Valley High

Janelle Brown’s first novel takes on the private lives of the tech world’s wealthiest.

Janelle Brown might have grown up in Atherton and spent her formative years in SF during the first dot-com era—lunching in South Park and working as an editor at Wired and Salon—but recently, her life has played out like a True Hollywood Story: Last February, on the day after she sent out a manuscript of her first book to publishers, her agent called to say that she had a two-book offer on the table. Brown, 34, had just landed at Aeropuerto del Bajío in Mexico and was getting on a shuttle. So she used the ride to San Miguel de Allende to negotiate her deal via cell phone from the back of the bus—Corona in hand, of course. The results of that negotiation come to fruition with this month’s All We Ever Wanted Was Everything—her darkly comic, voyeuristic journey into the world of a rich Silicon Valley family that comes undone during a year of divorce, drugs, teen pregnancy and juicy country-club rumor mills. Billed as the “ultimate summer read” by her publisher, it’s the kind of page-turner that warrants a sunburn.

What was your inspiration for the novel?
I started thinking about the idea when I was working at Salon covering the dot-com boom. I was fascinated by the wealth that had come with it and how it had transformed where I grew up. Then I moved to L.A., and was immersed in this whole other world of fame and celebrity and wealth.

How was it working for such iconic publications during the boom?
At Wired, people would get stoned on the roof every day. We had fire dancers and organic chefs. People worked 24/7, and slept at the office. I was on the Hotwired side, which was even more nutty—like, we were starting the revolution! We were going to start a sex-radio show online. It was a bunch of people in their early 20s [with] an unlimited budget.

Is your first work of fiction also part memoir?
All you have to do is read my book to realize it’s hyperreal and stylized and satirical. But bits of it are taken from my life growing up in Silicon Valley. Most of me shows up in Margaret, the striving feminist. I did do a feminist zine. At one point, we were even going to sell it to Wired.

Your parents still live in Atherton. How has Silicon Valley changed?
During the ’70s and ’80s, people had money but didn’t flash it. The guy next door might be a venture capitalist, but he drove a Volvo. Now, people buy a $4 million house to bulldoze it. People have six cars, and the airstrip in San Carlos is all private jets. Things are as nutty now as they were in ’91. There have been ebbs and flows, but overall, the milieu [is] the same.

Janice, your main character, spirals into a meth addiction after her jerk-of-a-billionaire husband leaves her. Is meth the new Valium for housewives?
I’ve never heard of anyone doing it in Menlo Park. But I saw a lot of people doing meth in the nightlife culture when I was living in SF. I was always interested in how it made you this über-efficient, overproductive person. I liked seeing what an über housewife did with this drug. But I have no empirical evidence.

The obvious question: Has the book been optioned for a film?
It has not. My husband [filmmaker Greg Harrison] and I are working on a script based on the book, and we haven’t sold it yet. He says I’m very opinionated. But it works pretty well as long as I shut up once in a while.

You moved to L.A. in 2002. What city do you identify with?
I’m agnostic. You know, there’s this perceived rivalry—everyone in SF hates L.A. And everyone in L.A. loves SF. It’s a one-way rivalry. But I think they’re kind of the yin and yang. They fit perfectly together.

Janelle Brown might have grown up in Atherton and spent her formative years in SF during the first dot-com era—lunching in South Park and working as an editor at Wired and Salon—but recently, her life has played out like a True Hollywood Story: Last February, on the day after she sent out a manuscript of her first book to publishers, her agent called to say that she had a two-book offer on the table. Brown, 34, had just landed at Aeropuerto del Bajío in Mexico and was getting on a shuttle. So she used the ride to San Miguel de Allende to negotiate her deal via cell phone from the back of the bus—Corona in hand, of course. The results of that negotiation come to fruition with this month’s All We Ever Wanted Was Everything—her darkly comic, voyeuristic journey into the world of a rich Silicon Valley family that comes undone during a year of divorce, drugs, teen pregnancy and juicy country-club rumor mills. Billed as the “ultimate summer read” by her publisher, it’s the kind of page-turner that warrants a sunburn.

What was your inspiration for the novel?
I started thinking about the idea when I was working at Salon covering the dot-com boom. I was fascinated by the wealth that had come with it and how it had transformed where I grew up. Then I moved to L.A., and was immersed in this whole other world of fame and celebrity and wealth.

How was it working for such iconic publications during the boom?
At Wired, people would get stoned on the roof every day. We had fire dancers and organic chefs. People worked 24/7, and slept at the office. I was on the Hotwired side, which was even more nutty—like, we were starting the revolution! We were going to start a sex-radio show online. It was a bunch of people in their early 20s [with] an unlimited budget.

Is your first work of fiction also part memoir?
All you have to do is read my book to realize it’s hyperreal and stylized and satirical. But bits of it are taken from my life growing up in Silicon Valley. Most of me shows up in Margaret, the striving feminist. I did do a feminist zine. At one point, we were even going to sell it to Wired.

Your parents still live in Atherton. How has Silicon Valley changed?
During the ’70s and ’80s, people had money but didn’t flash it. The guy next door might be a venture capitalist, but he drove a Volvo. Now, people buy a $4 million house to bulldoze it. People have six cars, and the airstrip in San Carlos is all private jets. Things are as nutty now as they were in ’91. There have been ebbs and flows, but overall, the milieu [is] the same.

Janice, your main character, spirals into a meth addiction after her jerk-of-a-billionaire husband leaves her. Is meth the new Valium for housewives?
I’ve never heard of anyone doing it in Menlo Park. But I saw a lot of people doing meth in the nightlife culture when I was living in SF. I was always interested in how it made you this über-efficient, overproductive person. I liked seeing what an über housewife did with this drug. But I have no empirical evidence.

The obvious question: Has the book been optioned for a film?
It has not. My husband [filmmaker Greg Harrison] and I are working on a script based on the book, and we haven’t sold it yet. He says I’m very opinionated. But it works pretty well as long as I shut up once in a while.

You moved to L.A. in 2002. What city do you identify with?
I’m agnostic. You know, there’s this perceived rivalry—everyone in SF hates L.A. And everyone in L.A. loves SF. It’s a one-way rivalry. But I think they’re kind of the yin and yang. They fit perfectly together.

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