How to Write a Bestselling Multiracial Thriller

A conversation with Reese's Book Club author Lauren Ling Brown

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Hello Loreates!

I’m thrilled to introduce you today to Lauren Ling Brown, author of the debut novel AND Reese’s Book Club pick Society of Lies.

Lauren contacted me recently for advice about leading a Foreword writers’ retreat in France, since I had the privilege of leading one a couple of years ago and Lauren will lead one next year (see below). It turned out we’re neighbors! So we met for lunch and found SO much in common that I decided we just had to continue our conversation here on Substack.

This post is Part 1 of said conversation, in which we discuss the challenge/opportunity of writing about multiracial identity in commercial fiction. [Plus Your Weekly Writing Prompt!]

Part 2 will be a LIVE chat on Substack: Best Selling! When Authors Hit the Big Time next Thursday at 9amPT/12pmET:

Here is Lauren’s official bio:

LAUREN LING BROWN is the bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club Pick, Society of Lies. Before starting her career, Brown received a BA in English literature from Princeton University and an MFA in film production with a focus in screenwriting from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she works as a film editor and novelist. And she writes Lauren’s Substack!

If you’re interested in working with Lauren on your own work, here’s your opportunity!

In September of 2026, she will be leading a writing retreat in the French Alps with Foreword Retreats.

• Dates: September 13-19, 2026

• Info link: Foreword Retreats

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Q&A with Lauren Ling Brown

AIMEE: AAPI Heritage Month often seems to skip over the issue of mixed-race identity, but you and I have both leaned into our multiracial heritage in our writing, so I’d like to get into that here. Tell me about your parents’ backgrounds?

LAUREN: My dad is African-American and my mom is Chinese, born in Hong Kong. Growing up, I never felt like I fit into either group and that feeling of not belonging became a big part of my identity as a child and later, teenager and young woman. Now that I’m in my mid-thirties and living in Los Angeles where there are large numbers of mixed-race people, I finally feel comfortable with my identity. It’s something that I now embrace, and I love meeting other Blasian women.

AIMEE: We’ve talked about growing up between ethnicities– facing that constant damned ‘What are you?’ question. I’ve always felt somewhat insignificant next to the extraordinary story of my grandparents’ interracial union. At the same time, I can’t get enough of that story, trying to understand what they truly felt and how they mustered the courage to defy so many taboos. That fascination has fueled most of my creative writing. My first novel, Face, was one of the first to explore biracial Asian-American identity head on, at least outside of Hawaii, but I think the boundaries have loosened up since then. How has your ethnic heritage affected you as a writer?

LAUREN: Oh it absolutely has affected my writing. In my novel, Society of Lies, many of the stories and details about growing up mixed-race with a Black father and Asian mother are pulled from my life. The detail about the Blue Sheen hair product that my dad used to braid my hair with, the R&B that he’d listen to in the morning, my mom’s Chinese cooking, the various cultural differences that made us clash when I was a teenager, even the uncomfortable fact that my parents’ union wasn’t easily accepted by her parents. I think it’s important to draw from reality in my writing because the specificity of experience is what gives writing a richness of detail and an authenticity.
My own experience as a multiracial, Black and Chinese woman also influences my writing. I try to have my characters experience the world in the way that I do. And in many ways it’s beautiful to be part-one race and part-another… because it lends a kind of unique perspective and empathy that not everyone has a chance to experience. It makes us realize that we are all shaped by our upbringing and that we can be more than one category at a time and shift between them. I love being mixed-race.

AIMEE: Me too! It’s sometimes a challenging gift, but a gift no less. To that point, in Society of Lies race plays a powerful role in shaping the way Naomi and Maya, your main characters, see themselves and their social position in the rarefied world of Princeton. And, of course, you also went to Princeton. How much of their experience reflects your own social experience there?

LAUREN: My time at Princeton was both full of wonderful new experiences and also uncomfortable, personal events that happen to many women during that time of life. Both have impacted me as a person and as a writer. For Society of Lies, I decided to pull from my entire life’s experience of being a multiracial woman, not just from my experience at Princeton, and much of that is very true to my experience, both the positive—being in a dance group called the Black Arts Company—and the negative—experiencing sexism and racism throughout my life.
On the other hand, Sterling Club and the secret society I called Greystone were both fictional. So in that way, the world I created was a “thriller” version of what I saw, not true to my experience of the eating clubs. I loved my eating club and I enjoyed much of my time at school. I was an English major, I fell in love with creative writing, I studied in these fabulous libraries, sledded down the Whitman dining hall hill on a dining tray. The seasons at Princeton were beautiful, the professors wonderful, and the Gothic campus, inspiring.

AIMEE: I’m so impressed by the subtlety with which you’ve woven race into the plot. It’s present and important, but it’s not front and center as the major “theme” or “issue.”  How did you decide how much weight to place on race in the book?  What were some of the factors you considered as you titrated its levels at critical points in the story?