Bookwild - Cancel Culture, Castles and Chaos: Audra McElyea's Not Good People

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Audra McElyea returns to talk about her new locked-room, cancel-culture thriller Not Good People, a twisty ensemble mystery set in a blizzard-stranded Blue Ridge Mountain castle. Audra shares how a decades-old British play inspired her to blend popcorn-thriller pacing with a deeper moral reckoning, how she crafted eleven interconnected characters through actor-based mannerisms, and why the story’s escalating secrets force readers to examine not just the cast—but themselves. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This week, I talk with Audra McLeer about her newest thriller, Not Good People, which is just a wintry, secluded popcorn thriller. When a group of strangers win a week-long stay at a primitive-style castle in the Blue Ridge Mountains, it feels like they've won the lottery. But when a deadly snowstorm hits, the moment they arrive, unease settles in because now they're bound to the secluded castle with no way out. Once they've unpacked, it's revealed that a mysterious source paid a, for all of their stays, and the contest that brought them there was nothing more than a trap, designed to lure them into the same place at the same time, causing suspicion to rise and paranoia to spread. Then the boxes begin to open, one per day. Each revealing a devastating reputation-shattering secret broadcasts not only to everyone inside the castle, but to the

outside world as well. And if anyone tries to leave before the game is finished, one of them will die. days seven secrets because someone has decided they're not good people if you are looking for that locked room vibes it's definitely locked castle vibes and strangers who all have something in common that they don't necessarily know they have in common and secrets secrets across the board you definitely want to pick this one up so that being said let's hear from andra i am so i am so to talk about not good people we've had audra on before so we kind of know her writing journey in general so typically with people who are repeats my like big first question is was there anything different about writing this book than your other books yeah it was a I had a big goal

for this book and it was really hard to do um yeah I saw this movie like 10 12 years ago and it was called An Inspector Calls. It's like a British film and it was a play before that. It's actually been adapted into a film a couple times that I know of. It's a really old play. And so the guy that plays Professor Lupin is like the inspector and it's like this big ensemble

cast. It's like, you know, like a BBC type movie. It was just so good. Me and my husband watched it and it was like everything you want a thriller like a mystery suspense who done it all that but it had a really big ensemble cast and they all had collectively contributed to the demise of one character at the beginning and so it had like this really strong moral lesson to it at the same time of being a thriller that was like a popcorn thriller you just couldn't get enough of it at the same time and although mine's completely different

it is an ensemble and they are all connected in a way that they don't know about and there is somebody who kind of suffers at the hand of all of them together in a completely different way but it did inspire me to try to marry like the traditional popcorn thriller with like this big moral question at the end of it that really made you think

and add a lot more depth to it and trying to do both of those at the same time to where somebody could read it and just be like oh the plot twist got me and it was such a good thriller I'll just one more chapter to myself until I read it until 4 a.m. But then if somebody wants to take it a little bit further and look in the mirror at the end and be like, what does this really say about me? Not just the characters.

They can do that. So it was really hard to feel like I got to the point where, you know, you could kind of choose your own adventure and do this part A, type A of the book and enjoy it for what it was, part A and also part B. Yeah. That makes sense. that's a good that's a good point i hadn't thought of it that way myself yet but it does it does do both um and has that it's this is the biggest cast you've created in the sense of like

being in the care with the characters like obviously you have books that have lots of people in them but um lots of characters going on did you get to know the characters as you were writing them or did you, like, figure out who each of them were before you started? Yeah, so there's 11 main characters, but the POVs, you only get two of their POVs, but through those, you get two very different lenses in which you see all the characters, and then you obviously get to know the people who are really close to the two that you get these through and themselves, too, as well. But, like, the way I've been doing it since I wrote Hushed Your Sisters,

is I'll cast each character with an actor and actress and kind of take some of their mannerisms from their most popular roles or what they're stereotypically going to play in movies and really kind of study that. And so I have a really good idea of their attitude in general and then like what little ticks they might have, like the way they might walk, the way they might condescendingly talk to people or not and those types of things and then you know just marry that into the story and what's what's going on in the story what's a normal reaction and then maybe times it by three if you're talking about helen so things like so it just depends on the character but i do try

to like really flesh that out beforehand so when i'm getting into it it's really more like what is their reaction going to be more than are they i already know who they are right that makes sense yeah that's kind of cool too i didn't i hadn't really thought of how like you could also think of the mannerisms of like actors and actresses or who they typically play i had never thought of it in like that context specifically um what about the setting so like they're all in this old castle in the blue ridge mountains uh and it snowy which i read this a few months ago when it was still hot and so it was a reprieve for me because I am not a summer girl but did you what did you kind of always have that setting in mind? I did and I really wanted

to do a castle in the Blue Ridge Mountains but the elevation really isn't high enough for it to be like a bankable blizzard type weather all the time to it is very important for the plot for it to be like oh it's definitely like a really good chance that you're going to be stuck here in a Lizard. So I obviously created like a fictitious mountain within the Blue Ridge Mountain range where it was possible for that. So I wanted it to be here because I have a lot of family throughout the whole chain of the Blue Ridge Mountains and I love them. But the elevation is just not quite high enough for a story of this magnitude of the snowstorm. So it's a little bit real, a little bit not real, but I've really liked

the gothic-y atmosphere of the castle and it was like this primitive resort where it's set in modern day like you have cell phones and you have Wi-Fi, but people go to this resort to not have that and they do have a landline but obviously that is taken

down really. So you really are in a contemporary story but it feels like the characters are trapped in another time while they're getting cancelled in real time as well. So it kind of feels like marrying the old and the new together, and it's just really fun. It's the first cancel culture thriller that I have read or written, really, that's labeled like a cancel culture thriller.

So that that would be a fun idea to do. Totally. Yeah, the kind of what you're talking about is these guests get stranded there, and then all of a sudden these boxes come out for each of them. And each one has a really damaging secret in them that is getting released. They're seeing it, but also the rest of the world is seeing it too. So what kind of drew you to the idea of a game like that? Well, I really liked, like, I wanted to have a locked room thriller, and I wanted to do a canceled thriller, but I didn't want it to be like famous people because we all get

engrossed in these cancel culture stories like it's so easy to get sucked in and to judge and to come up with your theories and we all do it um but what would that look like if it were happening to you and it like in a normal everyday situation as like an average Joe like what would that look like as a thriller and you know as you're walking through you're judging like what they did or didn't do

or said or didn't say but you're also like wow what would what does this say about me that I have this opinion and maybe it turns out they did have malicious and tense in the end and you're like wow I really believe that they maybe didn't or maybe that I thought that they did and then they didn't but I don't know it just says a lot about us as the reader and like yeah toxicity of cancel culture and how we all I mean we do all get sucked into it sometimes and it really is they are real people at the end of the day and are we any better than them you know right yeah yeah it's like we want it to be that people can still learn from mistakes and not just be like erased

and like not allowed to do anything now there's plenty of plenty of reasons to you probably shouldn't even use the word cancel in that case there there are plenty of reasons to like prosecute some people basically is what i'm trying to say but yeah we canceling everyone and not allowing anyone like room to grow definitely would not reflect well on ourselves if we were like always holding ourselves to that kind of a standard yes exactly and we're as a pub as the public we're like always foaming at the mouth for the next cancel culture victim i mean we really are and like how many of things that people have gotten canceled for that are like the minor the more minor things how many of those things have we done if we're really right if we're really

honest. If we ever done anything worth getting canceled for, probably. Right. At least ridiculed for, for sure. Right. What was that? I was reminding me of another. Oh, so like you said, we were only like technically into POVs, but was there a character

whose story was like the most fun to create? And then was there one that was like the hardest? to either create or to like write about um i really enjoyed doing iris's pov because she came from such an elite family and so her background is obviously a lot different than mine but she has um and this isn't a spool or anything but she comes from this very elite family and she has her eyes open to to the truth of what her family is actually doing and how it's very corrupt and And how she's kind of grown up with the silver spoon in her mouth. And she has no idea what real life looks like for normal everyday families and how hard it is.

And so her transition, looking back in her flashbacks from like how she grew into this more normal person and how rare that probably is for someone of that stature was really fun to write her just kind of turning into such an empathetic character that you really. really believed and trusted her POV a lot. And I really enjoyed having that like transformation in her. Yeah. Yeah. I read this around the time that I read Feigned by Omicatu, which is it revolves entirely around like she basically pitched it as like succession, but with like supernatural horror. And her story, like there were some similarities there too, uh, as well. is what I talked with her about where she was like is really hard to grow up in that and ever like question it or like try to see like is this okay yeah I really enjoyed you know like that she did like wake up to that and chose a completely different life than what she

grew up in even though it was giving up a lot in what most people would consider a lot of worldly like riches i guess yes ability security all that but it just wasn't worth for soul in the end yeah yeah totally with the with the secrets that they all had did you did you know what each person's secret was or did you kind of create the secrets as you were writing it i i actually I kind of knew I wanted to do like the Seven Deadly Sins and have a play off of that even though I don't ever really call that out.

Yeah. I've ever seen the movie seven and the seven deadly sins like I wanted to kind of do a little nod to that. But I didn't know exactly what they would be. I knew I wanted to start out a little bit on the milder side. So I was like, oh, this isn't too bad and then just really

make them progressively worse as they went on to where they would really start to break out and be paranoid yeah yeah totally did you so the castle part i know you said the um like the mountain they're actually on is fictional right have you because i'm realizing i haven't i read a lot of gothic like whether it's horror or thriller or mystery i have not been in a castle i don't think um was there any castle that inspired it or were you kind of just like i just to write one in a castle. I wanted to write about a castle, but I didn't go on a research trip to a castle

in Nashville, took my whole family and my husband and the kids, and we all went. And so this was actually Al Capone's Castle. It's like, it's really, really old. And so they gave me a tour. Now it is a music studio. So all of your like favorite country music artists in Nashville are recording there. And so I did a cool. So Castle recording studios. that's what it's called. Okay, I just found it. Yeah. And it was Al Capone's castle. It was kind of where a lot of illegal things happened back in the day. Naturally. The basement is haunted for sure. I did a tour of the basement and it was very creepy. And so aesthetically, I just wanted to go and like take some mental notes and get the vibe, the aesthetic. And it's not a real castle per se. It looks kind of like one,

but it's not like a full castle, if that makes sense. Some of it is just inauthentic, and some of it is more authentic. It was made to look like. Yeah. But like we did a tour of the roof and all that stuff, and it's not all like real stone and stuff. Like, it's more like to look like it. Right. If that makes sense.

But it was the closest, it was the closest field trip, and it was a really neat place to go visit. And definitely got the mood. And it's so fascinating that, yeah, they have, like, two different studios that you can even record in. And now I'm, like, looking at it all, I'm like, I want to go just to go. It was really much more. And they had a list of all the people that have recorded there before, and it was like, everybody that you could think. I know, I was just looking at it. They have it on their website, too.

That is like. Some pop artists and people like that. So many people. Like, Katie Perry has been there. Yeah. Like Billy Ray Cyrus Like there's a dolly parton Wow

That is so cool Well now We need someone to write I know That's a castle History could be a really good music murder at a castle Yeah

That's so cool Now I Now I want to go visit something like that Um Were there Were there any Oh yeah that was my other run Were there any of the characters

that you were like, this is this story, this part is just like difficult to write or required other research or if you just like, we're like, I hate this person. Like it is called not good people. I mean, yeah. So they're all very unlikable in at least one way. Yeah. But I mean, it was really hard to write the person. I won't give any spoilers, but the person who's behind everything. It was hard to write their story because I don't want you to end up hating that character but they are like the villain I suppose but what is a villain really? Are the good guys always

all good? Are the bad guys always all bad? And so that character was very interesting to write because I wanted the reader to step away and not absolutely hate that character which was really hard to know. So I won't say who. But that was an interesting way to write the villain per se yeah yeah where you might have to be on their side a little bit right well and that's what makes a like you're saying a compelling villain and that's what can i think i was just yeah i saw tiffany d jackson a couple weeks ago and she was talking about that like her

villains are either the system a system is sometimes like what the villain is for her characters but like when it's a person she's like you can't just make them like twirl the trilling their mustache like really obvious bad guy or it's not it's not as interesting to read yeah um you know my favorite actor tom hittleston who plays loki he's like one of the best villains he's like more of an anti-hero really i agree has a good quote and i'm not going to say it perfect but he says um the villain is the hero in his own mind in that oh yeah it makes a really good villain like they're not out there like you said twisting their mustache thinking oh, I'm going to torch everyone for the fun of it. They, in their mind, they're doing it for a good

reason. And that's what makes a villain. Yes, I agree. Well, that's a good segue, because I was about to, I saw one of my notes here. And another, like, area of whatever, society that talks a lot about villains is reality TV. And good villains, villains are good in all kinds of ways there. But one of the things that I was I kind of noticed while I was reading like the whole fact that it's like broadcast to the world is almost similar to like the setups of also like like I used to be a huge big brother fan and I probably still would be if I just had more time it's not like basically I'm saying I didn't like all of a sudden stop being a fan um but it almost reminded me of big brother but it also reminded me of even like housewives when they're trying to like

get a story out about someone while the cameras are rolling. So did you pull any inspiration from that kind of stuff? Because I know you like reality TV too. Right. Maybe not consciously. And I've never watched Big Brother. I probably need to. I would probably really like that. And I would probably like, because you try to guess who's in on it, right? Or do you know? That is, I think you might be thinking of traitors is like that. where it's like there are yeah there are like the traders yeah big brother is like one person wins every week and they become the head of household and then they nominate two people and then you have to vote on who to get out and it's whoever the final two then everyone votes on that so

big brother is kind of about like having alliances that other people don't know about um and basically trying to survive. It's a lot of emotional manipulation. And I just am that person who's going to say it was better before being an Instagram influencer became a goal because like people were actually coming on to like play the game and weren't thinking about brand deals. I do think it was better back then. But yeah, I don't know. I haven't watched many of the recent seasons. It's a commitment because it airs like three days a week. Oh, wow. Well, I do love housewives, and I love, I watch Beverly Hills the most. I have watched the old school New York, like when it was Ramona and Luanne and all them.

But, I mean, just put people in a house that aren't familiar with each other. I guess sometimes they have like new cast members come in and it's kind of that same feel. Or if you're like watching season one and everybody has to kind of like get to know each other. But there's also like the psychological warfare going on if everybody's trying to figure everybody out. So there very much is that dissection of everyone's person. and everybody's motives and what they're thinking in this book as you're going through because they're they're strangers and they don't know who to trust something very sinister is going on and and it's probably somebody in the house like or in the castle and they all think that

and so they're very much you know got this psychological warfare going on which they do now some of those ladies I mean they are smart especially Erica knows how to play the game she knows how to get the information out that she wants without telling too much. You know, some of them are better at it than others. Or Lisa. Definitely. Oh, gosh.

Lisa was the best pieces that Kyle talks about. It's so funny. Uh-huh. They all do it. Some of them, some are better than others, but they have a strategy. Yes. So good. Yeah, the psychological warfare part is the part that was making me think of reality

TV in general. there's just so much going on when it's related to that stuff yeah um did you know did you know um like the secret okay so the thing that made them all in common like did you know what that was when you started writing it yes yes the only thing i didn't know only thing i didn't know because i start with the plot twist first and then right up to that oh yeah and then i knew at the end i wanted to have one more plot twist with a certain character but I didn't know what exactly that would be and that kind of came about as I was writing but I plot things out and outline it so much at the like before I even start I'm really just mostly having to think of like dialogue and mannerisms

and like how you move and you know how you walk the way you hold yourself like things like that but I've already also got that in my head from the actor actress that I have kind of portraying them in my mind too. So a lot of things are pretty much already figured out. Like 99% of things are already fleshed out before I start. I feel like that's why I would need like generally. I would need to kind of know where I was going. But sometimes too, I'm like maybe I need to break free from controlling things. There's always a little wiggle room for subplots. But like the main plots I already have turned out for sure nice well obviously i loved it i feel like it also like blended um like it's thriller it's mystery there's even just the interpersonal relationships going on i don't

know what genre that would be um so it's a different cast yeah yeah and all types like they're kind of all over the place yeah and kind of what you said at the beginning um that it is the popcorn thriller vibes but there's also there's also a statement that you can or a thought that you can still think about and maybe learn from as it all gets resolved near the end so hi but Bruce just ran into me um so yeah it's it's really fun especially i feel like i've heard so many people saying they want to read more popcorn thrillers right now. So this is a really good example of it. Yes.

You don't read while you write, but have you read anything this year that you love? That's what I always asked too. I read Bitterhouse by Pearson Modul and I really enjoyed that. I think I read that during spring break. And I might have read one other book this year and that's it. I'm down to like two books a year because I'm going. You're writing all the time.

kind of sad but yeah i do a lot of tv and movies though that keeps me happy but i'm kind of oh yeah to the point where i'm putting out a book a year when i first started i had several books in my backlog so i had released one and then i was like oh i already have the next one or two written and done and so i could just read like lots and lots and lots of books of year and now i'm down there i'm only reading one or two and i always do read in my genre but it's kind of sad but I really just I'm going from finishing one book doing promotion and while I'm promoting this one I'm starting to write the next one so right totally and I just I am of the mind of where I don't trust my subconscious self to not take something from a book right while

I'm writing and so and I don't mean the plot I mean that's already all ironed out like I said it's just the little details in quotes and, I don't know, movement, little things I'm afraid that I'm going to subconsciously have it spill out somewhere. And so reading a book is just so full of all those little details where I feel like if I watch a movie or I'm watching a TV show that that's not going to happen. And I don't know whether I'm in denial or something or maybe that is a true thing and that's how it works. Yeah. Yeah. It's, Have you watched anything you'd recommend? I, you know, I like to rewatch things over and over and over.

They say that anxious people do that. I recently watched the new season of Only Murders in the Building. Always love that show. Yeah. I'm fully caught up on Severance, ready for that to start again. I've been watching the morning show, the new season. What else have I been watching? Oh, I restarted pretty little liars because I haven't watched it in forever.

It still holds up. I like, and my book very much like the grown-up version of Pretty Little Liar. You're right. So I went back and I was like, I wonder if this still holds up. And I recently started watching that during my workouts. And that's what I'm into right now. I mean, that's a good assortment of recommendations. And so my next book's going to have a little bit of severance to it.

And I'm already so excited. I already know that that's going to be like my favorite. Whatever my new book is is always my favorite. right well that being sense it probably helps you like get through writing it yeah yeah it helps to be really excited about it but I've never yeah anything with like a little bit of

sci-fi and I say sci-fi but I really mean like memory speculative memory type of like severance eternal sunshine of the spotless mind that kind of sci-fi like it's more it really is more psychological but yeah you have to have like the sci-fi technology

to get that to make that plot possible I suppose Right. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, sometimes I call that like black mirrors, sci-fi. Yeah, I'm not really sure what to call it, but I'm calling it sci-fi thriller. And I don't, I don't really think that that's accurate. Yeah. Yeah, it's that genre can, I mean, like a lot of genres can go in lots of different directions. Yeah. For sure. I think that's the best show on television right now, Severance. Severance. So good. Oh, yeah. It's, I mean, I think it's one of the best shows I've watched. I don't think there's anything. breaking bad comes close in terms of its like storytelling and visuals but i think severance is probably i loved west world so much too though and i wish it had if it had like a uh an ending that it was expecting to have because they thought they thought they were going to have another season i think it would be a bigger contender but like i have to look at it i loved it i loved that one so

much um bruce is about to start barking so for now we're we're going to say goodbye to audra um but um everyone can go get not good people is there a place that's like the best for people to get it yeah so all my books are available everywhere in every format the audiobook releases um and they might be watching this by this point but the audiobook for not good people comes out on the 18th of November. So depending on when this airs, you might or might not have access to it yet. But all of them are available in all formats. Like everywhere online, you can imagine, just go look where you shop. But the author does get like 92% of the sale of the paperback if you get it on TikTok shop. So versus like 30%. Ooh, yeah, that's what I thought. So I'll link her TikTok

in or her shop. Yeah. In the show notes. And now I I can't sell, like on TikTok shop, I can't sell the e-books or the audiobooks, obviously. But if you're going to get a paperback anyway, definitely get it on TikTok shop because yeah, that's a big difference for the author. Helps the author. Yeah, totally. Well, thank you for coming on again. And I'm excited for this severance one coming up next. I know, me too.