Meg Mitchell Moore has been one of my favorite authors since I happened upon her book, The Admissions, in a bookstore while on vacation. She writes beautifully and zeros in on her characters’ full range of emotions. The Admissions focused on one family’s desperate attempts to ensure their daughter’s acceptance to an Ivy League school, and the secrets their efforts threaten to reveal—a subject that has only become more timely.
I started Two Truths and a Lie over the weekend (staying up way too late, but definitely worth it) and am just as captivated. As you might guess from the title, it explores secrets, as well as relationships, romance, family dynamics, and the choices we make to pursue our dreams.
Meg was kind enough to answer a few questions.
What do you find most rewarding about being an author?
I feel really lucky to be able to write for a living. I know that so many hours of writing, revising, editing and marketing went into each book that made it to publication—and I know that there are many, many worthy books that never made it that far for any number of reasons, some of them subjective or random or having more to do with market trends than the quality of the book. I find it really rewarding when an individual reader reaches out to me to tell me why a particular book resonated with them in a certain way.
What two or three things do you wish you’d known when you became a writer?
I wish I’d known how long it would take! It took me some time in my career to decide to focus on fiction rather than nonfiction, to really take that plunge, and it’s such a long process (or at least it was for me) to get that first book out there.
Can you give a hint as to what your book after Two Truths and a Lie will be about?
My next book is about three generations of a family in a summer house in Owls Head, Maine, and the secret that comes out over the course of a summer.
If Hollywood made The Islanders, who would you like to see play the lead roles?
I would love to see John Krasinski play Anthony, Brie Larson play Lu, and Zooey Deschanel play Joy. There’s a minor character, Shelly Salazar, who I would love to see played by Annie Murphy from Schitt’s Creek.
If you could attend any event in the world, what would it be? This can be past, present or future, famous or more personal.
For a real event, I would love to witness V-J Day in Times Square in 1945. For a fictional event: a party at Gatsby’s house in The Great Gatsby.
How did you manage to pitch stories about dogs while working at trade publications?
Ha! It’s been a long time since I’ve pitched a dog story, although I’d write one now in a second if anyone asked me to! I was a freelance nonfiction writer after I left my last magazine job, and that involved pitching all sorts of stories to many different kinds of publications.
What’s are you currently reading?
I just finished a book I really loved, Gone So Long by Andres Dubus III. This is a book that will stay with me for a long, long time. I’m currently reading Beach Read by Emily Henry and loving it. Elin Hilderbrand’s newest book (28 Summers) comes out on the same day as Two Truths and a Lie so that will be next for me!