Lindsay Lynch’s debut novel, “Do Tell,” takes place in Hollywood — but it has its origins in the high plains of Wyoming.
Lynch, who grew up near Washington, D.C., conceived of her book while a student in the MFA program at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. She was focusing on short stories at the time, but decided to try her hand at a novel after being confined indoors for much of the year.
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“Winter in Wyoming is nine months, so that urged the writing process along,” she says with a laugh. “You basically can’t go outside unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Lynch immersed herself (virtually) in sunny Los Angeles for the novel, which follows Edie O’Dare, a character actress who is also a source for a notorious gossip columnist. Edie is given a letter by an actress who claims to have been assaulted at a party by a movie star, and the resulting story throws Hollywood into disarray.
“Do Tell” drew positive reviews from critics at Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist — and was a pick at a book club at Parnassus Books in Nashville where Lynch works as a book buyer (alongside her dog, Barnabus).
Lynch answered questions about “Do Tell” while on tour behind the novel. This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
Q: Can you talk about the origins of this novel?
I started researching it while I was in my MFA program, around 2017 or 2018, which was a weird time for America, and a weird time to move to a very, very red state like Wyoming. I just found that I didn’t really know how to write about the world around me anymore, and I had all these projects that I’m supposed to be working on. One day I checked out a book from the library, just for fun, called “City of Nets” by Otto Friedrich, which is a wonderful, gossipy year-by-year history of Hollywood. I was checking it out as a little treat, something fun to read. It consumed my brain for months. It was the only thing I wanted to read. And then I was watching old movies, and then I was thinking of characters, and then I was writing about the characters. I had never seriously attempted to write a novel before, but before I knew it, I was in real deep. For a span of time when I was researching, I played around with just completely cutting myself off from watching contemporary TV or movies. I was only watching movies between 1935 and 1945, trying to read source materials from the time and just really immerse myself in it.
Q: Were you still writing it when the pandemic started?
I had finished a first draft just before the pandemic, and it went out to literary agents and got a lot of very, very nice rejections. [Laughs.] So it was in OK shape, but something really needed to change about it. I ended up rewriting most of the book during 2020. I ideally would not like to try to rewrite a book during a pandemic again, although it did give me something to keep working and caring about during a very, very hopeless and dark time.
Q: The subject matter of the novel is serious, of course, but did writing it help you distract yourself from the awful news that was going on during those years?
A little bit. One of the weird things about it was when I went into it and realized that this book would go over into World War II. I was thinking, “I don’t know how to write about being in a war-torn country where everything is shut down.” And thank goodness there was a pandemic, because I learned how it feels to live in a country that’s very, very shut down. [Laughs.] It was like, “Oh, I think I really do get what it feels like to have every club and restaurant closed down, to have shortages.” But it definitely was also a respite. I love being in that era, and I have a very strong, weird fondness for my narrator, obviously. She felt like my friend through the pandemic.
Q: Was Edie inspired at all by any real life-figures? I was thinking about Hedda Hopper, who was also an actor turned columnist.
Yeah, she definitely has Hedda and Louella Parsons in her. Initially, I tried to hold back on learning too much about Hedda and Louella because I wanted Edie to be her own organic person. What I actually ended up doing was, I had copies of both of their memoirs on my table, and I would just read random pages just to get the cadence of how they talked and how they wrote about people, but without learning too many details of their lives, just to let Edie breathe and be her own person. I then went back and learned all the nitty-gritty details about the two of them.
Q: You work at Parnassus Books in Nashville. What’s the experience of being an author going to bookstores for appearances and signings been like?
Part of my job is that we have a very large signed first editions club, so we have authors that, when we pick them, they have to sign about a thousand books. And I’m usually the person who stands on the other side of the table and just kind of shuffles the books around for them. I was the July first editions pick, so it was very, very surreal to be on the other side of that table signing books while the staff was shuffling my books around. [Laughs.] It’s just been off the charts, surreal and amazing.
Q: Did [Parnassus Books owner and author] Ann Patchett give you any advice either about writing, or the experience of having a book come out?
She’s definitely been a huge presence with this book and my overall journey as a writer. When I was applying to grad school, I gave her short stories and she just decimated them. [Laughs.] She marked them up, she just basically tore them apart. She’ll tell you things straight and she will be very honest, but she’s usually right. So I’ve just been very grateful to have her as a mentor, and now being on this side of things, it’s been great to have her to check things with, because as a debut writer, you have to learn how to stand up for yourself.
