E asked Alex Gabriel:

Was there a particular Jpop or Kpop group that served as the foundation for your Learning How To Lose series? If not, what inspired you to write those books?

Alex Gabriel There were three real Jpop groups that served as inspiration for ONYX and 7Heaven – oddly enough, two of them were conflated into a single group for the purposes of my series. I am fascinated (and sometimes a bit chilled) by the way the Japanese and Korean idol industry works, so the idol milieu as a whole was definitely part of the reason behind the novels.

Still, while the idea of writing something set within that world appealed to me, it was the characters – Ryuu and Hiro – who actually inspired me. I love romances between very different people, and bringing these two together in as real and believable a way as possible was my main goal in writing Learning How to Lose.

I hope you liked the result! :-)

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