On Better Words this week: Claire Christian
How to write great sex scenes and green flag relationships for inclusive romances.
We had a blast chatting with Claire Christian about her steamy new novel, West Side Honey. Get set to swoon over these emotionally intelligent romance leads and absolutely delightful friendships.
Claire is a writer, theatre maker and facilitator. She’s published three novels with Text Publishing: young adult novel Beautiful Mess in 2016, It’s Been A Pleasure, Noni Blake in 2020, and West Side Honey this year.
Claire directed Michelle Law’s smash hit comedy Single Asian Female and is a proud member of the Mama’s Boys theatre collective whose hip-hop theatrical explosion Brothers Book Club premiered in 2022.
She also writes here on Substack, you can read her thoughts over at
🎧 Listen to the episode at the link below or search ‘Better Words’ in your podcast player 🎧
Things we talked about
Subverting traditional romance tropes and creating realistic characters
Exploring self-love and self-acceptance in West Side Honey
How Claire's experiences online dating inspired conversations between characters in the novel (and the dating profiles)
How to write great sex scenes – and not get embarrassed when your editor reads them
Why Claire chose to explore some dark and deep feelings in what is otherwise a super uplifting book
Claire's journey into the arts and theatre world, before her publishing deal
Other recommendations
Before we chat with our featured author, we always share some other recommendations. This week was a book club – where we read a book together and talk about it (without spoilers!)
Friendaholic by Elizabeth Day
In this memoir meets conversation, Elizabeth Day explores what it means to be a good friend versus being good at friendships (no matter the cost).
Elizabeth explores the nuances of friendships at various stages of life through the lens of her own relationships. We both really enjoyed this and loved the way personal stories added context to broader issues.
- Caitlin & Michelle
🎧 Search ‘Better Words’ in your favourite podcast player to get new episodes as soon as they’re live. We’ll be back with another episode next Wednesday! 🎧