1. To start off simple, when did you first begin writing? What were some of your big inspirations?

I always wanted to write, I think I always had those voices in my head my whole life. When I first read Harriet the Spy when I was younger, I loved the idea of observing people. And that lit me up. I loved the idea of sort of watching people in their natural habitat, observing them, human behavior was fascinating. I wanted to write, I decided I wanted to be a spy just like Harriet.

2. Did your work as a Senior Director of Programming at MTV influence or help you as you transferred to writing?

We had five half hour programming blocks and back then, there were five minute chunks of commercial three times in a half an hour episode. We had to hold people’s attention so they didn’t change the channel. I got very used to writing cliffhangers, very aware that anybody can put the book down at any time or change the channel at any time. I was very conscience that I had to make whatever I had to say entertaining as possible so that definately influenced my writing.

3. What was the original plan for the The Clique? Did you write as you went/contract continued or was there a clear plan for character development?

I had no plan. I always wanted to be a writer but I had this career in MTV, and I had no idea how to be a writer so I was just scratching this creative itch with my work.

I ended up getting this opportunity because the editor I was meeting with at MTV asked me if I ever wanted to write because we had been talking about how much MTV was like middle school. She was like, “You should write a book about that!”

I’m like, “Maybe. . . ” That ended up becoming The Clique.

I stayed at MTV while I wrote the first two books because I had no hope of it having any success or that anyone would read it. It was just something I was trying to do. I had this opportunity that I might as well go for it and go back to my day job. That was the plan. The second book ended up on the NYT bestseller list which was a total shocker.

“So this is working? I guess I’ll quit this job and start writing full time.” There was really no plan, I was just pursuing something I really wanted to do.

As far as character development goes, I’m a huge huge, huge developer of characters. It’s really important to me that these characters are surprising, human and fully formed. Rather than “This is the mean girl, this is the victim, this is the hot guy.“

Everybody has to have dimensions because that’s what we’re like as human beings. None of us are just one thing. I do a lot of the character development before I even start to write. I’ve done months plotting, developing the characters, all that before I even start to write. It can evolve as I start writing but I always start off with a game plan.

4. How did each character come to you as you created the original Clique?

They were all obssessed with material objects and money, that’s sort of what binded them together on the surface. And the reason they got into a lot of conflict because deep down that’s not who they were inside.

Kristen was not made of money and had to lie about it. Alicia was always felt insecure and second best. Dylan was always physically insecure. Massie was always scared that someone was going to come along and take everything from her.

They were brought together by this one thing and then their real personalities threatened to get in the way and that’s where the drama comes from.

5. The Clique has often come under fire for promoting bullying and superficiality. Now as I reread it, I can see how it makes meta references and makes fun of the girls that I couldn’t see when I was young. Since the message can get kind of lost, how did you think readers would eventually catch on to the joke?

I don’t know but they did. That’s all I can say, they did. I know for a fact because I asked big groups of fans before when they came to bookstore signings. I did this newspiece where I was being scrutinized about this very thing like “How dare you promote this?”

I had tv cameras and big groups of readers who were under the age of 15 and I asked this whole group, “Do you understand what I’m doing here? Do you understand what I’m promoting?” And they all got it.

The only ones who didn’t get it were the people who didn’t read it. And even though you as a fourth grader couldn’t articulate that “This is a satire, that’s the message,” I believe deep in my bones, you felt that.

You read it and you knew that “This is wildly entertaining but Massie is not nice. Claire is nice and Layne is confident.” I know people got that message because I believe if it was just a book about cruelty, I don’t think people would have read it or that it would have caught on the way it did.

I think it had to have a lot of heart whether you knew that consciously or not, you knew that. People don’t read about mean people without anything redeeming, that’s just psychopathic material. I think people read it and could see if something was mean, it was mean and if somebody learned a lesson. Plus people could see behind the scenes that Massie is really sad and lonely. You pick that up, her parents are rich and neglectful and her friends are all that she’s got.

The messages were there. There was no part of me that was promoting materialism and bullying. People didn’t see because they weren’t looking for it or it was an inconvenient truth to whatever bias they had. It was this amazing revelation that if you totally believe in what you are doing, criticism doesn’t affect you. I was so not insecure about that. I’m insecure about a ton of things but not that. My intention and integrity were never questioned by me. Therefore, anything anyone said about it didn’t get to me. It was incredible.

6. One of the best part of The Clique was all the outrageous situations the girls get into since they have the world at their fingertips. What was your favorite to write?

For some reason the prequel Charmed and Dangerous was my favorite because was so bizarrely hard. Since I never planned on writing it, I had to go back in time and retrofit everything I established and make it work somehow. It did come together pretty magically, it was like a magic writing experience that’s hard to explain without sounding all whoo-whoo.

It had a magical patina around it. Otherwise, I loved that I could write whatever goofy thing I wanted and the readers were up for it. I put a wave pool on the roof of a private boys school that collapsed and flooded the rest of the school. Somehow everyone was up for it, this bumping up against fantasy. The aspirational weird quality was almost fantasy, it was that outrageous but it wasn’t. It was just a lot of fun! I loved that was never called into question.

Like those little school boxes that Massie turns into Tiffany boxes like “What the hell?” I can’t believe I was allowed to do that. It was just a wild playground for my imagination and everybody was like “Were up for it!”

7. What was it like seeing The Clique adapted as a movie?

It was hard. It was flattering and exciting that people wanted to make it a movieout of it but it was tough. It was literally like handing over your newborn baby to be raised by animals. Not that they were animals by any means, that’s not what I’m saying. But just raised in a way that goes against your personal vision.

I mean in my head, I had a vision for all my characters, what should happen, what they should look like. Then casting comes along and makes their own decisions based on their own criteria. A lot of it was based on budget. A very unsexy truth. But I didn’t have to worry about budget I can do whatever I wanted as long as all the words fit on the page.

So it was never going to be what I imagined, so that was hard to watch. They did a great job for what it was and I’m sure a lot of people loved watching it but for me, it just wasn’t how I saw it.

8. The Alphas spin off was built on ladyboss ambition and friendship in a highly competitive enviroment. Even though it was a spin-off, did you feel pressured to keep it in tone with The Clique or to totally differentiate it.

It was based on the idea of What if?

In The Clique there were some alphas and the rest were just regular people. So what happens to the Alphas when everyone is an Alpha? Sort of like the Harvard- “You’re a baller at your school and now you’re at Harved surrounded by every baller from every school.” That I’m not special anymore idea, I liked playing with that.

9. Since the Monster High series was created for kids, how did you go about adapting it for high schoolers?

I just decided what themes mattered to me and said this is how I wanted to do it. They came to me so I had a certain amount of leverage. I didn’t want to make it totally corny, I wanted to elevate it a little bit.

It was all a metaphor about racism and judging people, can’t we all live together type thing. Everybody embracing their differences and celebrating them instead of shaming others for them. All sort of themes you get when you reach high school and start to become more aware. That was what made sense to me and luckily they were onboard with it.

10. Your Pretenders duology was such a intriguing concept on the art of duck swimming and unreliable narratives. Unfortunately it’s been 9 years since it was left on a cliffhanger, did you have an end in mind?

That is my biggest sadness. I loved writing that series more than anything. It was so much fun to write first person journal entries, to really get into the heads of these characters, to write in the head of a boy! I loved it.

That was supposed to be four books but it didn’t sell well so the publishers were like “We’re only going to do two.” And I’m like, “But it ended on a cliffhanger! I’m supposed to be doing another one.”

I put it on my blog and gave away the ending a long time ago that I can’t remember but I did reveal my intentions for all the characters. You have to find the blog on Lisi Harrison.

(So I did! Here you go) https://lisiharrison.com/pretenders-book/pretenders-payoffs-and-playlists-a-spoiler-alert-exclusive/

11. What was it like to work on your adut novel The Dirty Book Club. What drove you to the adult genre after working in YA fiction?

I had started a dirty book club of my own when I moved to Laguna Beach so it was sort of inspired by my reality. I moved to Laguna Beach from New York CIty and it was very different mentality of the people since I was so used to New York City people. I brought a lot of edge to the table and I missed that so I found a group of girls and said, “Let’s read dirty books.”

There was a whole long story of how we got there. I wasn’t just being a pervert but I was like if we do this, it will bond us. We’ll be talking about some hardcore stuff right off the back and I’ll get that honest talking edge I was missing from my friends from New York.

And it worked and this group of girls who didn’t know each other become bonded like a sisterhood over these books. It was amazing and from that I created The Dirty Book Club.

[About utilizing the 1950s characters to set up the premise] Also there was a really real reason why I used the women from 1950s. If it was a book club now there wouldn’t be a real reason behind it. There’s no taboo. Who cares? Fifty Shades of Grey was huge, once that book was out there was no risk or anything to reading a dirty book. I wanted to bring back the secret risky sexiness of that time and also show how girls now benefit from the generation before it.

[About the fate of the main couple] My agent was like “You can’t make them break up!” I was like “Oh yes I can! I can make them break up and be best friends.” I thought that was a happier ending. They were just so different and different things and the idea of them compromising so much of who they were for each other seemed so much more sad to me than if they took the best parts of each other and move forward with that. That was the happier ending.

12. Your Girl Stuff series brings back your themes of friendship, bullying and the complications of being a girl. What inspired you to return to this concept?

When I wrote The Clique I did not have kids. By the time I wrote Girl Stuff I had one son in high school and one in middle school and I was surrounded by girls that age. Then I saw those girls grow up and now they’re in middle school and they have really wholesome kind friendships that I was thinking, “These friendships are going to get challenged.”

They weren’t the mean, materialistic, backstabby girls of The Clique. That was over. It was a different time. It wouldn’t work today. I wanted to make it grounded and real.

“What to do you do when you grow up without growing apart? How do you grow and change and still try to hold on to the friendship?” These girls love each other and want to be with each other but life keeps getting in the way. It feels real to me and I wanted to write about that.

I love this series because to me, it has the heart and the goofiness of The Clique without the gratituous meanness and materialism. It’s stripped of that, but it’s still got a personality.

13. Have you had to do research on the foils and nuances of friendship in the digital age?

I don’t put a lot of that in there. One of the characters isn’t even allowed to have a phone and that’s her struggle, and one is addicted to her phone. I don’t love writing about that. But friendship is friendship, insecurity is insecurity, the need to be loved and accepted and appreciated, that doesn’t change based on technology.

Has friendship has manifested and challenged and bastardized because of technology? Yes. But the basic human needs and desires are timeless.

14. The Pack combines friendship issues with a supernatural twist and tackles such topics as female agency, dumbing yourself down, reclaiming power. All very important topics as girls go through self-esteem issues. How do you think werewolves best exemplifies those struggles?

I think it’s that shifting between different moods, and tendencies in one person. It’s that struggle and dissonance that you want to be this way, but I’m feeling this way and I want to feel this way but I’m acting this way. It’s that put in a literal way.

With a werewolf it’s the full moon that triggers it, with humans and females I can list a million things. But I think it’s that struggle in all of us to fight for the person who we are and the person we want to become. The parts we are proud of, the parts we are ashamed of. There’s a lot going on inside of all of us and it’s a struggle to keep it all tame.

The Pack is really about being powerful. For females, we want to be powerful, the whole girlboss. I hate the word “girlboss,” why can’t it just be boss? We’re still finding our way and it feels like we should have found it decades ago, centuries ago but we haven’t.

Women who want to be powerful still struggle with “Was that too strong? Was I too aggressive? Was I too direct? Should I dumb it down? Fuck you, I don’t want to dumb it down!”

That struggle is inside all of us. I know I’ve had to deal with that like when I write a direct email and someone says it’s too direct, you need to write the nice stuff first and guys don’t have to do that.

I feel like in The Pack, the characters were a metaphor for that struggle. We have these powers that are so strong and society is trying to tame them and tamp that down. But they’re wanting to use them. How much should I use them? When should I use them? When should I should tamp them down? When should I be quiet? When do I come out? What are people going to think?

It’s a metaphor for all that noise in a woman’s head when she’s trying to figure out her place in the world.

15. What has it been like to co-write Graveyard Girls with Daniel Kraus?

I love Daniel Kraus madly. It’s been great, it’s been a very different experience. I never done horror before, I’m really kinda into it. We have such different fields of expertise that it’s fun to try to bring them together.
We never fought, it’s never been contentious, but we’re trying to find our way as far as how do we blend two very distinct voices, two very distinct points into one.
I’d say it’s been great but it’s a challenge for me to let go of something since I’m not used to it. But I think it’s a good lesson for to let go.

16. Any upcoming news to look out for?

Aside from Graveyard Girls, my plan is to take a break from writing after 42 books. I’m switching gears and starting a wellness practice with a therapist and we’re going to do a mental health workshop for teens and tweens but fun.
We’re going to do self-improvement, mental health but fun.

The idea is medicine covered in tons of sugar because we all need it especially young kids and we have to take the stigma out of it and make it somewhere they want to go. The first thing we’ve been doing is drama-free friend workshops.

Yes, the woman who wrote The Clique and all about mean girls has created drama-free friend workshops. We did a bunch this summer and it’s been a huge success. It’s teaching girls and a lot of boys as well how to have a drama free friendship now and for the rest of their lives. I’m not saying we’re going to get rid of friend drama, that’s never gonna happen. But we can teach people how to deal with it when it happens.

You can see more of Lisi’s books, thoughts and updates on her bi-weekly blah-g https://lisiharrison.com/

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