7 Questions with Janelle Brown

I have always been a reader. But, like many readers, my eagerness to spend what little free time I can eke out diving into books has waned and ebbed.

Then, a few years ago, while vacationing in a cabin — which is, arguably, the best place to rediscover your love of reading — I picked up Watch Me Disappear. 

And I was back in the game.

Suddenly, I couldn’t read enough. It is largely because of this book, one of the first reviewed on Drink. Read. Repeat, that I started reading voraciously again.

So, when I heard that the author of this unputdownable novel was coming out with a new read, picking it up was an obvious choice.

Janelle Brown’s Pretty Things hits shelves April 21st. Before you buy it — which you obviously should — get to know a little bit more about this awesome author, our newest “7 Questions with…” featured writer.

1. What's your favorite drink?

I do love my coffee. Can’t live without it, especially first thing in the morning. 

But these days I’ve been looking to the evening cocktail that my husband has been making to mark the end of another day in lockdown. He’s an amateur mixologist and likes to try new things every night, but I think my favorite is a Black Manhattan, which is basically a Manhattan made with bourbon, Averna, angostora bitters and a brandied cherry.

2. Where and when do you write?

Funny - my answer as of six weeks ago would have been In my collective writers workspace, an office that I share with 24 other writers; and between the hours of 9 and 4 when the kids are in school. But things have changed. 

Now, I’m getting up at 5 a.m. to try to write for 3-4 hours before I have to homeschool the kids, and then I try to squeeze in a couple more hours in the afternoon while I have the kids ensconced in front of iPads. 

I’m writing in my bedroom or in our little guest house which my husband and I are taking turns using as an office space. 

3. What does your prewriting process look like?

A lot of long walks (long drives are helpful too!) for brainstorming. 

A lot of false starts, jotting down phrases and out of context scenes that come to me. 

I’ll think of a character and jot down her/his characteristics; and rough out a very cursory plot outline. 

I usually have to marinate in an idea for a long time before it starts coming to me as a book. 

4. What's up next?

I have a lot on my plate right now! I’m working on the television adaptation of Pretty Things, which is going to be a show for Amazon with Nicole Kidman. 

I have a new novel that I’m writing, though I’m just at the beginning stages of that so I am not quite ready to talk about it. The pandemic has thrown some wrenches in the story I was imagining so I’m having to rethink a lot!

5. Though the plot of this novel may seem simple – a tale of two vastly different women who, as a result of circumstance, end up at odds with each other – the tale felt fraught with deeper meaning. Is there a lesson you want your readers to learn from this novel and, if so, what is that lesson?

I think it’s less about “taking a specific lesson” from the book than it is about exposing a lot of issues that I hope readers will think about and debate. 

For example: How we use social media, the way we attempt to display ourselves for the entertainment of others and the way that impacts our self-esteem; as well as how we use social media as a perch from which we judge others. 

Social class in America, and how inequality and privilege lead to wild disparity in life choices. 

The ways that inheritance effect us — not just the objects our parents give us, but the behavior and traits that they pass down — and how we have to work to free ourselves from that. 

How easy it is to con ourselves, and to be conned by others who know how to reflect back our own desires.

6. Arguably the most memorable character in this novel full of particularly memorable characters is the Lake Tahoe adjacent mansion of Stonehaven. Was this long-held family manor based on any one particular place or was it an amalgamation of many different places? How did you write the setting so well?

Stonehaven is an invention that was inspired in part by a real-life mansion on the shores of Lake Tahoe, near where I used to spend my summers growing up. 

Stonehaven is a much grander (and more ominous) estate than the one I used to visit (which is now part of a state park!), but the feeling and locale of it are the same: A mouldering compound in isolation along the lake, all pine and stone, lost in time, with sweeping views of the water.

7. *SPOILER ALERT* At the beginning of the penultimate confrontation between Michael and Vanessa, Michael asserts that Vanessa is just as much a liar as he is. She lies constantly, he contends, pretending that she’s sharing her real life when what her social media actually reflects is a carefully curated persona. She argues that it’s different because what she does doesn’t hurt anyone. But even as she makes this justification, she’s not sure it’s accurate. I’m interested in your take on this. Have Vanessa’s actions hurt anyone? Having finished the novel I'm still pondering this question myself.

I think that Vanessa’s actions haven’t directly hurt someone in the way that Michael and Nina’s have - there’s less of a one-to-one cause-effect ratio. 

That said, I do think that the collective impact of “influencer” culture can be quite negative, and as a contributor to this culture, she’s complicit. A recent study I read said that 60% of people who use social media say that it’s done major damage to their self-esteem. That’s in large part because the culture of aspiration that people like Vanessa have created, even when it’s rooted in untruths and is an impossibility for 99.9% of all people cruising through Instagram. 

Vanessa is definitely a liar. So many people on Instagram are, whether it's intentional or not, because social media culture both encourages and rewards shiny, pretty things. 

Check out these reads by Janelle Brown:

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