The Owls Are Not What They Seem... and the Answers Are Not Ours to Have

As I doom-scroll and panic about the state of the world, and send my love to friends in Los Angeles, and wake up most nights at 4am wondering what's about to happen, I want to make it clear that I haven't forgotten about this newsletter. My free public post is meant to go out on the full moon, but unfortunately I was having a health issue and had to delay. Now the moon is waning and I'm fogged in the head from antibiotics, but I'm here thinking about David Lynch, who we lost this week, and it changed my plan for this month's post.

If you're here only for book news, check the bottom of this post!

But if you have a moment, pretend the sky isn't falling and stay with me awhile?

David Lynch gifted me with something so valuable. It was the permission to not offer easy answers. It was the beauty and power of ambiguity, which I believe is all the more essential in the confounding present we're living in today.

"Like a magician declining to explain his tricks, Mr. Lynch refused to discuss the meaning of his films. "I like things that leave some room to dream," he told the New York Times in 1995. "A lot of mysteries are sewn up at the end, and that kills the dream." (from The Washington Post obituary Jan. 16, 2025)

My first introduction to David Lynch was Fire Walk with Me. I was in college, back in wooded Woodstock on break, and I’d taken a boyfriend home with me. We slept in the living room behind a curtain my mother hung to keep our futon separate from the dining area, since I no longer had a room in the house. He’s now much more than my boyfriend, but at the time we were still getting to know each other, and since I was an aspiring writer and he was an aspiring filmmaker one way we did this was through sharing the books and movies we both loved.

One night, my boyfriend discovered that I had never seen Twin Peaks—for years of my young life we didn't have television and I grew up simply not watching it. He knew me enough in those early days to understand that I'd love the show, and the greater work of David Lynch (who was and still is his favorite director), but more, that I needed to see it. And so we went on an urgent mission to the local video store minutes before they closed for the night. TV episodes from the series weren't released in a box set yet—that's how long ago this was—but there, on a shelf at Woodstock Video, we found a VHS copy of the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Technically, Fire Walk with Me is meant to be watched only after you see both seasons of the show... But as you may know it's, in fact, a prequel. In the movie, Laura Palmer—the body found wrapped in plastic at the start of the series—is still very much alive and we learn some of her secrets.

Alone that night after my family had gone to sleep, we screened this movie, and my mind stretched into new directions I'd never before known it to travel. I was floored. Unnerved. Traumatized. Confounded. Thrilled.

And in the end, transformed.

In my post last month, I spoke about how Twin Peaks was a great influence on my novel Imaginary Girls. But there's more.

David Lynch also feels intertwined in our personal love story. In fact, when my boyfriend saw me walking past his dorm common room—his first glimpse of me, though I'd definitely noticed him before—he remembers that my hair was cut like the movie version of Donna's from Fire Walk with Me and I wore the same shade of lipstick. We talked for the first time that night, and the rest is history. Twin Peaks (before I even knew what it was) connected us even then.

In the same way, I remember significant moments of our relationship in connection to the David Lynch movies we'd come to see together. I'd witness the ways Lynch's influence impressed on my boyfriend's short films just as I was absorbing that same influence into my short stories. And there are particular personal memories, such as the way we floated home after getting our minds blown by Lost Highway at the Little Art Theater, how we see it before our eyes every time we drive at night. Like how, when we first visited Los Angeles together, we drove through the Hollywood Hills until we found David Lynch's house and paused at the driveway. My boyfriend wanted to ring the buzzer and say "Dick Laurent is dead" into the intercom and then drive away, but out of respect we restrained ourselves. Like watching Inland Empire together in the dark theater in our old neighborhood that we miss very much, holding his hand, and more I can't share.

Losing David Lynch—and having it happen before he was able to make his next work, which we fans hoped and hoped would be Wisteria—is a personal heartbreak. But there's so much his art gave me as a writer, and that's what I find myself thinking about today, as we face this precarious, confounding moment.

In most every work by David Lynch, there was inevitably much I didn't understand and elements left unexplained. That spoke to me. Not-knowing and never-being-told has always made a perfect kind of sense to me. That was my childhood. So many mysteries of the universe are beyond our ability to fathom, and it's up to us to interpret and see patterns and unearth meaning. What I loved most about Fire Walk with Me, for example, and about Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive and more, is how they fueled hours upon hours of conversations filled with symbols, and breadcrumbs, and interpretations and pieced-together meanings. I never got all the answers. And why should we? Our search is the whole point.

What David Lynch gave me as a writer is something I believe is important for those of us who create and consume art—and something I think a lot of people are lacking. It's the tolerance, the appreciation, for ambiguity. It's welcoming a story that leaves much open to interpretation. Many readers cannot abide by this. (Believe me, I know because I've been told to my face in regard to my own books, sometimes kindly and sometimes not.) I just don't understand this, and I honestly never will.

One of the most trying, and horribly vivid, experiences of my author life was a large event in which, one by one, young readers came to the microphone asking me questions about what different parts of my book meant. In that moment on stage, under pressure, my face growing hot, wanting to please them, I chose to answer. I've regretted it forever after. My answers are only one possibility, and hearing them aloud from my mouth effectively closed up every beautiful interpretation carried by some of my most passionate and imaginative readers who happened to be in that room. I did them all a disservice. I should have let them wonder and keep imagining for themselves.

Since that event, I vowed to never explain what certain elements of my books mean, or what happens at the end of the story, etc., etc., ever again.

As it has long stated in the FAQ on my author website:

I’ve read one of your books and I’d like to know if my interpretation is right. Will you tell me?
No.

So you won’t tell me what happens at the end of The Walls Around Us?
What do you think happens?
There’s your answer.

I learned that from David Lynch.

For me, so much of the magic of experiencing a story as a reader or a viewer exists in the gaps and in what's left unspoken. I want to imagine and fill in the pieces myself. I don't want to have the info dump or the monster showing up on the screen or the closed ending suddenly appearing tied up too tight in a neat little bow. I don't want you to tell me what you mean. I want to puzzle it out for myself. Even if it scares me. Even and especially then.

All I know is the mark of David Lynch—and especially the permission he gave artists to embrace being strange, to be open-ended, to not sit down and explain ourselves—touches every word I write.

RIP, David. Thank you for leaving us with so much room to dream.

Book News

What's happening with Wake the Wild Creatures?

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A cover reveal is coming!

My new book is coming out on May 6! And for all this time I've been talking about it, there's been no cover. But guess what? We have a final cover now. The timing is less than ideal because of a certain event happening on Monday, but I'll be sharing the cover next week. Since the cover is imminently about to be released to online retailers, I've been asked to make a cover reveal post online. Look for that on my social media on Tuesday (you can find me, for now, as @novaren on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads and as @novarensuma on Bluesky because someone took my username there). I will also send out a special COVER REVEAL edition of this newsletter likely on Tuesday, too!

Events are in the works!

I had a meeting with my publicist this week, which was extra-exciting. One of the things we discussed were the events we'll be scheduling in May. We're talking possible bookstores and conversation partners! I'll share dates and places as soon as I have them, but you can also always keep an eye on my Appearances page. I hope I'll get to see some of you in person in May!

And if you have ideas for events, or opportunities for me to travel and teach a workshop and share my book while I'm there, contact me! I especially like to do events with other authors, and I adore opportunities to discuss writing craft.

You can email me here: nova@novaren.com.

Prompt-Writing Generative Workshop

Join me in Zoom on January 26 by subscribing... or pay just $5 in Venmo!

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Do you want to write with me later this month? I have an online generative workshop coming up, and you can be a part of it for, literally, only $5.

I'll host the next prompt hour in Zoom on Sunday, January 26 starting at 8:30pm Eastern. We'll be writing to two new prompts in a creative, pressure-free session. Premium subscribers here have a free invite, but if you are a free subscriber, no worries... it's possible to attend by paying in Venmo!

Want to join me? Here's how to sign up.