Why We’re Just Watching Lior Torenberg

[1:16]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and, obviously, podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. I loved Lior Torenberg's novel. It's called Just Watch Me. It is so creative. Each chapter well, we talk about this in the in the episode, but each chapter talks about how many followers she has on this particular streaming, like, YouTube esque app and tracks the development of this pursuit along with her own life, which is sort of in disarray. And I found it refreshingly creative. And the writing, of course, was great, but the format was so intoxicating. I just loved it. Lior Torenberg's debut novel, Just Watch Me, was published in January 26 in The US, UK, and Germany. Her writing has been published by One Story, May Day, December Magazine, and others, and she received her MFA in creative writing from New York University and is a member of the Lighthouse Book Project. Go check it out. And by the way, I know you can't see it here, but the cover is awesome. Well, you can see it in the in the show notes and all that, but it's just very creative. Lior, welcome to Totally Booked. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm so excited to talk to you. I have been avoiding hot sauce ever since reading it. I've been looking at my plants in any way.

[3:11]Lior Torenberg: Anyway, congratulations on the book. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's really exciting to be here. Tell listeners what your book is about. Sure. So my book, Just Watch Me, follows Dell Danvers, who is a bit of a charismatic misfit, and she is at the end of her rope. She has been fired from her minimum wage job. She is behind on rent. She thinks she's developing an ulcer. Perhaps most central to the book is that her little sister Daisy is in the hospital in a coma, the doctors want to take her off of life support. And and Adele and her mom wanna put Daisy on private life support, but, of course, that costs a lot of money. So under all of these different pressures, and honestly, because she is bored, Dell decides to start a livestream to raise money. And she's finding that when she's talking about Daisy, her viewers become very interested, and they're even donating some money. So then when she adds on hot pepper eating on top of that, her viewership kind of starts to skyrocket. And she starts to think, maybe I can raise more than just my rent. Maybe I can actually help my sister. And a bit of a celebrity streamer in the space named Hot Pat takes her under his wing and mentors her and her viewer count goes up even more. But at the same time, another for viewers who she who might have a bit of a parasocial relationship with her starts to demand more and more of her. He's her top donor, and he thinks he deserves a certain level of access to her. And Dell is not one for de escalation. So, of course, she makes everything a 100 times worse. But as her digital life gets more and more stressful and as the stakes get higher and higher, she does have to finally deal with what her online presence is ignoring

[4:56]Zibby Owens: and face her real life. Wow. Well, I love it was just so creative. This whole and and almost subversive the way that Adele talks about work and just like all of life. Like, everything becomes complicated, whether it's dealing with her neighbor or her rent or her like, just everything. She, like, means well. I feel like she means well, but keeps getting in her own way. And you're left being like, oh my gosh. Like, stop. Like, it's okay. Do you feel like that? Like, kind of like anxiety feeling,

[5:28]Lior Torenberg: like, just wanting to help her out? Yeah. And I feel a little bit of responsibility as the writer because, of course, I'm just getting her in more and more trouble and I dig She has to dig herself out. And of course, I'm there to help her dig herself out. But no, and I do think it's part of her personality and she's so different from me, but she is someone that almost like a dog, like an injured animal. If she is in a corner, she is going to fight Like, she's going to bite. So there's she does not make it easier on herself for sure. You also

[6:00]Zibby Owens: write about her relationship with her mom who was also caretaking her sister, which is such a complicated time and relationship and a very vulnerable sort of moment for the family. Talk a little bit about that and the sort of triangle of relationships there.

[6:15]Lior Torenberg: Yeah. So at the time of the book, Del and her mom are not fully estranged per se, but it's clear that Del has been avoiding contact with her mom. And there is just this elephant in the room and this subtext to all of their conversations that Del can't stand, is your sister might die or is on her deathbed or we have to look at gravestones or we have to do this and you have to visit her. And and Dell is in this full denial mode where she has created this online space in her livestream where it is her own world and everyone sees her exactly and only how she wants to be seen. And she controls every element of that life. And by live streaming twenty four seven, she never has to leave that bubble. So she is ignoring her mom like the plague, lying to her mom. Her mom is in turn, of course, worried about her. And that arc develops and changes and does become a bit of a subplot throughout the book for sure. I'm fond of her mom even though she doesn't have a lot of screen time. Think it's it's outsized.

[7:14]Zibby Owens: She could get one of those supporting character nominations that you're like, oh, who knew?

[7:20]Lior Torenberg: Yeah. And it's part of kind of the multimedia of it all because her livestream is constant a constant barrage of of instant messages. And then there's a lot of voicemails and texts from her mom that often go unanswered.

[7:32]Zibby Owens: Yes. Which is how we live these days. Right? It seems like everything is even if we're not always putting it out there, it can feel as though we are all being watched at every moment because everything we all do is very public. It seems like there's like nothing to hide. Do you feel like that? And did you have to do research with streamers getting this vibe of 20 streaming?

[7:56]Lior Torenberg: Yeah. Well, I mean, I wrote this book and I started writing it in 2021 really deep in the pandemic. And it was more a case of writing towards what I wanted to know because I'm not an online person by nature. And I do think people became much more online during those years, me included. And Twitch has always existed. Twitch is a live streaming platform that LiveCast is based off of in the book. But it did blow up during the pandemic and specifically a category on Twitch called just hanging, where you see people truly going about their day, folding their laundry, going to the gym, and they're just taking a camera with them. And I really became fascinated by both sides of the equation there. Both the person streaming every second of every day, even if it's not a livestream, even even if it's a few hours, And the person on the other end who, in theory, wants the company or the entertainment. And it struck me as very lonely. And it struck me as also very unique to that time. But I think it has only escalated more and more, even if someone's not live streaming there every day. I think the way we've seen the content creator economy develop is this idea that your worst moments, your most vulnerable moments, the worst things that happen to you are the content of virality. And if you're having a bad day and you're crying, you think, okay, let me get my camera. Let me put this online. And then I think the question for Dell becomes, what do you keep for yourself? What do you give and what do you keep and what do you lose in that process? Because in theory, the better you are as a content creator, the more demand you create, the consumer on the other end becomes insatiable. Like, they will take more and more whatever you have to give. And so that balance of sharing everything and what you get to withhold, which Adele grapples with a lot is I think central to the plot. And I hope I answered your question. I think I forgot it now. No. That's I mean, that was super interesting. I was asking if you went on and tried a service. Did you go on Twitch or anything? No. I mean, now that we're in the more boring side of things, like bringing the book into the world, not really boring. I'm being facetious, but the book that demands an entirely different skill set. I'm trying to be more online. Zvi, I think you're very good at it. I could learn things like you. You know, even even the little that I am sharing is really just it's out of my comfort zone. And I had a friend tell me like, oh, don't worry. The first 100 reels you post or the first 100 things you post are gonna feel weird. And that I think made me feel worse, but I'm fine.

[10:29]Zibby Owens: I mean, I think the trick is just finding what's right for you. Like, I my kids made me delete everything I put on TikTok because it was so cringe inducing. They were like, this is so embarrassing. You cannot have this on. And they still will, like, make fun of me being like,

[10:43]Lior Torenberg: does Elle Evans know that? And I'm like, stop. Just stop. So, anyway, you know Yeah. I can't let them. I would love to have a 16 year old edit my my content before I put it out or however old your kids are. You would like any of them to to run it, you know,

[10:59]Zibby Owens: it by you. That would actually be kind of funny. Well, anyway,

[11:03]Lior Torenberg: if it doesn't feel natural to you, like, I'm just not gonna dance. Do you know what mean? Like, I'm not dancing in front. Nobody wants to watch me dance. And so I don't know. You don't know. No dancing on my end. I'm I'm thinking of doing some, like, behind the scenes content about the my writing process and things like that. And, you know, I think if I have fun making it, maybe people will have fun watching it. That's been my MO for writing. And it's definitely true for Just Watch Me. Like I was cracking myself up while I wrote it and hopefully, people crack up while reading it. So, yeah, I think coming I have a good internal radar if something feels right or not. And you can do something really funny. Like, you could do something that people haven't done. Right? And that's what captures attention anyway. Like, just do something cool. All you need is, like, a caption.

[11:46]Zibby Owens: I don't know. I think it's fun to experiment. It's it every so often. I don't know. Just try something totally new and people like that, I think. Or at least you'll like it, you know, something fun. I've already been asked a couple times to eat peppers while answering questions. So there's a few of those videos online. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You don't have to eat any peppers right now.

[12:06]Lior Torenberg: No. I don't have any with me, but yeah, I don't mind it. I love hot peppers and that's something I actually have a lot of experience about with. And I think being able to put that in the book brought so much specificity and maybe give people insight into a really rich world.

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[15:34]Lior Torenberg: I just love them. I I think ever since I was in elementary school, I've loved spicy food. And I remember a state fair or a school fair, like some small fair in my county that they had a hot pepper eating competition. They entered it and I was probably in fifth grade. And I didn't win, but it was really fun and I was better than a lot of the older people. And that gave me confidence. And then I think for the last eight years, I've been going to the world record competition every year, which is in New York, and the climax of the book takes place there.

[16:05]Zibby Owens: And shows like Hot Ones have really popped off and it's become much more mainstream. You just never know which interests end up differentiating you and causing entire books to be written.

[16:16]Lior Torenberg: For sure. You don't like spicy food?

[16:19]Zibby Owens: I do not like spicy food. Never ever. No. Maybe some black pepper on your food. Not even. I I asked for like cacio e pepe without the pepe. So I'm I'm that boring. It's true. That's okay. Tell me a little bit more about writing the book and coming up with this idea. I love how creative it is with the number of followers, like, being tracked each chapter. That was really awesome. How did you come up with everything? And, like, when did you know this was, a really good idea?

[16:50]Lior Torenberg: Yeah. I don't know if it was necessarily that clean. I I think that I feel like a lot of what I write is a direct response to the last thing I wrote. And the book I wrote before Just Watch Me was a bit of a Frankenstein in the end. I think I had been through 13 or 14 drafts and I wrote it while I was doing my MFA. So my skill level from when I started it to when I ended it was just so different and it became very messy and I really struggled with that book and it was very good. Me and my agent got in touch around it, but ultimately I just couldn't look at it anymore and it was driving me crazy. And I said, I wanna work on something new. So really, this was getting back to play in writing for me and feeling joyful and going back to what writing was before MFAs and before all these structured learning environments of just self expression. There's not a ton of myself in here. Dell could not be more different from me. I don't even think I'd like her very much in person, which I think a lot of people would probably say. But smaller elements like or, you know, not so small, but settings, the hot pepper of it all, even her stomach issues, some of that is from real life. And I wrote to entertain myself, and I think around even early, like draft two or three, her voice was just so strong that it became very much a matter of just watching her interact with the world and knowing how insane the Internet is, just thinking what viewers would say, what they would demand, and watching that escalate. So it was a very smooth writing process, much smoother than anything else I've ever written and probably anything else I'll ever write before. I think just because Del was so sure of what she wanted.

[18:30]Zibby Owens: Love that. So take me back a little bit. Like, where did you grow up and when did you know you wanted to be a writer? What else did you wanna do? All that stuff. Oh, wow. Okay. So

[18:40]Lior Torenberg: I moved to America from Israel when I was three. And I was in the ESL program in school because we just spoke we were at home growing up. So once I entered school, I did a couple years of ESL to catch up. And I think that writing and reading were really a way for me into the world, a way for me to start engaging and interacting in a real way. And that door never closed, and I'm so grateful for it. And some early again, some early wins. It's like these things happen when you're a kid and you think, oh, I'm good at this. And then you just hold on for dear life, like winning a Mother's Day poetry contest in second grade and a little Veterans Day essay contest in fifth grade and just feeling like, I am good at this. I'm just gonna do this. And I think I just made up my mind and I never stopped writing. But I did have this moment of sanity when I was applying to schools to undergrad of wanting to do something a bit more practical. So I didn't study English in undergrad, but it wouldn't I was writing books in my own time. And I finally decided to do an MFA, but my thought was, I'll just apply to the top programs that I want and probably won't get in. I'll just apply every few years and maybe one day I'll get in. And I got in my first year. So I was like, Oh, should I actually have to take this leap? So I did my MFA. No, I do think it was just a matter of writing every day. And I do think I got my ten thousand hours in a bit early because of that, which is nice. But, again, I've written probably five or six books at this point. Just watch me is the one I'm debuting with, obviously. But there has been a lot of trial and error.

[20:15]Zibby Owens: Wow. How is life having come from Israel given everything that's going on in the world and having a book come out now and all of that? It's a nightmare.

[20:25]Lior Torenberg: You know, know, there's not there's not a lot to say. I'm glad that things have settled a bit now. I'm hoping to be able to visit Israel, but, of course, there's constant cognitive dissonance and constant worry. I think ultimately, we agree, like everyone in the world just wants to be able to live their life and be with the people they love and have a normal life. And so all of my family's in Israel, my mom, my siblings, and I used to visit every year, but I haven't been since 2022. And this book could not also be more separate from that reality. Mhmm. Yep. But I am working on another book that I started in 2023 right after the war broke out that is historical fiction, and it it does delve a little bit more into those questions. Yeah. But Just Watch Me was written before the war, and it's just lives in a world where all that matters is madam madam Isabel Del's lifetime. It's very, very separate.

[21:16]Zibby Owens: Love it. Amazing. What types of books do you like to read? Because I feel like you have a really unique and funny sense of humor. You know, this sort of, like, dry wit and situational comedy and all of that. Like, what are some what do you like to read?

[21:32]Lior Torenberg: I read a little bit of everything. And thank you for saying that. I'm not entirely sure if it's my humor on the page or Della's humor. I'm like someone that's funny three years after you've known me. It takes me a really long time to be fully myself around people. But I've been told that that three year mark, I start being funny.

[21:49]Zibby Owens: You're funny on the page. So that's all that matters to me.

[21:53]Lior Torenberg: Thank you. I I read all over the place. I I just read Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson and Rebecca by Daphne DuMourney. And I am currently reading The Wedding People and just finished Murder Bimbo, which is an arc, an advanced copy. It's coming out in February. It's incredible by Rebecca Novak. So, yeah, I really just have a very, very taste with books, with TV, with movies. I just consume everything. I love it. I love to be entertained.

[22:26]Zibby Owens: Same. Go back for one second to the stomach issues. Talk to me about that because I felt so bad for Del and, like, just wanted to be like, stop doing that. Go to the doctor. Yeah.

[22:39]Lior Torenberg: I I have like a just a classic Ashkenazi Jewish stomach, which we have found out is gluten intolerance. Found that out in 2021. Before then I was like, okay, eating just makes me really sick. But yeah, now it's all good. Now I just I have a much more boring diet. But yeah, putting that type of pain in Dell's day to day, that stomach pain, eating hot peppers is definitely not the first thing you want to do if you think you have a stomach ulcer. So the ulcer was also a bit of or the potential ulcer is also a bit of a ticking clock that adds tension. Yep. New York City is also not an amazing place to be if you need to go to the bathroom unpredictably. There's an innate tension in that. And to add on top of it, Dell lives in a studio apartment that does not have a bathroom. And that exists. I worked in property management for nearly six years, and I've seen all the horrible apartments. And I have seen that apartment. I don't know if I could still find the listing, but it genuinely said in the description, there's a twenty four hour gym downstairs, and I never forgot that.

[23:45]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. I I love how her neighbor, like, comes over and is just, like, laughing. He's like, oh, you're right. You really you really had your,

[23:52]Lior Torenberg: like, entire apartment built out of my closet. That's pretty funny. So Oh, yeah. I once lived in a studio that was split up into three three rooms. Oh my god. It's such an illegal apartment. There's all kinds of wacky stuff going on in New York and I'm sure other places. Oh my goodness.

[24:09]Zibby Owens: And so what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[24:12]Lior Torenberg: Yeah. Advice is tricky. I think that it of course depends who you are. But for me, really getting back in touch with the play of writing because I love working and I love checking things off lists and I make plans and I follow them. And so sitting down to write is not a problem for me, but I don't want it to turn into pure labor. There has to be joy there. And then when I have this feeling like this hasn't been fun in a while, that is a red alert for me that I need to revisit my process in some way because all of this did come from just being a kid and being able to both escape and take part through reading and writing. Both things in equal measure, like being able to have a safe haven away from the world, but also to be able to enter it and grow empathy and understand people better. And if it's not fun, then what's the point? You know? We're not martyrs. It has to be playful. And so I I think keeping those things in balance. And if you're on the other side of things, and if you just like to write when you have that initial inspiration, which can pretty reliably get me through like twenty, thirty thousand work page words before it needs to have some part of work in it. So if you're that person that only likes the play, maybe get in touch with some of the work parts of it as well. But for me, it's keeping the joy in the center.

[25:30]Zibby Owens: Amazing. Well, Lior, it was so nice to meet you. Thank you so much. I hope to meet you in real life and congrats on your book. Thank you so much, Zibby. Was great to chat with you. You too. All right. Take care. You too. Okay. Bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.