We chat with author Lauren James about Last Seen Online, which is a riveting YA thriller about fandom, fame, obsession and revenge.
Hi, Lauren! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a queer writer of science fiction and thrillers from the Midlands in the UK. I’ve been writing since I got a book deal in my last year of university. Originally I planned to just write for a ‘gap year’ and then get a real job, but I’ve been on the gap year for a decade now!
My sci-fi novel The Loneliest Girl in the Universe is being made into a movie with Amazon MGM, and I also work in the writer’s room for the TV show Heartstopper. These days, alongside writing I do a lot of volunteer activism work – I host a queer writers workshop series in my hometown and run a collective of climate fiction writers called the Climate Fiction Writers League.
All of my books tend to have a few themes in common: exploration of deep time; queer found families; unreliable narrators and lots of plot twists. My favourite hobby is to create loveable characters and then ruin their lives.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve always been a huge reader – I used to go to my local library as a kid and borrow as many books as possible on my library card, my mum’s, my dad’s and my brother’s. I think I was a bit infamous there, because I’d go in with this big Mary Poppins carpet bag and fifty books a week would disappear inside it. I ate my way through the entire childrens section and started writing my own stories when the library couldn’t meet my insatiable needs.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
Your latest novel, Last Seen Online, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Fame. Obsession. Revenge. Fandom. Hollywood.
What can readers expect?
An old TV show was cancelled abruptly when one of the stars was murdered by another. Now, a decade later, the convicted murderer’s godson is determined to prove his innocence. He recruits a girl at school, who’s obsessed with true crime podcasts, to help him solve the case. The only evidence they have is an old fandom blog that documented all of the actors movements at the time of the murder. If they can use that to prove his godfather is innocent, then he will be released from prison. But everyone involved has a lot of secrets and hidden motives – so it doesn’t go smoothly.
Where did the inspiration for Last Seen Online come from?
Back in 2018, my dad was in hospital for a triple heart bypass, and as a form of stress control I started writing this fake blog by a fangirl who was obsessed with a TV show. When I was a teenager, I read and reread The MsScribe Story, an essay published online about a huge drama that went down in early noughties Harry Potter fandom. I loved how many twists and turns there were, with catfishing and shifting allegiences and all sorts of fake accounts. You can’t even really trust the person writing the essay, because they have their own motives too. So I tried to do a short story in that format – a fan manifesto essay, with someone publishing these chapters about all the drama going down in their small, obsessive online community. Then in comments from the blog’s readers, people start disagreeing with the fan’s claims. It all spirals into this unreliable, delicious, chaotic insight into an internet subculture. And then there’s a murder, which makes it all even more fun.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved loved loved coming up with all the comments on the blog. They’re full of internet references, from the usernames of the commenters to the deep-cut fandom dramas they discuss. It was such a joy to pay homage to the Supernatural fandom (my pandemic obsession) and One Direction fandom, and Gaylor fandom, and a dozen others besides.
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced whilst writing and how you were able to overcome them?
It was the hardest book I’ve ever had to write, honestly. I didn’t make it easy for myself! I wrote the fan’s blog first, documenting the events of the murder, and then jumped to a decade into the future and wrote new chapters where someone else starts investigating the murder. There were all these layers of what the reader knew, what the fan knew, what the fan’s readers knew, what the actors knew, and what they all wanted people to believe had happened. I absolutely do not recommend writing a book about liars! It’s bad for your health!
What’s next for you?
Season 3 of Heartstopper is released on Netflix on October 3rd. A character I created, Jack Maddox, is being played by Jonathan Bailey this season. I have a short comic about Maddox in Volume 5 of Heartstopper, out in September, illustrated by Alice Oseman. It’s truly delightful.
I’m also got another novel in the works with Walker Books, probably coming out in 2026, and I’m working on my first adult novel too. The Loneliest Girl in the Universe movie is a few years off at the moment, but that’s also very exciting!
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I loved Moonbound by Robin Sloan – an interesting take on language model AIs gaining sentience and becoming obsessed with the kind of plot archetypes they were trained on. It’s a homage to Arthurian legends and the Green Knight, with bonus talking animals.
I’m really excited for Zen Cho’s first romance novel, The Friend Zone Experiment. I would describe it as Crazy Rich Asians meets Persuasion.
