Author Q&A: Ivery Kirk and Luna Teague

Mix together romance novels, science fiction, and historical fiction, and what do you get?

TimeBangers, a new series in which two nerdy ladies travel through time to have sex with historical figures like Henry VIII and Genghis Khan.

Co-authors Ivery Kirk and Luna Teague have already put out (no pun intended) the first installment, One Does Not Simply Walk Into Tudor, and are working on a second, The Golden Whored.

The longtime best friends took some time off promoting TimeBangers to explain their series’ origin to Fussy.

SADYE: Do either of you have a writing background?

IVERY AND LUNA: Not exactly. Luna's educational background is in the biosciences and she's currently a second-year Ph.D. candidate in that field. Ivery is a CPA. 

That said, both of us have toyed with writing for years and have been encouraged by friends, family, and educators to pursue writing projects. The stars didn't align until we got the idea for TimeBangers and decided to go for it!

Ivery Kirk (left) and Luna Teague

SADYE: How did you come up with the idea for and decide to start the TimeBangers series?

IVERY AND LUNA: In August 2014, while Luna was preparing to move away for grad school, we went together on an apartment shopping trip before the school year started.

After a day in which we'd walked over ten miles and seen a dozen apartments, we were both so exhausted that when we finally collapsed back at the hotel, we were pretty slap-happy.

We started Googling for the weirdest erotic fan-fictions we could find and ended up reading "Andy Griffith" and "Murder, She Wrote" sex stories aloud to each other while cackling like idiots. After a while Luna said, "You know, I had this idea ..."

SADYE: What has been the reaction from friends/family who have read your work?

IVERY AND LUNA: Our friends and family who are in on this have responded to this idea with surprising enthusiasm.

These include people in various professional walks of life, and even a retired judge and someone who once served as a chief of staff for a state governor — in other words, totally respectable people!

SADYE: How are you picking the historical leading men?

IVERY AND LUNA: We chose Henry VIII for the first volume because this was a brand-new concept, and we weren't sure how much it would appeal to various demographics, so we wanted the first book to cover a time period and historical figures who would feel accessible to most readers.

Henry VIII is fairly familiar to most audiences thanks to authors like Philippa Gregory and shows like The Tudors, so we thought that was a good place to start and that we could introduce readers to some less well-known historical figures in future volumes.

For the second book, The Golden Whored, we decided that our heroines would have fun visiting Genghis Khan, who is well-known in the sense that everyone has heard of him, but hasn't been explored very much in fiction outside the eastern hemisphere.

We know for sure that our characters are interested in visiting a wide range of cultures and time periods, and a variety of historical figures with different sexual preferences and personalities.

SADYE: How much of Ivery and Luna are in your heroines, Beth and Tawny?

IVERY AND LUNA: Plenty! ... That said, much of the portrayal of Beth and Tawny is fictional and simply invented.

Neither of us were ever in a sorority, so the sections pertaining to Greek life were based on conversations Ivery had with a friend who was in a sorority. While Luna is extensively self-educated with respect to history, Ivery has little background in this area and has been learning as we go.

Perhaps most significantly, Beth's daughter, Jules, is a huge part of her and Tawny's life, but neither of us have children in real life. Many of the scenes with Jules were derived from our experiences with the children of friends, from younger family members, and from the stories we've heard over the years from the parents we know.

As for Beth and Tawny's sexual proclivities, we've been asked by a few readers how true to life these are. The official answer to that question is that we prefer to share that only with our significant others!

The reality would probably be a letdown to anyone asking about this, anyway — we're both in committed relationships, we're nonjudgmental of the swinging lifestyle but don't participate in it ourselves, and between us we probably own fewer than ten dildos.

Suffice it to say, TimeBangers is obviously fiction and should be presumed as such.

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