Welcome to The Enlightenment Show, Siena! I’m so excited to have you joining us to talk about your debut novel, Tell Us No Secrets.
· Tell Us No Secrets is a multiple POV story with woven layers all throughout the book. Did you get to know your characters or the story first? I had an idea of where I wanted the story to go when I started. I wanted to write about the break-up of a teenage friendship that would lead, ultimately, to violence. I knew I was going to have four main characters and had a rough idea too of who these characters would be, but I had no clue who would be the perpetrator or the victim of that killing until I started writing. I needed to know more about who the girls were before I knew what would happen to them, so the story and characters developed simultaneously.
· What inspired you to write the setting in a 1970s boarding school? I had a falling out with a friend, and it affected me so much I began to question why I was having such a strong reaction. Then it struck me that I was feeling the same kinds of feelings I'd had when I went to boarding school. At that point, I knew I wanted to write about the experience of living with a group of teenage girls 24/7, cooped up in a school away from family and, basically, normal life. I set it in 1970 because it was such a momentous and confusing time: a time when the whole hippie movement was in full swing when sex drugs and rock n roll was the norm when sexual liberation was starting—and yet a time when abortion was illegal when homosexuality was not widely accepted when the Vietnam War was impacting so many young peoples' lives. So there was a huge sense of freedom and yet an underlying darkness, mirrored in the book.
Your characters, Cassidy, Zoey, Abby, and Karen, are very dynamically different from one another. What are two things that surprised you most about each of your characters and why? The best part of writing to me is when the characters start to take on a life of their own. Asking what surprised me about them all is a perfect question and I'll start with Zoey. I had never planned for her to turn from being a rebel into a woman leading a conventional life—it just happened. Also, she was more practical and logical than I'd first thought she'd be. As far as Karen was concerned, her falling in love with Zoey surprised me, and I hadn't expected her to be quite so vindictive. Cassidy's relationship with the science teacher, Mr. Doherty, came out of the blue and I was actually pleased to find her trying to stop the others from ostracising Karen. Abby turned out to be insecure in a way I hadn't expected and her reaction to the events as they unfolded was more selfish than I would have thought when I was first creating her character.
· You mention the peer pressures and family dysfunction in your book, stirring the choices that each of these girls ultimately decides to make. What is something that you’d like to see changed in our society today to help teenage girls thrive and feel more confident in their world? I'd like the impossible. I'd like for society as a whole not to focus on looks the way it does. The need for women to be attractive in an accepted way seems to get progressively worse rather than better—and teenagers suffer the most. There are so many great things about social media but if I had the power, I'd ban photographs on social media sites of any person under the age of twenty-five. I know that sounds ridiculous, but having to compare yourself constantly with others, and being judged on what you look like—it has to take a huge toll on anyone. One of the main themes of Tell Us No Secrets is peer pressure and all those photos of perfectly posed selfies ramps up the peer pressure to such a degree that I believe it plays a part in the increasing problem of mental health in teenage and young women.
· What’s a secret that you tried to keep, but couldn’t keep hidden? My secret had to do with peer pressure too. Friends of mine started to shoplift items of clothing when we were all about fifteen. Which was a stupid thing to do but if you hadn't shoplifted something you weren't "cool." I was desperate to be cool so I shoplifted a bathing suit. Not only was I terrified doing it, but when I got out of the store, I felt so ashamed, I didn't want to tell anyone—ever—not even my friends, even if that meant that I'd failed the cool test. I didn't dare go back into the store and pretend I'd mistakenly taken it, and when I got home I stuffed it in the back of my closet. But of course, my mother found it, with the tag still on. Which meant I had to go back to the store, apologize to the manager, pay for it, say I'd never do anything like that again, and experience total humiliation on all fronts. I failed to keep that secret but I've managed to keep a lot of secrets since.
· Did you learn anything new about yourself while you were writing Tell Us No Secrets? While writing Tell Us No Secrets, I learned just how much of the teenager lurks in me still. I can claim to be an adult but it was ridiculously easy to relive all those feelings of insecurity, the need to fit in, and how painful it can be when friendships break up—and I learned to be a little easier on my teenage self. So much seems to be at stake during those adolescent years and knowing I've grown far beyond them doesn't diminish the experience. It also struck me when writing just how powerful female friendship is, at any age. I tell my female friends everything, I trust them with things I wouldn't even tell my partner, and if that trust is broken it can be equal to, or even more painful, than sexual infidelity. As I wrote about the interaction between these four girls, I saw similarities to friendships through the years. How women can so often revert to the playground mentality of "who is socializing with who?" and "who is the most popular?" or "who is talking behind someone's back"? So I learned that some things never change. Even if they should. Maybe the teenage self lurks in all of us.
· What was one of your favorite things about working at Doubleday Bookstore in New York? I loved working at the Doubleday bookshop in Manhattan. At that time, the store was open until 10pm and I worked from 4-10. We had regular customers who would treat it like a bar—they'd drop in every evening, hang around at the counter chatting about books and their lives, so there was an odd sort of party going on every night. When the store closed, we'd move on to the bar across the street, which made it a real party.
One memorable time there was when a crazily rich woman came in and ordered a copy of every single book in the store. I couldn't figure out why she'd want How To Get Rid of Weeds In Your Garden as well as The Great Gatsby and over a thousand other titles. We had to shut the store down, and figure out how to get enough trucks/vans to ship them all to her hotel. It was mayhem and adding up the cost of it all was a major mission but also pretty hilarious.
INNER CHILD SEGMENT
· Who were some of your best girlfriends growing up? What were your favorite things to do together? My best friend at age 12 was a girl named Susan who was very artistic and a little wild. We were the class outsiders and we were inseparable. Most of what we did outside of school was to sit up in our rooms and talk and listen to music. When I went away to boarding school, I became best friends with Candy, who was in some ways like Cassidy in my book. She was stunningly beautiful and popular and she had a great sense of humor. Everyone worshiped her so I was thrilled to hang out with her. We spent most of our time too in our rooms listening to music and talking. In the summers, we'd go to the beach and when I got my driver's license, we'd spend time driving around blasting the radio. Music was the key to life in so many ways and when we were old enough, we'd find clubs and places to go where we could dance.
After she left school, Candy became a Playboy Bunny in Denver, a blackjack dealer in Reno, and finally a nurse.
· Did you receive an article of clothing or an object from your parents that you loved? My father gave me Anna Karenina when I was thirteen. At the same time, he told me to wait until I was at college to read it, but that it was one of the best books ever written. I loved it the first time I read it and I've loved it the five times I've re-read it since. He knew I was a voracious reader and I think he just wanted to make sure I read something brilliant as soon as I'd be able to appreciate it. It still fascinates me that he gave it to me though, because it's such a passionate book and on the surface, my father wasn't passionate except when it came to sports. So it gives me a glimpse into a part of him that is really meaningful to me.
· What were some of your favorite subjects and things to learn about as a teenager? As I said, I loved to read, so English and History were my favorite subjects. I was totally hopeless at any of the sciences. Really weirdly, I was a huge fan of Latin. I'm pretty sure I was the only one in the class who thought translating Virgil was fun. Looking back I think it was a help with sentence structure and vocabulary. At the time it felt as if I was delving into an exciting foreign world that no one else I knew wanted to visit.
· What’s the oddest food combo that you’ve liked and tried, or just tried?
This is truly disgusting—the oddest food combination I've tried was pasta and seal's paw. I was in Iceland, out to dinner with an Icelandic friend. I ordered some nice pasta dish and then he informed me I had to try the seal's paw—that this was an Icelandic staple and I couldn't turn it down. The pasta was great. The seal's paw was a hunk of blubber. Cold, wobbly blubber. Food doesn't get any more revolting than a cold, blubbery seal's paw. I took the smallest bite possible and forced myself to swallow it. It was as awful as it looked, which is saying a lot. I would have thought he was playing a practical joke on me, but I watched him happily eat it. Sometimes it's not a great idea to listen to locals.
· What advice can you share with our readers about living a joyful life? How to live a joyful life. That's a tough one. It's great to have dreams and goals and ambitions, but my advice is to put people and relationships first. And to have a team of people who you know will always have your back, who are loyal, empathetic, and good listeners. You don't need a huge team, but if you have two or three people who you can always count on, who know you well enough to ride through the tough times with—and enjoy the good ones—then it is much easier to negotiate the inevitable ups and downs.
· Where can the readers connect with you? Where can they find your book? Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siena_sterling
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sienasterling
My website: www.sienasterling.com
They can find my book at any of the below places:
https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Us-No-Secrets-Novel/dp/006316180X/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tell-us-no-secrets-siena-sterling/1140137277
https://bookshop.org/books/tell-us-no-secrets/9780063161801https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780063161801
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