’m just following and giggling along! 

Beatriz: We forgot you were there. 

Lauren: We did a talk once where the moderator complained afterwards that she’d not been able to ask a single question. 

Beatriz: I remember she had pages of questions and had done all this research to prepare. But we hadn’t seen each other in so long, so it was like, sorry! Ask your question, Rosemary. 

RC: Did you get to go to Scotland in the name of “research”? Please tell me you did.

Karen: We did not, because everyone’s mean and hateful and they wouldn’t let us. 

Beatriz: Let’s say our publisher’s generosity does not extend to research trips, unfortunately. But the reality is Lauren and I have small children, and trying to find time and money to go to Scotland just wasn’t in the cards. 

Lauren: Fortunately, we’ve all spent lots of time in Scotland. Karen and I have stayed in the same haunted castle. I spent a while living there on a grant as a Scottish Renaissance person. 

Beatriz: Not an actual Scottish Renaissance person, a studier of the Scottish Renaissance. Maybe in a previous life you might have been, actually. That would explain a lot.

Karen: I lived in London for seven years, so I took lots of trips to Scotland. I even did a horseback riding camp there one summer. I stepped in a lot of sheep patties. The last time I went, I stayed at Castle Stuart, which is where Lauren also stayed, near Culloden and the standing stones. I adore Scotland. The only thing I don’t adore about it is the weather. 

Beatriz: Karen and weather… My father’s British, so I belong to the philosophy that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Karen begs to disagree. For a writer’s retreat, I took her once to Mount Washington, New Hampshire, where we got her out for one walk. The photo is hilarious. 

Lauren: It’s like a hostage picture.  

Karen: Next trip is south, maybe Florida. One of us has a beach house there. 

Beatriz: Which one of us is that, Karen? 

Karen: I don’t know. 

Beatriz: When it gets too cold in Atlanta, she goes down to Florida. 

Karen: We’ve had snow here. “The devil’s dandruff,” they call it, and I’ve seen it myself.
RC: Okay here’s a question: Which of you is responsible for me Googling “Edward VII Sex Chair” at midnight last night? 

Lauren: That was a joint effort, I think. 

Karen: At least one of us has seen it in a museum. But as to who added it to the book, I don’t know. Definitely a collaborative memory from the Unibrain again. 

RC: Surely there must be times when someone has an idea and someone else says, “What? No.” Then what? 

Beatriz : It’s true. When we’re at dinner having fish, I’ll say, “We should get some white wine to go with this fish.” What does Karen say? 

Karen : “I don’t drink white wine.” 

Lauren : Then I jump in and say, “Let’s order Prosecco!” So we’re all happy. 

Karen : We’re playing, but really nobody ever says no. Everything is workable so we say, “yes, and?” We build on it, build on it, build on it. A germ of an idea becomes something else. That’s our secret to no conflict. It would be counterproductive to be constantly arguing. There’s no drama. 

Beatriz : If we were to actually write a book about us, it would be so boring. Kat, Cassie and Emma have much more conflict than we do. We’ve got some great moments though. If you’re an Uber driver at 5 am on the way to the airport on a book tour, that’s when we’re on our game. 

RC : I want to come! 

Lauren : You should! We’re headed to Newport next for a three-day reader’s weekend. It’s at a seaside resort and it’s gonna be like 60 degrees. 

Beatriz : Karen’s all worried there’s gonna be a blizzard.