By Lauren Ling Brown
Lauren Ling Brown is an LA-based writer and editor. She majored in English at Princeton and film production and screenwriting at USC School of Cinematic Arts. For the past decade, she’s worked as an editor and cutting assistant on documentaries, TV shows, films, and commercials for HBO, Netflix, Disney, and more. Her debut novel, Society of Lies, is set to release October 1, 2024.
I began writing novels during the pandemic at a low point in my life. It was also when I rediscovered my love of writing.
But my writing journey started long before that.
As a child, I remember walking to the library with my mother and sister, a big smile on my face. When I was eight, my sister and I received our own library card, and we were allowed as many books as we could carry.
That summer, my sister and I would stay up late in our bunkbeds reading by flashlight. Goosebumps and Judy Blume. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. We spent our days climbing plum trees, swimming, and dancing; scents of sunscreen, strawberries, and redwood trees swirled in the air around us. When I went to college many years later, I would major in English in an attempt to recreate that time filled with books and adventure.
Sophomore year, everything would change. It was at a high school soccer game. We were winning 2-0, and the girl who was guarding me was coming in late for tackles. When I wasn’t looking, she ran through my knee, and I heard a terrible crack. I was carried off the field.
That was 2005. By 2020, three surgeries had reassembled my knee. I had graduated from Princeton with an English degree and from USC School of Cinematic Arts with an MFA in film production. I’d also begun to fall in love with writing.
Because I didn’t know anyone who had published a novel and needed to pay my rent, I got a job working in post-production.
Over the years, my knee had become so painful that I could no longer sleep through the night or walk without pain. I’d discovered aerial silks, a low-impact sport, but even that was too much.
Then, the pandemic. The world shut down. In 2019, I had broken up with someone whom I had lived with through my twenties. My digestion was a disaster. My mental health, too. I arrived at my surgeon’s office on crutches, not realizing that I would be using the same crutches off and on for the next three years.
Yet the pandemic put my struggles into perspective: people were experiencing serious health problems, oftentimes death. I would eventually heal. So many would not.
During that time, two seemingly-impossible things happened: I fell in love with the kindest human I’ve ever known, and I wrote the book that would become my debut.
It was like an Emily Henry novel: I had finished my yoga and was reading a book on the beach when a tanned guy with hazel eyes and bright swim trunks asked me if I knew what acro-yoga was.
It turned out I had—acro, I knew, was this funny-looking partner sport where one human would balance on the feet of another. Well, I thought, this guy looks harmless, and there are other people around to rescue me if need be…so I took his hand and said, why not?
We laughed and laughed.
My studio in Venice Beach was 300 square feet with a mini-fridge and camping hotplate that I’d borrowed from my sister, since the place didn’t come with a stove.
I loved it.
It had been seven years since I’d lived on my own, and I decorated the place in my own style. Baby’s breath, eucalyptus, and lavender from the farmer’s market, my mother’s oil paintings. I ate cereal on my yoga mat on the floor, and before sunrise, I would ride my beach cruiser up the empty boardwalk and make my way to the water. As my feet sunk into the sand and the water lapped at my ankles, I watched the sun rise and felt hope for the first time in years.
Brad, the guy with the colorful swim trunks, and I started dating. I learned that he made music for video games and that, up close, his hazel eyes were a mix of green and brown with flecks of gold. We went stand-up paddleboarding, sang ‘90s songs in his Jeep, and talked about the books that changed our lives. He loved to travel, kite surf, and rock climb, and his face grew brighter when he talked about the places he wanted me to see, like Kite Beach in Cabarete.
Over the next months, while I recovered from my fourth knee surgery, he would teach me guitar, play piano while I sang along, and carry me onto the sand for sunset picnics. In the early weeks of that year, I was in so much pain that I cried every day. Brad put on my socks, eased me out of bed, and brought me ice at 4 a.m. when I woke up screaming. That summer, he held me on my bike so that we could protest the incomprehensible violence that took George Floyd’s life.
One night, a couple of months later, we were lying in bed, and I was wondering if I was falling in love with him when he asked me about my writing—he was reading one of my old screenplays. I told him it was just for fun. Maybe someday when I’m old I’ll write a novel, I said. You know, just so I could do it before I died.
And he said, Well, I think your writing is really good. Why not now?
I wrote a novel. It was just okay, so I wrote another one. Soon, I discovered this whole community of writers. Websites and YouTube videos about this thing called querying. NaNoWriMo, ThrillerFest. Craft books. Podcasts. Full Saturdays writing in libraries with friends. People who were kind enough to read my early drafts.
A few days before Christmas 2020, I had the first hip surgery. By then, Brad and I had the whole ice thing down. When the book I queried didn’t go anywhere, I wrote a third. Many drafts and another hip surgery later, that book would become Society of Lies.
Now it is 2024, and Brad and I are engaged. This July, we finally visited Kite Beach in Cabarete, and I tried wing foiling for the first time while Brad cheered and ran along the shore. We would go back to the AirBnb afterward, and I’d write scenes for my next novel, just like we did when we were first dating four and a half years ago.
The book that I wrote in 2021 became my debut novel, Society of Lies, and is being published by Penguin Random House this fall. More importantly, I am surrounded by friends and family who support this dream. My sister brainstorms writing ideas with me. My mother has given feedback on over twenty drafts, and my father teared up when I gave him an ARC of Society of Lies. The same friends who generously read my early work, still do. The agent that took a chance on me in 2021, and the editor in 2022, are two of the biggest champions of my work and have helped me grow as a writer.
I am so grateful for these kind and generous people. If I hadn’t had the support of my family and friends while writing this book, and while recovering from this low point in my life, I don’t know if any of this would have happened. What I have learned is this: Publishing a novel is part hard work, it is an even greater part luck, but it is also love.
Society of Lies by Lauren Ling Brown
Maya is supposed to be returning to Princeton for a double celebration: her own reunion and her sister, Naomi’s graduation. The visit takes a horrific turn when Naomi turns up dead. Though the authorities are saying it’s an accident, Maya isn’t convinced. Her sister was hiding things from her and joining a club that may have led to be contacted by a secret society. As Maya pieces the past few months together she knows there is something to uncover and that Naomi isn’t the first girl to lose her life.
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