Lara: I was. My mom's favorite film is the 1965 adaption of Doctor Zhivago. It's also one of her favorite books. She always reminds me to tell people that because she's like, "I loved the book first." I was named Lara after Boris Pasternak's heroine in Doctor Zhivago. It was this kind of name that I hated growing up with because everyone would always pronounce it wrong. We had a Larra who was a couple years older than me in school, so all the teachers called me Laura instead of Lara. I was like, "Mom, couldn't you have just put a U in my name?" She's like, "No, that's different." It wasn't until my adult years that I started actually correcting people and saying, "No, my name is Lara. This is how you pronounce it." Now my mom thinks it's her fate that led me to write this book in the first place.