Writing together as a married couple brings its own challenges—and delights. Emlyn Rees and Josie Lloyd open the door to their creative world in this Q&A, sharing how decades of shared pop culture, music, and life experiences shaped their hilarious, heartfelt novel You & Me. From juggling alternate timelines and mixtape-fuelled time travel to weaving in moments inspired by their own family, they reveal the playful, emotional, and sometimes chaotic process behind the story. Honest, witty, and full of nostalgia, their conversation shows how collaboration, trust, and a love of storytelling can turn a fantastical premise into something deeply relatable.
You & Me has such a brilliant premise and takes the reader through both laugh-out-loud and tearjerking moments – what influences fed into your writing?
Influences. Wow. There are so many! We got together as a couple in 1998 and, like a lot of couples, have built up an archive of shared books, films, music and TV over the course of our relationship. Add to that all the new shows, books and bands we’ve been exposed to by our three daughters, along with the old classics we’ve introduced them to, and we ended up with a whole ocean of pop culture to dive into when it came to writing You & Me and You & Me and You & Me. But our biggest influences? They’d have to include When Harry Met Sally, One Day, The Beatles, Back to the Future, director Alexander Payne, and It’s a Wonderful Life. The kinds of stories and storytellers that can flip you from sadness to joy in the beat of a heart.
You have been writing partners for a long time but what was it like writing a book about long-term relationships together as a married couple?
We were actually really nervous to begin with. Seriously. Apart from a few fun kids’ parodies (We’re Going on a Bar Hunt, etc), we hadn’t written a book together for twenty years. Also, even though the story of You & Me – a couple finding a time machine in their shed – is fantastical, we wanted the couple themselves and their family to feel super relatable and real, so readers would be able to go on this crazy journey we send them on every step of the way. That meant being really honest, of course. About all the wonder of a long-term relationship, but also the harder times too. Like most people who’ve been together for a while, we’ve had plenty of ups and downs over the years, and so we had lots of honest, soul-searching conversations. Talk about mid-life therapy! It actually brought us closer as we dug down into the nitty-gritty of day-to-day family life and asked what really makes for a good life and what can turn a good life bad. What this led to was a lot of our own lives on the page. Mixed with fiction, of course. It’s been nuts watching our kids reading the book and spotting what bits they think are real and what bits are not.
You & Me is full of music and really conjures its nostalgic power brilliantly. Where
did the idea of using mixtapes as the time travel device come from?
We toyed with all kinds of time travel devices before hitting on this one. At one point, it was going to be a washing machine. Seriously, based on that old space age Zanussi advert “The appliance of science!” Though quite how our two main characters, Adam and Jules, were meant to climb inside a washing machine to travel back in time we still don’t know! Then we thought home video tapes (a spin on that old Christopher Reeve film, Somewhere in Time). But none of these fitted our two main characters, Adam and Jules, who are both music obsessed, and even have their first kiss outside a Brighton beach club listening to a band. The more we talked about who they were, the more we realised that their story was one that had to be set to music.
“What we’ve both also realised from writing this book is that everything,
every single decision you’ve made in your life, is what leads to
this exact life you’re living here now.”
We decided using mixtapes they’ve given each other over the years, like the ones we’ve still got stuffed in drawers and boxes at home, would be a fun time travel device that would send a big message to readers about the kind of book this is – one that’s jammed with music, nostalgia, emotions and what ifs. Music is also how we’ve always time-stamped our own relationship too. We have, literally, hundreds of CDs, vinyls and tapes and our Spotify playlists go all the way back to 2014, each seasonally named! We’ve also included a Spotify playlist in the book because so many tracks are mentioned in each chapter. Music really is the engine of the plot.
The book has a really intricate structure, given that it involves alternate timelines. This must have been even more complicated by having Adam and Jules speak to
the reader in alternate chapters. How did you keep track of everything?
We’re members of a writing group here in Brighton, and it’s great for the honest feedback you get, particularly early on in a project. When we said we were going to write a story with a time machine, the reaction from our friends was 1) Don’t, it’s a plot nightmare waiting to happen! and 2) If you must, then keep whatever rules you come up with for the time travel logical and stick to them. Ha! Easier said than done. With two of us writing, we quickly realised that the real fun of this book was not just the time travel, but the fact that both Adam and Jules could travel back on their own and change things about their futures, themselves and each other behind each other’s backs. As these multiverses they created multiplied, we suddenly had so much to track. What would change and how would this emotionally affect them and the wider emotional curve of the book? We ended up with a cork board covered in timelines and pieces of cotton connecting them, like one of those evidence boards (also, aptly, known as ‘crazy boards’) in crime dramas. But luckily, we did manage to solve it all in the end!
If you could travel back in time, would you be tempted to tweak anything in
your pasts?
Tempted? Oh yes, by so much. Big things, like spending more time with our parents in the years before they died (because at the time, you just think they’re going to be there forever). Selfish things, like that early Bitcoin investment we never made. But silly things too, like not leaving a much loved, signed Iggy Pop baseball cap on a plane to Majorca in 1988. Or Josie throwing out her beloved 90’s platform leopard print boots. But what we’ve both also realised from writing this book is that everything, every single decision you’ve made in your life, is what leads to this exact life you’re living here now. Hopefully with some people you love around you. People whose very existence you’d never want to risk by changing anything in the past. So, tempted? Yes. But even if we did have a time machine, we hope we wouldn’t actually change a thing. But then, that’s exactly what Adam and Jules say to begin with. The trouble is: temptation is sometimes just too hard to resist!
You & Me and You & Me and You & Me is out now.
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