Lauren Ling Brown, SOCIETY OF LIES
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[0:38]Thanks for listening. Laura Ling Brown is the author of Society of Lies. This is an event that
[0:47]happened at Zibi's Bookshop, which I was at, and which I thought was one of the best conversations I've heard there or
[0:54]anywhere. Her moderator was Halley Sutton, who's a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles, and is a
[1:00]pitch wars mentor. Halley holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of California
[1:05]Santa Cruz, and a master's degree in writing from Otis College of Art and Design. Her debut novel is the Lady
[1:11]Upstairs. Back to Laura Ling Brown. By the way, Society of Lies is a Reese's Book Club pick.
[1:18]Laura Ling Brown received a BA in English literature from Princeton University and an MFA in film
[1:23]production with a focus on screenwriting from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She also currently
[1:29]resides in Los Angeles, where she works as a film editor. I hope you enjoy this conversation.
[1:34]You can also watch it on YouTube, where you can watch all of our bookstore events. Enjoy!
[1:39]Thank you, everyone, for coming to celebrate the publication of Society of Lies,
[1:43]the Reese Witherspoon Book Pick for the month, which is so exciting. Lauren, for anybody who doesn't
[1:48]know, can you give us a short summary of what Society of Lies is about? Sure. So first, I just want to
[1:53]say, thank you guys so much for coming. You all mean so much to me. I love you all. These are my
[1:59]closest friends from, you know, so many years, 10 years back, and some new friends, too. So thank
[2:06]you for being here. And Society of Lies is a suspense set at Princeton about two sisters,
[2:12]born 10 years apart who get invited to join the same secret society. When Maya returns to campus,
[2:19]she's expecting a fun weekend with friends celebrating her sister's graduation, but then
[2:24]something horrible happens, and she learns that her sister's died. So as she starts to investigate,
[2:30]she realizes that a secret in her own past may have something to do with her sister's death.
[2:44]Do you want to read a short clip for the book for us? Yeah. So this is part of the prologue.
[2:50]Surrounded by wild looks and shuttering bodies, I dance. Everything is elevated,
[2:55]intense, like none of us want this night to end. The airhings thick as smoke, floor sticky with
[3:01]champagne, as heads tip back and arms rise overhead. To my right, strobe lights flash against 19th
[3:07]century doors. Their glass panes fogged over. A handprint drips down the glass as a guy presses
[3:13]the state against the wall. Her legs wrapped around his waist as they kiss. The place feels charged
[3:18]with electricity, excitement, maybe even fear if they've been paying attention. Tonight is the
[3:24]night I've waited for my entire life, our initiation into Sterling Club, Princeton's most prestigious
[3:30]eating club. It's not just a place to have fun. It's also a golden escalator to our future.
[3:35]Once inside, we're bound by our secrets, and that creates a deep bond. It feels dangerous,
[3:41]cult-like, but isn't fun always a little bit reckless. Several hours later, I'm catching my breath
[3:48]on the upstairs terrace overlooking the back lawn. The late February airhings cool and still,
[3:53]and it hasn't snowed in weeks, maybe the worst is over. Exhaling a cloud of breath,
[3:59]I lean over the banister. I like watching people out here, new lovers sneaking off into dark
[4:04]corners, young men sharing a bottle of whiskey, a guy kissing someone who is definitely not his
[4:09]girlfriend. I'm watching a girl stumble down the back steps when a shadow slides over me from
[4:15]a hand touches the bare skin between my shoulder blades and I go still. When I turn around,
[4:20]the guy saw watching me as their tall and confident, attractive. His lips curl into a cocky half
[4:27]grin. He leans closer, and when his hand touches my waist, I feel a current of electricity.
[4:32]My skin warming under his fingertips as if his touch could burn straight through me.
[4:37]He leans down to whisper in my ear and what he says makes me freeze.
[4:41]You've been tapped for Greystone Society. I look at him goosebumps rising over my skin.
[4:48]Greystone Society is so covert that most people don't, I prince and don't even know they exist,
[4:52]but I've been fascinated by them for years. He looks at his watch. You have 30 seconds to decide,
[4:58]if you want to accept, the moment I leave, the offer's done. So what do you think are you in?
[5:03]As the reality of his offer sinks in, I grow aware of the shakiness of my breath,
[5:08]the rush of blood in my ears, the exhilaration and fear. In front of me is a door to another
[5:13]universe, another life. I imagine my mother saying from wherever she is now to take every strange
[5:18]adventure life presents to experience the world, not shy away from it. But in spite of the pride
[5:24]I feel at having been chosen, there's another instinct telling me to run. I bury it, steal myself,
[5:31]and take his hand. I'm in. He smiles, then come with me. So how did you find out the news
[5:47]that this was going to be a Reese Witherspoon book club. So my fiance Brad and I were in the
[5:54]Dominican Republic and actually the day before that we were on the beach with some friends in Santa
[5:59]Monica and it was a great day. I had my Kindle to read some books. I had, you know, an umbrella. I was
[6:05]having a great time and I turned over and I felt a sting, shoot down my leg. And I'm slightly
[6:11]allergic to bees so my legs started swelling up. And then I was trying to get the sting rat and a
[6:16]bird pooped on my face. I was like, this is just not my day. And Brad being the optimist that he is,
[6:23]it was like, no, you know what, this is double the good luck. A bee sting and bird poop on, you know,
[6:29]this is going to be a great day. And then two days later my agent and editor called when we were
[6:35]on vacation and they're like, Lauren, we have the best news of your life. It's a Reese's book
[6:40]club thing. So it was right. Kind of like that old wives tale of like having a bad wedding day
[6:50]leads to a good marriage. So what was the inspiration behind this story? I know you went to Princeton.
[6:58]How did that play a role in coming up with this? Well, the idea for the story started with the
[7:04]older sister, Maya, who like me is black and Chinese and always felt like an outsider and certain
[7:11]circles didn't feel like she fit in anywhere. And so I thought about my feeling stepping off the
[7:16]train onto campus and thinking how am I possibly going to fit in or be as, you know, I was just
[7:24]looking at all these smart people around me smart and successful. And I just didn't feel like I
[7:29]and so then I took that person and introduced this moral dilemma. How far would she go to belong?
[7:36]If a secret society promised her the life of her dreams, everything she ever wanted,
[7:41]but then she learned that that society was hurting someone else. So that's the moral dilemma
[7:46]at the heart of the book and something that I wanted the sisters to sort of struggle with,
[7:51]or at least Maya to struggle with throughout this story. And I feel like the relationship between
[7:57]the sisters is so strong in this book. It's so much the heart of this book. Did you always know
[8:01]that you wanted to write about sisters? I have a sister who's three and a half years younger than me
[8:07]and my brother's 10 years younger. And so, you know, being an older sister, the eldest of three,
[8:13]he was like my little baby growing up and my sister and I were close. We used to go to the library
[8:19]with my mom and like would read with flashlights in our bunk bed growing up. So it's a relationship
[8:25]that means so much to me. And throughout a lot of our life, we had periods of our life where
[8:32]we weren't as close. And I was always telling her, you know, you should be careful of this,
[8:36]you should do, you know, thought I knew better because I was older. And so sisters sometimes,
[8:42]at least my sister and I, you know, had miscommunication and didn't always have the words to tell
[8:47]each other how much we loved each other. So that really inspired these two sisters.
[8:55]Is there one of the sisters that you identified more with than like, if so, which one and why?
[9:01]I think that's really a cool question because they're actually inspired by who I was at different
[9:07]points in my life. So the older sister, Maya, is more insecure. She doesn't know where she fits
[9:13]in. And so that's who I felt like when I first got to college. And I feel Naomi who was in
[9:19]basically the Black Arts Company, the Stance Group. And she found her spaces where she belonged
[9:25]and, you know, is confident in who she is. That's who I feel like I evolved into. So there's sort
[9:32]of just, you know, inspired by different points in my life. Was it harder to write something like
[9:38]to revisit any of those spaces than others, like the headspace? Interesting. I guess it is hard to
[9:46]think about, you know, sort of the more difficult situations. Like, you know, in this book,
[9:52]we talk about privilege and racism and those are not comfortable conversations. And so I think it
[9:59]was more difficult.
[10:00]to revisit those types of situations.
[10:03]But I hope that by talking about them,
[10:05]we can understand each other better
[10:07]and realize we're more alike than different.
[10:10]I think you navigate that so gracefully in this book,
[10:12]especially on such rare-fied eras
[10:14]Princeton and these secret societies,
[10:16]such a good vehicle for that.
[10:17]So the book is a, you called it a suspense novel,
[10:20]but it also fits really cleanly
[10:22]into dark academia, which is all the rays each these days.
[10:24]So like, what is it about dark academia
[10:27]that draws you and were there any
[10:29]that like inspired you or that were touched on
[10:31]for you as you were writing the book?
[10:32]I love dark academia.
[10:34]I think never let me go is one that I really love
[10:37]like has who is she grow.
[10:39]And then, you know, the secret histories
[10:41]like the original dark academia.
[10:43]So that obviously I've read that when I was younger
[10:47]and definitely stayed with me.
[10:49]They're more than I've read recently.
[10:51]Like white Ivy that I really like.
[10:53]Yeah, nice.
[10:56]And did you always wanted to know you wanted to be a writer?
[10:59]Do you always want to write novels?
[11:00]I think on some level I did,
[11:02]my mom recently gave me these stories where I would, you know,
[11:06]write in this third grade cursive about my life
[11:09]and like give them to her, dedicated to my family.
[11:12]So I think I did want to be a writer,
[11:15]but I took my first creative writing class in college
[11:18]and that made me fall in love with writing.
[11:20]And I've always loved to read.
[11:22]And I just think like it took me a while to make it a career.
[11:27]But I did go to grad school to study screenwriting.
[11:31]So it was always a part of the journey.
[11:33]Do you always know how your novels are going to end
[11:36]when you start them?
[11:37]Like, did you know the ending of society of lies
[11:39]when you first started writing it?
[11:40]Or was that something you discovered along the way?
[11:42]I did know the end.
[11:43]And I don't want to give anything away there.
[11:46]So yeah, I did know the end
[11:48]because it was important to me to include it
[11:52]as part of this like moral dilemma
[11:55]that one of the sisters has to reckon with
[11:59]like her own mistakes basically.
[12:01]Yeah, but then I always layer in different layers of mystery
[12:05]as I do a bunch of rewriting.
[12:07]I don't know, is that your process or how do you?
[12:10]My process is a mess.
[12:11]My process is like when does the editor need the draft?
[12:16]And so here you go and then we'll work from there.
[12:18]So it's really comforting to me
[12:20]to hear you have a process, it's achievable, you know?
[12:25]So are you a plotter or a pantser?
[12:27]I'm a pantser, which means that I basically don't plot
[12:30]out my books ahead of time.
[12:31]But then I will say once I write like a coherent first draft
[12:36]because there's a lot of incoherent drafts early,
[12:38]I will actually go back and outline
[12:39]and I'll kind of put that outline over the top of my book
[12:43]to be like, okay, which parts are dragging?
[12:45]Like the first act should not be 200 pages, that's wrong.
[12:48]So like going in there and kind of pulling that together
[12:51]is really like what I've learned how to do.
[12:53]What about you to do outline?
[12:55]You know, it's kind of similar for me
[12:57]where I'll have this extensive outline like 20, 30 pages
[13:01]over months, maybe a year.
[13:03]And I think I know what I'm gonna do
[13:06]and then I sit down to write
[13:07]and the whole thing comes out differently, like a mess.
[13:11]And then so for me it's revising like constantly
[13:15]rewriting the chapters and my mom's one of my first readers
[13:18]and a lot of people in here have read early drafts.
[13:20]So thank you all.
[13:23]I get a lot of feedback from friends
[13:24]and it's like really important to me
[13:27]and helpful to my writing to do that.
[13:31]Yeah, definitely.
[13:31]Do you have any like revision tips?
[13:33]Like I know sometimes people put things
[13:34]in different fonts or yeah, do you have anything that you do?
[13:38]Like you, I do a reverse outline where I'll outline later on
[13:41]and then have the note cards.
[13:43]And I also, with different beats like in a three act structure
[13:47]and I also like to print out the whole thing
[13:50]and lay it out chapter by chapter
[13:52]so you can like see it visually on the floor.
[13:55]That's so cool.
[13:55]I think it's like, okay, all my work is right there.
[13:58]How hard could it be?
[14:00]Well, and so this book you basically had to do that kind
[14:02]of twice, right?
[14:03]Because you have two narratives moving at the same time.
[14:05]So like, did you, how did you find that process?
[14:08]Kind of like weaving those together
[14:09]and making sure that they were kind of
[14:11]hitting the right beats at the same time for the reader?
[14:14]Yeah, it was quite a process.
[14:15]It started out with just at the older sister Maya.
[14:18]And so we had the past and present storyline
[14:21]where she's solving a mystery in the past
[14:23]where she's involved and then in the present
[14:25]she's trying to figure out what happened to her sister.
[14:28]And my editor, Hilary, who's amazing,
[14:32]she recommended she suggested
[14:34]that we introduced the younger sister's perspective more.
[14:37]And that was partly to show that, you know,
[14:40]our society in Princeton had changed and grown
[14:43]for the better over 10 years
[14:45]and also to show, you know, give Naomi more of a voice.
[14:49]So we wove her chapters in and out throughout the novel.
[14:52]That's great.
[14:53]So you kind of like layered those two together
[14:55]that makes a lot of sense.
[14:56]So this is your first book, which way to hit a big out
[14:59]of the gate, that's pretty great.
[15:01]What's been the most surprising part
[15:07]about the publishing process for you?
[15:09]Well, I didn't know how many drafts it would be.
[15:13]Oh yeah.
[15:14]That's right.
[15:16]Yeah, so that was surprising.
[15:17]But a really great surprise is that the thriller
[15:20]author community is so kind.
[15:22]Every author I've met has been so kind and welcoming
[15:25]and just like, they know how hard it is
[15:28]to write a book and they've been there.
[15:30]And so like, I met Halley at a book club
[15:33]and you were so great and we'd remain friends after that.
[15:37]So, and she blerped.
[15:39]I blew it.
[15:40]It was my honor to get to read it early.
[15:42]That's like one of the coolest things about being an author
[15:45]is that people will send you their books early.
[15:46]And they're like, I got to read Lauren's book, but you know.
[15:51]So what's been the best moment so far in this journey?
[15:54]I mean, you told us about the phone call, finding out
[15:56]about Reese, but what are those, yeah, I can imagine
[15:59]what have been some of the other highlights.
[16:01]The best moment was giving my dad a copy of the arc,
[16:04]the advanced reader copy.
[16:06]And he's not a type of person who cries very easily,
[16:08]but he like tiered up.
[16:10]And he said, I'm so proud of you.
[16:12]And that was like the best moment.
[16:13]Yeah.
[16:14]And my mom's like one of my first readers.
[16:16]So she's read so many drafts and just to see them so proud
[16:20]is really nice.
[16:21]And they've given up so much for me.
[16:23]So that's really beautiful.
[16:25]So what can you share about what's next for you
[16:28]or anything else you want people to know?
[16:29]And then I have one question that you may not want
[16:31]to camera before we go to Hawaii and really fun.
[16:34]So next up, I am going to be participating in Lit Up
[16:39]hopefully this year, which is the Reese's Book Club program
[16:44]for emerging writers, authors.
[16:47]And I'm really excited about that.
[16:48]And then I'm also working on Book Two,
[16:50]which is another mystery between a mother and a daughter.
[16:54]And that's all I can say.
[16:58]OK, so I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't ask this.
[17:01]But were you in a secret society at Princeton?
[17:04]LAUGHTER
[17:06]Wow.
[17:07]No, Reese.
[17:09]Thank you.
[17:10]LAUGHTER
[17:12]Great society doesn't exist, or if they do,
[17:15]they didn't tap me.
[17:16]OK.
[17:18]So I was not in a secret society,
[17:21]but I wasn't an eating club.
[17:23]And I met some of my closest friends to this day
[17:27]in that eating club.
[17:28]And the school has come a long way since 2010,
[17:34]which is when Maya's early perspective takes place.
[17:39]And this was before me too.
[17:40]It was before a bigger push for diversity.
[17:43]And so I just think, oh, you asked about the eating club.
[17:46]Oh, yeah, I mean, I want to hear everything you have to say.
[17:49]So I guess to me, it's really important
[17:52]to know that this story could take place anywhere
[17:55]at any university and in any city in the US.
[17:58]And it's more an opportunity to talk about these subjects
[18:02]that we don't often talk about.
[18:03]Like Sisterhood belonging, privilege,
[18:06]and to listen to one another and hopefully
[18:09]get closer by doing that.
[18:10]So that's really the intention behind the book.
[18:13]That's great.
[18:15]OK, lightning rounds.
[18:16]Legally blonde or big little eyes.
[18:18]Big little line.
[18:19]But I look.
[18:21]Culture secret societies.
[18:23]Ooh, secret societies.
[18:27]Princeton or USC?
[18:28]Princeton.
[18:29]OK.
[18:30]I'm so sorry.
[18:32]I hope you're sorry.
[18:33]You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
[18:38]You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
[18:40]I was thinking undergrad.
[18:42]I was, you know, so I went to grad like a story.
[18:48]Hocus pocus or the craft?
[18:49]Oh, hocus pocus.
[18:51]One of those good.
[18:52]Where wolves are vampires?
[18:55]That's that's part one.
[18:56]What's that you?
[18:58]Oh, we're turning back on me.
[19:01]I'll say vampires because I'm
[19:02]really excited about Rachel Harrison's book that just
[19:04]came out so thirsty.
[19:05]Oh, cool.
[19:06]The secret history or never let me go.
[19:08]Never let me go.
[19:09]But both are great.
[19:10]And that's concludes the lightning round.
[19:18]All right, well, thank you everybody.
[19:20]This is really great.
[19:26]Thanks for listening to Momstone.
[19:27]Have time to read books.
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[19:30]And follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.