IT'S FICTION, I SWEAR

(the disclaimer I didn't know I needed to write)

Jul 04, 2025

My debut novel is out in the world! If you’d like to support this newsletter, you should totally order a copy! It’s available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop.org, or anywhere else books are sold. (You might have to special order it if you don’t see it on the shelf of your favorite indie, but you should totally do that, too!)

I recently had dinner with a pair of longtime friends—the parents of one of my childhood/adulthood BFFs who are in their late 70s and know a lot of the people I grew up with and who, because of chance, opportunity, and a mutual love of sarcasm, have become close with my husband in recent years. They’d come to my launch in Cincinnati, and I knew Tom1 was reading Tell Them You Lied. After we settled around the table and ordered the first of many drinks, I was asked the question that set me spiraling:

Was Boomer really like that in the 90s?

Boomer, you guys, is the name of a character in my book. Boomer also happens to be the name of a person I grew up with. That is the only way the two people over lap, I swear. When I named my character Boomer I was thinking about The Secret History. I wanted a name that hit the way the name Donna Tartt’s character name Bunny hit: something memorable for being almost silly in such a dark and serious book. “Boomer” hit that note. I wrote it such a long time before I had readers, and I liked it so much I never even considered changing it.

But here I am, a month out from publication, with many people like Tom (and, incidentally, the real person named Boomer I knew from growing up—I’m sorry, Boomer!) reading my book. (I’ve mentioned this in my newsletter before.)

Not at all! I told Tom in the restaurant. The Boomer in my book is not the Boomer you know. I just liked the name.

He nodded, and the conversation moved on. And then it came back a few minutes later when Tom asked, Did Lizzie really smoke that much?

IRL, I know 6 people called some form of Lizzie/Lizi/Liz, and none of them are the Lizzie in my book. I mean, yes, my friend/Tom’s daughter did smoke a shit ton of Marlboro Lights back in the day, but that does not mean she is the Lizzie in my book.

The Lizzie in my book is fictional. The Lizzie in my book does not actually exist. None of them do. Nothing in my book happened. None of these people are real, none of the bars/restaurants exist, and (I swear), I committed none of these crimes.

I MADE IT ALL UP.

Here’s a confession—some of the plot points in my book are so unhinged and insane that I felt like I needed to lock it into reality in certain ways. One of the ways that I did this was to create credibility in other ways, like names. For every character except one in my entire book, I picked names of people that I have actually met.

Anna is the name of a close friend from my art gallery days, which is a beautiful old-fashioned name that doesn’t draw too much attention to itself. Milo is the name of another good friend’s son, romantic and still punchy. Arvanitis (Milo’s last name) is the last name of my parents’ great Greek friend who was born in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. I’ve known a bunch of Ryans, and one was a girl; I thought it was memorable enough for a character who appears for a moment in the first part of the book, but has a larger role later. I know a real life Jon and several Johns, and Potts (the last name of my Jon) is the last name one of my closest friends from these days, but I promise there is nothing real about him. I named a bar (Arcadia Cafe) after another BFF, Arkadia, whom I met in NYC in 2000.

The only character—and I mean that literally, from the smallest characters to the largest— who has a name I’ve never encountered in the real world is Willow. Why? Because I didn’t want Willow to be tethered to reality in the same way as the other characters. Willow is Anna’s (metaphorical) shadow self. She is the part of Anna that Anna loves and loathes. The demon Anna must fight.

This dinner conversation was not the first I’d had like this.

—

A few days after my book was published I got a text from my NYC roommate, with whom I shared an apartment on 9/11.

Roommate: My mom is reading your book!

Me: oh nooooo… she’s not going to let us hang out anymore!2

Roommate: lol. She did say, did Laura want to kill you?

—

A text from an agent sibling:

Is this book about Miami University??

—

A text from a college friend:

Is Willow [redacted]?

Me: NO! keep reading.

—

Conversation with an old friend at my Cincinnati launch:

I can’t believe BOOMER is in your book, and I’m not!

—

A text from a high school friend:

Who was your inspiration for the girl with the hunter green Range Rover, huh? … It also makes me want to smoke a cigarette

—

A conversation with my own mother, who reads tons of novels, and should know better (I know you’re reading this, Mom, hi!):

Mom: I didn’t know all that was going on…

Me: It wasn’t! It’s fiction.

Mom: I mean, some of it surely…

Me: NO, NONE OF IT.

—

Earlier this year (before my book came out) Liz Alterman wrote a Substack about something similar and asked me to contribute. I had no idea how many more anecdotes I’d have for her post-pub!

Does anyone else have experience with this? Was I wrong to use names of people I know? (I hope not, because I am doing it again in Book 2.)

This Debut Life

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