Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.

Patty K. Rivera: Hi, listeners. I'm Audible Editor Patty K. Rivera, and today I'm so excited to speak with Jeneva Rose and Drew Pyne. Jeneva is the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect MarriageThe Girl I Was, One of Us Is Dead, You Shouldn't Have Come Here, and most recently, It's a Date (Again). Drew is a New York Times bestselling husband, a legend as Jeneva's social media wingman, and co-author of their new audio original, #CrimeTime. Thank you both so much for being here today.

Drew Pyne: Thank you for having us.

Jeneva Rose: Thank you for having us. I really enjoyed Drew's introduction.

DP: Yeah, that's the best intro I've ever had [laughs].

PR: Oh my gosh, you guys, listen, I worked on that, I worked on that. I want to jump right into talking about #CrimeTime. I was lucky enough to listen to early audio and it was so, so good. For anyone who hasn't watched your hilarious #CrimeTime update videos, how would you describe the audio original?

JR: I would describe it as Only Murders in the Building meets Finlay Donovan Is Killing It. And it's basically the dangers of witnessing crime, filming that crime, posting it on TikTok, and going viral. So, it was inspired by some true events as well. And it's a fun, campy mystery, and you're supposed to have a good time when you listen to it.

PR: I actually follow you on social media and heard that #CrimeTime is inspired by a robbery at your building. What made you decide to turn this real-life experience into an audio original?

JR: A lot of the things I write come from real experiences or trying to work through different things, whether it be grief or trauma. We had both witnessed an armed burglary where three men broke into our building and robbed, or burglarized, the apartment above our townhome. And then we discovered that the person renting the apartment was actually a drug lord afterwards, because we went inside the apartment while waiting for the police. I'm like, “There's a story here.” Everything that happened that night with us, with us witnessing it at nine o'clock at night and then being up till three, four in the morning while the police are clearing out the rest of the drugs and guns and everything that was left behind, it just kind of stayed in my head for months and months, and I was like, “There's something here that we can turn this into.”

Jeneva Rose: "A lot of the things I write come from real experiences or trying to work through different things, whether it be grief or trauma."

PR: Oh, my goodness. Well, I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're both okay. I'm just really curious, I know that this is your first collaboration together, why did you decide to release #CrimeTime as an audio original versus a written novel?

JR: Well, I used to write screenplays as a hobby—they didn't go anywhere—back when I was in college. And I had heard about audio originals and being able to write something for basically a script format minus the stage direction; you replace it with sound effects. And when I thought of this story and how we could turn it into something. I was like, “This would be a great one, because there's a lot of action in it.” And then the component of adding TikTok and having sound clips from TikTok, I was like, “This would be perfect as an audio original.”

DP: And then the added piece of it being us collaborating together, having those two lead characters structured the way they were gave us a really good opportunity to go back and forth. And it worked out more as an audio drama in an episodic style to do that than just one straight, you know, novel, for example. Plus, it was a very auditory experience for us. In the beginning, hearing up and down the staircase and what was going on. We had to all visualize it from sound first, so that was the start of the experience for us and really led to it making sense for it to go to that place when we wrote it up.

PR: I'm glad that you touched on the collaboration that you guys have and also the audio experience, which we will talk about later on. But what was interesting to me in seeing you create #CrimeTime, I noticed that it's a brother and sister relationship. So, what was interesting to you both about writing a sibling relationship between the two of you, versus, let's say a romantic relationship between Chase and Nadiya?

JR: Well, when I actually thought of the idea I was like, husband and wife. But then when we started actually collaborating on it and diving into Chase's character, I was like, he’s goofy, he's aloof, he's naïve. And I was like, “This isn't really a romantic relationship between the two leads.” And then we were trying to figure out a way also, because it's audible, I can't tell you exposition, backstory on them. And I was like, “These people have to be meeting recently so I can tell the listener who they are in their backstory without it being info-dumpy.” So, it's not like, “Oh, do you remember that time this happened?” They don't really know each other that well. They've recently discovered each other, but they're half-siblings. So that was a way to be able to give the backstories of both of them. They're learning about each other while the listener is learning about them too.

DP: We also really, as we were writing it, wanted to focus on the thrill and the comedy of it, and we weren't inserting any romance. And so, if we thought about them as a husband and wife, we would've had to go back and kind of put romance in where it wasn't naturally occurring, which would've just made it feel forced. Whereas the relationship that we structured, it felt more natural to where we wanted to go with the story.

PR: Drew, how did it feel to add your touch of comedy and your sense of comedy into #CrimeTime?

DP: I mean, it was great because in the past when we've done stuff on TikTok, collaborating and making funny videos, it's always been a really great experience to kind of bounce her comedy and my comedy together. And this was the first time we kind of put pen to paper with it, so I was just very fortunate and very happy that I got a chance to work with such a great author and get to add my touch to things. And I'd like to think that I added some comedy stylings to it to help out with hers, but I mean, yeah, it was just a pleasure getting to work with her.

PR: I can definitely tell you that it was so funny. You guys work so great together. It worked so well, and I'm sure that I am not the only one who is excited to finally hear the collaboration between you two and to hear just some of the jokes and some of the one-liners. It's great.

*WARNING: Spoilers ahead*

Now I am going to go into spoiler territory here. Let me just say that one of the things I enjoyed the most about #CrimeTime is that once the action starts, it really starts. So, just a little spoiler warning here, in trying to clear their names, Nadiya and Chase end up reuniting with their father, Victor. Was that reunion always part of the plan for the story?

JR: Yes. We always wanted to bring in Victor.

DP: Yeah. When we were flushing out the characters and giving them their background and thinking about what their identity was going to be in the story, we ended up very much falling in love with the Victor character. And so we wanted that moment where he comes back into both of their lives—well, back into Nadiya's life, and Chase meeting him for the first time—we wanted that to be a very, very impactful scene and moment that would kind of carry through the rest of the audio drama, where you really felt a strong tie to him, whether good or bad, from both the characters’ perspectives, right off the bat.

PR: I mean, it sounds like you had a lot of fun creating Victor, and I can't wait for listeners to hear Victor and all of his Victor sayings. Now, going into that, into having fun, what was the most surprising or fun part of collaborating to create #CrimeTime?

JR: The most fun was actually just writing it. Because he was working in banking at the time, so the only day he had off was Saturdays, and so we spent three months every Saturday working on this. And then some Saturdays he would get us mimosas and we'd have mimosas and sit down, write in the morning until dinnertime. And so it was just really fun, because this was like his first creative project. And being able to bounce ideas off of each other and actually act it out and see how the dialogue sounds—we were saying it to each other—was just a lot of fun for especially a collaboration process when it's an audio original.

DP: The most surprising aspect, I thought, was how natural and seamless it felt creating it. I thought coming into this, this being my first project, versus her, who has had so many, that there would be this big delta between the process and what she's used to versus me learning it all from the beginning. And it was just really, really seamless, where it just kind of flowed right from the get-go. We'd usually be able to do a full episode in a full Saturday. And we never had any hard stopping points where we had any blocks. And so that was the most surprising thing, is how just seamlessly it worked out.

Drew Pyne: "The most surprising aspect, I thought, was how natural and seamless it felt creating it."

PR: Well, that's wonderful. Now, was the casting process just as seamless? What was that like? Did you have Abelardo Campuzano and Jennifer Damiano in mind when you guys started to cast?

JR: Simon & Schuster sent us over I think it was like five for each one, so we got to listen to the different voices and whatnot. And we pretty much agreed right away when we heard them. And then some of the other ones, maybe we'd get like two options, or they'd send over a sample of them reading it and then we were able to give feedback. And so that was really fun to be able to actually listen and kind of help with the casting and hear the whole thing come to life.

PR: I cannot stop raving about how much I enjoyed the narration. And it was so funny. And those moments of awkwardness just worked perfectly. Now, did anything about the story change, post-production? Did you want to go back and say, "Hey, maybe I want to correct this part or fix this part or add something in or take something out."

DP: I don't think so, post-production. I mean, we had a very healthy, very good editorial process on the script pre the production. Because once it gets set up that they're going to start adding the sound effects and doing all the production, it would be a lot to go back and change it if we were changing scenes. So, I think once it got set to the point where we were happy with the actual story piece, then post-production of the actual sound effects and the full production quality getting created, then we didn't touch it after that.

JR: The only thing that I could think of is maybe, because, obviously, this is a shorter project than a full-length novel, so then I was always thinking, “Oh, maybe we should've made it longer.” But we really wanted it to be fast-paced and like you were doing this with them and going through this process. And it's just go, go, go, go, go, as everything's being thrown at them. So, I think if we would've lengthened it, it would've slowed down the pacing.

PR: You brought up the length, so I want to ask, because I am curious, and I’ve listened to #CrimeTime three times, so needless to say, I really did enjoy it, and I am very much going into spoiler territory: At the end, Chase and company make a choice to continue their investigative adventures. Does this mean that listeners will get to hear more from the #CrimeTime squad?

JR: I mean, we set it up so we could continue it, but we have to have enough listeners to continue it [laughs].

PR: You have a listener. I'm listening [laughs]. I'm sure that once it's out in the world, I will not be the only listener. You will have plenty of listeners. Now, I want to bring it to social media, just because there is quite a bit of mention in social media, and it is social media that lands Chase and Nadiya in some troubles there. #CrimeTime, as you mentioned earlier, is a testament of how oversharing on social media can be both good and bad. What are your individual relationships with social media today?

JR: I mean, mine’s good. Actually, the reason we tied it so much in the social media and went into that territory of what happens if you go viral for putting something out there that maybe you weren't supposed to witness, was because when all that went down in real life, I was posting TikToks about it. And they were going viral. And I was getting scared because there's a drug lord upstairs, and then there's the burglars. And I was getting scared because people were like, "You better take this down. They're gonna come after you." And "Snitches get stitches" and whatever. All the comments.

So, I went back and forth between privating it and then making it public when I was just feeling brave. I went back and forth, and I think the videos had, I don't know, one has like 1.6 million. And the other ones are probably a million or so. I think they're still up, but yeah, I got scared. And so that was kind of what led to the story was, “What if this did go viral and our drug lord neighbor was after us?”

PR: I mean, well, needless to say, and I think I said it earlier, I'm glad you're both okay. And Drew, what about you? What's your relationship with social media like today?

DP: I don't really have much of one outside of my presence on hers, and then the Facebook reader group, helping moderate that. But other than that, I don't really have much of a social media presence. So, it's a healthy relationship. I enjoy getting to collaborate on hers. So that's where mine mostly lives.

JR: Yeah he just gets to see all the positive stuff. Luckily for me, like 99 percent of comments or interactions I have are positive. I don't really have a lot of hate comments. I mean, they come and go. But, overall, it's pretty positive, and that's why we created a Facebook reader group, to have a very positive place of social media where both of us share stuff in that group, behind-the-scenes stuff or fun stuff with us, and it's just only my "silly geese" are in there, which is what I call my readers.

PR: I'm part of the Facebook group, so I do get to see Drew's comments every once in a while when I log in. And they do keep me laughing, so I appreciate it. The last thing I wanted to shout out was the Winston appearance. I'm curious, was it the real Winston?

JR: No. I wanted to ask, like, “Can we try to capture sounds of him?” But it would just be him snoring or farting, and they needed a bark and he doesn't really bark.

PR: Oh, no. Maybe next one, Winston [laughs].

JR: Just snorting. Because he's a little English bulldog. So, he just lays around. Which is what he was in the story.

PR: Exactly. So, true to character. Now, Drew, Jeneva, do you have any plans on collaborating again, outside of #CrimeTime?

JR: I would love to. It was really nice not having to be responsible for everything in the novel, and then I could be like, “Oh, you didn't like it? Drew wrote it” [laughter]. What about you, Drew?

DP: Yeah, and I'm willing to bear that burden, so—no, I had a blast. And like I said earlier, it was so seamless and such a fun process. So, I would be more than happy to do it again.

PR: I'm looking forward to seeing you collaborate again. I am so excited for whatever audio, whatever novel comes next, because you guys together are gold.

DP: Thank you.

JR: Thank you.

PR: Now, I do have one final question for you both. If Nadiya and Chase could recommend a listen to me, what would it be?

JR: Nadiya would recommend Marigold, which was actually what led us to wanting to do this in audio too, was we listened to that and it's fully audio, almost like a podcast style, about a woman who says she lives in a haunted house and she's meeting with a guy who investigates haunted houses, and is it really a haunted house? And then what would Chase recommend? Chase would recommend probably #CrimeTime, for sure.

DP: Yes. He'd shout out his own work.

PR: You know what? I appreciate that recommendation, and now that he's recommended it, now I have an excuse to listen to it again [laughs]. Jeneva, Drew, it has been so much fun and a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much for spending time with us. Listeners, you can find #CrimeTime and the rest of Jeneva's novels on Audible now. Happy listening.

DP: Thank you.

JR: Thank you.