← Books With Your Besties
Loading summary
Transcript95 lines
- [00:00]
A
We are thrilled to announce that this episode is brought to you by Lagoon Pillow. As women in our 40s who are trying to take care of our health and wellness, we know that good mornings start with optimal sleep. And Lagoon pillows are made just for that. They're customizable, supportive, and will have you waking up feeling your best. I personally am an otter. Head to lagoonsleep.com, take the sleep quiz and use code book club for 15% off your next order. Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Ashley. This is Books with your besties. Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us. I am just so thrilled to talk with you. And I've been just researching and reading all about you since reading this book. And I'm so excited to talk to you even about what got you to writing. Reasons to Lie.
- [00:48]
B
Oh, great. I'm excited to talk to you.
- [00:51]
A
Right?
- [00:51]
B
You guys are so much fun.
- [00:53]
A
Thank you. I was telling someone the other day, when we reach out to authors, you're like our celebrities, because we just love books. We love everything you guys provide and put out there. And when people say yes, we're like, oh, my gosh, they're going to talk with us.
- [01:06]
B
That's amazing. Well, you know, it's really fun to talk to people who've actually read your book, but it's fun to talk to people who are doing something in the book space. You know, we want to encourage that. All of us on every side of it. Yeah.
- [01:20]
A
I will back up just for a second and do a short introduction. So this is Emily. Reasons to Lie is what we are talking about today. And our listeners and our readers know if they are going to listen to an interview with an author, it's full spoilers. So they had to have already read the book. So anything and everything is on the table. I will tell you, I read this book in one sitting.
- [01:43]
B
Oh, wow.
- [01:44]
A
I tried to put it down, and I was so curious about what was going to happen next. I absolutely could not. So we'll get into some of the book specifics, but there were two other questions I wanted to ask before we just get into reasons to Lie. So one is, I really admire how transparent you have been both about grief and caretaking. I wonder if you wouldn't be open to talking with us a little bit about how that has shaped your journey is a word I don't love, but journey as a writer.
- [02:14]
B
No, I would love to talk about that. I did write a piece about it for O'Daly, for Oprah, in part because it's something so many people go through. And being a caretaker is very underrated. The amount of effort and grief and recovery it takes is very underrated. To tie it into just quickly, the book I had started writing, Reasons to Lie. And briefly, my brother got sick with lung cancer from 9 11. And on the first day of his chemotherapy, my mother fell while reaching for her cell phone to hear how he was and fractured her spine. And so I was kind of the only one left standing. And luckily, we all live close together in Manhattan. I think at first you don't understand. At least I didn't understand what the road ahead was going to be. At first they thought my brother's cancer was caught early. In fact, it wasn't. And then my mother, as can happen with elderly people, one fall just kind of puts you off. But I had this vision that I was going to be able to write while I was at my mother's apartment or write from hospital rooms. And finally I realized I couldn't because they were in separate hospitals and they needed me and I was making life and death decisions all the time. And I, in writing about it, I did some research. And, you know, so much of caretaking falls on women. And whenever I started talking about it, it resonated with a lot of people. And even in my acknowledgments, I wanted to do a shout out to caretakers because I think it's so important. And what I didn't realize is there's something called caretakers ptsd. I'd never even heard of that until I went through it, which is after they died six weeks apart. And after that, I just had no conception. You know, you kind of think, I'll rest, I'll eat again. Because I had stopped sleeping, eating, exercising. But I couldn't get back to myself. And it took therapy for me to understand, oh, there's such a thing as caretakers, ptsd. It has a name. I'm experiencing it. And then finally, you know, I was able to say, this is grief. This is normal grief now. And I can get back to writing what was essentially supposed to be a fun book and was a fun book and a great relief to be able to pick up again. So that was my experience with that.
- [04:32]
A
I will just say on a personal note, I read that article and I was a bit of a puddle afterwards because we lost my dad three years ago and I watched my mom be his caretaker and then have grief. And I think the most challenging part, as someone trying to support the caretaker is trying to help them navigate who they are without the caretaking piece.
- [04:54]
B
Exactly.
- [04:55]
A
And it's finding a whole new identity. And you have to be really brave about it.
- [04:59]
B
Exactly. You kind of lose yourself because you're living so in the moment. You have one job, which is to take care of this person. And as much as people say, make me time, make sure you take care of yourself. Put the oxygen mask on. It's very hard sometimes it's hard to pick up your old identity again. Sometimes you'll never be the same. But you're not a full time caretaker anymore. Yeah. And there are issues of identity and purpose and finding all that.
- [05:26]
A
Yeah. And. Well, we'll talk about the book now, but I also think the freedom of time can become paralyzing because this is not your priority now 24 hours a day. So I've experienced with my mom, almost feeling an inability to figure out how to use this time she now has. And that can be paralyzing.
- [05:45]
B
It can be. And then also when you're going through it, I'm sure your mom felt this. You're on high alert all the time. Like, even if you step out for coffee or do an errand, you have your phone, you're on high alert, and all of a sudden you're not on high alert. But it can be hard. And I shouldn't speak only for myself, but hard to regain how to process information, how to, you know, make sense of your thoughts, how to have normal communications with people again, which does come back. But all that goes away for a little while.
- [06:13]
A
So then the other piece I wanted to talk with you about before the book specifics, and this is a complete 180. But you had a hand in creating an app called Correct Gist.
- [06:21]
B
Gist, which is in the book.
- [06:24]
A
We have a retreat every year for creepy book readers and it has like 450 to 600, primarily women. And I was like, well, this feels like it was made for our community. And it seems like you created the app just because you saw a need a hundred percent.
- [06:38]
B
And we launched it. I did go out into the world. I was at that time working in a company as the chief content officer and one of my best work buddies there was the chief digital officer. I was widowed, so I was dating. She's married. And I was dating someone. And like every two minutes I was running into her office saying, what does this text mean? Like, what does he mean by this? And then she realized that she was on a train one day, you know, commuting. And she said, a woman I didn't know asked Me what a guy's text meant. I'm like, this is crazy. And especially with online dating, but in general and women turn to each other and especially as we all begin texting more and everything is digital, it's very hard to interpret. So we had this idea that women should be able to offer each other advice anonymously because you can bore your friend silly by the way, asking what he meant a hundred times. So we thought when we get crowdsourced advice and you know, we self funded and we hired developers in Patagonia and we were so convinced it was such a great idea that we launched before we really honestly figured out how to monetize. And it somehow got written up in Forbes when we had 47 people weren't really telling people about it. And then we started and we got nice write ups in a lot of magazines but we hadn't honestly, it launched before we were ready and we hadn't thought it through like who do we need to hire? Should we fundraise? Should we not? And then just briefly, funny, we started, we're doing it all ourselves, like waking up at 4 in the morning and started reading all the questions because they were populating a lot but they weren't very well written, the questions. And we finally said, are our users kind of sub literate? Turns out it was very big in Europe for some reason and English wasn't their first language, so it was in Germany, I was here. So it was a lot of fun. We kept it up for a while and then, you know, we both had jobs and kids and we. In retrospect, I think one of the dating apps should have bought it or someone else should have just bought it. Yeah, but it was so much fun and I do think it was based on the need of mine, but I also think it's based on women's behavior.
- [08:51]
A
It makes me think of how we started book club. We started it based off of women connecting over books. And then like your app, it started with five people and then all of a sudden people had interest and we were like, oh no, there are only two of us. Instead, the two of us in a book, there's still four of us running this whole operation and we're just like, well, this got bigger than anticipated in the way possible but.
- [09:11]
B
But I think when you start an idea grounded in experience, yeah, it's more organic. You know, I worked in magazines for a long time and there was always an expression if you're doing it and three of your friends are doing it, it's trend, you know, and so it's just a matter of observing what's going on around you.
- [09:29]
A
Okay, let's get into the book. Just some. I'm not going to keep you for too long, although I feel like we could talk forever. But the key players in your book are a handful of families and their teenagers. And you have a daughter yourself. So kind of sharing with us how your experience as a mother informed just some of the relationships you wrote in the book.
- [09:49]
B
Absolutely. And I will say my daughter read the book and she was halfway through and she said, mom, am I the one who did it? So. So anyway, as anyone who's had a teenager knows, they are mysterious creatures, the best of them. My daughter was a great kid. I love her. She's a great student. She lied. All teenagers lie at some point. It was just fascinating to me. I've always been interested, through books and the novels I've written, how well you can know another human being. But then I became interested in how well do you know your own child and what they're capable of. And then the question becomes, how far would you go to protect them, not knowing what they did, if it was right or wrong? Because I think maternal instincts, certainly mine is you protect your child at any cost. So when you combine this, you don't know your kid. You think you do, then you don't. And it's grounded in the friendship of three women. Because female friendship is so core to my life. And I think it's cord to a lot of women's lives. And, you know, they have to decide between some instances between their friends and their children. Absolutely.
- [10:55]
A
You also didn't shy away in this book from really hard topics like mental illness. I would love to talk about Daniel because as the character who everybody wanted to point a finger at, you were able to walk this really, what felt like razor thin line of having sympathy for his circumstances, but also thinking, did he do it right?
- [11:14]
B
Right.
- [11:14]
A
How did you find writing his character? And did you have to do much research for that?
- [11:18]
B
I did do some into his specific illness, his family illness. But I think one of what I wanted to point out is the cost of family secrets and the shame around mental illness because his mother is interpreting his actions incorrectly, or we don't know if it's correctly or not. But in part because she hasn't shared the history of her family with him, she's ashamed of it. So she hasn't shared it with him. And in keeping that secret, it makes her, as a mother and also hymn to himself, inexplicable in some Ways because they don't know the root cause. I do think there's less shame in their own mental illness currently, but there is still a lot of familial shame about backgrounds. And so I wanted to give that a human face.
- [12:05]
A
Yeah, it was very well done.
- [12:07]
B
Thank you.
- [12:08]
A
I taught for years in classrooms in Oregon that we call SLCB classrooms, which are special education classrooms, but for students with high behavior needs. Daniel reminded me of them because they are often, usually boys who are extremely misunderstood because of their trauma, because of their mental illness. And they are so often judged on their behaviors instead of actually treating what is attributing to those behaviors. It felt like a very authentic. And I felt such sympathy for him, but also like he could potentially be so dangerous.
- [12:39]
B
Exactly, exactly. And that's the fine line you walk. And that was what was interesting to me. I'll tell you something interesting in the writing process though. I knew this about Daniel and his mother going into the book, but the two girl, I didn't know how it would play out, but I knew that the cause, you know, the root cause of some of it, the other two teenagers, two girls, have secrets as well that have something to do with their identity and mental illness. And I didn't know those secrets till halfway through. I knew they had to have secrets, but then you find it sounds so mystical, but it's real. A character sort of reveals themself to you and then you say, oh, of course that's what she was doing. Of course, you know, that's what she was hiding. And. And that felt organic to me and interesting and things, you know, teenagers are also have a hard time sharing their insecurities and problems or identity with parents who they're not sure will be accepting or not, even if they've given no reason to think they wouldn't be accepting.
- [13:35]
A
Right. I have a 16 and a 13 year old son. Okay. And you're saying about teenagers, I'm like, yes, yes. So Jordan in the book uses his wealth to manipulate people. A tale as old as time.
- [13:50]
B
Right.
- [13:50]
A
Did his involvement ever look any different or did you kind of know his. So all along he was.
- [13:56]
B
Yeah, I think, you know, the book is set in this very Upper east side, wealthy private school world. And I'm interested in class and the difference that money and power make and people trying to fit in or people pretending they fit in when they don't. But I think as we see day in, day out, now more than ever, if something happens and you have money and power and connections, you have a better chance of escaping than someone who doesn't have those things. And it's a lever you pull. In this case, you can pull it with a school, you can pull it with police, you can pull it with pr, but those levers are real and they're pulled every day.
- [14:33]
A
Yeah, it's scary. I was actually going to ask you that question, but I think you just answered it. That it was pretty fascinating to read a domestic thriller set in this kind of high society, high class. And we're so used to just reading kind of suburban, domestic. And it just felt. It just felt very different and very privileged in a way that kind of grossed me out in parts.
- [14:55]
B
Yeah. As it was men, too. Yeah. You know, I know that world well. My daughter did go to a school like that. And I'm a downtown single writer, mom, so I'm not that wealthy person, you know, and it's just, you know, I started hearing the stories and meeting the people. My daughter had gone to public school first, and the first day of private school, she came home and said, mom, there's a boy in my class who's never taken public transportation. Or in my old school, they were doing a petition to get graffiti out of the school. Now there's a petition to get an extra panini machine in the cafeteria. So it was kind of fun to have an insider. Outsider view, if you will. Yeah.
- [15:34]
A
My boys play for an elite soccer program, and there's a lot of wealth involved, which is not her story whatsoever. So we've had conversations like, well, no, you're going to fly with the team, not on the private jet. That's not our reality.
- [15:48]
B
Exactly.
- [15:49]
A
So we have Abby, Cara, and Hollis, and they all lie for very different reasons. Did you have a character that you felt like you empathized the most with when it came to their reasons to lie or the lies they were telling, both themselves and others?
- [16:06]
B
Yeah. I mean, again, I. I empathize with all of them in that my instinct as a mother is I want to protect my child. And so I. I empathize with all of them. I empathize with Abby a lot because the externals of her life are closer to mine. Though her daughter isn't closer to mine. My daughter that didn't share that. Her daughter's identity in secret. But the idea she's worried about her daughter not fitting in because of the wealth she's worried about, why isn't she capable of making friends? So I definitely related to that because that's a hard thing to. As you told me, you're experiencing it's. A hard thing to explain. Even if your child's not spoiled, you know, you're coming up against the realities of the world at a young age. And I definitely, you know, when it came to Carol, she witnessed her daughter doing something so painful. And how could that not hurt you to see?
- [17:01]
A
Right.
- [17:02]
B
And she's not status conscious. She doesn't want her children to go to this very fancy school because of status or social climbing. Her kids were having trouble in the school they were in, and they are really struggling financially to pull this off. And that was interesting to me because I think a lot of times in life and in fiction, in these very wealthy worlds, you see people who are, I'll say, lower class, less income, but you don't see people in the middle that much. You know, you see extremes of wealth at either side. And I thought, well, what about someone in the middle who can't find a way to fit into either world but is struggling to?
- [17:43]
A
And I really think with her character, who is struggling to, but is really trying to do. I guess as a mother, I just felt she's just trying to do what she thinks is best for her child, which is out just really putting herself in the backseat and really making a lot of decisions I don't think she would have made had it not been for the benefit of her child.
- [18:03]
B
Oh, a hundred percent. She seriously wasn't in it for the social climbing. Other people are, you know, but she had a daughter who is a main character in the book who was acting out in strange ways in public school and was not getting attention. She saw, she hoped, going to a different school, a smaller school where she'd get more personal attention would kind of nip that in the bud. Instead, it did the opposite, but her intentions were good.
- [18:32]
A
I feel like you kind of unintentionally tied in a little bit of some of the toxic positivity stuff we see on social media with kind of the performative perfectionism some of the families were attempting to portray. Again, do you feel like that's from watching it from an outside view within your community, or was. Some of it, you know, some of
- [18:52]
B
it springs from my imagination, but part of it was that I did. I did have a child go to this school and see this over and over and over again and yet not be a part of it, because that's just not my world. And there is social climbing. There is one upsmanship there. There are all those things that take place. And if you take the three main characters, they're all outsiders for different reasons. And those. None of them are there for that reason. So they had a good look at that as well.
- [19:22]
A
When it comes to the secrets that unfold throughout the book, did you know all of them, or did any of them reveal themselves to you? And did you decide which ones to hold back on and which ones to share to make us even, like, a third of the way through the book
- [19:34]
B
go, oh, my gosh. Yeah. Well, the first secret is who gets murdered. You don't know that. The first half of the book. That I always knew. Okay, I knew that. And I knew Daniel is dealing with mental illness or his family was dealing with mental illness. What I didn't know, and I mean, these are spoilers, but I didn't know Abby's sexual identity. And that secret came out in the last third. I didn't know the cutting scenes. I will be honest. I had someone else as the murderer until the last draft. You can realize I'm like, wait a minute. It was someone else.
- [20:13]
A
I was going to just ask you that if there was a piece that either your editor or you made a major change before the final was published.
- [20:21]
B
It wasn't before it was published. It was a little bit earlier in a draft, but it went through numerous drafts. And somewhere along the line, I was like, this just needs a twist to make it fun. And then I had to kind of go back and do a little bit of seeding. But one of the nicest things, my editors, they didn't know about it when I gave it to them. And the first thing I said was, this is one of the rare books where we couldn't guess who did it.
- [20:47]
A
Oh, that's a huge compliment.
- [20:49]
B
Yeah. So that was fun.
- [20:50]
A
Would you be able to say which character you felt like changed the most for you from the first draft to the final draft?
- [20:57]
B
In some ways, I think Hollis becomes more. She finds herself and is able to be proactive, and she's kind of passive in the beginning, and I wasn't sure how that was gonna come out. You know, the relationships changed the most. I think the mother's relationships with their children and with each other changed a lot. You know, Abby has never been honest about who the father of her child is, and I was really unclear when that was gonna come out or how. And then so that went through some changes through the writing process.
- [21:30]
A
When I finished the book, I had an immediate. I wonder what this book would have sounded like if it was written from the teenager's perspective.
- [21:38]
B
So funny you say that. It was at one point. No, really, when I first had this idea and I was talking to my agent about it and I always knew the basic plot like this was in my gut, I want to write this book. She said, well, what about writing it as a YA book? So writing it from the teenager's point of view. And it had to be from their point of. I was gonna write it from a YA perspective and I started to do it and I realized two things. I wasn't sure that I was nailing teenage language and thought process. And then I realized that the adults interested me. But in one draft I had vignettes that were from the teenager's point of view interspersed. And it was pulling away from the drama a little bit. But I had all that in there and then took it out. But I think it helped me create more fully realized characters.
- [22:28]
A
Yeah, I just thought the stories we tell and the way they're told, I can't imagine it would just be fascinating to see how differently the story was told from the teenager's perspective.
- [22:38]
B
So true.
- [22:39]
A
And the mother's and how it made me think of my own children and how different we see the world and move through these conflicts and Anyway, no, it's.
- [22:47]
B
It's really true. And I tried it and then I did try using that throughout the book, which was kind of fun, but it just pulled away a little bit. But I don't know. You have a 16 year old. I don't know what they tell you they did in school. I only got the answer stuff I did stuff, things happened. So it'd be really interesting to know what actually went there, went on there.
- [23:04]
A
Well, I guess that makes me interested to know if you were to just write a little follow up novella, is there a character you would choose to write, to write that to kind of
- [23:14]
B
from a teenager's point of view? Yeah, that's a really good question. I know, I just came up with it.
- [23:19]
A
Cause I thought, I don't know who I would even. I would want to hear it from each.
- [23:24]
B
Yeah, probably one of the girls, you know, probably one of the girls. I would like to see Olivia, the one kind of recover and come to terms with who she was and why she was doing that. And I would like to see that play out.
- [23:41]
A
So I guess one final question, and this one's always hard to answer because unless we have personally been in this situation, Emily, my co host, is a psychologist and she's like, you actually never know what you would do in a situation. But I think what feels to me like the recurring tension in the book between maternal protections and moral integrity at what point do you. I guess we. Or you think that protecting your child becomes a form of. I don't want to use the word corruption, but there has to be a point where.
- [24:13]
B
Immoral. Yeah.
- [24:14]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [24:15]
B
I think that's such a central question we all ask ourselves. And I actually did a poll online and almost all of them said they would protect their children. I thought about it, obviously. I think if you think your child is a danger to others, you have to step in. That's a different thing than a one time event. But if you think they're in any way like the parents whose kids go off and do horrible things in the schools. But it's very. They saw the warning signs. They should warn the school. But in an instance like this, if I think my child did something in the past that was wrong and might get in trouble for it, but I felt I had dealt with it, my guess is my gut as a mother would be to be checked. What about you?
- [24:56]
A
This is an age old conversation that Emily and I have over and over. As you have said, mothers and sisterhood, raising children the best we can is. I think we've boiled it down to exactly what you're saying, that if my child was a harm to others or had done something that really needed to be held accountable by someone other than me, then that's. And that's my role as a member of society.
- [25:19]
B
Exactly.
- [25:20]
A
But I also don't know and I
- [25:23]
B
hope I need that find out. I don't. And I don't think I would ever let someone else take responsibility for something my child did. Right. Because that's not serving. It's not serving society, it's not serving your child. Like I do believe there have to be consequences for actions. I would like to think even if I protected my child, I got them the help they needed and there were consequences. But I think it's a question that we ask ourselves.
- [25:47]
A
Yeah, it is. And I also think your book did a really excellent job of making me kind of reflect and have different conversations with my mom about hard decisions we make as mothers and are we actually protecting our children or are there things we should be sharing with them that might be hard to share but they might need to know?
- [26:05]
B
Well, that's what I do hope people come away with. And I think that's certainly true for all of us. You have one mother who's protecting her child on not telling her who her father is. She would have been better off knowing. You have another mother who is hiding a history, familial history of Mental illness. Her son would have been better off knowing another family is really trying to hide the degree of financial stress they're under. Maybe they should be honest with their children and make a family decision. So I do think we often think we're protecting our children from some of the challenges in life, when, in fact, that's not really serving them right.
- [26:44]
A
And I think a word that just came to mind that I hadn't really associated with reasons to lie yet, but is also the things we choose not to share because of shame.
- [26:52]
B
Exactly.
- [26:53]
A
Once shared, you realize they're not shameful. It's just.
- [26:57]
B
Exactly. But that's so interesting you say that because each of the lies from the three mothers and the three kids are rooted in shame, every single one of them. Shame of our identity. Shame about a mistake you made in the past. Shame about your family. And the funny thing about shame is once you are open with it, there is no shame. You know, like, it goes away. But they all. You're absolutely right. They're all paying a price for the lies they've told because of shame.
- [27:23]
A
And then continuing the cycle of teaching your children that shame is something to be honored instead of something to be worked through. And reminds me of when you've been putting off a task for a year and you do it and it takes five minutes. It's like, sometimes the ripping off of the band aid is the hardest part, but then repairing can happen.
- [27:42]
B
Yeah. I mean, all the mothers kind of say, well, two of them say, like, why didn't you tell me? And then you think, well, the mothers weren't telling them the truth either, so.
- [27:50]
A
Exactly. Exactly. It's the question also of, is this type of deceit a learned behavior? There's the whole nature, nurture, conversation with thereabout.
- [28:00]
B
I know, I know, and I have no answer to that.
- [28:03]
A
Dang it.
- [28:04]
B
I'm sorry.
- [28:06]
A
While I have you here, is there anything you want to plug that's coming next or. Any book that. I know you've written several. Seven books, practically.
- [28:13]
B
Yeah, well, I'm working on a new book, but Reasons to Lie was just optioned for a television series, so fingers crossed.
- [28:19]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [28:20]
B
That doesn't mean it'll get made, but nice signs coming up. So I'm just kind of dipping my toe into that.
- [28:25]
A
Oh, my gosh. Well, if you need any, like, co producers or co hosts. Oh, we're here.
- [28:33]
B
Thanks.
- [28:34]
A
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. I just can't say enough good things about reasons to lie. Congratulations.
- [28:40]
B
Thank you so much. And I'm so glad it resonated with you.
- [28:43]
A
Thanks for listening. For more content, find us on Patreon at the Creepy Book Club. Happy reading.