Liv Constantine, THE STRANGER IN THE MIRROR

[2:03]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time To, a Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time To Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram ZibbyOwens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Liv Constantine is the pen name of sisters Lynn Constantine and Valerie Constantine. Together, they are the best selling author of the Reese Witherspoon book club pick, The Last Mrs. Parish, as well as The Last Time I Saw You, The Wife Stalker, and The Stranger in the Mirror. Their critically acclaimed books have been praised by USA Today, The Sunday Times, People Magazine, and Good Morning America, among many others. Lynn and Valerie are national and international best selling authors and their books have been translated into 28 languages, are available in 33 countries, and are in development for both television and film. We did this, by the way, as an Instagram live. Lynn is a former marketing executive with a master's degree in business from Johns Hopkins University. She has explored coral reefs all over the world, sunken wrecks in the South Pacific, and fallen in love with angelfish in the Caribbean. You just never know what you're going to get in someone's bio. When Lynn's not writing, you can find her curled up with her Labrador and golden retrievers reading a good book or walking the beach thinking up devious plans for her characters. Lynn also writes the Jack Logan series under the pen name Elsie Shaw. To learn more about her other books, visit lcshaauthor.com or connect with her on Instagram or Twitter lcshaauthor. And finally, Lyn is a board member of the International Thriller Writers. Valerie has always loved books and spent many nights reading by the light of her bedside lamp until 3AM. She lives with her husband and their brilliant Cavalier King Charles babies, Zorba and Da Vinci. Earlier in her career, she served as White House assistant in the president's scheduling and advance office, planning presidential trips and travel, and has visited over 40 foreign countries. She has a degree in English literature. When she's not writing, you won't find her. She and her husband will be traveling to some faraway destination.

[4:23]Liv Constantine: Oh, hi. Good morning. How are you Good morning. I'm so delighted this worked. I almost gave up on you, but I was like, that's so unlike them not to show up. What am I doing? Right. Last time we were actually at your beautiful apartment. I know that was so fun. Right. It was like a week or two before. Is that when it was? Oh my gosh. Yes. I remember my husband drove us because we were afraid to be on the train. Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. Well, I'm glad this all worked out and that we can like chitchat about your new book, which I've been talking about for fifteen minutes. Sorry. I wanted to know about it, but I read your bios in the beginning. For anyone just joining, we're talking about The Stranger in the Mirror by Liv Constantine. They're the co authors of The Last Time I Saw You and The Wife Stalker as well. And now The Stranger in the Mirror. So I was kind of summarizing what this was about before, but if you want to take it over and maybe something that I didn't say or what people should know about this book. And also, how did you come up with the idea for this? Is this someone's worst nightmare? I feel like this would be my worst nightmare. It's like forgetting about my family. Yes. Yes. Yeah. We were together in Sharjah at a book festival a couple years ago. We had 10 together. And, you know, we don't normally get that kind of time because we're living in different cities. And we had finished another book, and we were having to go back and do a lot of revisions, and we were not excited about it. So we said, you know, why don't we just start over? Let's think about something that we really could get into. And we'd liked the idea of this woman with amnesia, with no memory, because we knew there was just so much we could do with it. I'm really excited about the kind of research that that would entail, and we're delving into the mind, into memory, and and perception. So that's kind of where the seed was born. We came home, and we both got very you know, ordered our books and talked to doctors and watched videos. And then we began writing the stranger in the mirror. And it was a little it's a little different from what we've done before. I mean, it's still a psychological thriller, but clearly having a protagonist who doesn't know herself presented a bit of a challenge for us. And what we really focused on initially was her her struggle and what that must be like when you're trying to figure out who you are. How do you figure out what kind of a person you are when you don't know anything that you've done, you know, any any kind of relationships that you've had, and, you know, where where do you go from there? So that was, you know, that's sort of the genesis of the story about this woman, Addison. And all she does know is that she has had trauma because she's got scars on her arms that prove she had a failed suicide attempt. So she doesn't know, you know, why did she do that. And she's in starting a new life with this wonderful young man and a family. But can you know, is she really deserving to start a new life because she doesn't know whether she's done something bad or something bad has been done to her. So that's pretty much her struggle. And then I'll let Valerie talk about the other voice in the book, which is Julian. Julian. So here is Addison at the very beginning of the book, which is not her real name, it's a name that she has taken on because as Lynn said, she doesn't know who she is. And she's engaged, ready to be married to this wonderful guy that she's in love with, but thinking how can he really love me? He I don't know who I am. How can he really know the real person? And just having lots of doubts about, do I have family out there? Is somebody looking for me? How did I get here? What happened? And then a few 100 miles away in Boston is Julian, and he is sitting with his little seven year old daughter talking about the day two years ago that his wife disappeared. And a little girl saying to her daddy, is mommy ever coming home? Why mommy must not love us. Why would she have left us? And he's, after two years, almost ready to give up, the idea of finding her. Is she is she dead? Is she just disappeared without a trace? And their paths converge. And that is the rest of the story. Wow. I thought it was so heartbreaking how the daughter wanted to get an American Girl doll to, like, have it look like her and her mom. Oh my gosh. Like a little like, just like you or whatever. Right. Right. Sad. And that they have to sort of hold on to these memories of her, of the mom, of the rare pictures of, you know, all of that stuff because they miss her so much. And it sounded like, you know, the dad just Julian did not wanna give up. Like, he wasn't prepared. He just had this sense inside him that she could not be dead, that there she must be there somewhere. And I found myself wondering, like, come on. Like, there must be a way. Like, there must be a way he could have found her. Like, why didn't she, like you know, more like on Addison's behalf. Like, why didn't she post herself? Why, you know, why didn't she, like, go to the news or, like, you know, whatever? But, of course, that's not what she wanted to do. You know, she didn't even wanna go to the hospital. So She was afraid. Yes. Yeah. As who who am I? Am am I going to find out that I'm something that I don't want to be or I did something that I'm that I feel horrible about doing having done. So yeah. Yikes. It was inter we talked we not talked to, but we read some blogs and some essays from people who really suffer who suffer from amnesia. And just to hear the agonizing things that that they go through not knowing, you know, every every day, people who have never really regained their memories. And what a struggle that is. You just don't realize, you know, we we feel like we can imagine what that would be like, but it is only that, just imagining it. But to really live it is just pretty difficult. It's it's an awful thing. So the research Sometimes I feel like I have amnesia because I can't there's like whole periods of my life and now I can't even remember that well. I remember like when someone tells me a story, it often comes back, but not always. Like my my friend just before this was like, hey, remember that time when we were like hanging out in East Hampton town and we were like, nothing ever happens to us and life is so boring. And now look at how crazy our lives are. And like, I was like, no. She's like, did you ever really that happened? And then like two seconds later, like someone fell and an ambulance came in. Was like, that does not even sound familiar to me. It happens to me too all the time. I know. It's scary, isn't it? Scary. Yeah. That's one of the things. I mean, memory is very fickle and can be totally different. And even if you do remember something, you can remember it differently from the person that you're talking to. It's like, no. Wait. It didn't happen that way. This is how it happened. So it's something that you really can fool around with when you're writing. Yes. And I love how you guys had short chapters, alternating perspectives. So you're constantly like keeping the like the pacing was so good. Like you just kept it was it just made it easily to easy to fly through because you wanna just, know what's happening next. And I love this mother-in-law character and her, like, skillful manipulation. And I feel like someone, you know, must have this in their lives or like, I don't know. Maybe it's just a trope of the mother-in-law, but it was like so perfect with the how she really inserts herself and, you know, even from just the wedding planning, like how she walked in and soon as she walked out, like she had a whole another thing going. So We loved yes. We loved we love life. I think she became one of our favorite characters as well. And, you know, it was interesting too, because typically, I guess too, a you know, as moms and as I feel like for myself, when I was a younger writer, I would more relate to, you know, to the Addisons and the, you know, the younger character. But now having children that are in their twenties and I can understand that. Like, if all of a sudden my son brought this woman, this girl home with no memory, I mean, I what would I do? And and I could really relate to her not wanting to alienate him or Addison, but by the same at the same time, being very concerned about what's in her past or what if all of a sudden she remembers everything and leaves and and breaks my son's heart? So she had a you know, and that's such a close family too. She had a really fine line to walk in being careful. And then, of course, the husband's like, Oh, everything will be fine. You know, don't worry about it. It's all good. She's like, No, you can't just leave it like that. Right? I mean, I feel like I would be really nervous to be with someone who didn't remember who they were. Like, wouldn't you? Yes. Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, don't You're waiting for the right to walk to walk back in. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Know that tried to harm herself with the scars on her arms and you wonder, yeah, what would what is what kind of trauma is in her pain? And also just that that feeling of, like loss really that Julian is feeling and that, but that right cause it's like he's mourning the loss of her in his life and yet he can't put it to bed. It's like, I don't know, there's, I was doing all this research and not research, but talking to somebody all about how the trauma specific to like a disappearance, right? Cause that does happen often and how there's just no sense of closure and what that does to you. You know, there are just so many ways, I guess, to have horrible things happen and, you know, being pain about. So, you know. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

[16:20]Liv Constantine: So how did you guys go about writing this together? What did you do your normal, Like, is your normal strategy of co writing? And how did you was this one any different? Was it written during the pandemic? Like, what was that all about? It was. I think I think the first draft had already been written before the pandemic hit. So we were in revisions and heavy edits, which was which was a good thing because I don't know that we would have had the energy or, you know, the presence of mind to come up with something completely new during such a dark time. But we did write this the way we now our writing process has evolved is that after we do all of our brainstorming and development, we write every day individual scenes, email them to each other, and then talk in the afternoon and give each other feedback. Then we have now reached a point to where I'll write half of a chapter and send it to Valerie and say, okay. Don't know what else to do. Finish this, and she'll do the same with me. So by the time we've gone through the book and gone through two or three rounds of editing, there could be one sentence really that I wrote half and Valerie wrote the other half. And we forget. You know, we we like to take credit for those lines that really stick out. We're like, yeah, I wrote that. But we don't really know who wrote what. Yeah. But it did help. Say that it did help, as Lynn said, that that there was something already started when the pandemic became, you know, something that we knew was going to be long term. And talking to a lot of other writers, there were some who said, I just can't I couldn't write. I can't write during this time. And there were even and felt like a lot of people were saying I that they couldn't read, that it was really difficult to concentrate. It was just such a time of mourning, I think, and sadness and fear that it affected lives in in such well, as I mean, you know, in just terrible ways. And yet interestingly, on the book front, at least, you know, sales were up. I just got some statistic yesterday, which of course now I'm gonna forget, but sales were way up in terms of books even though all the stores were closed. Right? Like 67 of sales came from online for that whole year. And, you know, so people were buying books. That's for sure. So what are you working on now? Well, we're in hopefully final revisions of book number five, which is a political, not a political thriller, but it takes place in Washington, DC, in the political arena and centers around a senator and his new wife who have just both emerged from a terrible tragedy that has brought them together. So, of course, you know, lots of, hopefully lots of intrigue and lots of backstabbing and some interesting terrible characters, but some nice characters as well. And then we have an Audible original coming out in the next few months that we're finalizing called Misconception about a woman who is trying to prove that her ex husband's new wife has a horrible secret that she's hiding. So that was that was fun. That was written during the pandemic as well. So what happened to your childhood here to make you guys so obsessed with all this terrible stuff? Like, where is this all coming from? Well, know, we're Greek, right? We're Greek. So, you know, it probably goes back grandmother to and stories. I I guess, you know, we spent a lot of time growing up around this a small kitchen table late into the night with our grandmother, our mother, and our aunt, and they would just love to tell different stories. And there were I mean, not that they were murder or dark, but I guess there was some of that. A lot of drama. There was always a freak, for sure. Know? The Yeah. Country and what happened in to our grandmother in Greece. And yeah. It was she told wonderful stories. What happened what happened to your grandmother in Greece? Well, you know, she was from a small island in Greece. And so so one of the stories that we always loved hearing about was that she was in love with a man from a different island. And he was considered as you know, with well, the word in Greek is stranger, like sandy. He was a foreigner because he was from a different island even though he was Greek. And, you know, like, it was such a different sort of life. And she was forbidden from marrying this man. And she did wind up marrying somebody from her island who she loved and adored. He died very he was 40 when he died. Oh. And she was here in America having come, you know, right after World War one with four children, four young children, and she was a widow. And it was in the in 1930, in the midst of the depression. Years, years later, I guess in the sixties, she went back to Greece for the first time, which is a whole another thing about these parents who let their children go knowing they would probably never see them again, never meet their grandchildren. There were no I mean, forget a telephone call, cables, or letters took months. It's just astounding that the what parents that their gave freedom to their children to just really disappear from their lives. But anyway, she went back to Greece in the late sixties, and she met the man again that she had been in love with. Of course, he was married and but the the idea that here was this man who lived all those years and her husband died so young, not that I mean, as I said, she was in love with her husband, but it was sort of a tragic story, you know, too, that what she had gone through and raising her children by herself in a foreign country. But anyway, lots of interesting stories from the old country. Reminds me I should not be complaining so much about raising my own four kids here. I know. Right. With, like, you know anyway, I just It's just so many things. So many things. Wow. Okay. Well, anything else you wanna tell us about the stranger in the mirror and how great it is and how people should go out and get it and, you know, this fabulous paced thriller. And I was saying earlier before you got on, like, might be an untraditional wedding gift for those who are engaged. But since there is some of that, you can always try to get people their minds off the wedding. There are lots of summer weddings. Oh, that's true. Very true. Yeah. Yeah. I would say I've had a few people that'll tell me that, with psychological thrillers, they like to read the ending and then kind of go and figure out, like deconstruct that way. And I will say with this book, don't do that because you will be very confused. So this is if you are anybody out there is one of those people who goes to the last page, you know, don't don't because you you have no idea what's going on. Think I mean, when we were writing it, there were even times we were confused. Valerie would one of us would do something like, no, no. That was this. That happened here. You can't because of this, you know, the time timeline that changes in the book as well as the point of view. So it it was I don't know. It was a lot of fun. I think it's fast becoming I'm not gonna say my favorite, but one of my favorites of our books so far. And just, you know, appreciate your having us on here. And again, I'm so sorry that you had to go and, No. You know, talk okay. And Julie Julie in the comments here is saying she can hardly put it down. And several other people were commenting that they were going to get it right right then. So Oh, thank you. Hopefully, this will, you know and I'll post this on the feed and people can watch me embarrass myself for fifteen minutes and then we can get to here. Oh my gosh. You gotta put us in like a, you know, penalty box or something. No. No. It happens all the time. I should just stop scheduling. Well, I shouldn't say anything on on Instagram. No. It's I I've got a I'm such a you know, as much as I'm good on social media, sometimes with technology, you know what I mean? I And can't. It's very stressful. But anyway, it was great to chat with both of you. You too, Sydney. Sorry. We're not in person again this time, but hope to reconnect in person soon and have Enjoy you the launch of The Stranger in the Mirror. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye.

[24:24]Zibby Owens: and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.