Q & A With Jo Piazza, Author of EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU
NS: EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU is a murder mystery involving tradwives. In your journalist days, you covered gossip and politics and landed as a podcaster (Under the Influence) known for your expertise on momfluencers and tradwives. How did you get into the tradwife internet sensation and what inspired you to write a murder mystery about it?
JP: I always joke that I didn’t find the tradwives the tradwives found me, or at least the algorithms brought them to me. I’ve spent the past few years waist-deep in the murky waters of momfluencer culture and I watched the rise of the tradwives start about two years ago. The deeper I dug, the more I realized that the tradwife aesthetic isn’t just vintage aprons and sourdough starters—it’s a political costume. It’s Stepford cosplay with a dark underbelly. I thought, what if we took that perfectly curated world and cracked it open to expose what’s underneath. Then let’s add a gruesome murder and let the fun begin.
NS: You said in your Substack, “My mantra while writing this was ‘make it weirder,’” how did you come up with all the weird things/shenanigans in the book? Was there any point where you thought to yourself, “this is weird enough?”
JP: I never think it’s weird enough. But honestly, I’ve spent so long watching influencer stories at 3 a.m. that the line between satire and real life is so blurry.
Also, as I was writing, things that I thought were satirical became reality. At one point I decided to include an AI generated baby that an influencer made to boost her engagement and a few months later I heard about someone doing that in real life.
NS: You also wrote a thriller novel last year named THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE. While they’re both thrillers and share dual POV, they’re on completely different topics. Was the process writing EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU the same as writing THE SICILIAN INHERITANCE? How did it differ?
JP: Sicilian Inheritance was rooted in history, family secrets, and ancestral trauma which meant a lot of research and slightly less murder. With Everyone is Lying to You, I got to be fully unhinged. The process was faster, funnier, and a little messier. I knew that Everyone is Lying to You had to be written and published very quickly given the subject matter and political significance so I wrote it in a fever dream of about three months last summer and we did a wildly quick publishing turnaround.
NS: The excerpt of EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU on Bustle had me dying because it read just like what a BTS of a tradwife video would be like. As it gets serious at the end of the excerpt, how did you tackle balancing writing a thriller and a dark comedy?
JP: I love that sweet spot of laughing until you are actually horrified. The thing is, these women are both caricatures and real. They’re selling a fantasy that’s dangerous because it’s so seductive. So I wanted the humor to lure you in, lull you into submission, make you comfortable, and then snap cut to blood on the prairie dress. It’s like if Gone Girl were written by the ghost of Nora Ephron after binging Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm content.
NS: As someone who covers social media on your podcast, specifically momfluencers, what research did you do for this book?
JP: I’ve been collecting these characters for years in my research. I’ve interviewed hundreds of influencers, attending a dozen influencing conferences. I’m essentially a social anthropologist of the influencer world at this point.
NS: After your “bring your own pie potluck and dress as your fav tradwife costume” book tour, what’s next for you?
JP: I want to sleep for about a year, but I have three kids under eight so that’s never gonna happen. We are going straight to the Catskills for a few weeks after book tour and I just turned in my next novel The Lost Masterpiece which is a feminist art heist in the present timeline and the untold story of Jo van Gogh in the past. I’ll probably be editing that come August, but I also just submitted three more book ideas to my editor so we need to see which of those is gonna pan out. One of them is a murder for hire plot set at a fancy dude ranch in Wyoming based on a real story I heard while vacationing at a ranch out there years ago and I’d love to get started on that one.
Discover the Book
Fifteen years later, Bex is now Rebecca Sommers, a “traditional” Instagram influencer with millions of followers who salivate over her perfect life on her ranch with her five children and handsome husband, Gray. Lizzie is a struggling magazine writer, watching reels while her young children demand her attention.
One night out of the blue, Bex calls Lizzie with a career-making proposition–an exclusive interview with her about her multimillion-dollar business venture and an invitation to MomBomb, the high-profile influencing conference.
At the conference, Bex goes missing and Gray is found brutally murdered on their ranch. Lizzie finds herself plunged into the dark side of the cutthroat world of social media that includes jealousy, sordid affairs, swingers, and backstabbing. She must learn who her old friend has become and who she has double-crossed to try to find her, clear her name, and maybe even save her life.
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