Wendy Walker, THE NIGHT BEFORE
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:22]I'm here today with Wendy Walker.
[0:23]Wendy is the national best-selling author of All Is Not Forgotten, Emma in the Night,
[0:28]and now her latest work, The Night Before.
[0:30]She has sold rights to her books in 23 languages, which I can't even name 23 languages,
[0:35]as well as film and television options.
[0:38]Wendy graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and Georgetown University Law School.
[0:42]Prior to her writing career, Wendy practiced both corporate and family law and worked as
[0:45]a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs.
[0:47]She currently lives in Connecticut with her three children.
[0:50]So welcome, Wendy.
[0:51]Thanks so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:53]Thank you for having me.
[0:54]We were just joking about how both of us have been up.
[0:57]I was up last night with little kids.
[0:59]She was up with her big older kids, so we'll just put that as a caveat.
[1:05]We're both sleep deprived.
[1:07]So please tell listeners what The Night Before is about.
[1:10]So The Night Before is about a woman named Laura who goes out on an internet date and never comes home.
[1:16]And then it's about her sister Rosie, who looks for her the next morning.
[1:21]And it's also about a man who lies and who uses internet dating to lure women out on dates under false pretenses.
[1:29]But it is also about turning the damsel and distress theme upside down.
[1:36]So I gave Laura a backstory that's dark and filled with a little bit of anger and rage.
[1:42]So that we actually become more afraid of what she might do to this man if she discovers
[1:47]he's lying than what he might have done to her.
[1:51]Excellent.
[1:52]You can tell right from the beginning.
[1:53]It's like thriller land.
[1:55]You're like in it, you know, like my heart was going for good.
[1:59]I'm just like waiting for it.
[2:01]So when Laura, the main character was six years old, she overheard her mother say the following about her.
[2:06]She said, I don't know, she was just born that way, born with fists for hands.
[2:10]It's hard to love a girl like that.
[2:12]I mean, how gutting for someone to overhear that even a character.
[2:16]And yet, Laura remembers feeling what you said was a sense of pride that her mother had bothered to see
[2:21]me at all.
[2:22]I had always felt invisible to her, which is not what I expected her reaction to be to that.
[2:26]So talk to me about this and how you chose to set it up this way.
[2:29]Right.
[2:29]So I had to give Laura a backstory that would explain her anger and also her bad choices
[2:37]with romantic partners.
[2:38]She always chooses men who won't love her.
[2:40]So I did a lot of research on the psychology of why someone might be like that.
[2:45]And I then constructed a backstory in her childhood that needed to include stories like the
[2:51]the one you just read.
[2:52]So her perception is not in realizing that her parents did something wrong.
[3:00]She just has the result of that, which is the sort of attachment issues and anger.
[3:07]So when she reflects on these moments, it's not sort of informed reflection.
[3:13]It is an emotional response similar to the one she had as a child.
[3:18]So these little vignettes were really necessary to build this understanding of why Laura is
[3:23]the way she is and why this man might be in danger.
[3:27]Talk to me about this psychology.
[3:29]You just referenced the psychology of picking the wrong men basically and you're a former
[3:34]divorce lawyer.
[3:35]You are divorced.
[3:36]I'm divorced, but now remarried.
[3:38]Have divorced parents lots of divorce around and Laura and her parents are also divorced in the
[3:44]and you're right.
[3:44]It was undeniable that Laura had bad luck with men.
[3:47]For someone so smart and Laura was that if nothing else, she kept making the same mistake over
[3:51]and over.
[3:52]But Joe couldn't seem to grasp the intangible thing he couldn't feel was the reason why
[3:56]this latest breakup was just a symptom or perhaps a warning.
[4:01]In fact, then Laura tells her therapist Rosie says, I choose men who won't love me.
[4:05]I choose them because they won't love me.
[4:08]But why would I do that?
[4:09]So what's up with this?
[4:10]Why do women choose the wrong men?
[4:12]Right, go from there.
[4:13]Okay, it's fascinating.
[4:15]So in all of my books, I do a lot of research.
[4:17]I read everything I can find on the internet and then I actually find experts in the field
[4:21]to talk to me about my specific characters and how these psychological
[4:26]dysfunctions would play out in them.
[4:29]And so what is so fascinating about what they call them attachment styles or attachment disorders
[4:36]as adults is that they almost invariably began when we were children.
[4:42]So we are sort of hardwired as we grow up.
[4:45]The brain is trying to figure out what tools we need to survive as grown-ups in our current
[4:51]environment.
[4:52]So when the brain is trying to figure out what types of attachments we need to get used to
[4:57]and we need to react to, it's taking in the stimuli from our environment.
[5:03]So if during that wiring period you have primary caregivers who are not giving you
[5:10]healthy attachments and healthy relationships, your brain will be wired around them
[5:16]to survive around them.
[5:19]And as a grown-up, what's so fascinating is that you would think that you would choose the opposite
[5:26]but you don't because of these wires.
[5:28]So the perfect example would be someone who was abused as a child or witnessed abuse.
[5:34]You would think, well, you would go into your adult life and pick people who didn't abuse you.
[5:40]And you might try to do that.
[5:41]But there is something inside of you that is still longing for that familiar feeling you had
[5:48]when you were with someone who was abusive, the sort of excitement, then the fear, the terror,
[5:53]and then the resolution, and then sometimes the warmth and lovingness that comes after it.
[6:00]And inadvertently we'll search for that familiar feeling.
[6:03]And the other dynamic at play is that there's almost this inner child inside of you that still
[6:09]wants to fix it, that wants to find a way to make that parent stop being abusive.
[6:14]And because you were never able to do it as a child, when you find someone as a grown-up
[6:20]who gives you the chance to fix them and finally be powerful enough to solve that problem,
[6:26]it's almost euphoric.
[6:28]So for Laura, she grew up not feeling loved by her father and being dismissed by her mother.
[6:35]So she inadvertently chooses men who create that same feeling inside of her that is familiar
[6:41]and who also give her this opportunity to finally be enough, to finally be whatever this person needs,
[6:49]to give her love.
[6:51]And in the book, you get little glimpses into her therapy sessions when she was in New York
[6:57]before she went on the state that helped to explain and these dynamics.
[7:02]But it's really, it's so fascinating learning about this.
[7:05]It was one of the greatest parts for me in writing it.
[7:08]Did you know when you started the book that that's the psychological issue you wanted to include?
[7:12]Or what came first?
[7:14]So I knew I wanted to turn this damsel and distress theme upside down.
[7:18]So I knew Laura had to have issues.
[7:21]She had to have anger and she had to have issues around relationships.
[7:25]Because part of the fun of this book is you get to be on the date with her hour by hour
[7:30]in her head, in first person, in present tense.
[7:34]You are experiencing her reactions to this man and the little bits of knowledge that she does have
[7:40]from her therapy sessions about what she might be doing wrong, what she might be missing,
[7:47]the clues.
[7:48]And so you get to live that with her.
[7:51]And so it evolved from there when I started doing the research of attachment disorders.
[7:57]And then it fits so beautifully with the backstory and then I was able to weave in all of the
[8:02]little clues from her childhood and build that backstory throughout the book.
[8:07]I'm sorry I didn't mean to make you repeat that.
[8:09]Maybe I asked it the same way twice.
[8:12]Oh, sorry.
[8:13]No, no, I asked you like the same question two times in Rome.
[8:15]So, but you answered it beautifully both then.
[8:17]So thank you for.
[8:19]So I want to do that.
[8:20]So Laura's sister Rosie is happily married living in the suburbs with a toddler.
[8:26]And she gives Laura advice from her sort of more feminist point of view.
[8:29]And she says, you don't need a man, Laura, not for anything.
[8:32]And Laura thinks that the risk of stealing the obvious, it's easy to say you don't need something
[8:36]when you're holding it in your hands.
[8:37]She might as well tell me she doesn't need her coffee as she inhales her second cup.
[8:42]So tell me more about that.
[8:44]And also how you feel like feminism, which is like all the rage or it's all everybody's
[8:48]talking about, is mixing with the sort of need or slash want of a man in your life.
[8:54]Right.
[8:54]So I think wanting a romantic partner has nothing to do with feminism or any social issues at all.
[9:02]It's something if you want to have a romantic partner, then you do.
[9:06]I think we get into issues that involve, you know, social constructs and feminism when a person
[9:13]doesn't have a choice and has to be with a romantic partner, either for financial reasons
[9:18]or because of societal expectations.
[9:21]So that's really not at play here.
[9:23]Laura needs a man because she has this dysfunction from her childhood.
[9:28]She needs love.
[9:30]She needs to resolve those issues to move forward with her life.
[9:34]She has a great job.
[9:35]She has an education.
[9:37]She has a loving family and she lives in a society where it's okay to be single.
[9:42]It's okay to not have children.
[9:43]So the need is really not coming from any sort of societal pressures.
[9:48]It's coming from this backstory and these childhood issues that are unresolved.
[9:53]I just love how you said that.
[9:54]People are so free with their advice, right?
[9:57]Yes, it's okay.
[9:58]Okay, thank you.
[9:59]Thank you.
[10:00]I don't think that's being a single woman.
[10:02]Of course, you feel that push and pull
[10:05]of why do you need this?
[10:06]And the answer is it's not that I need it.
[10:09]It's just something that I want.
[10:11]And I think I am considering myself a feminist.
[10:13]I went to Brown in the 1980s.
[10:15]So I think that gives me some credentials
[10:17]in that department.
[10:19]And I'm perfectly comfortable saying what I want
[10:22]in terms of romantic relationships.
[10:25]Speaking of dating.
[10:26]Let's start with the internet dating aspect of this.
[10:28]Let's do that.
[10:29]You have this fictional website.
[10:31]I mean, I assume it's fictional.
[10:32]I didn't Google it.
[10:32]Actually, find love.com, right?
[10:34]It is.
[10:35]OK, get it.
[10:36]Otherwise, how would you have picked it?
[10:37]So you say this site has no swiping a lab.
[10:41]So let's talk about what you think online dating
[10:44]has really done to relationships and how it allows things
[10:47]like this to even happen.
[10:48]Oh, what are you going to take up our whole session
[10:51]in a paragraph?
[10:53]So I have been single again for 11 years
[10:56]when I first went out in the dating world.
[10:59]I was reluctant, but I did.
[11:00]I went on match.com, e-harmony, back then.
[11:02]There were no apps.
[11:04]And you had to actually sit down at your computer.
[11:05]You had to build a profile.
[11:06]And you could search for people based on things like,
[11:10]do they have a job?
[11:11]Are they still married?
[11:12]Do they have children?
[11:13]Where do they live?
[11:14]And so there was a screening process.
[11:17]And I actually met a wonderful man on match.
[11:19]We were together for many years.
[11:21]And back then, the danger really
[11:24]was that the person was lying.
[11:25]And I did encounter actually encountered
[11:27]a professional con artist.
[11:29]Yeah.
[11:30]Yes, it's a longer story, which I'll tell you another time.
[11:32]But a professional con artist.
[11:33]So you get wise to that, though.
[11:35]And you start to realize, OK, I need to Google this person
[11:38]or go on Facebook and just verify that this person is
[11:42]the person that he says he is.
[11:44]But now, what is so fascinating, I have
[11:46]re-emerged and I have dipped my toe into the world of dating
[11:51]apps, which are on your phone.
[11:53]And it is completely different.
[11:56]And one man I spoke to described it as a candy store.
[11:59]And he described this temptation to always
[12:03]be looking for the new batch of people that were on your screens.
[12:08]You could swipe left or right, left or right.
[12:09]And then you swipe right.
[12:10]And then you become, you get a face bubble.
[12:13]And he had screens and screens and screens of face bubbles.
[12:17]And it was so hard to choose.
[12:18]How do you choose?
[12:19]And then you go out on a date with one.
[12:21]She's nice, but you have 100 other face bubbles
[12:24]and more coming every single day.
[12:26]And they're just right there.
[12:28]So there's this illusion of an endless supply
[12:32]of attractive, you know, potential partners
[12:37]for a date or whatever it is you're looking for.
[12:40]And I think that is actually changing relationships
[12:44]because you have to have a certain amount
[12:49]of determination and a willingness
[12:51]to survive the bumps in the road.
[12:53]You might not like the person's dog.
[12:55]You might not like their house.
[12:56]You might not like the things that they cook.
[12:58]No one's perfect.
[13:01]But the fact that you can then go home and say,
[13:03]eh, let me look at my face bubbles.
[13:05]Maybe there's someone just like him who doesn't have,
[13:07]you know, these few things I don't like.
[13:10]Or maybe, you know, there's a woman who's more attractive
[13:12]than the one I just had a date with.
[13:14]She's not as good looking as in her pictures.
[13:16]It's just that supply that's there.
[13:19]And it's always nagging at you.
[13:21]So it's like buying a sweater,
[13:23]you know when you go and you shop for a sweater
[13:24]and you'll be on a website and a blue sweater
[13:28]and maybe you go on Jay Crew or something.
[13:30]And you'll be 10 of them and you're trying to choose,
[13:33]you put some in your shopping cart.
[13:34]And then all of a sudden, you know,
[13:36]it miraculously on the right-hand side of your screen
[13:39]will come advertisements from 10 other websites
[13:42]with these same type of blue sweater
[13:44]because the computer is the one someone is watching you.
[13:48]And then it is, it's a candy store of sweaters.
[13:50]And I feel like the apps now are making it a candy store
[13:53]of people.
[13:54]It's a while ago, like when I was single,
[13:57]I had a friend from the finance world
[13:59]who used to say you can't make,
[14:01]you can't make smart decisions
[14:02]without the presence of options, right?
[14:04]Like you can't, if you only have the one option,
[14:07]okay, I'll take it, right?
[14:09]But if you have three guys you're updating,
[14:12]you can choose.
[14:13]But now, if you perceive it to be limitless, right?
[14:17]That's just like there's the whole equation.
[14:19]Exactly.
[14:20]I mean, then what do you do?
[14:21]I mean, which of course is not true.
[14:23]I mean, right at all.
[14:25]Yeah, and actually it could probably create
[14:26]some sort of algorithm for this
[14:28]and some sort of statistical analysis model.
[14:31]But yes, when there are always going to be 10 more people
[14:35]tomorrow on your screen,
[14:37]how do you then limit those choices
[14:39]because the choices are always changing?
[14:42]Yeah.
[14:42]I recently went online to help a family friend of mine
[14:45]who's turning 70 and she looks like she's like 50.
[14:49]But I was like, you need to go on these things,
[14:52]how can you just try?
[14:53]Anyway, so I was like her seer know
[14:55]and I went on and I was like writing all these people
[14:56]I love her.
[14:57]I love her.
[14:58]Anyway, so I got a taste of what the current state of the house
[15:02]and websites are like and it's like whoa.
[15:04]Meanwhile, all the 70-year-old men
[15:06]only wanted like 50 or 40-year-old women.
[15:08]I was like, seriously, like stand from New Jersey
[15:11]is not going to meet my pretend personality.
[15:13]Yes, you know, like really good luck, man.
[15:15]Like yeah, my friends and I, my single friends and I joke about it
[15:19]because men, our age, I'm 52, sometimes we all get together
[15:22]and some of them will complain about how so hard
[15:25]when they ask whether he wants to have children.
[15:29]And we, you know, we all look at each other and say,
[15:32]well, that's because you're dating 30-year-olds
[15:34]and you're 55 or 56 or whatever.
[15:38]And it is true and that's where the candy store situation
[15:41]really comes into play because the flip side of it is
[15:45]I have a male friend who actually has found that women use him
[15:50]for free meals.
[15:52]And so they will, you know, send, they'll communicate,
[15:57]they'll send more sexy pictures
[15:59]and then they'll make a dinner reservation
[16:01]at like John George and expect him to pay.
[16:04]Yeah, and then he never sees him again.
[16:06]So it goes both ways.
[16:07]Yeah, it works both ways.
[16:09]No, no shortage of schemers at that.
[16:11]Exactly.
[16:12]So I was interested in the structure of your book.
[16:15]You used alternating viewpoints first person
[16:18]as you were mentioning for Laura.
[16:21]Yes, thank you.
[16:22]Yeah, I'm sorry.
[16:22]Yeah, I'm telling you the words are like not coming out.
[16:24]It's okay today.
[16:25]And you also have it take place in a short period of time.
[16:28]So I felt like they were sort of like that show 24
[16:30]like that same vibe or you're like in each hour.
[16:33]This is 48 hours essentially plus and flashbacks
[16:36]over the course of several months.
[16:37]So how did you choose this particular structure
[16:40]for your story?
[16:41]So, you know, first I came up with this idea
[16:43]of wanting to go into the deception of internet dating
[16:46]and then I decided to turn the theme upside down
[16:49]and then I decided, well, how am I gonna tell this story?
[16:51]Because I need to tell the story about the search for her
[16:56]because there's lots of fun stuff about how they go on
[16:58]onto the app and they create avatars
[17:00]and all these things that I thought were so cool.
[17:03]I really wanted to use.
[17:05]But I also wanted readers to experience the date itself.
[17:09]So I thought about all the different structures I could use
[17:12]and I decided to just do this split timeframe
[17:15]so that you could actually be with Laura the night before,
[17:18]which is where the title of the book came from
[17:21]and you could be with her hour by hour on that date.
[17:24]And what it does is it creates this heightened level
[17:26]of suspense because you know from the start
[17:29]that she's going to go missing,
[17:31]that this date is going to go very wrong.
[17:33]So everything that happens on that date,
[17:36]everything he says to her, where they go.
[17:39]You don't know if that's the moment when it's gonna happen
[17:41]where it's gonna go off the rails.
[17:43]It just creates an automatic sense of apprehension
[17:46]and suspense and then by splitting the timeframe,
[17:50]you also get to go to the next character, Rosie.
[17:54]So you go back and forth with information now
[17:57]that Rosie doesn't have because you were just with Laura,
[18:01]you know why she parked the car on this one street
[18:03]and why her phone was found somewhere else,
[18:06]but Rosie doesn't.
[18:07]So then you kind of want Rosie, come on Rosie.
[18:10]Yeah, figure it out.
[18:11]So there's that and then at the end of her chapters,
[18:14]she learned something new about the man.
[18:17]So when you have to Laura, you have that same feeling,
[18:19]like come on Laura, find out what happened,
[18:21]find out about this man, find out the truth.
[18:24]And so the suspense is just really amped up.
[18:27]And this is the first thriller I've written
[18:29]that has this level of breathless suspense.
[18:34]And I just felt like the market was calling for that.
[18:38]And it was something I wanted to experience
[18:39]as a writer as well.
[18:41]And so you were not a writer for your whole life.
[18:44]You have had lots of different jobs.
[18:45]All very interesting.
[18:47]You started at Goldman.
[18:48]You became, you decided to go back and become a lawyer.
[18:51]You practiced.
[18:52]Then you were stayed home.
[18:54]Then you even volunteered as a lawyer for a while.
[18:56]Then you went into D'Worsa.
[18:57]So it's all, basically the story.
[18:59]And then you just decided you were gonna be a writer.
[19:02]And then now look at you, you've like just done it.
[19:04]It's like, wow, I'm impressed.
[19:06]No, it's amazing.
[19:07]And now, so how, as someone who's starting out,
[19:10]now just deciding to be a writer,
[19:12]what did you do?
[19:13]Did you take a class?
[19:14]Did you research online?
[19:15]Did it just all come naturally to you?
[19:17]How did you take yourself?
[19:19]How to write books.
[19:21]So I actually started writing
[19:24]when my first child was about nine months old.
[19:26]And I was taking, quote, unquote, a break from work
[19:29]while my kids were little.
[19:31]But I had what I refer to as a Betty-Free Dan moment.
[19:34]I don't know if you're familiar with it.
[19:35]So, Mr. Fennon, Ms. Dake, exactly.
[19:38]Which was the start of the feminist movement in the 60s.
[19:41]And it's really about what happens to your mind
[19:44]when you've been educated
[19:46]and you've been in the workforce.
[19:47]And then all of a sudden you're at home.
[19:49]And I knew I had to do something that I wanted to be home.
[19:54]But I had to do something that felt like it was leading
[19:56]somewhere.
[19:56]And I just came up with this idea to write a novel.
[19:59]I was like, oh, no, no, no.
[20:00]of legal thrillers. I thought, John Grisham was a lawyer. He's a best-selling author.
[20:04]How hard can this be? And I should have taken a class. And I should have actually learned how
[20:12]to use dialogue and narration because I spent three years writing a novel that had a great
[20:18]plot. But when I took it to a writing professor, I was told that I had to rewrite the whole
[20:24]thing because I had no idea what I was doing in terms of using these tools.
[20:28]And he was, he was right. I knew it did not read like a novel. There were basic things that
[20:34]I didn't know, but I didn't know I didn't know them. If that makes sense. Okay. So the best example
[20:39]is that, you know, chapter one, this exciting thing happens and my lawyer found the secret file.
[20:45]You know, it was very Grisham asked. But then in chapter two, he needed to pull his office
[20:50]mate into this adventure with him. So he needed to tell her what happened in chapter one.
[20:56]Yeah. So I had five pages of dialogue where he is telling her and she's responding. But to
[21:01]the reader, that's boring because they already lived it. And he said, he said, no, you need to cut
[21:07]out those five pages. And in one sentence of narration, say, you know, Sam told Justine,
[21:13]what happened in chapter one? And I was like, oh, right, duh, you know. But I had never studied
[21:21]writing. So that was a wake-up call. I kept writing. It's actually my story sounds like an overnight
[21:27]success, but it was 17 years. And then an overnight success because I actually published two
[21:33]books and women's fiction before I went back to practicing law as a family lawyer. So but
[21:39]those books didn't sell well. So I went back to practicing law and I gained all of this knowledge
[21:45]about psychology. And I also had this nagging feeling that I could still make it as a writer somehow.
[21:55]It was something I'd fallen in love with that I didn't expect. It had really just been an escape
[22:01]from my kids and let's see if I can do this. But I fell in love with storytelling. And I realized
[22:06]that when I was practicing law again. So I kept writing while I was practicing law, wrote a whole
[22:12]other novel in women's fiction, found a new agent who then told me she didn't think she could sell
[22:17]it. And that was a moment that was so instrumental in how I view life now that, you know, some
[22:26]dreams aren't going to come true. And no matter how hard you try, you can, you know, I can start
[22:32]doing cartwheels in my living room. I'm not going to be an Olympic gymnast. I'm 52. That's not
[22:37]happening. So you have to also have realistic expectations and pragmatism. So I decided I needed to
[22:44]just know one way or another. So I said I would write one more book. She suggested psychological
[22:49]thrillers. I had this knowledge of psychology from the last five years I'd been practicing
[22:55]divorce law. And I knew how to write a novel now. So everything sort of came together and I wrote
[23:00]it in two months. And it sold at an auction. And my entire life changed. And I became an author
[23:07]of full-time working author. It's so cool. I mean, it's just so cool. It seems to me very few
[23:15]writers have a straight and narrow path. They do not. It's absolutely true. It's like,
[23:20]I have this book on a shelf. I tried this. It didn't work. Then I tried that. I thought I was going
[23:24]to do this. And I did that. Like, it just, I don't know if other careers. I feel like other careers
[23:29]have more. They do. And you're a progression. They do. Like, you start at this point first year
[23:32]in analyst and you're an associate. Like, it's like, you just follow along. But yes,
[23:36]something that this creative, I don't know. Well, it's just such an unstructured world. Nobody
[23:43]knows what's going to sell. The market's always changing. Tastes are always changing. And so you
[23:49]and you have a love gatekeeper. So you could, you can get five degrees in writing, master's degrees
[23:56]and doctorate degrees. You can teach for years as, you know, teach writing. And that's not
[24:01]getting you past the gatekeepers. You have to come up with a book that they feel is current.
[24:08]And that's your agent. And then the agent has to go and sell it to a publishing house.
[24:14]So there are no like set of credentials or work experience that are necessarily going to make
[24:19]you eligible for the job. Interesting. Yeah. Which can be like, job in the nonprofit world.
[24:26]Exactly. That's exactly right. Yes. So I know we're almost set of time. So are you now?
[24:32]Do you have like 20 more ideas for thrillers coming down the pike? Yes. I think I was born to
[24:39]write, write psychological thrillers. You're probably going to write your next book on the train
[24:42]on the way. You're so fast. Well, they can sing. So once I have the story and then I have the
[24:48]the basic outline, I write pretty quickly. But I already, I've finished my fourth thriller,
[24:53]hopefully it'll be out next year. And this story came to me. And this is what happens with
[24:57]writers. You'll just be in an everyday event or experience. And you always think how it could
[25:02]turn into a thriller. So I was driving back from my son's soccer game up in Massachusetts. And I
[25:08]was in one of these sort of remote desolate towns. And I had to stop for gas. And I was tired. And
[25:15]the game, it just, you know, just really hard. And they lost. And it was a bad ref call. And it was
[25:21]you know, my son takes the bus. So I was driving four hours up and back alone. And I was just sitting
[25:26]there. I was feeling fatigued. And I saw this road that was going off between these cornfields. And
[25:30]I thought, why have I just walked away down that road left left the gas pumping left my wall
[25:38]and phone in the car and just started walking down that road. And then the whole way home, I started
[25:43]thinking about a thriller. Well, then I'd have to get kidnapped by someone. They'd have to come
[25:48]looking for me. Why would I walk away? I would need a backstory. So the book that I just finished
[25:54]is currently has no title. It started with that theme. So there's a woman with older children. And
[26:01]she doesn't actually walk away in that sense. But when I did my research, I found out that most
[26:06]adult women who disappear have walked away from their lives. Isn't that incredible? And they
[26:11]end up coming back on their own. Or they are found many, many years later. But they left on their
[26:17]own. They just couldn't face telling people they were leaving. So I knew I had to write about this.
[26:23]So the woman is, she doesn't actually walk away. But her family comes to believe she has. So they
[26:28]stopped looking for her. And then her daughter, who's a 21 year old adult, gets a new lead, a tip,
[26:35]an anonymous tip that comes in. And she decides to go back to this desolate town and find her mother.
[26:43]And I used the split timeframe again. So you're with the mother. You know what happened.
[26:48]You're with her. And you know what happens to her. And you don't know exactly where she is or who's
[26:53]taken her. And then you're also with her daughter two weeks later when she comes back to try to find
[26:59]her. So it has that ramped up suspense again. But also these really interesting themes that I was
[27:05]able to research and bring into the book. That sounds great. I hope so. I can't wait to read that.
[27:10]So any parting advice to aspiring authors? Well, from my story before, I would say,
[27:16]you know, get your toolbox and shape, right? Learn how to write if you haven't done that already.
[27:21]Know your market. If you're going to create a new genre. If you're going to create a literary
[27:28]masterpiece, that's wonderful. But for most of us who are working authors in commercial fiction,
[27:36]you have to know the space that you're writing in because you have to get past the gatekeepers.
[27:41]And they are looking at what has sold and what the market seems to want. And those are the gates
[27:48]you have to get through. So you have to be a little bit pragmatic and smart. You have to think about
[27:53]the story you want to write and ask yourself why you want to write it. And if it's something
[27:58]other people are going to want to read. Sometimes we're driven to write a story because we have
[28:03]issues we want to resolve. But not everybody is going to get it. So you have to be a little,
[28:08]you know, a little self reflective about your desire to write the story. But really, it's the tools.
[28:14]Understand your genre. Understand what structure. Know what the structures are. Learn how to use
[28:20]dialogue in your nation for starters. And join a writer's group or find beta readers who can
[28:27]give you, you know, really good feedback. And then just keep at it.
[28:31]Love that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful time to read
[28:34]books. This is wonderful. Thanks. This episode has been brought to you by Boombox Gifts. Memory boxes
[28:40]filled with personal messages and photos from friends and family for your next special occasion.
[28:44]BoomboxGifts.com. Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing.
[28:50]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.