Ask the Author: Hallie Ephron
Answered Questions (6)
Hallie Ephron
Hold your nose and write.
Hallie Ephron
Seriously? Meeting readers and writers. I love it. Widening horizons.
Hallie Ephron
Sit at the computer. Set the timer. Turn off the Internet. WRITE!
Hallie Ephron
I just read an advance copy of Deborah Crombie's A BITTER FEAST - stayed up reading and woke up the next morning hungry.
Hallie Ephron
Unsub - Lisa Gardiner
The Girl Before - JP Delaney
Duplicity - Ingrid Thoft
The Nowhere Man - Greg Hurwitz
Under the Knife - Kelly Parsons
He Said/She Said - Erin Kelly
Never Let You Go - Chevy Stevens
The Evening Spider - Emily Arsenault
The Whole Art of Detection - Lyndsey Faye
Conviction - Julia Dahl
Burntown - Jennifer McMahon
The Lies We Tell - Theresa Schwegel
The Girl Before - JP Delaney
Duplicity - Ingrid Thoft
The Nowhere Man - Greg Hurwitz
Under the Knife - Kelly Parsons
He Said/She Said - Erin Kelly
Never Let You Go - Chevy Stevens
The Evening Spider - Emily Arsenault
The Whole Art of Detection - Lyndsey Faye
Conviction - Julia Dahl
Burntown - Jennifer McMahon
The Lies We Tell - Theresa Schwegel
Hallie Ephron
The idea that spakred NIGHT NIGHT, SLEEP TIGHT -- Hallie Epron
I was ten years old, growing up in Beverly Hills the daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, when the news broke that Lana Turner's fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane confessed to murdering her mother's gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. Like the rest of the world, I was riveted by the story of the murder, by the hearing that followed, and pored over the pictures and articles that ran in the newspapers.
The house where it happened was a few blocks away from where we lived. I'd bike over and just stand on the sidewalk out front, staring up at the bedroom window where I thought the murder had occurred. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be that girl at the center of the scandal, the focus of paparazzi and the subject of all the gossip and speculation. I tried to imagine the kind of courage it must have taken for Cheryl -- I thought of her as someone I might have been friends with -- to do what she did and then to face the consequences.
In Night Night, Sleep Tight, I create an fictional set of characters in a situation that echoes that 1958 murder. I create glamorous Hollywood leading lady Elenor "Bunny" Nichol, her Argentine boyfriend Antonio "Tito" Acevedo, her daughter Joelen Nichol. Deirdre Unger, Joelen's best friend who was sleeping over at the house the night of the murder, is based on me.
Much of the novel and the character of Deirdre spring from my own experience growing up in Beverly Hills in the shadow of so much money and celebrity. And part of the novel is a murder mystery, one that is entirely fictional but inspired by an infamous scandal. Both of these threads weave together in a tale of love and betrayal, of celebrity and its consequences, set in the glamorous world of Beverly Hills.
I was ten years old, growing up in Beverly Hills the daughter of Hollywood screenwriters, when the news broke that Lana Turner's fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl Crane confessed to murdering her mother's gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. Like the rest of the world, I was riveted by the story of the murder, by the hearing that followed, and pored over the pictures and articles that ran in the newspapers.
The house where it happened was a few blocks away from where we lived. I'd bike over and just stand on the sidewalk out front, staring up at the bedroom window where I thought the murder had occurred. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be that girl at the center of the scandal, the focus of paparazzi and the subject of all the gossip and speculation. I tried to imagine the kind of courage it must have taken for Cheryl -- I thought of her as someone I might have been friends with -- to do what she did and then to face the consequences.
In Night Night, Sleep Tight, I create an fictional set of characters in a situation that echoes that 1958 murder. I create glamorous Hollywood leading lady Elenor "Bunny" Nichol, her Argentine boyfriend Antonio "Tito" Acevedo, her daughter Joelen Nichol. Deirdre Unger, Joelen's best friend who was sleeping over at the house the night of the murder, is based on me.
Much of the novel and the character of Deirdre spring from my own experience growing up in Beverly Hills in the shadow of so much money and celebrity. And part of the novel is a murder mystery, one that is entirely fictional but inspired by an infamous scandal. Both of these threads weave together in a tale of love and betrayal, of celebrity and its consequences, set in the glamorous world of Beverly Hills.
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