Facts about Landry in Like

The scene where Landry and Peyton are too intimidated to go into the restroom at the teen dance club happened to me, but when I was older and in college. My friend and I were at a club in downtown Flint called The Metro. She opened the bathroom door and all these older girls gave us the once over. She shut the door and we scurried back to our table.

I have a lot of bookish readers, so the bookstore scene where Landry goes wild checking out the new classic covers and all the books and accessories was in honor of them.

I wrote the scene where Landry’s backstage at the modeling shoot getting maced with hair spray and stabbed with hair pins because I really hated going through that for modeling photo shoots. I did get maced in the face before and was freaking out I would go blind from hairspray. I still hate hairspray and the smell of it due to that.

The Skylar Halston computer games the girls are obsessed with are like the Nancy Drew games I used to play—who am I kidding? I still play them. I imagine Skylar as being as sort of a CIA agent type who solves mysteries. Landry and her friends have grown up with this series and are still obsessed with it like I was with book series like: Sweet Valley High, Nancy Drew, etc.

The sleepy puppy pants are based on my sister’s sleepy sheep pants that had little cartoon sheep in sleep caps drinking tea. I called them her “sheepy” pants. She wore them in her college dorm and everyone stared at her and she was so embarrassed she never wore them again…which is how I inherited them. Landry’s embarrassment over them is based on my sister’s.

Landry’s grandma is slightly based on my own. My grandma and I had the same mannerisms and it wasn’t until someone pointed it out that I realized how much alike we were right down to the way we stand. Landry’s middle name is Lilyanne, which is a mix of my grandmother’s and mother’s names.

People always ask if I ever ran into a Yasmin McCarty type in my life. Yup, there were a few times when I was in high school where I had mean girls who would talk about me and cause trouble for me with guys. I knew how uncomfortable Landry felt when having to be around Yasmin in school when writing those scenes.

I wrote about Landry going on talk shows because I did some shows last year. The line where Ashanti tells her to take a cough drop just in case Landry throws up from nerves, came from a friend who joked about Landry’s nervous stomach getting the better of her in book one and she told me to take cough drops. I did and posted a pic of the cough drops on Instagram.

Landry’s hair gets messed up right before she goes on live TV and the same thing happened to me. We both rounded a corner and hit wind tunnel-like winds. It was not cute.

I’ve had people say you can hear my mom and me talking in the scenes where Landry and her mom have conversations. I think there’s also a lot of influence from professors I’ve had in the Mrs. Albright character. You can also hear my dad in the Mr. Albright scenes.

I cried when I wrote the scene where Landry’s grandma makes Ashanti’s grandmother’s macaroni and cheese. When Ashanti cries—oh that got me every single time I read it during the editing process.

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