Emilya Naymark Looks 'Behind the Lie'

Artist, illustrator, web designer and now author, Emilya Naymark, sits with us to discuss the second novel in her Sylvan series, Behind the Lie. The series centers around Laney Bird, a former NYPD cop turned PI, who had worked a Russian racketeering case gone wrong. From there, a sequence of unfortunate events occur with her finally fleeing the city and moving to upstate New York, where she is in the process of finding herself while also trying to protect her teenage son, Alfie. In the second book, Behind the Lie, “She is coming to herself a little more, she’s trying to trust people, she’s trying to be part of a community, part of a society… it begins with a gigantic block party… you get 600 people on the block and it kind of lends itself perhaps to not very good things happening. Within the first few pages, you have a fire, a man drives a truck into his own house, destroying it, and someone is shot, and two people disappear, and that happens within 15 minutes of the book beginning.” Amidst the chaos, Laney has to figure out what is happening whilst keeping her family together. The story is also about Laney’s friend, Holly, a character that has a seemingly perfect life, but goes missing. With Holly, Naymark explores the pressures women feel to be perfect at everything, at the same time being a good wife and mother. In the story, readers see Holly starting to unravel and lose control, trying to be everything to everyone. Naymark added, “There’s just no way that she can be this perfect without having to pay for it somehow,” and it’s that idea that forms the premise for this second book.

Naymark also discussed being born in Moscow before the fall of the Soviet Union, her thoughts on the financial crisis some middle class families are facing today, and the art of reading Russian fortune-telling cards, called Cartomancy. Her advice for aspiring writers trying to get their first book published is to be persistent. “If writing is what makes you happy, write. Write the best thing that you can, and I would say, write because you love writing, that’s really the only advice.”