Q&A: Lauren Schott, Author of ‘Very Slowly All at Once’

We chat with author Lauren Schott about Very Slowly All at Once, which follows a couple whose financial problems are seemingly answered when they begin receiving growing sums of money from an unknown source . . . a windfall that will carry an unthinkable price.

Hi, Lauren! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hi! I’m a native Ohioan, and I now live in England with my family. I’ve been working on my own stories and those of other writers for decades—I’ve worked in publishing pretty much since I graduated college, and wrote my first “novel” in the fourth grade.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

My dad used to tell me stories at bedtime, and that’s really what started it. Some of them he would make up, but a lot were about his own childhood and he was kind of a live wire so they were always captivating. (He once jumped on that back of a moving ice cream truck, broke an ankle jumping off a roof, and when he was about five he accidentally burned down a garage… let’s just say that he had a lot of good material to work with!) He also read to me, and then later he left books lying around that maybe he shouldn’t have. I read Pet Sematary way too young and didn’t sleep for about ten years, but it was worth it.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Home For a Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
• The one that made you want to become an author: The Real Diary of a Real Boy by Henry Shute
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: That’s hard, there are so many. Right now it’s Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Your debut novel, Very Slowly All at Once, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Nothing in life comes free

What can readers expect?

It’s a twisty look at a couple under extreme pressure. My characters Mack and Hailey have almost made it, but they’re overextended financially and caught up in all kinds of personal drama, so when they get unexpected checks in the mail from a company they’ve never heard of, they are desperate and distracted. They don’t see the danger coming until it’s too late.

Where did the inspiration for Very Slowly All at Once come from?

It was a little bit wish fulfillment—wouldn’t it be nice to get unexpected payments instead of unexpected bills!—but also an exploration of that terrible feeling you get when you’re not quite living within your means. It’s that fear that if you get yourself in a vulnerable position and something goes wrong, there’s no one there to catch you… no one with good intentions anyway!

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

There’s a sinister first-person voice in there that I loved tapping into, and also the rare tender moments between my couple—though there aren’t many!

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

I’m a freelance editor, and my biggest challenge is not to keep editing the beginning of a novel and thus never write to the end. I do this even the ideas phase, mulling things over for months and even years, but then once I get going and push past the opening chapters the novel comes out sort of complete. I hear about writers who throw away whole drafts, but so far I don’t work like that.

This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?

Sort of long and round-about! I’ve always loved books, and I’ve worked in publishing in one form or another for 25 years. I was a magazine editor, a literary agent, and now I’m a freelance fiction editor. Very Slowly is my adult debut, but I’ve written for children too; I published an early reader series about ten years ago. I’ve always been obsessed with storytelling, and apparently I’d always intended to write novels for adults–my college roommate just got in touch on Instagram and pointed out to me that I told her in 1995 that I wanted to write a novel someday; it only took me 30 years!

What’s next for you?

I’m working on a new novel, about a woman who discovers that the mother-in-law who destroyed her life and her marriage was in fact a serial killer…

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?

I’m really looking forward to Room 706 by Ellie Levenson and Malcolm Kempt’s A Gift Before Dying. Both are fellow debuts publishing this month!

Will you be picking up Very Slowly All at Once? Tell us in the comments below!