Interview With Lauren Thoman (I’ll Stop the World)

Today we are very excited to share a special interview with author Lauren Thoman (I’ll Stop the World), conducted by YABC Staff Reviewer, Lillian McCurry!

Read on to learn more about Lauren and her book!

Meet the Author: Lauren Thoman

Born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, Lauren Thoman studied music education, though soon realized that the life of a band director was not for her. Her passion for pop culture and watching and analyzing movies and TV shows led her to become a frequent contributor to a number of prominent online pop culture outlets, such as Parade, Vulture, PopSugar, Looper, and Collider.
Her debut novel, I’LL STOP THE WORLD, will be published by Mindy Kaling under her eponymous imprint with Amazon Publishing, Mindy’s Book Studio, on April 1, 2023. She lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee with her family.

Website * Twitter * Instagram * Facebook

About the Book: I’ll Stop the World

An engrossing time slip novel, an emotional coming of age story, a delightful ’80s nostaglia trip, and a suspenseful murder mystery— I’LL STOP THE WORLD by Lauren Thoman defies categorization and genre even as it offers a host of surprises and delights for readers. Publishing April 1, 2023, the novel is the first debut to be released by Mindy’s Book Studio, Mindy Kaling’s eponymous imprint with Amazon Publishing. Mindy expressed that she fell in love with the book because it’s “fun and entertaining,” and at the same time, will make the reader think about “fate, the nature of existence, the power of forgiveness, and second chances.”

While the novel unfolds via multiple perspectives from an endearing cast of diverse characters, the story centers on two teens from two different times. In 2023, Justin Warren feels trapped in a dead-end life that’s defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents 38
years prior in a school fire, and he’s unable to imagine any kind of real future for himself. An unexplainable twist of fortune brings him crashing into the path of determined optimist Rose Yin. Justin and Rose live in the same town and attend the same high school, but have never met before—because Rose lives in 1985. Justin won’t be born for another twenty years. And in Rose’s time, his grandparents are still alive—or at least they will be for another week.
Against the odds, Justin and Rose band together with the goal to solve the mystery of his future grandparents’ deaths and stop the deadly fire before it happens, with the hope that changing the future will also get Justin back to his own time. But every choice has unexpected consequences, and no reader will anticipate the shocking (and utterly satisfying) finale.

~Author Chat~

Lillian: For me, I blink and feel like the 1980s was yesterday, but I know that isn’t the case. What drew you to that time period for Justin’s adventure?

I actually played around with a few different time periods before realizing that the story fit best in the ’80s. Not only was it a time period I actually lived through, but it felt like a really interesting time into which to toss a modern teen, back when everything was analog and most kids didn’t really know what was going on outside of their own little bubbles. It was so different from the way we live now, and yet teenagers in the ’80s were still facing a lot of the same issues as teens today. They just faced them in a different way. Plus, as a giant Back to the Future nerd, I just couldn’t resist setting the book in the same year in which that movie takes place, just a couple months after it premiered in theaters.

Lillian: How long did Justin, his grandparents, and Rose live in your head before you were able to get their story on paper?

I’m notorious for jumping into new stories almost as soon as I get the idea for them. It’s one of the ways I explore an idea to see if it has potential to become a book. So Justin and his grandparents showed up almost immediately, very soon after I got the idea to write a time travel story about a kid trying to prevent an unsolved crime before it happens. Rose showed up a bit later, once I landed on 1985 as the setting. I knew I wanted Justin to team up with a teen from the time period he lands in, and I wanted it to be someone who saw the world in a completely different way than he did, who would push him and challenge him in a way he’s never been challenged before. That said, I first started writing this story in 2014, and worked on it off and on for years. It went through a ton of major changes. So even though they all appeared very soon after I started writing, they’ll have been with me for nearly a decade by the time I’ll Stop the World is published.

Lillian: The title is epic! When I see it, I instantly hear Modern English’s song “I’ll Melt With You.” The book parallels some of the lyrics. Is that intentional? Did it inspire parts of the story?

Actually, the title didn’t come to me until I’d almost finished writing the book! I am notoriously terrible at titles, and tried on probably a dozen different (bad) titles over the course of drafting, all of which I hated. But I happened to be on Twitter one day and saw a tweet from Eric Smith talking about his book, YOU CAN GO YOUR OWN WAY, which of course instantly got Fleetwood Mac stuck in my head. It got me wondering if there were any ’80s songs that might fit my story. So I just googled songs from the early ’80s (since I wanted something that my characters could’ve conceivably listened to in 1985, when the book is set) to see if anything felt right, and “I’ll Melt With You” almost instantly jumped out at me. I refreshed my memory of the lyrics and found that they were almost eerily applicable to my story, more than I’d even realized at first. Once I landed on I’LL STOP THE WORLD as a title, I went back and wrote a scene where Justin and Rose are actually talking about the lyrics of the song, and how it means something different to each of them, which I now think captures a lot of the themes that were already present in the story.

Lillian: What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?

Honestly, without getting into spoilers, the ending. I always knew what the last chapter of the book would be, and I wrote it really early on in the process. Some of the details changed over the years, but overall, that scene is still largely intact. But the scenes that lead up to that, which are the climax of the book — where the reader finally gets answers to the questions that the characters have been asking throughout the story — I love how those scenes came together. They don’t cover a lot of time, but a lot is going on in them, and I hope that they feel both surprising and satisfying for readers.

Lillian: What can readers expect to find in your books?

My critique partners laugh at me because I’m practically allergic to writing from a single point of view. I’ll Stop the World started out as a single point-of-view story. Now it has nine. So I think it’s safe to say that readers can typically expect multiple points of view in my books. I love ensemble casts, and the different dynamics that can develop between members of a group — how characters will act differently depending on who they’re with at the time, and how those different facets of their personalities will impact how they handle conflict. I love to explore friendships and families, and friendships that feel like family.

I also love speculative stories of all stripes, whether that means time travel or haunted houses or superheroes or alternate realities. I think it’s a lot of fun to explore real, authentic emotions and relationships through the lens of unreal or impossible scenarios. So while I will always use my books to explore how humans exist in the world and relate to each other, I will probably also always tend to do it while playing in speculative sandboxes.

It’s also a safe bet that my books will always include diverse casts, and that I’ll always have at least one biracial Chinese character in there to help make up for the decades in which I never saw characters like me in the books and shows I loved. And there will always be a lot of banter, because that’s fun for me to write, even in tense stories.

Lillian: What do you do when you procrastinate?

I can justify any reason to procrastinate. There’s always something to be done around the house, an email that needs to be written, a dog that needs to be walked. I’m also a lot like Justin in some ways, when he explains that sometimes it’s not really about putting off what he needs to do, and more about intending to do it and then just… not. That’s an ADHD thing, which I don’t have (as far as I know), but it can also be an anxiety thing, which I have in spades. Sometimes my brain just refuses to move forward on a task, and there’s no real reason for it other than that my brain said no that day. Deadlines help, as do friends who help hold me accountable.

Lillian: What’s up next for you?

[I will update this answer if things change between now and when this interview is scheduled to publish.] I’m just always working on the next thing. I’ll Stop the World was always intended as a standalone, and that’s how it will remain, as far as I know now. I’ve got a proposal for another speculative YA mystery out right now, which isn’t time travel, but which I think will still scratch that same I’ll Stop the World itch. I’m working on a post-apocalyptic haunted house book, which is just an absolute blast to write. For some reason, I’ve gotten really into horror over the past few years, and haunted houses are my favorite subgenre within that category. Beyond that, who knows?

Lillian: What is your favorite holiday or tradition and why?

My husband and I have done a family Halloween costume with our kids for the past ten years, and each year it’s so much fun coming up with a theme and putting the costumes together. He is the crafty one in the family, so the bulk of the costume construction falls on him, but we all enjoy the creativity of it and the thrill of watching the costumes come together. Last year we were characters from Over the Garden Wall, and our dogs even got costumes of their own. We’re still debating what our theme will be this year. My oldest daughter will be a senior in high school this year, so this may be our grand finale. So obviously, whatever we land on, we’ve got to go out with a bang.

Lillian: As a debut author, do you have any advice for those who are starting out in their writing career?

It took me a long time to sell a book, so I’ve had a lot of opportunity to collect nuggets of wisdom from other authors. One piece of advice that has stayed with me is to aspire to have my name in more acknowledgments sections than on spines. That has served me well over the years. Not only has it given me a lot more to celebrate while waiting for one of my own books to sell, but I’ve learned more from reading for friends than I ever have from a craft book or writing conference (not that I’m knocking either!). There has never been a time when I’ve critiqued a fellow author’s writing and haven’t come away with some sort of profound realization about my own work. I lost count of the number of times it happened on I’ll Stop the World, and I hope I remembered to thank all of those writers in my own acknowledgments! I think a lot of writers worry about finding beta readers or critique partners for their own work, but in my experience, I’ve always benefited more from reading for others than from having others read for me.

In the same vein, I can’t tell you how important my friendships with other writers have been. Making friends is hard, especially as an adult (and double especially as an introvert), so I realize that “make friends with other writers” can sound like an impossible task. But whether it looks like attending writing conferences or book signings or joining writing clubs at your local library or simply being active on social media, I think having a community of fellow writers to commiserate with and learn from is vital for anyone who wants to write long-term. It’s a difficult road filled with potholes, and so much easier to walk if you’re with people who can tell you where to step. And once you’ve gone a little way down the road, don’t forget to look back and help the folks following behind you.

Lastly, write for you. Write what you enjoy. Don’t worry about “the market” or whatever BookTok is obsessing over or what industry people say is selling. It takes a long time to write a book, and then even longer to sell and publish a book. The market changes all the time, and there’s no way to predict where it might go next. At the end of the day, the name on the cover is yours, and you’re your only guaranteed reader. May as well write the story the way it wants to be written, and the way that feels most natural to you. Make it the best version of itself, a version you’re happy with. That’s all you can control, so it may as well be something you love.

Title: I’ll Stop the World

Author: Lauren Thoman

Release Date: April 1, 2023

Publisher: Mindy’s Book Studio

Genre: YA, SciFI

Tags: I'll Stop the World, Interview, Lauren Thoman, Mindy’s Book Studio

Interview With Lauren Thoman (I’ll Stop the World)

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