The Infinite Noise: Interview with Lauren Shippen

Superpowered stories tends to focus on the external powers more than the internal when it comes to powers. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. (Bruce isn’t talking about the emotional repercussions of pissing someone off here.)

Enter The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen, a novel adaptation—the first in a planned three—of Shippen’s award-winning The Bright Sessions podcast. The teen-centric novel follows Caleb, a football player who develops the supernatural ability to feel others’ emotions. This is a different kind of coming-of-age superpowered story: one that looks at the unique struggles and strengths of the very internal superpower of hyper-empathy.

As you can imagine, having hyper-empathy in high school, where emotions tend to be unpredictable, intense, and often overwhelming, comes with a steep learning curve. Luckily, Caleb has some help in the form of his therapist, Dr. Bright, who specialized in helping Atypcials (those with superhuman abilities) like Caleb and his classmate Adam, a bookish boy from school whose emotions tend to calm Caleb down.

Told in the alternating POVs of both Caleb and Adam, The Infinite Noise is a quieter superpowered tale with nuanced depictions of mental illness, queer romance, and masculinity. We had the chance to talk to Lauren Shippen about translating this complex story from one medium to another, what inspired her to tell this story, and where this world is headed next. Here’s what she told us…

Den of Geek: The Infinite Noise is based off of your science fiction podcast. Can you tell me about how that project started originally?

Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve been in LA for six years and I initially was out here because I wanted to continue to work in television, but I was also an actor. I had been in acting class for a couple of years and auditioning, and kind of doing the whole actor hustle of working at a restaurant and doing web series and short films and all that kind of stuff.

I was really frustrated with the roles that were available to me and the kind of breakdowns I was seeing for, specifically, women, and the scripts I was reading. I was in an acting class with some just incredible actors and had been listening to Welcome to Night Vale, the audio fiction podcast. And I just decided to try something on my own, to try and make something on my own. And a podcast seemed like something I could manage on my own. So, I started writing one and then it just was really fun to do. And so, we kept doing more of it and I fell in love with writing and then, fast forward four years now, I’m a full-time podcast writer, which is kind of crazy.  

I mean that’s how all writers start, right? You’re just like, I want to write something. And you do.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, honestly, I think the fact that there were such low stakes in the beginning because it was just an experiment and it was supposed to just be for creative fulfillment and for fun, that kind of allowed me to, I think, be a little less critical of myself as a writer and just say like, ‘Okay, well, it doesn’t need to be good. It just has to be what I want to do and it’ll be out there.’ Whereas, I think if I tried to—just because of the person I am—tried to write something to be successful, I think I would have probably gotten too caught up in perfectionism.

Yeah. Or if they were like, ‘Here, write a Marvel podcast…’

Yeah. Even now I’m like, are you sure?

Yeah. So, I’ve seen the podcast referred, in a few different places, as X-Men meets some form of therapy example. And I’m curious if you grew up as a fan of speculative fiction.

Definitely. Science fiction and fantasy were always huge for me growing up. I was really into fantasy as a kid. The Lost Years of Merlin series by T. A. Barron was my main. T. A. Barron actually read Infinite Noise and gave me a really nice quote that’ll be on the back cover. So, I’m so stoked. He’s just the greatest man. He’s wonderful.

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But, yeah, those were the books that got me into reading and got me into especially like, chapter books. I read them when I was maybe like seven or eight and then, of course, Harry Potter came out and I got super into that. And then, when I was a little bit older, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. And I just loved the magical world of all of those books and then started to get into monster books, things like that. Of course, Twilight and A Great and Terrible Beauty, and all those series that were coming out and really popular in the mid-2000s.

In high school, I discovered television and watched all of The X-Files through Netflix DVDs because that was what Netflix used to be. I ordered the DVDs and watched it CD by CD in four-episode chunks, it took forever.  

And having to wait and you’re like I need the next one now.

Yeah. Having to be very strategic because you could get two discs at a time, so I would get two discs of The X-Files, eight episodes. So, it’s like I would watch one disc and send that back in so, hopefully, by the time I was watching the second disc, finish that up-

Yeah, you need a strategy.

A new disc. Exactly. Time it out perfectly. So, yeah, I got super into The X-Files and Twin Peaks, which isn’t necessarily like speculative fiction, but I think because it’s has fantastical magical realism elements. And then also getting into all the Joss Whedon shows like Buffy and Angel, and everything. Oh, the other big one was Battlestar Galactica, the remake, which I just adored.

I think the thing for me with all of those shows and kind of what was foremost in my mind in starting The Bright Sessions was taking these really human characters and putting them in these superhuman circumstances and seeing how they react. So, kind of, using vampires, or space, or aliens, or monsters as basically, an abstract way to deal with very human issues, like love and loss, and betrayal, and relationships.

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As somebody who has been struggling with panic and anxiety since I was a kid, the idea of taking my own panic attacks and kind of framing that—which is really the start of The Bright Sessions: the character, Sam who time travels when she has panic attacks—taking that framework and saying, ‘Okay, well what if we took this very human experience and turned it into something extra human and talked about it that way?’ Because just talking about panic attacks, as somebody who has panic attacks bummed me out. I don’t want to do that.

It’s like, I want to read this, but also trigger warning. It is about panic attacks.

Yeah, whereas like, ‘Oh, well, what if I time traveled when I had panic attacks involuntarily? What would that be like? How can I use that as a metaphor?’ So, I think, yeah, really talking about very human issues through things that humans don’t experience, has always been, I think, a way in for me of understanding emotions and character dynamics, and just the world.

Hard same. So, I want to know about that decision to turn The Bright Sessions into a trilogy of books. When did that happen and why did that happen?

Yeah, it’s funny, it happened in a couple of different stages. I’d been working on The Bright Sessions for a little while when it was starting to gain traction, and there was some interest around, have you thought about adapting it to TV? Have you thought about adapting it to books? And I kind of had conversations with some folks and, but then my book agent, or who became my book agent, Matthew Elblonk reached out to me and we hopped on the phone to talk about it. Like I said, I had been having these conversations with various people and I got on the phone with him and we talked for like an hour, and we totally clicked, and he completely understood what The Bright Sessions was and was really excited about the story and the possibilities within the novel space.

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So, he asked, have you ever thought about adapting this into novel form? And because we just clicked instantly, I was honest and I was like, actually I’ve already started writing something. Because when I was writing the first season and then the first 15 episodes of the podcast… writing prose is the only writing experience I had up until writing the first script of The Bright Sessions. Being such a big reader growing up, and now I would write a lot of short stories and half finished novels.

It’s funny, I found a notebook the other week that had the novel I wrote when I was at 14, all the world building stuff. And I was looking at it and I was like, oh my God, I just stole this from The Lost Years of Merlin. This is just The Lost Years of Merlin fanfiction.

You’ve got to start somewhere.

Exactly. But, of course, I it didn’t have the knowledge or wherewithal when I was 12 to know what fanfiction was and actually just do that. So, I came up with my own original idea, because I thought that it wasn’t just fanfiction.

So, yeah, that was like comfortable with. And so, when I started The Bright Sessions, and now that I’ve written two books and written over probably not, but at this point, a hundred scripts of episodes. I definitely am more comfortable with writing scripts, in some sense.

But, when I started The Bright Sessions, one of the characters I was writing Caleb, who is one of the main characters in Infinite Noise, he’s talking to this other boy in his class and they’re kind of figuring out, they’re exploring this dynamic and also Caleb has this and empath ability that’s so interior. And I just, I was having a hard time figuring out how to express what he was experiencing and also was frustrated by the fact that I had created this format in which we would be hearing about Adam from Caleb, but we would never be hearing from Adam.

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I didn’t know that Adam was going to eventually be in the podcast when I started. I ended up having him in the podcast because I wanted to set up a phone call that’s also in the book. And then, when we got Alex Gallner to do the lines just for that episode, I was like, wait a second, this is so fun and you’re so good at this. Let’s just do this.

So, I just started writing just for myself what became, I think chapters five and six of the book. I started writing that and some other things just of Caleb experiencing this empath ability very directly. And then, also then swapping five and getting Adam’s perspective on Caleb, and the way the Adam experiences the world, and the way that Adam experiences his emotions versus the way that Caleb experiences those same emotions from Adam.

And I gave it to Briggon [Snow], when we started working together, who played Caleb just as like, this is 30 pages of something, but here you go. And it’s just a little bit more context. And then, I got swept up in writing the podcast and kind of just left it. But, it was always there lingering in the back of my mind. 

Then, when Matthew reached out and asked if I had been thinking about writing a book, I was like, actually like I don’t know what you’d been thinking. Most people I’ve talked to want adult science fiction, but I actually love young adult fiction and I still read it as a 28-year-old, and I started this book and I would love to do more of it. I just don’t know how to do this.

And so yes, I sent it to him and we started talking about it and I started to dive back into it. And then, thankfully, Tor Teen was into doing it with me. And, by that point, I had these ideas for these two other books that dive deep on these other characters. Because that, to me, is the benefit of the written word versus audio fiction: you can go really deep into the interior life of a character in a way that you can’t in a podcast that doesn’t have inner monologue or a narrator.

Was it hard for you to choose which characters you wanted to focus on for the books? I haven’t listened to the podcast, but it seems like you have a lot of different characters you could have chosen from.

Yeah, it’s funny. It wasn’t, actually.

I think, once we realized that it was going to be a young adult trilogy, or just a series of young adult books, that eliminated some characters. I tried some ideas about doing some stuff about Dr. Bright, the therapist, and that would have definitely been like an adult fiction thing. There were certain characters that are very near and dear to my heart that I was just like, I don’t think I want to tell their story in a book form.

The main one, one of the main characters, Sam, time travels. That’s one of those characters where, because she is me and I am her and I’ve been on this journey with her of both writing her character and performing her character, I’m like, ‘Yeah, I don’t ever need to explore her world in other mediums.’ I feel like I have this relationship with her and I live that experience, so I don’t necessarily think that I need to dive into it.

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And then, the other main character from the first season is Chloe, who is the mind reader. The challenge of writing her ability in dialogue was always really fun and really frustrating. And she actually appears in The Infinite Noise. She’s a character in The Infinite Noise. Writing her internal monologue when she’s hearing other people’s thoughts, I was just like, that sounds too daunting and too confusing as a novel.

So, the two characters that I chose, the third one is Rose, who appears much later in the series. She appears for the first time in season three and then becomes a larger character in season four, our final season. And she’s a dream walker. She can go into people’s dreams. Episode 50 of The Bright Sessions is a musical episode in which she goes into people’s dreams. It was really fun to do.

I mean, I already wanted to listen to it, but now, I extra want to listen to it.

Now you’re sold?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was a dream come true. I’m a huge musical theater nerd and so me and my composer wrote this musical together and it was, yeah, it was such a blast. And yeah, for Rose I was like, oh, I really want to explore what that’s like. Some of that, through the looking glass dream world, and she kind of gets addicted to it. And so, that’s the book that I haven’t haven’t written yet, but I’m really excited to dive in, especially since she’s, out of the three novels, she’s the character that we know least about from the podcast.

So, it’s a little bit more of an open sandbox because by the time that I was ideating what the novel would be, Rose had barely been introduced. Whereas Caleb, Adam, and Damien, who we’ll talk about in a second, had all kind of established things already. And then, with Infinite Noise, I kind of worked within this timeline that I had created, which sometimes caused some difficulties, whereas with Rose it’s a much more kind of open playing field, which is really fun.

And then, the novel I just finished a couple months ago, a second book, is about Damien, who was one of the main antagonists of the series and a very, very divisive character, and meant to be that way. His ability is that he can manipulate emotion. So, basically, whatever he wants, he makes people around him want also. So, if he wants people to like him, they’ll like him, if he wants people to give him money, they’ll give him money. But the trick is that it’s not mind control. He’s always trying to like say that it’s mind control, but it’s not. He has to actually really want the thing himself in order for it to be influencing other people.

So, it’s kind of this imperfect mind control thing. He’s influenced a lot by Spike from Buffy in aesthetic and attitude. But I think what I wanted to explore was that archetype and media of the smooth-talking bad boy who gets what he wants and complicating that a little bit.

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And, also, what happens when that man doesn’t want to redeem himself? A lot of times we see that character and they are glorified and redeemed simply by the nature of being a cis-gender straight white man usually. And it’s like, well, what happens if that person doesn’t make an active choice in their own redemption? The way that, for instance, Spike did. Does he deserve to be redeemed?

And that’s why he’s a really divisive character because some people are like, ‘Oh, you should have redeemed him, he had a hard life, he should get another chance.’ And then, other people are like, ‘Let them burn in hell.’

It’s really fun because that was exactly what I was hoping to do: what if we treat the person like an actual person, not just an archetypal character and have the people around him interact with him in a way that like, yeah, you would be mad if someone basically gaslit you and influenced you all the time. Even if they were also lonely and sad, like someone being lonely and sad is not an excuse for that behavior. And so, kind of confronting that a little bit more.

Did you have an answer to that question when you started writing?

No, I don’t even have an answer to that question now. Not to spoil the end of the podcast for you, but I leave his story in a very open place in terms of like: okay, well he hasn’t made the active choices to change his behavior at this point. But, he could potentially, but he won’t be able to with these people, because he’s already burned these bridges.

Somebody who’s essentially the victim of abuse is not in charge of redeeming their own abuser. It doesn’t mean that person can’t be redeemed, but it’s not the survivor’s responsibility for that. I think that’s a question that I’m not even sure I had when I started writing Damien, and then working with Charlie Ian who plays him in the podcast and kind of growing that character and seeing how he interacted with the other actors and characters. He turned into this really multilayered, interesting character that I love deeply, even though he almost does nothing but mess up and make the wrong choice.

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So, for the second novel, it’s a prequel. It takes place 10 years before the events of The Bright Sessions. And it’s kind of a look at 18-year-old Damien who has been abandoned, basically, by everybody in his life. And he arrives in Los Angeles trying to start fresh and not abuse his ability because he’s not an evil person, but he can’t help it, and he can’t help that he’s influencing people.

And so, how do you exist in a world when everything around you is giving you privilege that you didn’t ask for? And do you ultimately try to fight against it or try to use it for good or do you abuse it? And so, that’s the story of the second novel is, almost like a villain origin story. But, rather than just him being out and out bad or a hateful character or something, it’s really him grappling with this reality of his life that he can’t do anything about, but that he can react to in different ways and what choice is he ultimately going to make?

That sounds great. I’m looking forward to that.

So, you mentioned before writing within the timeline for The Infinite Noise. Does that mean that you mostly stuck to the existing story from the podcast?

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that there are any huge deviations, because I didn’t want to completely shift the course of the story. But, there definitely are little small deviations simply by the nature of what you’re able to do in a book that you’re not able to do in a podcast.

For instance, we define certain things about Adam’s experiences that are not defined in the podcast and we get to meet their families in a way that we don’t in the podcast. There are scenes that happened in the podcast that also take place in the book and there are light tweaks of dialogue, and slight shifts to how things happen. I think it’s one of those things that eagle eye listeners will notice, but that hopefully for the most part will be not jarring to big fans of the podcast, but also still kind of do all the things that a book needs to do for a new reader of being cohesive and tracking along a consistent storyline.

And so, it was really just about finding that balance and making sure that it wasn’t straying too far from the story that made these characters who they are, but then also making sure that it could still flow within the structure of a book.

Well, I love Caleb’s character so much.

Thank you.

Adam’s great, too, but for some reason I really latched onto Caleb. I think maybe part of that is because you were speaking about archetypes before and having this male jock stereotype, which we see so often and is often so simplistic, complicated in this book in lots of different ways. Most probably obviously, having him be an empath, which is usually something that’s associated with traditional femininity. So, I just love that. And I’m assuming that this was something that was at least somewhat intentional when you were creating this character. I’m just curious what you wanted to complicate about the male jock stereotype or typical depictions of masculinity, in general.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of that was intentional from the beginning. Definitely in picking the characters in the beginning, on those two, three pages in the beginning it was Sam, Caleb and Chloe and Sam, like I said, just came out of my own experiences and the idea of okay, well one is a time traveler, but they can only observe. And they also don’t get to choose when they time travel. Because I think time travel is one of those cool abilities that everybody would want, but it’s like what if it sucks? And it was kind of those what if’s. Well, what if a mind reader, but it was someone who wanted to see the best in every single person, even after hearing their innermost, dark thoughts? What would that person be like?

And then, what if a jock, but then emotional? I think taking those things that, again for me, feel like very human struggles of there are people who are confronted with the worst the world has to offer and are still optimistic and hopeful and believe the best in every person that they meet, despite potential actions. And that’s Chloe. There are people, like myself, who want a lot of control because of anxiety, but that’s not how the world works. And so, how do you live with that? And then there are lots of people who are hyper masculine people, and that doesn’t mean that they don’t have this full range and depth of human emotion. And the idea of masculinity not being something that detracts from emotionality, but kind of focusing on the good traits of masculinity. I think, especially for Caleb, the thing that I realized that I was doing subconsciously about halfway through writing The Bright Sessions was, ‘Oh, huh, the thing that I care most about, I think, is toxic masculinity.’

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Just realizing that was a thing that’s coming up and up and up again in The Bright Sessions and just in my writing, like I’m really fascinated with with the spectrum of masculinity and the good traits and the bad traits, because there’s positive masculinity and there’s toxic masculinity, and it’s the same thing for femininity. The only difference is that toxic masculinity has ruled so much of our society for so long. And so, we all have to, I do think that there’s something, there is like a toxic femininity, right? Like there is like the standards that women are held to are, or people who are female-bodied or whatever, it can be very toxic. But, the difference is that male-presenting people are not necessarily confronted with toxic femininity in the same way that female-presenting people or people in the world who are not male are confronted with toxic masculinity.

And, so, it’s this thing that we all have to deal with. And I think that, in my mind, one of the ways to talk about that productively is to talk about the fact that masculinity can also be a good thing. Masculine traits and feminine traits, I think, people traditionally think of them as being tied to sex and gender and it’s like, ‘No, like they’re just catchall terms for these types of traits that we talk about.’ But, I’m a cis woman and I have feminine traits and I have masculine traits and, to me, the positive masculine traits are things like protectiveness and loyalty and bravery and that can be embodied in anybody of any gender.

Whereas, toxic masculinity is something that tends to be embodied by men and people who are socialized as men. And so, grappling with all of that spectrum and keeping somebody like Caleb who’s played by Briggon who was a huge influence on who Caleb became as a character, and also like me, is really fascinated by all of these ideas of masculinity. Briggon is a very masculine guy who’s married to a man and loves musical theater. In the way that Caleb is complicating people’s traditional ideas about masculinity, I think that’s something that Briggon and I, as people who have both masculine and feminine traits as other people would see it, that’s something we’re really interested in.

And so, yeah, I think, for me, making Caleb the traditional masculine jock and saying like, ‘Okay, but he’s not going to have toxic masculine traits. He’s just going to have the positive stuff and then he’s also going to have all these things that are traditionally associated with women and femininity and it doesn’t take away from his masculinity, and also his masculinity doesn’t take away from the femininity. Those two things can live side-by-side.’ I don’t know if any of that was coherent.

It was very coherent. Have you ever read the web comic, or I guess it’s also published now, Check, Please!?

Yes. I love Check, Please!

What you were saying makes me think about Check, Please!

Totally. Yeah. Jack is very much like a kind of, very stoic and quiet, and Bitty’s a bit more of like the more emotionally upfront, wears his heart on his sleeve. I think that’s like thinking about masculinity and Adam.

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Adam, you would look at him probably and think like, ‘Okay well, he’s kind of like this skinny emo kid, a bit of a nerd.’ It’s also that like strong masculine thing, but I think Adam has the less good masculine traits. Where he doesn’t want to talk about his feelings all the time. He’s very closed off in a lot of ways, which is often associated with masculine traits. And so, how that kind of indirect contrast to Caleb, and actually Caleb’s empathy, and these things that he has that are more associated with femininity actually give Adam strength and let him be vulnerable.

Vulnerability, I think, being a positive thing for all people is always what I’m trying to say with those characters.

Yes. And you also have therapy at the center of both the podcast and the novel. And that’s, obviously, another conversation we need to have more of in mainstream culture and feels particularly missing from superhero or superpowered stories, which are everywhere and often feature characters that experience a lot of trauma and then just don’t talk about it.

In translating the story from podcast to novel form, were you at all nervous about losing the centering of that aspect? Because it seems like, structurally, it was so built into the podcast, but you have so much more room to explore the world with the novel.

Yeah, I think absolutely Caleb and Adam were the right people to start with, for me, in bringing the podcast  into a novel form, because the podcast eventually starts to step away from the therapy format, as well, and kind of expand the world a little bit more. But, it is always centered around Dr. Bright and her practice and the people that she’s working with.

And, for me, the thing I love about Caleb and Adam is that, even when they’re outside of the therapy room, because we never go with Adam to therapy, but he talks about being in therapy and then he went to a summer group therapy program and has been struggling with depression, and self-harm for a lot of his adolescence. And his parents are doctors. So, it’s a little bit more for him immediately when we meet him. And then, Caleb is kind of newer to it, but it’s really productive for him and I think he can, it’s a little bit less scary because he has this superpower thing that he has to deal with that other people don’t have to deal with.

And so, the fact that for both of those characters therapy is just part of their lives, kind of helps ground the story that, yes, has therapy in it in the book, but it’s not the central focus. It’s about emotion. And it’s always about the way in which we relate to one another and the way that we express ourselves. And that’s very much, to me, a lot of what therapy’s about. So, even when Caleb is not in the therapy room with Dr. Bright, still kind of carrying those things with him and Adam is too, and they’re figuring it out together.

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It’s interesting because the second book has no therapy in it. And that was really interesting and really challenging. There’s a couple of different cameos in Infinite Noise from podcast characters, of course, Dr. Bright, and then Chloe appears, Damien actually does appear very briefly. Frank is another character in the podcast, and they all appear in various ways. Oh, Wadsworth, too, one of the main antagonists of the series.

And the second book is just Damien. He’s the only podcast character that we are familiar with. And so, I think it was nice to kind of ease into that front of doing Infinite Noise of like, ‘Okay, I’m going to figure out how this story works in a book. I want to have this figured out. Okay, now I can just fully go into this world, that I’ve now been in for several years, and can kind of just have this full open sandbox to run around in.’

Cool. I know that the podcast has also been optioned for a television series. Has there been any progress on that front?

We’re still figuring it out. It takes a while to get to TV and to be completely honest, I’ve been so focused on audio fiction and on novels because those are the things that really excite me as a creator because you get a lot of control and you can collaborate in a way that I find really helpful and productive and fun. And yeah, I would love to eventually, get it to TV because it’s a story I want to have even more accessible in the world, even more people getting exposure to it. But, it’s definitely not my main priority at the moment.

Yeah, you’ve got a lot going on. Well, I already had this written down as a question, or kind of a joke question, but after talking to you as well, I was like could this please be a musical because I think it would make a good musical?

I would love to.

Perfect. It’s a plan then. You can just do that in your free time.

Yeah, exactly. We already have like five songs.

Yeah, you’re halfway there.

Exactly.

I’ve actually reached the end of my questions but I’ve also, like you’ve said so many things that have brought up other thoughts in my head, including have you read Vicious and Vengeful by V. E. Schwab?

Yes, so good.

Okay, because I feel like you guys, reading the book already reminded me of it a little bit and then hearing about your next book, I’m just like, oh my god, yes. Sounds like they’d be good book club buddies or something.

Absolutely. Reading Vicious was such a lesson in how to do villains and just so satisfying, and her writing is just so incredible. I’m obsessed, yeah.

Yeah. So cool. Do you have any other projects? I mean, we know the Marvel podcast, you’re writing books, you have several audio podcasts going on outside of Marvel for your Atypical Artists, correct? What are you working on right now that is at the forefront of your mind or that you’d like people to check out or know about?

Yeah, so the thing we just wrapped up two weeks ago is our Bright Sessions spin-off, actually called The AM Archives, that is on Luminary, which is a podcast app. You don’t need to listen to The Bright Sessions to listen to it, but it does pick up after The Bright Sessions ends and contains a couple of people’s stories. But, it’s really like a deeper look into The Atypical Monitors, which is a sketchy government organization that researches these superpowered people and it’s a bit more adult and a bit more intense. Some stuff happens, so if you’re looking for something a little bit more like breakneck speeds thriller…

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And then, the other project that my company Atypical Artists is doing is ARCS, which is a completely different thing. It’s a D&D actual-play podcast. I don’t run it, I just play in it. My COO, Jordan Cope, is the DM and it’s so much fun. It’s very juicy. It’s very fun.

And then, yeah, the Marvel project and the other project that I’m really excited I worked on last year is a show called Passenger List, that’s coming out September 16th from Radiotopia and that stars Kelly Marie Tran, and Colin Morgan, and Patti LuPone. It’s not my creation. It was created by John Dryden, an amazing British writer, and I got to co-produce and co-direct the whole thing with him, which was just a dream come true.

That sounds amazing. I’ll definitely check that out, as well. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. This was so fun.

Yeah, this was great. Thanks so much for your questions.

The Infinite Noise will hit bookshelves on September 24th and is now available to pre-order. You can find out more about Lauren Shippen on her website.

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.