Delightful Debutantes #13: Lisa and Laura Roecker & The Liar Society!

I've been hearing so many good things about Lisa and Laura Roecker's debut The Liar Society - have you read it yet? And I'm excited to invite these delightful debutantes along to the blog today!

Read on to find out more about the inspiration behind the book, what it's like to work as part of a writing duo, and more!

I've seen The Liar Society described as Veronica Mars meets Pretty Little Liars. I think I love it already!  Can you tell me a little about the story and about the inspiration behind the book? 

Oh that description makes us swoon! The Liar Society features Kate Lowry who gets an email from her dead best friend on the anniversary of her death. Kate has always felt that Grace's death was more than just an accident. The email sends Kate on an investigation to discover the truth and in the process she uncovers some pretty shocking secrets about her snooty private school.  

We were actually inspired by a tragedy. Lisa lost someone a few years ago and would periodically email him updates about her life and kids telling him how much everyone missed him. One day she considered what would happen if he wrote her back. The Liar Society tells that story.  

I've never interviewed a writing duo before, and I'm interested to find out more about how you guys write together.  What are the different elements that you each bring to the writing process?  And what happens if one of you writes something the other really doesn't like? Eeek! Has anything like that ever happened? 

We are naturally very similar so our writing style is virtually the same. We quickly discovered that we do each have specific strengths as writers and luckily they are different. Lisa is a pro at dialogue, the queen of snark and absolutely loves mapping out our plot and Laura obsesses over the setting and character details that make a book come alive. Because we alternate chapters (Lisa writes a chapter and Laura edits and writes the next chapter, etc.) if you don't like what the other person wrote, you just change it. You don't even have to ask! Whenever the document is shipped back, your chapter may have changed but it's usually for the better. If we ever have a huge difference of opinion in terms of the direction of the plot, we usually hash it out on the phone and that's when the catfighting comes in. Okay, maybe not catfighting, but there's usually a lot of annoyed sighing.  

The Liar Society sounds like it just might have some hot boys for me to swoon over.  Is there any special guy in The Liar Society that I might be adding to my very special book crush list? 

There are a couple boys Kate swoons over throughout the book. When she was younger, she had a gigantic crush on Bradley Farrow (big man on campus, captain of the lacrosse team, total hottie). *Spoiler Alert* he comes back full force in book 2. But her heart currently belongs to Liam Gilmore, alternative artiste and music junkie with shaggy hair and vintage shirts. Our hearts, however, belong to Seth, Kate's nerdy next-door-neighbor whose goofy personality would win us over in a heartbeat.  

I read your most fabulous blog, and I know that you two actually cried when you saw the cover art for The Liar Society.  Can you tell me the story behind the cover and your reaction to it?  For the record, I love the pink hair!  It's a super sassy cover!

The cover for The Liar Society was a tricky, tricky beast. The book is a mystery at heart, but has a somewhat light touch and the designers really wanted to nail that. We saw a number of different comps throughout the process and were pretty happy with them. We had no idea pink hair was in the running so when we were told that was the direction the cover designers were going in we were kind of floored. Kate didn't even have pink hair! That's what upset us the most. As readers, we get frustrated if the cover doesn't accurately reflect the main character and we didn't want our readers to be confused! We made a choice to trust our publisher (they're the experts after all) and begged them to let us make some last minute changes to the text. So now Kate rocks some pretty fabulous pink hair.  

Can you name three other books that you think readers of your book might enjoy? 

Deception by Lee Nichols, any book in the Pretty Little Liars series and The Body Finder series. 

Can you tell me what you are working on next? 

We're currently hard at work on a book outside of The Liar Society series that features a girl who loses her memory and her sister on the same night and must retrace her steps to piece back together the story.

Thank you for the great interview, Lisa and Laura. I gotta say, I am loving that pink hair on you guys! ;)

The Liar Society is available now! Go buy it!

Lisa and Laura's Blog

Lisa and Laura's Website

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Next up on Delightful Debutantes: Cynthia Hand & Unearthly.