{"id":32911,"date":"2026-07-28T16:45:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T16:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/?p=32911"},"modified":"2026-07-28T19:19:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:19:55","slug":"falling-for-the-career-of-her-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2026\/07\/falling-for-the-career-of-her-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling for the Career of her Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

With twenty-one New York Times bestselling romance novels, Lauren Billings \u201996 seems destined to have become a writer. But, once upon a time, Billings had a very different career: she held a doctorate in neuroscience and studied neurodegeneration in aging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really loved writing, but I just thought that it was going to be my hobby forever,\u201d she says. \u201cI was super happy in my science career, but then I had this dream I\u2019ve always wanted dangled in front of me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before her life as one half of acclaimed writing duo Christina Lauren, Billings was a principal scientist researching cognition, pain, and retinal degeneration at pharmaceutical company AbbVie (then Allergan). Helping solidify her path to neuroscience were behavioral psych classes at Mac and a monthlong shadowing program at a local inpatient mental health facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning about the intricacies of the brain and how mental illnesses are treated became a particular passion. So the decision to leave the fascinating and fulfilling neuroscience career she\u2019d built for thirteen years wasn\u2019t easy. But momentum had been building since she and her writing partner, Christina Hobbs, secured their first book deal with Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, in 2012. Once their first six books all hit the New York Times list in 2013, Billings made the decision to embrace writing full time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series books all certified New York Times bestsellers, BookTok\u2019s (TikTok\u2019s devoted \u201cbook club\u201d of sorts) swooning for Love and Other Words during the pandemic-era romance novel boom, consistent placements on end-of-the-year-best lists from Goodreads to Audible, and a Netflix adaptation of In A Holidaze this fall\u2014it\u2019s an understatement to say her choice paid off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Illustration
In celebration of Lauren Billing’s career jump to full-time author, we commissioned illustrator Marina Astudillo to create a book cover inspired by the plot twist in Billings’ career journey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs somebody who had written her whole life for pleasure and joy, the idea that I could now do this for a living and support my family felt like a dream,\u201d says Billings, who lives in California. \u201cI thought, \u2018I can\u2019t not take this opportunity,\u2019 and it\u2019s been the best decision.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically, Billings believes her choice in undergrad to pursue neuroscience over creative writing gave her the very thing that led her to her current career: permission to stay playful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think if I had taken some creative writing courses, I might have taken myself too seriously. I just get to have fun with it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if she hadn\u2019t just had some fun writing fanfiction in her free time\u2014Billings\u2019 fandoms of choice: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alias\u2014she might not have ever met her beloved writing partner, Hobbs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fanfiction, a hobby in which fans write their own stories about characters from their favorite pieces of media, provided Billings a creative outlet during the stress of being a new mother. In 2009, she met Hobbs, who lives in Utah, on FanFiction.net, an online forum. That summer, a grad school friend who directed Comic-Con programming invited Billings to organize a panel on fanfiction. Billings invited Hobbs to San Diego\u2014and it was love at first sight. Three days later, they decided to write their first story together inspired by Twilight, and it received rave reviews in the fandom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople loved it, and we\u2019re like, \u2018This was kind of good. Should we try and write a book?\u2019\u201d Billings recalls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to co-write came with some growing pains. While the original plan was an even 50\/50 split, the two discovered some speed bumps\u2014different writing speeds, preferences, and specific skills. After seventeen years of practice, Billings now describes the process like \u201cbuilding one of those super layered cakes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll outline the book together, and Christina will do what we call the \u2018trash draft\u2019\u2014which is almost free association: she doesn\u2019t think about if it reads beautifully at that point; it\u2019s about getting everything out,\u201d Billings explains. \u201cThen I come in and write the polished draft, and then she edits that, and we layer.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their transition from fanfiction to established coauthors is a story they\u2019re fearless about sharing, in contrast to the conventional publishing-industry wisdom that writers who want to be seen as legitimate should keep quiet about their fanfiction. The reality, Billings says, is that \u201cfor some authors, their fandom platform is what literally sells their books.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She and Hobbs, who now mostly write romance, are also eager to dispel the notion that romance as a genre is \u201cfrivolous.\u201d For one, a sector written primarily by women for women is the highest-selling genre in fiction\u2014\u201cIt basically keeps publishing doors open,\u201d she notes. But what Billings finds most compelling is the genre\u2019s \u201cvery quiet power.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe wonderful thing about it is that you can do a lot of really powerful work because you promise the reader this happily-ever-after at the end,\u201d she explains. \u201cYou can explore issues of sexual identity, gender identity, class, race, culture, and so many other things because you are promised that soft landing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, that soft landing available in romance isn\u2019t always available in real life\u2014but Billings credits her Mac education with helping her find the courage to dive in anyway. \u201cBecause I went in with the mentality of \u2018I am not one thing\u2019 at Mac, I knew I didn\u2019t have to be pigeonholed as a scientist\u2014why couldn\u2019t I be a writer?\u201d she says. \u201cThere was no reason I couldn\u2019t be both.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for up-and-coming writers? \u201cWhat is the book that you really wish you could stumble upon on the shelf?\u201d Billings asks. \u201cThat\u2019s the book that you need to write because it\u2019s what your heart and soul are seeking.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Billings \u201996 wrote the ultimate plot twist in her own story. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":875,"featured_media":32913,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_link_url":"","custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"Ashli Cean Landa","article_type":[8],"post_thumbnail_style":"default","flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_downloads":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32911"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33065,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32911\/revisions\/33065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}