novel
A Childhood Full of Love and Death: On Growing Up With a Father in Forensics
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It wasn’t a surprise to those who knew me as a child that when I start telling stories for a living, they were centered around the forensic and crime…
Vanessa Lillie on Writing a Thriller That Explores Native American Issues and Environmental Injustice
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Vanessa Lillie says she’s “an impatient reader,” a trait that influences her writing: “I really like to create characters who are aggressively seeking justice, even when it puts their…
A Cultural History of the Erotic Thriller
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The strip mall video rental store was an emporium of illicit dreams. Its doorway in the small town where I came of age, located in between candy store and…
James Kennedy: “Storytellers are manipulative cult leaders.”
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I missed my chance to be in a cult. In my twenties, a guy on the street handed me a pamphlet to join a “communal farm”—an obvious cult. Nevertheless,…
Sudden Death and the Startlement of Absence
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Sudden Death is a dirty business. It touches you, and there’s no rubbing it off. Scrub until you bleed. No dice—it remains. Maybe that’s why I keep writing about…
Love Letters to a Serial Killer: Excerpt and Cover Reveal
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There was a drought in letters from William after I sent him the pictures of myself. I stared at my reflection in the mirror in the mornings and wondered…
The Dead Girl and the Survivor Trope
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When I first picked up crime thrillers as a teenager, I remember being fascinated by how many plots begin with the discovery of a dead girl. What was it…
How Unlikeable Characters Freed Me From Perfectionism
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I’m hardly the first author to call herself a perfectionist. In fact, I’m sure many of us were once described as “a pleasure to have in class”—which, for me,…