Office Hours: Allie Rowbottom

Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom dares to ask the question: what if a book had both blurbs from Lili Anolik and Madeline Cash and also a toned ass on the cover? A literary ride through the world of adult films in the 1980s, Lovers XXX is the it-girl book to get caught reading this summer. We asked Allie all of our red-hot burning questions about female friendship, agency in a male-dominated industry, and how you go about researching a book like this.

NOTE: This interview contains references to sexual assault and sensitive topics related to the adult film world. It also contains a spoiler that is marked toward the end.

Lit Girl: I read your Publishers Weekly interview and you mentioned that you like to “go to the places where people are afraid to go,” which I think you definitely do with Lovers XXX. What went into the research for this novel? I imagine it had to be pretty specific and had to find some corners of the internet that maybe a lot of authors aren’t normally venturing into. So I’m curious how you approached writing this.

Allie Rowbottom: Great question. I had originally thought I was going to write a similar concept - two friends who are sometimes rivals - but set in like the ‘60s Laurel Canyon folk scene loosely based on Judee Sill and Joni Mitchell. But then I started researching that and I was kind of bored by it. I don’t know why, maybe I’m not as musical as I thought. But I was listening to a podcast called “Once Upon a Time in the Valley” by Lili Anolik simultaneously. It’s about Traci Lords, the adult film star of the early ‘80s who ended up being underage for some of her films. And I was like “oh, I’m so interested in this!” It was just so sleazy and exciting and it felt so fun to research. Obviously I ended up changing the book to be set in that time period and took it from there. But for all of my books the research process has to be designed around something that I’m inherently obsessed with. Once I get obsessed then I am super laser focused. So with Lovers, ‘80s porn became the obsession. I listened to Lili’s podcast and that took me to a bunch of different podcasts. There’s actually a lot of oral - no pun intended - histories of the adult film world especially in this time period. I think right now with where pornography is headed there is actually a lot of nostalgia in the porn industry for this time period specifically. So there’s been a lot of projects to sort of document the experiences of adult stars of that era. I did watch a lot of porn.