Lauren Applebaum Has Entered the Chat
Debut Seattle author releases first novel of two-book deal
It’s often said that there is the technical and the creative, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But local author Lauren Appelbaum aims to show otherwise with the release of her debut novel Rachel Weiss’s Group Chat.
Appelbaum is a graduate of the University of Washington’s Informatics program, a technical editor in the Seattle tech industry, a mother of two, and a lifelong writer. Her book is the first of a two-book deal signed by Hachette Book Group, one of the “big five” publishers, stocking bookshelves across the country with a new author and story both based in Seattle.
Rachel Weiss’s Group Chat is a lot of things: It’s an epistolary novel told through a group chat of friends. A Seattlite’s loving take on Seattle. A tech worker’s prodding take on the tech industry. A millennial tale of romance and friendship. Oh, and it’s a modern retelling of Jane Austin’s Pride & Prejudice.
The story follows Rachel Weiss (no relation to English actor Rachel Weisz) and her friends as they turn 30 and navigate the pivotal changes that come with life, love, careers, and friendship at that age. Appelbaum describes it as a romantic comedy written for lovers of classic ’90s rom-coms like Bridget Jones’s Diary.
She penned the first draft in 2019, the same year that the book is set, and emphasized that unlike some of her more arduous previous projects, Rachel Weiss’s Group Chat was driven by a sense of fun — a key ingredient that may have helped her win over Hatchett.
“I was in a time of my life when I just wanted to entertain myself because I was feeling a bit hopeless about getting my previous book published, and I just needed something to cheer myself up. So I was really just having fun with it, and I think that that came through in the voice and the story, and it spoke to people, and I think that’s what did it,” she said.
The story’s setting in Seattle is not just wallpaper — there is a strong sense of place throughout with references to real locations and cultural oddities that Seattleites can connect with.
“I loved setting the book in Seattle! It’s an interesting city. Rachel gets into some shenanigans that could only happen in Seattle and on top of that she works in tech…I’ve always been a little bit of an outsider in the tech world — as a woman and as a creative person who’s really only here for the paycheck, it was really funny to write about it from Rachel’s perspective and to see how she struggles with finding her place in the tech scene.” — Appelbaum
If that’s too on the nose for you, the group also takes a trip out to Leavenworth to go river tubing. What could be more authentically Seattle-millennial than that?
Speaking about her book and her creative process, it’s hard to shake the sense that Lauren Appelbaum is anything other than the spitting image of a novelist, her interest stretching back into a bookwormish childhood and bedtime reading sessions with her parents:
“My parents would read me books when I was little and they would read the title and the author [so] I learned there was someone behind each of these books and I thought that was so cool…as an introverted shy kid it was the best thing ever for me to just disappear into a book and go off and have an adventure.”
There’s a semi-charmed quality to her good fortune, landing a two-book deal with one of the big five as a heretofore unpublished author. Rachel Weiss’s Group Chat made it through with minimal editing and a strong semblance to its original conception. Her second book is nearing completion and should be released next year — another romantic comedy, also set partly in Seattle, but also in Florida with more emphasis on family, loss, and coming out of one’s shell.
But that’s only what the public sees. Rachel Weiss’s Group Chat is Appelbaum’s fifth completed book, though the first she’d made an earnest attempt to get published. Her writing is for now still balanced with a full-time tech career (with increasing pressure to return to the office), as well as her family life — she and her husband celebrated their second child within the last year.
Getting published is the achievement of a lifelong dream for her, but to hear her tell it life goes on much the same, the years-long process often understated with small moments of celebration. But her advice to aspiring authors is to stick with it, find the joy in the journey, and to be open to growth along the way.
“If you find something creative that sparks joy, just try to get lost in it. Don’t be perfectionist about it. Just do it for the joy…And I think that part of the reason that I got to where I am now is because I was willing to take feedback. I was never precious about it. I never said, ‘No! I know what I’m doing!’ Because I knew that I didn’t really know what I was doing. So anytime an agent or a fellow writer or reader said anything helpful, I just filed that away and tried to learn from it.”
You might catch Appelbaum sipping an iced oat milk latte at Fresh Flours on Phinney Ridge, typing away on her Macbook while working on her latest project.
Originally published in The Evergreen Echo at https://theevergreenecho.org/echo/weissgroupchat
