Lauren Thoman to Participate in the Kentucky Book Festival with “I’ll Stop the World”

August 18, 2023

What will Kentucky Book Festival visitors find on your table?

I’LL STOP THE WORLD is my debut novel, about a modern teen who finds himself inexplicably whisked back to the year 1985, one week before the mysterious deaths of his grandparents. There, he teams up with an ‘80s teen to attempt to solve and prevent their deaths, hoping that maybe by fixing the past, it will return him to his life in the future.

Whom do you invite to stop by? Who will benefit from reading your book?

I’LL STOP THE WORLD is a multi-point-of-view coming-of-age with narrators ranging in age from 12 to adults, although the majority of them are teens. So I like to say it’s for anyone who either is a teen or remembers being a teen, anyone that can still relate to that period of life when everything felt intense and high-stakes, and anyone who knows what it’s like to look back at your life and wonder where you’d be today if you’d made different choices.

Could you please tell us something curious about you and/or your book?

I’LL STOP THE WORLD is my debut, but it’s not the first book I’ve written; I actually worked on it off-and-on for eight years, in between other projects, before I finally finished it. Because it took so long to write, I actually went through several different time periods before landing on 1985 in order to make the generational math work. In the earliest drafts, my modern teen was traveling to 1968 and going to fight in the Vietnam War alongside his grandfather, which would have been a very different book!

Is this your first time participating in Kentucky Book Festival? If yes – what are you looking forward to the most? If you’ve participated before – what was your favorite experience at the Festival?

Yes, it’s my first time, and I’m excited to participate! I’m looking forward to meeting readers and interacting with authors and discovering new books. I hope I get to participate in a panel, because those are always my favorite part of any book festival. I almost always leave interested in a book that wasn’t even on my radar beforehand.

Lauren Thoman lives outside of Nashville, TN, with her husband, two children, and a rotating number of dogs and fish. I’ll Stop the World is a mystery thriller, where the end and the beginning become one in a coming-of-age story about the power of friendship, fate, and inexplicable second chances.