Bookwild - Everyone Here is Lying by Shari Lapena: A Problem Child, a Cheating Father and a Toxic Neighborhood

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

This week, I talk with Shari Lapena about her newest domestic thriller Everyone Here Is Lying.Follow Shari on InstagramCheck out her websiteEveryone Here Is Lying SynopsisWilliam Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.Hours later, Avery's family declares her missing.Suddenly Stanhope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbors become increasingly unhinged.Who took Avery Wooler?Nothing will prepare you for the truth. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

Hey, booktokers, books to grammars, and bookworms. Welcome to Between the Lines, a podcast where I go between the lines of some of my favorite books with the authors who wrote them. This week I got to talk with Sherry LaPena about her newest domestic thriller. Everyone here is lying. It is such a perfect read for anyone who loves domestic suspense, domestic thrillers, settings that are very much in suburbia. and it just has some wild, wild twists at the end like we've come to expect from Sherry. So here is the synopsis. William Wooler is a family man on the surface, but he's been having an affair, an affair

that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper. hours later, Avery's family declares her missing. Suddenly, Stan Hope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbors become increasingly unhinged. Who took Avery Wooler? Nothing will prepare you for the truth. With that said, let's get into it with Sherry. So I saw that you've been an English teacher and you've been a lawyer and now you're writing.

Did you always know that you wanted to write? Was that always something you were kind of doing? It was something I knew I always wanted to do, but it was something I didn't actually do. So when I was, you know, nine years old was the first time I remembered consciously thinking I would like to write novels for a living. That's what I wanted to do because I thought there could be no life better than just writing Nancy Drew stories. But it was sort of a childish thought. I didn't really believe it could happen. So I just filed that away.

And I went to university. I went to law school. And I didn't enjoy being a lawyer at all. So I retrained as an English teacher because I love books. I've always loved reading. But I didn't write. Like I didn't do any exploratory writing until sort of in my late 20s, I took a little stab at it.

But then I just left it again. And then I didn't really give it a real try until I was home with my first baby. I was in my like late 30s then. Yeah. That's cool. But you got to it that way. Did any of your, so a lot of your stories are super layered and detailed.

Was there anything about being a lawyer that like informs the way you wrote or did you just hate it? And you're like, no. You know what? I don't, I don't know. I don't think legal training is necessarily good training for a novelist unless you're a criminal lawyer and or family lawyer and get great stories. I think it's good training for discipline. It's good training for analytical purposes.

But I don't think it necessary. I didn't do any criminal laws, so it didn't really help me that way. And as far as people ask me, too, about being an English teacher, did that help my writing? But not really. I became an English teacher more

because I loved English and books and stories rather than the other way around. So I think writers just, want to be right or they want to write. So it just took me well to give myself the mission to write. You know? So I think, you know, ultimately people, you have to do what you want to do. And sometimes, you know, especially I think with women, we feel like we can't do what we want to do. We have to be doing other things that people think we should be doing. So it took me a while. Yeah. That's what matters. Yeah. So you picked it up.

a little bit later in your life. So how did your writing process develop? Did you like research some stuff before it or did you just start writing? I'm someone who just starts writing. So when I decided finally I wanted to get serious about writing, I just sat down and I just started with a character and I ended up writing a literary comedy. Just. Oh, nice. Yeah. So I've written a couple of books. Actually wrote three, three literary comedies, two of which were published in Canada with a small press. But I had always wanted to write mysteries and thrillers because that's, that's what I read the most. That's what I like. But, you know, there's so plot, the plots are so important and so intricate, you know. And I've never plotted things ahead

with my books. So I didn't think I could write a thriller. So I just didn't try for quite a while. you know, I suppose it's a good thing. I learned how to write, writing comedies. And by the time I had written two or three of those, I thought, I want to try writing a thriller. I just, but I had so little confidence that I would get the plot one that I just wrote in secret. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing. I didn't even tell my husband. So I thought, I'm going to try a thriller.

I had, I fully expected it to fail. I thought I would get halfway through and have no idea what to do with the plot. But I surprised myself. I just. I wrote it the way I wrote my comedies, which is to say I didn't plan anything, and I just wrote away and things happened, and then more things happened and more things happened.

And when I got to the end of the comedies, they had nice plots. But even after writing those, I thought, okay, so I can write a novel without planning it if it's a comedy. I still didn't think I could do it with a thriller because they're quite different.

I mean, plot is very important. Structures, so it's important. So I just lacked the confidence, really, to do what I wanted to do. So I came at it slowly. They came at writing slowly. They came up writing thrillers slowly.

So I always tell people, if you want to be a writer, I find it very freeing to write in secret. Just don't tell you. I love that. That might be my favorite advice. And that way you can discover what it is you want to write and you don't have any telling me, you know, it's wrong or you shouldn't do it or whatever. And that's the way to discover your voice. I like that a lot. Yeah.

Yeah, it takes a lot of the pressure off when it kind of makes it feel like. it's just something you're doing for yourself is what I would assume. I wrote the couple next door for me was just an experiment. I just wanted to see if I could write a thriller that actually had a whole story arc and that the plot work. No one was more surprised than I was when the plot worked. Oh my gosh. Because I wrote that just, you know, just freewheeling with no idea what was going to happen.

Wow. And I just enjoyed it and I wrote it really quickly. And then when it was over, I thought, okay, so you can write a thriller without planning it. Who knew? Because I didn't know what it in prime writer said. And now I know better. I know that there's lots of psychological thrill writers who don't plan anything. The fact back then I didn't know that.

Yeah. It's what you're going to tell you. Yeah. Writers, like write in secret and you don't have to have a plan. Yeah, you can just be a panseller. Yeah. Yeah, when I started this podcast, that's what blew my mind the most was. Like some of the books, I would be like, sure that the author had to have plotted it out.

I would have thought that was yours. There's so much going on. And when I started asking people, they're like, I don't know, I just kind of get started. And I was like, what? Yes. There's a lot of us. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel like I'd noticed more than the plotters, actually, is what I kind of started to realize. So what typically, like, what typically comes to you first? Like is there like a scene or a character or do you build around a twist or is it just different kind of for all your books? It's different for all my books. I never build around a twist because the twists just come organically when the story gets going. I don't start with a twist. What I usually start with is just an idea.

So for this one, I just had the idea. I wanted a little girl to go missing and I wanted the father to hit her or she went missing. And I wanted her to be a very difficult little girl. Yeah. And that's all I started with. And once I had that, once I had that scene in the kitchen of them having that little exchange where she's a very difficult girl and she's sent home from school for misbehaving, he comes from a trist with this lover who's just dumped him and he's upset.

And they're both in the house and nobody knows that they're there because neither one of them is supposed to be there. Right. And she pushes his buttons and he slap and he hits her really hard. And then he starts to, you know, beg forgiveness and asks her, please don't tell your mother and then I start to understand a little bit about the family and and when I was writing that scene when he begged her not to tell then I realized he had that thought where if she does tell the wife thinks the daughter's a liar but she doesn't know that he's a liar and then I realized

oh he's come from an affair and then it just it just goes crazy so from that one scene at the dad hitting the misbeating little girl I get the affair and then I know that there's problems in that family and the marriage. Yeah. And then it just spreads outwards to the whole neighborhood. Suddenly there's a brother who was supposed to walk her home from school. And it just, it just goes from there. That's so cool. Yeah. It definitely, especially in that book, it's like it starts in one house and then like we just see the corruption of like everyone on that street basically. What, so a lot of your books are like domestic thrillers or kind of like suburban settings. And is what about that is like, like, draws you to write in that kind of like arena?

I'm interested in ordinary people, ordinary situations, and I like to look at just your average person, it could be you, could be your neighbor, could be anybody. And if they're put in an extraordinarily stressful situation, I like to see what they do. Yeah. So can you, like there'd be nothing more stressful than if you're hiding something in your life and your neighbor gets murdered. And all the police descend and they want to know where you were, what if you had something to hide? And that's what happens in my story is, is that a police investigation just rips open all the lies that everybody's hiding. There was a famous case, I won't give a name, there's a famous case in Ontario where a little girl was missing, and there was a trial. And they found out that the brother

had been abusing the daughter. It had nothing to do with her disappearance. It was just a sidebar. the brother and a couple of his friends have been abusing her. And the poor mother, like the things that come out. Yeah. When there's an investigation that you would never know about, all these, but, you know, as I said, it had nothing to do with the actual disappearance of the girl. So it's just that idea that the minute the police come in and start looking at everybody's cozy little lives, nobody can hide.

So I find that fast. Yeah. Yeah, that is cool. It's kind of like one event agitates like everything else. Yes. That really just isn't even related. Yeah, I love that perspective. Exactly.

So the disappearance of little girl is sort of the catalyst. Yeah. And it brings in all sorts of stuff that may or may not be related, which is great when you're writing mystery because we've got automatic red herrings. That's what I was about to say. It's like there was a red herring in real life almost in that case you mentioned. Yeah. Yeah.

That is so cool. So one of the things I thought was really interesting about the title is that the title is everyone here is lying. And so when I was reading it, I was talking to a friend who was reading it as well. And I was like, the craziest part is like the title is telling me that like I shouldn't believe anyone. But I keep being like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So it almost made me one or two.

Did you like go back and forth on titles at all? It's kind of like a bold title to just like say that everyone is lying. It's a very bold title. And it was the brain, the brain idea of my British. editors Sarah Adams, she came up with it. And we had struggled for months of other title. It's very hard to come up with a thriller title. I bet. To be catchy. And you know, you think you've come up with the perfect title and then you Google it and there's like three books with that title. So I'm shocked that no one has this title. That's a good point. Yeah. And then I thought everyone here is dying

would be really good for another book, but I can't, I can't do that. But titles are really difficult. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally believe that. I know. I was excited when I like, because someone thinks it in the book and I was like, ooh, I found it. So that was fun too. Was there anything about writing this book that was different than your other ones or was it pretty similar? They're all different in their own way. Like they're all, they all have different challenges to them. But what I always find the most, challenging is just the structure of it, the timing of the reveals. And so when I write my story, I write it from start to finish all the way through in a linear way. And then I just, I'm figuring up the characters and, you know, what's going to happen. The twists happen organically. I come to an

end. Then I know what's happened. And then I have to go back and sort of massage it and make sure I've got everything in the right place for the best effect. Yeah. You know, what I'm like, my first draft is a big baggy thing, but I know what the story is. I know the characters. I know what the twists are. I have all the content. But then to make it the best reading experience, I have to chop and maybe feed in different things. It's hard to explain. No, that makes sense. I heard I was listening to Stephen King's on writing, and he's done something similar where he said, write everything you need to know and then go back and take everything out that the reader doesn't need to. And so I feel like it's kind of similar to that. Like you're saying like tell you tell yourself the story and then you go back

and kind of like figure out how to assemble it. Yeah, that's exactly, he's genius and I've read that book and that's exactly what you do. I write to figure out the story for myself and who everyone is and then you craft it to make it the best reading experience for the reader to learn that story. So there's a lot of craft involved. Oh yeah. I would imagine. Especially there's just so many things going on in thrillers, especially this one, you had so many characters that were like involved and mattered to the story in a pretty big way. I am going to get into some spoiler questions for anyone who has already read. So if you haven't, you can pause it and go read it and come back if you want to, but otherwise, just go ahead and stop listening.

So the one that I was thinking of, I loved the ending so much. I thought it was a really cool ending. But I was wondering, did you know how evil Avery was going to be from the beginning? No. I didn't know. So I always say I don't know the ending before I start. But in this book, it's the first one where I did know some of the ending. I did know that she was going to be very indicted and she would be behind the disarmine.

appearance somehow. Okay. And I knew she wouldn't be dead. But I didn't know how it all end. I didn't really know. I didn't know how she would pull off her own disappearance, for instance. Because the idea of Marion didn't come until later on. So I didn't know how she'd pull it off.

I didn't know what the fallout of that would be. I didn't know anyone was going to die. And I did know that I wanted to put parents at the end to have some inkling because they would know that she'd manipulated. She had made it up. So I wanted them to know that she had that capacity. But the ending, I wrote two or three endings for this one until I had one that I liked where she got her come up with.

Like she's not going to go to jail over it. But the parents in the world will know the truth. And they're going to have to get the eye on her. And the parents actually will suspect her of even worse things. They're going to think she actually killed the woman more than this pushing down the stairs. But we're left with the idea that maybe she should. is capable of that. So, you know, maybe I should do a sequel with Avery when she's 14 or something. I don't know. I know. That would be so cool.

That family's been through so much already, but I don't know. It might be fun. That's true. That's totally true. So you said you had different endings. So did you have some where she basically didn't get away or sorry, did get away with it? Like no one figured out? God, I can't know what they were. Oh, yeah. I had an ending where I think with a brother discovered that she had done it somehow, that he had trapped her in a lie and he'd figured her out. But I didn't like that because I just like the media, the journalist, getting at the truth out. I thought that was a better ending. Like I wanted her in the headlights with everybody looking at her because she wanted this fame.

And she is only nine years old. And she's super clever, but she's only nine years old. So she's not really in charge of everything. She doesn't know. She doesn't know what she doesn't know. She doesn't realize how little she was days, what the world works. Yeah. She's pretty clever about people.

And she's very bright, but she's only nine. She's in over her head, really. Yeah, it was like, it was basically like the culmination of her, like, flying too close to the sun there at the end. And it just, it caught up with her. Yeah. one of the other things I thought was super interesting is like at the beginning of the book we know her dad's having an affair and we know he hits her because he gets fed up basically and so at the beginning we kind of think of him a certain way and we're kind of like judging him a little bit and we're like what a terrible father and then by the end we're kind of like oh I see why it could have gotten to that point so how did you like finesse that relationship dynamic kind of shifting. That is really interesting to me.

That's what sort of gotten started on the book because I was so interested in the really difficult challenging child. And I didn't, when I had that first scene, I didn't realize she was behind the disappearance. Okay. It wasn't until later on. But I was interested in that family being dysfunctional and the father wanting to handle the difficult child differently than they were. mother wanted to handle it with a child. And then there are experts, you know, giving advice

on another way to handle a child. Because the truth is, I know lots of parents with challenging children and they don't know what to do. One parent will think of approaching one way, the other one will approach another way. The experts are telling them something else. And the thing is a young child who's being challenging, it's quite often you don't know what it is or what's going on. Yeah. And it's very hard to know whether they just, you know, you know, the death, wants to set limits and the mom wants to just let her get over the phase right and yeah you know by the end of the book you realize setting limits isn't working and letting her get away it isn't working nothing's going to work on this child yeah yeah yeah really good psychiatric interventions but um yeah so i found that

very interesting yeah i thought that was really cool how that flipped by the end of it i had read an article about children psychopaths and psychologists. That's what I was going to ask. Yeah. And that's what got me sort of percolating about. Yeah. Yeah. It's always creepier when a kid really has bad intentions.

You're like, wait a second. This is like the person I don't suspect to have bad intentions in a story normally. Yeah. I wanted to sort of turn that on its head. Usually the kid that goes missing is this perfect little child. Yeah. And I wanted to sort of, you know, reverse that. Yeah. Yeah, I loved that. It made it really fun and unique. So I always ask people at the end, if there, what have you been reading lately that you love?

Do you have anything you would recommend or TV, whatever? Well, I read a lot and I'm, you know, I was read ahead because I get so many proofs. So right now I'm reading something called Day One by Abigail Dean. She's a British writer. She's the one that wrote Girl A that I love, absolutely love. And I'm reading now day one, which probably is known for another six months. So it's probably a bit early, but it's brilliant. And I'm going to read the new Lisa Jewel because I've heard that that's amazing.

Yes. One I've been really... Oh, is it good? It's so good. Everyone loves it. Everyone I spoke just loved it. We just didn't need back together in London and she gave me a copy and I'm really looking for that's the best. I think it's your title and her title. I was like both of these titles,

she's like, none of this is true. And the whole time I'm like, what's true? I know. I looked at her title and I thought, oh my God, but for the grace of God, we could have had exactly the same title. I know. Yeah. Yeah. I really loved it. And for books that are just out now, I am, I love Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. I read that a long time ago, but it's just out now. Have you read that Yes. I just finished it last week. Oh. And? That was so good. I loved that. It's so good. When you were saying, like, parents kind of wanting to raise a child differently, I was like, oh, yeah, that was in that as well. So I loved that one. That was really good. So I think that's just out now in Canada. Yeah. It's really good. It is. So where can people follow you? So they stay up to date with everything. So I have a website. So that's www. Sherrylopena.com. And it's always up to date if you want to see where my tour tour dates are and so on.

But mostly I'm on Twitter and I'm on Instagram, just as Sherry LePenia. And I do a lot of Instagram. I have a lot of fans on Instagram. For a lot of the bookish people go. Yes. So that's a lot of fun. Yeah.

Well, I will put those links in the episode notes so everybody can find all of that. But otherwise, thanks for talking with me today. Thank you very much. You really enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Between the Lines. And if you did, the biggest thing you can do to support the podcast is to go rate and review it on whatever platform you listen on. You can also follow me on Instagram at The Girl with the Book on the couch.

And if you still need more thrillers in your life, check out Killing the Tea, my other podcast where I talk to my friend Gare about literally everything we read. Thank you.