Q: What’s happening with the TV version of your series “The Perfectionists?”Ī: There was a pilot shot (for Freeform). One of the characters was on trial for murder, and I just had to talk to a camera. Everyone was really sweet, but I think I did a million takes for my three lines of dialog. It was the first time I’d ever been on a film set, and I wasn’t an actor. Q: You had a cameo in two episodes - “The Homecoming Hangover” and “I’m a Good Girl, I Am.” What was that like?Ī: The first time, I played Miss Shepard, a substitute teacher. I was worried – are they going to even read the books or just use the characters and take it in a totally different direction? But I read the pilot and saw a DVD ahead of time. I had written seven or eight books in the series by the time I found out it was going to be a TV series. The world of “Pretty Little Liars” seems simpler for high-school kids than the world is today.Ī: I thought it was great. I feel like if I were writing “Pretty Little Liars” today, the theme would be anonymous cyberbullying through social media.

When the first book came out, the big thing was texting. How have your books changed with the evolving cultural environment?Ī: The last book in the series came out in 2014, and with those (later books), there was more (mention of) Instagram, Twitter, cyberbullying and all those things. There have been big changes in the world since then, especially with social media. Q: The first book in the “Pretty Little Liars” series - which combines crime with teen cliques and drama - was published in 2006. In advance of the event, Shepard spoke recently by telephone with The Dispatch. Shepard and one of her literary acquaintances, Dublin author Kristen Orlando, will take part Saturday in a panel discussion and book signing at Barnes & Noble Easton. Shepard, 41, a married mother of two young boys now living in the Pittsburgh area, has published more than 30 books for young-adult and adult readers, including her newest, “The Elizas,” published last month. “But, no, there was no dead body in my real backyard.”

“There can be some pretty creepy things that happen in these perfect places,” she said. Sara Shepard, author of the series and many other thrillers for teen readers, based the setting for the “Pretty Little Liars” books on the affluent Philadelphia suburb where she grew up. Soon after, her friends - the “pretty little liars” - are taunted by text messages from the mysterious “A.” Is “A” a villain? Or the victim herself - and she isn't really dead? In “Pretty Little Liars” - the first of 16 books in a young-adult series that became a long-running TV series on Freeform - a teenager’s body is discovered buried in the backyard of her wealthy family’s home.

The liars sara shepard