Liv Spencer - Rosewood Confidential. The Unofficial Companion to Pretty Little Liars

Sara Shepards Killer Series

Before there was a mysterious text message from beyond the grave, before there were four former friends separated by secrets, before Rosewood was built and rebuilt on the Warner Brothers back lot, Sara Shepard had only a blinking cursor but she conjured a world of decadence and deception, best friends and betrayal, and created a series that would sell millions of books and become a veritable pop culture phenomenon.

Sara grew up in a family that valued the arts, and she recalled, My mother constantly encouraged my sister and me to read, draw, write, and be creative. The author-to-be started honing her storytelling skills at a young age, tapping out tales on her fathers computer by the time she was in fifth grade. Looking back, the author joked, Of course, I would be all amped up to write chapter one... but would have no idea what to do with chapter two. I wasnt great at plotting back then. Though she was still a couple of decades away from being a bestselling author, Sara did have an early taste of literary success: in fifth grade she won second prize in a library contest for a short story called Quizzles.

The budding author continued to write throughout high school, where she showed such promise that her English teacher told her she could skip the essay component and focus on writing fiction instead! But following her inner Spencer Hastings instead of her inner Aria Montgomery, Sara refused the offer. Looking back, the author lamented, Like an idiot, I said no . I wanted to write the themes about, I dont know, The Fountainhead . The Scarlet Letter . What was wrong with me?

In her undergraduate studies at New York University, Sara started out studying biology but admitted, [I] was afraid of my teachers and fellow bio majors so I switched to English, where everyone was laid-back and happy and talked about books all day. During her college years she got to combine her love for fashion and writing when she interned at Elle magazine, though she didnt get to put many words to paper. Sara remembered, Like the girls on The Hills , it involved a lot of folding, steaming, and basically doing the work no one else wanted to do. She found a better fit, and some actual writing and editing experience, at Time Inc.

Sara went on to real journalism work after graduating, and reporting satisfied her writerly side for a few years, until the events of 9/11 forced her to look at her life to date. As lots of people did after September 11, I decided I was going to make the most of my time, explained the author. She decided to go back to school, enrolling in the MFA program at Brooklyn College in 2002. There she studied under celebrated writers like Michael Cunningham (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Virginia Woolfinspired novel, The Hours ).

Spending her days honing her skills, writing, rewriting, and workshopping, Sara decided she might be ready for some paid work. Her sister worked at Alloy, a company that originates creative properties that cross platforms like Gossip Girl , The Vampire Diaries , Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants , and now, Pretty Little Liars . So, to get her foot in the door there, our ambitious author crashed the company Christmas party! This holiday caper paid off, and Sara started doing freelance work for Alloy. One of her earliest projects was ghostwriting the Samurai Girl books, a six-novel YA series about a girl who is married into the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) and must train as a samurai to protect the people she loves. In 2008, the books were adapted into a miniseries for ABC Family, but by that point Sara was already hard at work on a series of her own that would later become the networks hottest property.

With the Samurai Girl novels, Sara had proven herself to Alloy as a pen-for-hire. But when the company discovered she had grown up along the Pennsylvania Main Line (the towns along the train route out of Philadelphia) and knew a thing or two about the lives of the east coast elite, they realized they might have a good match for a new idea theyd been developing, one they described as