Lindsay Kent is the author of the new novel My Twin the Murderer. She is also a filmmaker, and she lives in Half Moon Bay, California.
Q: What inspired you to write My Twin the Murderer, and how did you create your character Evelyn Malcolm?
A: After directing my first feature documentary, Going Furthur, in 2014, I unexpectedly became something of a psychedelic historian. The film explored the history of the CIA’s MKUltra program, Ken Kesey’s involvement, and how LSD profoundly altered both his life and the trajectory of American counterculture.
I remember thinking, I can’t believe MKUltra actually happened. How are there not more books and films about this? The CIA was dosing people with LSD—often without their knowledge. It was staggering.
That question sparked a larger one: What if MKUltra never really ended? Where would it be today? That idea became the foundation for the TV pilot I wrote first.
When I shared it with my twin sister, an award-winning screenwriter, she told me, “You know too much about this subject. It should be a book.”
After plenty of resistance, I got to work.
I created Evelyn as a pragmatic scientist who begins the story with a firm, deeply skeptical understanding of psychedelics. To her, they are not a force for good. Over the course of this book—and the larger series—she is compelled to confront both her own firsthand experiences and a lifetime of reductionist scientific thinking.
That evolution felt like a compelling arc to build on, one that mirrors the questions the scientific community is actively grappling with as the psychedelic renaissance reaches new heights.
Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I immersed myself in books on MKUltra by John Lisle, Stephen Kinzer, and Tom O’Neill, while also speaking with Bay Area neuroscientists about psychedelics, memory, and trauma—Gül Dölen’s work, in particular, has been a personal favorite.
I leaned on my legally minded husband for police procedural insight, and I drew several of my characters’ internal struggles from people I’ve known over the years who were pursuing healing through plant medicine ceremonies.
What surprised me most during my research was how little we truly understand about the human mind—and how quickly we often reach for a prescription without examining the deeper source of suffering, whether it’s trauma, grief, or some other profound loss.
The CIA was remarkably willing to dose unsuspecting Americans with LSD without any real understanding of what it was doing to the mind. In my own experience, psychedelics can be profoundly healing, but they can also be deeply destabilizing—disorienting, even psychosis-inducing.
Exploring that duality, both within psychedelics themselves and within the characters who encounter them, became one of the central themes of the book.
Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I had a clear image in my mind of the final shot from the very beginning. It’s much like how I approach filmmaking: I start with the first frame and the last, then work backward to figure out everything in between.
The greatest challenge was bridging those two points—figuring out how to move my characters from point A to point B in a way that felt compelling, while throwing them into the deep end without getting so lost in the details that the reader lost momentum.
The most significant transformation came in a later draft, when the climax changed entirely. I had originally written a completely different final confrontation, but then I had an epiphany that reshaped the entire ending. It was frustrating, as any writer can imagine, to dismantle something so substantial and rebuild it—but in the end, it was far more satisfying.
Q: How do your experiences as a novelist and a filmmaker coexist?
A: Twenty years as a documentary filmmaker has profoundly sharpened my storytelling instincts. I can sit down with a hundred hours of footage—often mostly talking-head interviews—and shape it into a compelling narrative in the edit.
I’ve spent decades learning how to see and hear the finished story in my mind before it fully exists, and that skill became invaluable when writing a cinematic novel like My Twin the Murderer.
What fiction offers that documentary often cannot is a different kind of access point. If someone chooses to watch a documentary or read nonfiction, they’re usually already interested in the subject matter.
With fiction, I wanted to enter through the realm of imagination—where readers could viscerally experience what my characters are going through without needing any prior knowledge of MKUltra or psychedelics.
That’s what I love most about fiction: it invites readers in through story first, then deepens its impact by making them feel, question, and understand ideas on an entirely new level.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m currently writing the second book in the series, My Twin the Witch, which follows Evelyn and Vivian on a new adventure in the Brazilian Amazon.
What’s been most fascinating is how completely different my creative process has become. I “pantsed” the first draft of My Twin the Murderer, writing largely by instinct and discovery, but this time I’m approaching the story through deep plotting and careful structure.
I think that shift comes from the fact that I’m exploring cultures and communities that are entirely unfamiliar to me. It’s both exciting and intimidating, but it also means I have the opportunity to dive much deeper into research, connecting with experts and luminaries in these fields to better understand the world I’m writing about.
I’m hoping to release this next installment in 2027.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: A few years ago, my sister and I founded our production company, Sisters Kent Films. Our first short film, The Split, is available now on YouTube.
We’re currently developing an indie horror feature that incorporates our real home movies as found footage—an especially personal and unsettling approach to the genre. You can follow our journey as we bring the film to life on Instagram at @sisterskentfilms.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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