In this special episode (a live event at Zibby’s Bookshop!), film editor and bestselling author Lauren Ling Brown discusses her haunting and atmospheric debut (and Reese’s Book Club Pick!), SOCIETY OF LIES, with writer and editor Halley Sutton. The two delve into the novel’s themes of sisterhood, secret societies, and the dark side of privilege at elite universities. Lauren reveals how her own experiences shaped her protagonist, who grapples with belonging and morality. She also shares her creative process, the journey to becoming a published author, the heartwarming moment she shared an advanced copy with her dad, and her exciting plans for her next mystery.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, hosted by me, Zibby Owens. It's an award winning podcast with over 1, 900 episodes, all featuring authors of books you love and those you have yet to discover. Listen daily, five times a week. Then go to Zibbymedia. com and learn more about what they're doing.

The LA Times called the Zibbyverse. Zibby Media includes Zibby's bookshop and Independent bookstore in Santa Monica. Zibby books publishing, Zibby retreats, Zibby's Book Club and more. Go check it out@zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. It'll take you where you need to go. Thanks for listening.

Laura Ling Brown is the author of Society of Lives. This is an event that happened at Zibby's Bookshop, which I was at, and which I thought was one of the best conversations I've heard there or anywhere. Her moderator was Hallie Sutton, who's a writer and editor who lives in Los Angeles and is a Pitch Wars mentor.

Hallie holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a master's degree in writing from Otis College of Art and Design. Her debut novel is The Lady Upstairs. Back to Laura Lang Brown. By the way, Society of Lives is a Reese's Book Club pick. Lauren Ling Brown received a B.

1. in English Literature from Princeton University and an M. F. A. in Film Production with a focus on screenwriting from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She also currently resides in Los Angeles where she works as a film editor. I hope you enjoy this conversation. You can also watch it on YouTube where you can watch all of our bookstore events.

Enjoy! 

Hallie: Thank you everyone for coming to celebrate the publication of Society of Lies, the Reese Witherspoon book pick for the month, which is so exciting. Lauren, for anybody who doesn't know, can you give us a short summary of what Society of Lies is about? 

Lauren: Sure. So first I just want to say thank you guys so much for coming.

You all mean so much to me. I love you all. Like, these are my closest friends from, you know, so many years. 10 years back, and some new friends too, so thank you for being here. And, um, Society of Lies is a suspense set at Princeton about two sisters, born 10 years apart, who get invited to join the same secret society.

Um, when Maya returns to campus, she is expecting a fun weekend with friends, celebrating her sister's graduation, but then something horrible happens, and she learns that her sisters died. So as she starts to investigate, she realizes that a secret in her own past May have something to do with your sister's death.

Hallie: Wow. That's good. That's so fun. Do you want to read a short clip of the book for us? 

Lauren: Yeah. So this is part of the prologue. Surrounded by wild looks and shuddering bodies, I dance. Everything is elevated, intense, like none of us want this night to end. The air hangs thick as smoke, floors sticky with champagne, as heads tip back and arms rise overhead.

To my right, strobe lights flash against 19th century doors, their glass panes fogged over. A handprint drips down the glass as a guy presses his date against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist as they kiss. The place feels charged with electricity, excitement, maybe even fear. Tonight is the night I've waited for my entire life.

Our initiation into Sterling Club, Princeton's most prestigious eating club. It's not just a place to have fun. It's also a golden escalator to our future. Once inside, we're bound by our secrets, and that creates a deep bond. It feels dangerous, cult like, but isn't fun always a little bit reckless? Several hours later, I'm catching my breath on the upstairs terrace overlooking the back lawn.

Mm hmm. The late February air hangs cool and still, and it hasn't snowed in weeks. Maybe the worst is over. Exhaling a cloud of breath, I lean over the banister. I like watching people out here, new lovers sneaking off into dark corners, young men sharing a bottle of whiskey, a guy kissing someone who is definitely not his girlfriend.

I'm watching a girl stumble down the back steps when a shadow slides over me from behind. A hand touches the bare skin between my shoulder blades, and I go still. When I turn around, the guy I saw watching me is there, tall and confident, attractive. His lips curl into a cocky half grin. He leans closer, and when his hand touches my waist, I feel a current of electricity, my skin warming under his fingertips, as if his touch could burn straight through me.

He leans down to whisper in my ear, and what he says makes me freeze. You've been tapped for Greystone Society. I look at him, goosebumps rising over my skin. Greystone Society is so covert that most people don't, at Princeton, don't even know they exist, but I've been fascinated by them for years. He looks at his watch.

You have 30 seconds to decide if you want to accept. The moment I leave, the offer's done. So what do you think? Are you in? As the reality of his offer sinks in, I grow aware of the shakiness of my breath, the rush of blood in my ears, the exhilaration and fear. In front of me is a door to another universe, another life.

I imagine my mother saying from wherever she is now to take every strange adventure life presents to experience the world, not shy away from it. But in spite of the pride I feel at having been chosen, there's another instinct telling me to run. I bury it, steal myself, and take his hand. I'm in. He smiles, then come with me.

Hallie: So how did you find out the news that this was going to be a Reese Witherspoon book pick, book club pick? 

Lauren: So my fiance Brad and I were in the Dominican Republic, and actually the day before that we were on the beach with some friends in Santa Monica, and And it was a great day. I had my Kindle to read some books.

I had, you know, an umbrella. I was having a great time and I turned over and I felt a sting shoot down my leg and I'm slightly allergic to bees. So my leg started swelling up and then I was trying to get the stinger out and a bird pooped on my day. And Brad being the optimist that he is, was like, no, you know what?

This is double the good luck, a bee sting and bird poop on you. This is gonna be a great day. And then two days later, my agent and editor called when we were on vacation and they're like, Lauren, we have the Best news of your life. It's a racist book club pic. So he was right.

Hallie: It's kind of like that old wives tale of like having a bad wedding day leads to a good marriage. Yes. So what was the inspiration behind this story? I know you went to Princeton. How did that play a role in coming up with this? 

Lauren: Well, the idea for the story started with the older sister, Maya, who, quote, Like me is black and Chinese and always felt like an outsider in certain circles, didn't feel like she fit in anywhere.

And so I thought about my feelings, stepping off the train onto campus and thinking, how am I possibly going to fit in or be as, you know, I was just looking at all these smart people around me, smart and successful, and I just didn't feel like I fit. And so then I took that person and introduced this moral dilemma.

How far would she go to belong if a secret society promised her the life of her dreams, everything she ever wanted, but then she learned that that society was hurting someone else. So that's the moral dilemma at the heart of the book and something that I wanted the sisters to sort of struggle with, or at least Maya to struggle with.

Hallie: And I feel like the relationship between the sisters is so strong in this book. It's so much the heart of this book. Did you always know that you wanted to write about 

Lauren: sisters? I have a sister who's three and a half years younger than me. And my brother's ten years younger. And so, you know, Being an older sister, the eldest of three, I, he was like my little baby growing up and my sister and I were close.

We used to go to the library with my mom and like would read with flashlights in our bunk bed growing up. So it's a relationship that means so much to me. And throughout a lot of our life, we had, you know, periods of our life where we weren't as close and I was always telling her, you know, you should be careful of this.

You should do, you know, I thought I knew better because I was older. And so sisters sometimes, at least my sister and I, you know, had miscommunication and didn't always have the words to tell each other how much we loved each other. So that really inspired these two sisters.

Hallie: Is there one of the sisters that you identified more with and like, if so, which one and why? 

Lauren: I think that's really a cool question because they're actually inspired by who I was at different points in my life. So the older sister, Maya, is more insecure. She doesn't know where she fits in. And so that's who I felt like when I first got to college.

And I feel Naomi, who was in BAC, the Black Arts Company, this dance group, and she found her spaces where she belonged and, you know, is confident in who she is. That's who I feel like I evolved into. So they're sort of just, you know, you know, inspired by different points in 

Hallie: my life. Was it harder to write something like to revisit any of those spaces and others like the headspace?

Lauren: Interesting. I guess it is hard to think about, you know, sort of the more difficult situations. Like, you know, in this book, we talk about privilege and racism, and those are not comfortable conversations. And, So I think it was more difficult to, you know, revisit those types of situations, but I hope that by talking about them, we can understand each other better and realize like we're more alike than different.

Hallie: I think you navigate that like so gracefully in this book, especially on like such rarefied air as Princeton and these secret societies and such a good vehicle for that. So. The book is a, you called it a suspense novel, but it also fits really cleanly into dark academia, which is all the rage these days.

So like, what is it about dark academia that like draws you and were there any that like inspired you or that were touchstones for you as you were writing the book? 

Lauren: I love dark academia. I think Never Let Me Go is one that I really love by Kazue Ishiguro. And then, you know, The Secret History is like the original Dark Academia.

So that obviously, I've read that when I was younger and definitely stayed with me. There are more that I've read recently. Like White Ivy that I really like. 

Hallie: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and did you always wanted to, know you wanted to be a writer? Did you always want to write novels? 

Lauren: I think on some level I did. My mom recently gave me these stories where I would, you know, write in this third grade cursive about my life and like give them to her dedicated to my family.

So I think I did want to be a writer, but I took my first creative writing class in college and that made me fall in love with writing. And I've always loved to read. And I just think like, It took me a while to make it a career, but I did go to grad school to study screenwriting, so it was always a part of the 

Hallie: journey.

Do you always know how your novels are going to end when you start them? Like, did you know the ending of Society of Lies when you first started writing it, or was that something you discovered along the way? 

Lauren: I did know the end, and I don't want to give anything away. Fair. So. I don't know. Yeah, I did know the end because it was important to me to include it as part of this like moral dilemma that one of the sisters has to reckon with, like her own mistakes basically.

Yeah, but then I always layer in different layers of mystery. As I do a bunch of rewriting, I don't know. Is that your process or what? How do you My process 

Hallie: is a mess. My process is like, when does the editor need the draft? And so here you go. And then we'll work from there. So , it's really comforting to me to hear you have a process.

uh, it's achievable, you know, , 

Lauren: wait, so are you a plotter or a pants? 

Hallie: I'm a pants, which means that I basically don't plot out my books ahead of time. But then I will say once I write. like a coherent first draft because there's a lot of incoherent drafts early. I will actually go back and outline and I'll kind of put that outline over the top of my book to be like, okay, which parts are dragging?

Like the first act should not be 200 pages. That's wrong. So like going in there and kind of pulling that together is really like, What I've learned how to do. What about you? Did you outline? 

Lauren: You know, it's kind of similar for me where I'll have this extensive outline, like 20, 30 pages over months, maybe a year.

I think I know what I'm going to do. And then I sit down to write and the whole thing comes out a mess. And then, so for me, it's. revising, like constantly rewriting the chapters. And my mom's one of my first readers and a lot of people in here have read early drafts. So thank you all. I get a lot of feedback from friends and it's like really important to me and helpful to my writing 

Hallie: to do that.

Yeah, definitely. Do you have any like revision tips? Like I know sometimes people put things in different fonts or. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Hallie: Do you have anything that you do? 

Lauren: Like you, I do a reverse outline where I'll outline later on and then have the note cards. And I also, with different beats, like in a three act structure, and uh, I also like to print out the whole thing and lay it out chapter by chapter so you can like see it visually on the floor.

That's really cool. I think it's like, okay, all my work is right there. 

Hallie: How hard could it be? Well, and for this book, you basically had to do that kind of twice, right? Because you have two narratives. moving at the same time. So like, did you, how did you find that process? Kind of like weaving those together and making sure that they were kind of hitting the right beats at the same time for the reader?

Lauren: Mm hmm. Yeah, it was quite a process. It started out just with the older sister, Maya. And so we had the past and present storyline where she's solving a mystery in the past where she's involved. And then in the present, she's trying to figure out what happened to her sister. And. My editor, Hillary, who's amazing, she recommended, she suggested that we introduce the younger sisters perspective more.

And that was partly to show that, you know, our society in Princeton had changed and grown for the better over ten years. And also to show, you know, give Naomi more of a voice. So we wove her chapters in and out throughout the novel. 

Hallie: That's great. So you kind of like layered those two together. That makes a lot of sense.

So this is your first book, which way to hit it big out of the gate. That's pretty great.

What's been the most surprising part? about the publishing process for you? 

Lauren: Well, I didn't know how many drafts it would be. Oh yeah. Yeah. So that was surprising, but a really great surprise is that the thriller author community is so kind. Every author I've met has been so kind and welcoming and just like, they know how hard it is to write a book and they've been there.

And so like I met Hallie at a book club and you were so great. Thank you. And we remained friends after that, so, and she blurbed. 

Hallie: I blurbed. It was my honor to get to read it early. That's like one of the coolest things about being an author is that people will send you their books early. So you're like, I got to read Lauren's book.

You know? So what's been the best moment so far in this journey? I mean, you told us about the phone call. Finding out about Reese, but what else? Yeah, I can imagine. What have been some of the other highlights? 

Lauren: The best moment was giving my dad a copy of the arc, the advanced reader copy. And he's not a type of person who cries very easily, but he like teared up and he said, I'm so proud of you.

And that was like the best moment. Yeah. And my mom said, Like one of my first readers, so she's read so many drafts and just to hear, see them so proud is really nice. And they've given up so much for me. So 

Hallie: that's really beautiful. So what can you share about what's next for you or anything else you want people to know?

And then I have one question that you may not want on camera before we go to the lightning round. 

Lauren: So next up, I am going to be participating in lit up hopefully this year, which is really The Rhesus Book Club Program for Emerging Writers, Authors, and I'm really excited about that. And then I'm also working on book two, which is another mystery between a mother and a daughter.

And that's all I can say. 

Hallie: Okay, so I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't ask this, but Were you in a secret society at Princeton? 

Lauren: Well, no race, race and society doesn't exist. Or if they do, they didn't tap me.

I was not in a secret society, but I wasn't an eating club. And I met some of my closest friends to this day in that eating club. And And, you know, the school has come a long way since 2010, which is when Maya's early perspective takes place. And this was before Me Too, it was before a bigger push for diversity.

And so I just think, oh, you asked about the eating club. Oh, I mean, 

Hallie: I want to hear everything you have 

Lauren: to say, so. I guess to me, it's really important to know that this story could take place anywhere at any university and in any city in the US. And it's more an opportunity to talk about these subjects.

That we don't often talk about, like sisterhood, belonging, privilege, and to listen to one another and hopefully get closer by doing that. So that's really the intention behind the book. That's great. Okay. Lightning round. Okay. 

Hallie: Legally Blonde or Big Little Lies? 

Lauren: Big Little 

Hallie: Lies. Oh. But I love both. Culture Secret Societies.

Secret societies. Princeton or USC? 

Lauren: Princeton. Okay. 

Hallie: I love Princeton. A hocus pocus? Sorry, my USC 

Lauren: friends are here. I really 

Hallie: like you. I was thinking undergrad. I was, you know, so 

Lauren: I went to grad 

Hallie: school at USC. Hocus pocus or the craft? Oh, hocus pocus. Good one. So good. Werewolves or vampires? Mmm. That's, that's a hard one.

What about you? Oh, we're turning it back on me? Uh, I'll say vampires because I'm really excited about Rachel Harrison's book that just came out so thirsty. 

Lauren: Oh, cool. 

Hallie: The Secret History or Never Let Me Go? 

Lauren: Never Let Me Go. But both are great. 

Hallie: And thus concludes the lightning round.

All right. Well, thank you everybody. This is really great.

Zibby: Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at Zippy Owens and at Zippy readers.