Authors Interviewing Characters: Laura Lekkos
In the vein of Pineapple Street and Such a Fun Age, a smart, heartfelt debut novel about two expecting mothers navigating motherhood, family life, and female friendship, whose bond is threatened by a shocking revelation.
Victoria and Liz barely breathe the same air, but they collide headfirst when they meet in a group for expectant mothers and find common ground against all odds.
Victoria, forty-three, is confident, poised, and powerful, on the fast track to major career success in finance. Having kids is not in the plan. She had avoided love for decades—and hadn’t been too keen on female friendship either—when she fell for Ace, a dashing man twenty years her senior.
Liz, thirty-two, lives a fairly unstable life, trying to make her situationship work and navigate a job on a vile reality dating show. She’s desperately wanted to experience motherhood for her entire life, but anxiety and insecurity have landed her with a laundry list of failed romances. It’s an accident—ish—when she gets pregnant with her emotionally elusive boyfriend Preston’s baby just shy of a year into dating.
When Liz and Victoria meet in a parenting class, they both feel out of place amongst these pregnant women who seem to have it all figured out. They roll their eyes at the classic sign-off peppering the new mommy group chat: TIA (thanks in advance!). Alienated from these other women and due within a week of each other, Victoria and Liz’s bond becomes a lifeline as they navigate their pregnancies and relationships. They grapple with impending motherhood together and lean on each other to navigate important decisions about family, career, and love. It’s the first successful female friendship in Victoria’s life and the first time Liz has felt so connected to an older, wiser confidante. Maybe, just maybe, it will all be okay.
But as they grow more secure in their futures with each other’s support, the friends confront a shocking turn of events that will change the course of both their lives. Victoria and Liz then must reckon with their relationships, their impending journeys of motherhood, and the strength of their own bond in this unforgettable work of women’s fiction.
Laura Lekkos Interviews Liz
Laura: Hi, Liz. Thanks for sitting down with me. I know when you’re a new mother, time is a precious commodity.
Liz: So is cleanliness. I just saw I have spit-up on my shirt.
Laura: It’s the ultimate badge of motherhood, isn’t it? When my daughter was a toddler, every time she’d get a cold she’d choke on the mucus and throw up. I used to catch the vomit in my hands.
Liz: Something to look forward to!
Laura: Sorry to scare you. My point is, becoming a parent thrusts you into situations you couldn’t have predicted. It’s the ultimate leap into the unknown and a transformative process that’s not always seamless or pretty. You had a rough start. How are you doing now?
Liz: Better than I expected, all things considered. I had a lot of ideas about how things should be or what would make me happy. I’m learning to let go of those. I’m not totally there yet but I’m trying to trust the process. Victoria’s been encouraging me to give myself grace.
Laura: You and Victoria are very different, but you formed a close bond. How is your relationship with her different than with other friends?
Liz: There’s an ease and honesty and openness to it that I’ve never had before. Maybe it’s because she so clearly operates in a different world that it would have been silly of me to try to keep up with her, but I never thought about attempting to. It’s incredibly freeing to be able to be yourself in a friendship without fear of judgment or the impulse to curate yourself. I’ve never had that before with anyone – friends I’ve been trying to fit in with or guys I’ve wanted to like me.
Laura: Do you think you did that with Preston – did you try to curate yourself?
Liz: Well…yes. Don’t we all do that when we’re dating? It can feel like an exhausting marathon of personal marketing. You’re trying to look your best and be funny and chill and sexy and the kind of woman someone would want to be with. You can’t let it all out – ingrown hairs and indigestion and crippling self-doubt aren’t exactly a turn on.
Laura: But at one point, you did get the courage to call out Preston on some of the concerns you had been sitting on. What about the things you never shared with him? Do you think you’ll eventually tell him about the circumstances leading to your pregnancy?
Liz: It’s not like I cut a hole in the condom! Was I sloppy with my birth control? Yes. Did I tempt fate? Sure. But I don’t know that it will do him any good to know about that just like I don’t think Charlie needs to know his existence wasn’t planned by his parents with a PowerPoint.
Laura: Does he still have the dog?
Liz: You know it. Preston was made for that Corgi.
Laura: I bet the puppy and baby pictures are pretty cute.
Liz: Don’t worry, Preston posts them all over Instagram.
Laura: Speaking of social media, how do you think it affected your journey into motherhood? We see all these performative displays of relationships and pregnancies and mommy moments and intellectually, we know they’re staged at worst and a sliver of reality at best, but these highlight reels can still have a damning effect on our psyches.
Liz: I’ve compared myself to other people my whole life. Pinterest-perfect and Instagram-ideal is just another way to feel like I’m not measuring up, only magnified. I deleted my accounts recently. Maybe I’ll get back on at some point but for now, I’m good without knowing the latest viral trend or seeing a post of a size-zero mom of three making bento boxes with caviar for her kids.
Laura: Don’t forget the stack of Cartier love bracelets from her adoring husband.
Liz: Vom.
Laura: Jewelry notwithstanding, we see and hear a lot about romantic relationships. Do you think friendships can have as profound an impact on a person?
Liz: I’m walking proof that a friend can be the love of your life.
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Laura Lekkos is a screenwriter and author. Her credits include Amazon MGM’s Relationship Goals and she is the adapting writer of Maurene Goo’s Somewhere Only We Know for Netflix and just confirmed Jennifer Probst’s The Marriage Bargain. She is especially passionate about writing female-focused stories and has worked with various studios including Amazon, Netflix, Sony, Universal, and Lionsgate. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and is repped by Gersh and Felker Toczek Suddleson McGinnnis Ryan LLP. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Find out more about Laura on her website https://www.lauralekkos.com/
Category: Interviews, On Writing
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