Fame, Love and Early 2000s Nostagia: Laura Hankin discusses her new novel, ‘The Daydreams.’

Photo Credit: Katie Tamaro

The following interview contains minor spoilers for The Daydreams.

Laura Hankin and I are not at The Dime. It’s not because we wouldn’t be cool enough. It’s because it’s 10 AM on a Monday and it’s also 2023. Eighteen years ago, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, and other notable names of the early 2000s were constantly photographed outside the dive bar doors. Making the location, or rather Cofax Coffee located next door, the perfect place for us to discuss her latest book, The Daydreams. 

Shelved in the ever-growing section of fictionalized history, Laura’s third novel tells the story of four millennial teenagers who are cast in a family-friendly network drama in 2004. The show’s two-season run was marked by rabid fans, catchy musical numbers, and countless ‘Which character are you?’ magazine quizzes. But by 2018 what The Daydreams is mostly remembered for is its disastrous finale. It’s been thirteen years since Kat–now a lawyer in Washington, DC, Liana–the influencer wife of a famous athlete, Noah–the golden boy who achieved more than a modicum of industry success, and Summer–the dubious cautionary tale have seen each other. However, when a reunion special brings the respective mean girl, best friend, and star-crossed lovers together again, only time will tell if the secrets that ruined them at the turn of the century will once more drive them apart or if the live taping will be the second chance they all need, if not deserve. A theater kid herself, Hankin’s twist-filled drama places readers at the center of the action and on the edge of their seats. It forces them to peruse pages they’ve already read and leaves its audience with both a superficial and introspective understanding of a time when celebrity was beginning to mean something other than merely famous.               

While on her book tour in Los Angeles, Laura chatted with The FMC about all things The Daydreams, her love for the early 2000s, the growth of her creative process, and more.

Congratulations on The Daydreams! It is fantastic. I started it waiting for my plane to take off in Indiana and finished it during the taxi to my gate in Los Angeles. So many things happen. I was flipping back and forth between the timelines. I think the guy next to me was concerned.

[laughter] That’s great to hear. It’s my dream that people want to go back and reread certain sections as they get further into the story.

Where did this particular idea come from? 

I got really into the early 2000s pop culture and that general nostalgia over the past few years. It's really come back. Everyone's been obsessed with it. With the resurgence, we as a culture have started to realize a lot of the young women who were center stage at the time have struggled in the years since. So, I was wrestling internally with how I can enjoy this music, these movies, and TV shows while knowing the damage they ultimately inflicted on some of the people in them. The next level to it is how we treat these women today. Some of them are trying to make a comeback, some of them are finally able to write their own stories down, and some of them are still really struggling. I wanted to write a book that grappled with all of that in a very juicy, fun, and entertaining way.

Ultimately, The Daydreams is about owning your past and moving forward. Did you ever consider any other settings besides the 2000s? Because I know sometimes the decade itself, and the beliefs held during it, can almost be a plot device.

It was always the early 2000s for me. That's when I was a preteen and teenager. So that's when pop culture made the strongest impression on me. When you're a preteen and teen, celebrities matter to you the way that they never have before and maybe they won't ever again. You're having all of these awakenings and these feelings and experiencing passion for the first time. It’s all connected to your favorite media. I still think about certain celebrities a lot. Plus, the early 2000s was such a weird, fascinating moment in time. We were getting the early internet, but there wasn’t social media. Suddenly we had more access to pop culture than ever before. We didn't have to wait for the weekly magazines. We could just go on Perez Hilton, another gossip blog, or even make our shitty fan pages. But, we weren’t pulled in a million different directions in the way that we are now.

Everything was funneled into a few specific places.

Yeah. Exactly.

More than one person, including yourself, has compared The Daydreams to Daisy Jones & The Six. One of my favorite things about Daisy is the unreliable narrator aspect. You never get a stone-cold version of the truth. The Daydreams does not pivot between POVs quite as much. But, do you believe some characters' versions of events are more accurate than others, or should what's eventually revealed in full on the page be considered the truth?

 Oh, that’s good. I believe what is ultimately revealed is the truth. Everybody has only been seeing their version of the truth up until that point. When everyone's versions of events come together, it makes a cohesive story. I don't get the sense that Kat or any of the other characters are still withholding information at the end. Part of the book, for me, is them going on this journey of accepting what happened back then and accepting the role that they played in it, while also acknowledging that that doesn't have to mark them or make them a bad person forever.

There's room for growth.

Exactly. You could probably ask anybody who was on the set at that time their version of the truth and see how they’ve changed, even Mr. Atlas. I mean, he's not a good guy. But maybe even he wants to make amends. Kat has that moment at the end where she's like, “I hope that maybe some of that loathing he projected onto Summer was also for himself as he regretted his role in the eventual outcome.

Why did you choose Katherine to be the main character and not Summer? Did you consider any other perspectives before you sat down to write the story?

Very briefly, I considered a book that moved back and forth more equally between all four of the main characters. But because so much of the tension stems from what really happened and everybody's ulterior motives, I decided that it made more sense to stick with one narrator because otherwise, everything would be revealed way too quickly, or you would have that annoying thing where everybody in their chapters was like, “the secret that I can't think about.” [laughter] Kat does that a little bit, but not too much.

Just enough to reel you in.

When it came to picking the narrator, I liked the idea of going with Kat because she's the best audience surrogate. She's left show business and is trying to have a normal life. So, coming back for the reunion, she's the most disoriented. I worried that if Summer was the main narrator because she’s the girl that everyone is obsessed with and fascinated by, the other characters wouldn’t feel like they mattered, and it would just be Summer’s story. I wanted them all to matter because like the show affected them all.

You avoided one of the things that causes tension between the cast in the novel.

We're all so curious about and fascinated by what was going on with these women who were at the center of the spotlight. With Kat as the narrator, she could channel that feeling we all have of “Oh, my God, what happened to this person? Did I play a role in achieving this outcome?” One of the questions in the book for readers is, “How are we complicit in bringing these people down and tearing them apart?” Kat is very complicit. Plus, I felt like having Kat narrate separated the novel from the memoirs that we are now starting to get.

I can see that. You didn’t want the book to be a fictionalized autobiography.

Yeah. That wasn’t my goal.

Speaking of the story itself, because of the complete rollercoaster this book was–what was your creative process? Did you outline, notecard, plot board, etc? Did you do anything different for this novel you had not done for your others? 

With every book I write, I outline more and more before I dive into the actual writing. Usually, once I have the idea, I'll spend a few weeks walking around daydreaming about it, brainstorming, writing down slightly incoherent notes in a Word document, really considering all the different possibilities of what it could be, and then, slowly, over those weeks, the worst options start to fall away. I start from there. Once I know one thing, I move on to the next. For The Daydreams, I had a three to five-page summary of the overall plot and the major twists before I really started writing. I’ve always liked the idea of being a notecard writer who can shuffle things, but I'm too lazy.

[laughter] Was there a part in the story that was either hardest to come up with, you’re proudest of, or you didn’t expect but suddenly was on the page? 

I'm very proud of the soliloquies: the moments when the POV changes and readers suddenly get other characters' versions of events, I'd always known I wanted to find out what the other people had been thinking and going through at the time, but I didn't know what form that was going to take. In the first draft, it was Kat narrating what other characters were telling her. So, you would get Summer’s version of events, but in the third person. It added this extra layer of distance. My editor suggested trying to write those sections in the first person, so I did in the second draft. It became apparent very quickly that that was the right way to do it. Plus, it was much more fun to write in the different voices. When I showed that draft to my writers’ group, they were like, “These are great, but they break the form. There’s not an explanation for why they do that.” So then, at some point in the next revision, I was like,” Oh, I'll call them soliloquies.”

Is that when you made those parts of the show in the book?

Yes! I was like, “Oh, if we can establish in the show that they would  occasionally break the form of reality and let the characters express their truest feelings in song, then I can get away with it.” So I’m very proud of those.

Adding an additional musical element to the show in that way feels very 2000s.

I was thinking about High School Musical. So many of the songs are channeled through karaoke or auditions, but then you have Gabriella singing her innermost thoughts as she meanders down a hallway.

Or Troy in “Getcha Head In The Game.

Yes!

We obviously have to talk more about the early 2000s. The Daydreams is full of easter eggs and references to the era. Once you knew that was your setting, did you have a list of things you wanted to include?

Not really. It was much more fre-flowing. I’d be writing the fanfiction section and think, “Okay, now I need to come up with names for the commenters. What about a little nod to Avril Lavigne?” I never sat down with a bunch of references I knew I wanted to include. I do think at a certain point, I had to take a step back and make sure I’d hit all the cultural points of the era. I remember at one point realizing I hadn’t included anything about TRL, which was a must. The AIM sequence came later than it should have. I wanted to include references to the bigger cultural moments, but there weren’t any specific celebrities or anything like that.

If you had to put yourself in the book, where would you fit in? I definitely would probably have been a semi-rabid fan of The Daydreams.

[laughter] I probably would have been one of those rabid fans as well. Seeing one of them in Walmart or something. Although, I was a huge theater nerd. I don’t know if  you remember from the time, but there would be ads on the radio like, “Kids come to the–”

Mall! Yes!

Yes! I never actually went because I was always too busy with play practice and homework, but there's also a world where I did do one of those open calls and somehow it magically lands me a supporting role.

I loved that Kat went with her cousin. She didn't care openly about the casting at all.

At the time, there was this whole narrative that you could become famous without having to try very hard with reality TV or The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

Totally. Do you know what blows my mind about The Lizzie McGuire movie? It's eighth-grade graduation. In my brain, it was high school graduation.

Right? When you think about it, a 13 or 14-year-old girl galavanting around Italy, with a 17-year-old pop star doesn’t seem safe. [laughter] I recently rewatched it. There's a movie that doesn't quite make sense. 

To piggyback off that–since this is The Female Main Character, what classic archetype do you most identify with? 

Oh my god. The bookish one. When I was little, I related to Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I’m a dreamer, but I am also very bookish.

Because I am an audiobook girlie, and I listened to The Daydreams, I noticed you were the narrator. What is that experience like? 

Oh, so fun. I love narrating audiobooks. I always knew I would love to throw my hat in the ring to narrate my audiobooks. And when Happy & You Know It was coming out, I asked if I could be considered to narrate. They made me audition, which makes sense. I think a lot of authors want to narrate their audiobooks, but it's hard. It’s many days of reading into a microphone, and having to do different characters and tones and things like that. Because I had a theater background and had tried to be an actress for a little while, They were like, “Oh, okay. You're allowed to read this.” But they were going to give me a really hands-on director and plenty of time. They wanted to make sure it was a good learning experience. We were going to record it in early April of  2020 in New York.

Oh no.

In the middle of March, I got a panicked email asking if I could come into the studio tomorrow and just read until I couldn’t read anymore. The director hadn’t even had time to read the book beforehand. But they wanted to see if we could get it done before the city shut down. It was a very fun, but also very stressful, experience. The Daydreams is the third audiobook that I've read. I feel like I've gotten the hang of it now. I know what to expect. I understand how to differentiate between characters a little bit more. But, the really special thing about The Daydreams audiobook was that I got a full cast. Everyone involved is so talented. I listened to it–not really my parts of it– and it was so great to hear it come to life.

Do you ever get sick of your writing?

Occasionally, I'll have a moment of being like, “Oh, why did I write this?”

That would be me. I don’t think I would ever stop editing. 

It’s easier when a director is making sure you read what’s written.

[laughter] I know you can’t talk much about your next book. Plus, this one is brand new to readers, so I’ll give it some time to shine, but, as you mentioned at your The Ripped Bodice event, you are already in revisions, so what is the typical timeline for an author with a multi-book deal? 

Publishing moves pretty slowly. Because there's so much to do once a final draft is turned in. The book is combed for grammatical errors and typeset all beautifully and all kinds of other stuff. People need to get excited about it, and blurbs have to come in. The cover has to be designed. There are a million other things that happen after you are “done.” Oftentimes, it's at least a year, if not more, between when an author turns in their final draft and when the novel comes out. I finished my last substantial revision on The Daydreams in February of last year. Obviously, it's now May 2023. I would have had to work on something new, or else I would not have enough money. Not to mention, I would be going out of my mind. A lot of authors, especially others who are on a book a year or every two years schedule, will be finishing up their latest manuscript as a book is coming out, which creates a strange dissonance in your mind. 

That's what I was going to ask. 

For instance, I had a revision of the new book due April 30, and then this one came out May 2. I will go ahead and say that the last two weeks of April were not a fun time. [laughter]

They don't sound like it. That's crazy. I want to close, as if we were closing The Daydreams, and talk for a second about the gorgeous cover. The cover reveal was what sold me, to be honest. I didn’t think of this until last night–do you think the girl is Summer or Kat?

I’m hesitant to say who I think it is because I want people to interpret it in whatever way they would like.

I can’t decide. It could be either, which I think makes it even cooler. Rarely do I register that there's a guy with her.

He's not important.

No, he's not. [laughter]