Thanks for joining us here at YALC. We would love you to introduce yourself?
Thank you so much for having me! I’m Lauren Wilson, and I’m the author of The Goldens and Tell Your Friends.
I live in the North East of England, and when I’m not writing you can find me reading, drinking coffee, and exploring the coast with my fiancé and our two spaniels!
Can you give our readers an overview of your YA novel Tell Your Friends?
Absolutely! Tell Your Friends follows Crystal, the oldest daughter of famous family vloggers At Home With the Shaws, as she moves away to go to university. She’s desperate to escape having every moment of her life posted online, and wants to finally expose her controlling parents.
She enlists fellow journalism student Alyssa’s help, but Alyssa is secretly an At Home with the Shaws superfan who grew up watching Crystal and her siblings – and she isn’t going to let the star of her favourite channel tear the Shaws’ picture perfect family image apart that easily…
And, if you could do it in just 5 words or less, what would they be?
Oooh! Maybe ‘vlogging superfan stalks kid influencer’?
What first sparked the idea for Tell Your Friends and including an influencer culture?
I first came up with the idea for Tell Your Friends when I was researching influencers for The Goldens! I read a really powerful article by Fortesa Latifi in Teen Vogue, in which former kid influencers spoke out about what it was like having their childhood made into content.
I was really shocked by some of the things that they said, and it made me wonder what it must be like to a) have had snippets of your life posted online for anyone to see without your consent, and b) turn eighteen and finally feel like you have a semblance of control over your life but be unable to turn back the clock. Crystal’s character in particular was inspired by this!
Who was your favourite character to write and why?
I really enjoyed writing Alyssa! She’s so delightfully unhinged, and it was really fun coming up with ways for her behaviour to escalate throughout the novel.
Is there a character that you relate to?
I wouldn’t say I necessarily relate to any of them – but I did study Journalism at university, so we share some of the same experiences!
Why did you choose to tell the story through Crystal and Alyssa’s perspectives?
I really wanted to explore two key perspectives of family vlogging – the influencers themselves, and their audience.
Through Crystal’s “insider” perspective, we see the real Shaw family – how strict and controlling they can be, plus the pressure that Crystal’s under to create regular content – and through Alyssa’s “outsider” perspective we see the perfect family image that the Shaws present to the world.
What interested you the most about the relationship between someone’s online persona and real identities?
I think what fascinates me the most is how easy it is to pretend to be somebody else.
People often say that social media is a highlight reel, and that’s completely true. You can present yourself to the world however you like by using carefully chosen content, filters and captions. We only see what our favourite influencers, for example, want us to see – and we’ll never really know just how much of that is genuine! It really intrigues me.
Is there a particular scene that felt rewarding to write?
I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a scene towards the end with Crystal and her mum that was incredibly satisfying to write.
Did you feel more sympathy for Crystal or Alyssa while writing?
I think I feel more sympathy for Crystal! Although they’re both products of their circumstances to an extent, Alyssa’s behaviour goes way too far – whereas poor Crystal just wants to live her life on her own terms.
Did you have to do much research before you started the writing process for the book?
I read articles about vlogging and ‘momfluencing’ and scrolled Instagram a lot, but I decided not to watch any videos by actual vlogging families as I wanted the Shaws to be completely fictional. I didn’t want to inadvertently include any similarities to real family vloggers, or the content they’d produced.
How did you come up with the title? Was it a hard process?
The title was the result of teamwork! I was struggling to come up with something, and my editors suggested Tell Your Friends as it fits in with the social media element of the story as well as other themes. I immediately loved it.
Where do you write?
I find I work best when I have a change of scenery, so I usually write in a local coffee shop! If I’m at home, I’ll be at my dining table looking out onto our garden.
Did you learn any lessons from writing The Goldens that helped you with this novel?
If I get 20k words in and start to think about restarting the whole thing, it means I need to push on!You can’t edit an unfinished manuscript – but you can make it better once it’s finished.
What is your favourite genre to read?
This one’s tricky – I’m a big mood reader, so I’ll read whatever I think sounds interesting! I’ve just finished reading Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang, which is another influencer thriller, and it was absolutely wild. 10/10 recommend!
Where can our readers find you on social media?
I’m on Instagram, X and TikTok as @laurenwauthor!
Finally, can you give us your favourite quote from a novel (it can be yours!)?
One of my all-time favourite books is Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel! It’s hard to pick a favourite quote from it, but this one she uses from Star Trek is simple but powerful: “Survival is insufficient.”
The novel follows the Travelling Symphony ,who travel between communities to perform music and Shakespeare, years after a global pandemic has wiped out the majority of the world’s population. The quote, which is painted on one of their caravans and tattooed on a main character’s arm, suggests that survival is not enough to truly live – humans need art, culture and connection, too.