Bookwild - Jennifer Fawcett's Keep This For Me: A Serial Killer, Generational Trauma and Motherhood

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

This week, Gare and I got to talk with Jennifer Fawcett about her serial killer thriller Keep This For Me! We dive into her inspiration for the story, how she was drawn to writing about the aftermath of a serial killer's actions, and how grief and trauma effect families for generations.Keep This For Me SynopsisOne hot August night in 1993, a young couple go to a party. When their car breaks down, they are picked up by a truck driver who attacks the man and abducts the woman. She is never seen again.That woman was Fiona Green’s mother.When the trucker, Eddie Ward, is caught, a mass grave of bodies is discovered in his backyard but Fiona’s mother isn’t there. Thirty years later, on his prison deathbed, Ward insists that he didn’t kill her, so Fiona finds herself back in the small town where her mother disappeared. Fighting demons of her own, she’s shocked when history repeats itself: another woman, another roadside breakdown, and another disappearance. Only this time the primary suspect is Jason Ward, Eddie’s son. Desperate, Fiona hunts down answers, unaware that she is being drawn into a dangerous trap.With Jennifer Fawcett’s signature “suspenseful and immersive” (Library Journal) prose, Keep This for Me is a fresh, spellbinding exploration of what we unwillingly inherit from our parents and how one random act can send ripples years into the future. Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week, Gare and I got to talk with Jennifer Fawcett about her new book, Keep This for Me. It is a really stunning serial killer thriller that kind of has some true crime vibes to it and really explores intergenerational trauma and how we all handle traumatic events differently. So this is what it's about. One hot August night in 1993, a young couple go to a party. When their car breaks down, they are picked up by a truck driver who attacks the man and abducts the woman. She has never seen again. That woman was Fiona Green's mother.

When the trucker, Eddie Ward is caught. A mass grave of bodies is discovered in his backyard, but Fiona's mother isn't there. 30 years later, on his prison deathbed, Ward insists that he didn't kill her, so Fiona finds herself back in the small town where her mother disappeared. Fighting demons of her own, she's shocked when history repeats itself with another woman, another roadside breakdown, and another disappearance. Only this time the primary suspect is Jason Ward, Eddie's son. Desperate Fiona hunts down answers unaware that she is being drawn into a dangerous trap.

This one has so many elements going for it. If you, through our conversation, we realized, if you enjoyed notes on an execution and or the Lake of Lost Girls, this is like in that vein as well, where it's really examining the effects of a serial killer, how they hurt families, and not just giving them the spotlight. So there was so much for us to talk to her about, as you can imagine. So let's hear from Jennifer. I am excited. Gare and I are here with Jennifer Fawcett to talk about to keep this for me.

I almost forgot the title, like, right before I said it. I was like, oh, no. Yes. So, yeah, I'm super excited to talk to you about this book, but I did also, at the beginning, I do always want to know what was your like, I want to be an author moment or what, like, how long have you known? or what was your journey to writing, basically? Sure, sure.

So start there, start with journey. Yeah. So I was a playwright for many, many years. And so my transition, it was more of a transition than going from zero to nothing. And so I've been writing plays for like, I don't even know how long, 15 years or something. And then a friend introduced me to NanoRimo, which I hadn't actually heard of. So for anyone who doesn't know, Nanolimo is National Novel Writing Month.

It's been around for ages, I think. And it's the month of November, the challenge is to write 50,000 words, which is, I mean, it would be a very short novel. Yeah. But it definitely is a good, like, kick into a novel.

And so she, so I was, like, fully a playwright. I mean, I'd always harbored dreams of being able to write a book, but it just seemed so insurmountable. I think. Like, it was just like so many more words. Yeah.

But I was at a point in my life where I had no excuses. Like I was unemployed waiting for some paperwork to, I'm a Canadian citizen and I was becoming, I was getting my green card, but I hadn't got it yet. So I couldn't work. And I was totally broke. So I couldn't go, I couldn't really like afford to leave the house, didn't have kids or anything. Like I just had no distractions and therefore no excuses. So I said, sure, why not? I'll try this.

nano-rimeo thing and 50,000 words, it seemed like a really intimidating number, but you break it down to just like, I don't even know what the math is. It's something like 1,633 and a half words a day or something like that, right? And it's, which is way more manageable. And the whole point of it is that it's, um, it's not about quality. It's just about quantity, which for me and for a lot of people, when you're first starting to write, you're, you know, you're like, oh, this is terrible. This is terrible and you keep stopping yourself. And this was just about, no, just hit your word count. Hit your word count.

It doesn't matter if 49,992 of them are bad. So I did. I hit my word count. And, you know, as with many things, I started to see an accumulation and started to kind of get into the hang of it. And that, you know, by the end of the month, I think I actually had 60,000 because I was on a roll. And I was like, oh.

okay well I like what I've written so I'm going to keep going with it and that became eventually it took a very long time but that became my first book and I think it was doing that that that just showed me that I yeah I can write that many words yeah I wrote way more than that because I went through so many of them ended up just in like the graveyard on my computer yeah so is that the one that was beneath the stairs it became beneath the stairs there's many years later. It was a long process to get it to publication. But it really was that initial month of just throwing out the words and kind of getting

started. And that's something that I think the lesson that I learned in that is something that I've taken into writing this book, the second book, and it's taking into writing the third, which is in the beginning, just get the words on the page. Don't worry so much about them being beautiful. beautiful, perfect, sensical. You know, like just get the story out. Try and, for me, anyway.

I mean, everybody has different ways of how they write. But for me, it's about, you know, get to the end. Get to the end. Then you can go back and revise. Because I love revision. I will happily revise so the cows come home. But that first draft is really intimidating. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes me think of that Jordan Beale quote where he says, like the first draft is just getting all the sand in the sandbox. And then you can. I like that. the sand castle later basically yeah exactly but you have to have the sand yes and that's the thing but that's the thing like that's what so many people myself included um you know seem to like you know it logically but to actually do it as hard like to go yes you have to actually have the material there before you can start really making it great but you have to be able to give yourself permission

to write badly and that is hard to do because yes you know most of us are you know we have higher standards than yeah well the first time you're doing anything you're not good at it so it's even harder to be like okay i think i want to be a writer but like i'm not good at it yet yeah that's and it's hard to be a beginner yeah like like at anything it's it's it's intimidating it's not comfortable i think especially as adults it's not comfortable to be a beginner like i have a child and i watch him try new things and he he kind of goes into them with very high expectations for himself too, but I do, you know, maybe when I was a kid, there was a little bit more of like, well, I'm a kid and this is what, you know, you have to learn how to ride your bike and learn

how to skate and you're going to like make a fool of yourself. But when you're an adult, it's really hard to be new at something and be bad at something. Because you have, also because you have so many examples, you know, I could look at my bookshelf and see all these books and be like, how do I get there? I don't know. Right. Yeah. a 180 moment though because like as somebody who like dreams of writing a book someday like this is the book that like I look at and say like how do I get there one day oh that's and that's that's that's incredibly meaningful to me because I also had those books and and then you'll write a book and somebody will look at your book and go how do I get there yeah when I'm like 90 well that's the other

nice thing about writing is that it doesn't really matter how old you are. Yeah, yeah. I kind of like that you can. I'm a man. So I just don't have any like time management skills whatsoever. And I, you know, and just like, I'll do this one day. You know, men are amazing at procrastinating. And if they. Oh, well, I, I don't know. Maybe I'm, I'm, I don't know. I'm definitely with you there. I'm also. Especially when it's hard. When it's when it is hard to do, again, when it's those early pages, they're painful. And so I'm like, maybe I need to reorganize something. Maybe I need to, you know, busy myself answering emails or going on social media. I mean, thank goodness. Like when I started beneath the stairs,

I wasn't on social media because it was, that's how long ago I started this. So I didn't have that, I didn't have that distraction. Right. How did your process kind of like evolve? So do you, do you,

do you outline? Do you surprise yourself? How did that kind of come together with this book especially? It's kind of a combination of both. So the, I mean, the writing process between the first book and the second was very different because the first book, I was totally panting it. You know, I did not know where I was going, blindly kind of stumbling forward. And I kind of stumbled into a story. And then, and it was a very long process, like I said. So the second book, though, the way, I mean, I sold the book. to the same publisher, and it's part of the contract, is that the publisher usually has first write of refusal on your next book, as long as it's within the same genre. And so they had first write a refusal, and what you can submit there is five chapters and an outline. And so that was the first time that I'd outlined. And so creating the outline,

in some ways I worried like, oh, am I going to feel really hemmed in by this outline? But I mean, no, I didn't. Like, no matter what, you're still discovering the story. And the outline actually really helped me. So I did, I mean, obviously, I did work from an outline. Things changed and that sort of thing within it. It's not, like, super rigid. But, I mean, for the publisher, they have to be able to see this book is going to have,

is going to go somewhere. It's going to have an ending that is satisfactory. It's going to have all the peaks and valleys that we want. in a book, especially in a thriller. And so I was able to kind of prove that. But actually what it did was it just gave me a little bit of a roadmap. So it was super helpful. So it's definitely something going forward that I will be doing.

I mean, obviously I'm going to try and sell the third. I haven't sold the third book yet because I haven't got the five chapters in the outline yet. It's still kind of messy in my head. But there's still a tremendous. I was worried that by creating an outline, there would be no discovery, none of that organic discovery on the page. No, there's tons of organic discovery. It goes into creating the outline and then it also goes in creating chapter by chapter.

And I feel like a lot of writers I talk to, it's really, it's not like an either or thing. It's kind of more you fall somewhere in the middle of organic, totally discovering on the page, pancing it to rigid, rigid outline. It's sort of, it's more of a spectrum. So I'm kind of somewhere in the center of that because there are definitely things that kind of even if I have an understanding of I have to get to this point. I have to get to that point. I don't necessarily know how I'm going to get there. And so there were things that were kind of organically, you know, come out on the page, which maybe sounds kind of woo-woo, but I mean, it does happen.

Yeah. And then it's like, oh, okay, there's the there's the solution to that. problem that I created for myself. Yeah. That's awesome. Kind of a hybrid. Yeah. Did you, did you think that like those things organically happened in comparison to like the true crime aspect of it? Because like I feel like, you know, sometimes when you have like an episode of a true crime, you like, this woman disappeared. This guy was arrested, but they didn't find her body sort of thing. And then in your mind, you're like, well, I bet you this happened and this happened. But then as you get into like the episode of it, right? And you start to put together these pieces,

you kind of like are surprised by things that happened. Yeah. Did it almost like feel like you were solving your own case in a way? Yeah. I mean, that's, and that's definitely happened to, to me in, in various situations where I've, I've written something, I've written something that's made like dramatic truth, right? Like all these pieces kind of threading together. And some of those pieces might have come from actual events. So, and then figure and gone like, okay, well, I think with all of these pieces, this is what has to make sense.

This is, this is what is truthful for the narrative that I'm creating. And then found out like, oh, and that's actually really close to what happened, which is, which is kind of, it is kind of neat to, to discover. there were things, the true element of this story of keep this for me. I mean, I gave myself permission to use it just as a jumping off point. Like I'm not trying to write something that is true crime. So I'm not rigidly adhering to what actually happened. And yet there were some things that I created in the story that then when I did some further,

the publisher asked me to do a little deeper research on the, original crime, like the actual crime. I think they were looking for like angles that they could use in marketing and that sort of thing. And so, and I actually hadn't, like I hadn't wanted to dig too deep into it. But at that point, I was like really far in. So I did. And I was like, ooh, there's some other little like weird little parallel things that happen. I'm like, I, that's freaky.

That's kind of freaky. And I don't know if I can talk about them because I feel like they give spoilers. Right. Yeah. But it was just, I'll listen to say, and it's happened before as well. It certainly happened also with my first book. So beneath the stairs is set in a haunted house. And it was loosely inspired by a supposedly haunted house that I visited when I was a kid.

And after I'd written the book, I had a conversation with a friend of mine, a woman who I had been childhood friends with. So we'd grown up on the same little rural. area and she was actually the one who had taken us to see this house. And she got really upset with the real haunted house and she got really obsessed with it and started doing all this research on it. I mean, I was just so terrified. I went in once and I was like, done. And then, you know, 25 years later wrote a book about it. But what was so interesting was that I had sort of created all this stuff about my sort of fictionalized version of this haunted house. And then I talked to my friend and we compared and we actually had again there were all these sort of things

that were like I was like oh I invented this pergola that sits on the top she's like oh no there actually was one there was a pergola that sat on the top it just it wasn't there when we went to see it but it had been there and I talked about like the house feeling really cold which was something that I kind of thought well this place was haunted it's like really cold and she talked about she's like the real house was actually really, really cold. And there were just all these like weird little things that sort of like, you know, what is it like reality kind of mirroring fiction or something like that. Yeah.

So I feel like it happens all the time and I don't know why. Yeah. It's cool. Freaky. That is so cool. Yeah. That is so crazy. Yeah.

So I felt like I was reading like a true crime book at certain times. Right. With like. Good. Good. Yeah, yeah. Because, well, there's so many different elements, you know, you have like a little bit of a police procedural. You have like a little bit of, you know, what really happened. And it just felt like it was such a good and refreshing combination of different genres within one, you know, thriller book. Thank you. Thank you. That's nice to hear. I was definitely very intimidated by the police procedural part of it. I love police procedurals. Like I love watching. them. I love reading them. I'm fascinated by it, but I have no idea how to write one. Because you've got to get it right. Yeah. And people are crazy. Like, people are crazy when it comes to

police procedurals because you have these armchair detectives or like people who like work in accounting and they're like, a real detective would never do that. And you're just like, come on. Like, let it go for the plot, bro. Like, come on. Well, and I mean, but I also, I mean, I, I, I will say that if I read something in a book and it is just so far-fetched and it's not a, you know, I'm not in like a fantasy world where I'm in a, if I'm reading a story that is supposedly grounded in our real life and then I read something and I'm just like, that would never happen. It feels frustrating because it feels like the writers being lazy. Like they're not.

Yeah. Like if it's so out there, I'm like, that's just convenient for your plot. Like, but if it actually feels like, oh, maybe. that is actually how it happens, then it feels, I don't know, I find it, I find it more satisfying, but I was really, yeah, I was really terrified of people being like, that never happened that way, that's so wrong. So, I mean, I knew that I couldn't make my protagonist a police officer. This was one of the questions that I had when I was writing it. I was like, I need to have this person who sort of is trying to solve what happened, but she cannot herself be a detective.

because she can't have access, she can't have full access to that information, but she needs access to, it was like, so, so that's why her, you know, her best friend, it's a detective. So there's a little, there's a little, she has a little bit of access, but because I was like, I don't know,

I mean, there are ways to do the research properly. And I did speak to a detective. I spoke to a retired detective who had actually worked on a really major case. And that was so helpful to talk to him. And for him, I was really just sort of asking, like, in the early stages of a missing person's case, right? Like before we know that it's, before we even know that it might be murder, when it's just someone's being abducted, what are some of the things that happen? And so he was really helpful with that.

And I mean, there may be some professionals out there who are going to read this and pick it apart and go, no, that's wrong. but hopefully not. It's fiction. Send them my way. It's fiction. I'll have your back. Thank you. Yeah.

I know, I just, you want it to be, you do want it to be, I mean, people have opinions about everything, but like you also, I know that there are people who are going to, you know, if anything that you write, right, you write something and there's a medical component. There's going to be people who read that or a law component, you know, look, who read that who actually have a background in that and if it smells wrong to them, it's going to ruin the story for them. So you have to, I do think you have to do your research as a writer, but that's actually kind of fun too. I enjoy doing that. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. As somebody who I,

I read a lot of crime fiction, but I also listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and I, I watch a lot of true crime documentaries. And I will say, I think you're safe because I'm 90% of the time more surprised with what police officers have done in real life with cases than I am picking apart something fiction. Wow. You know? That's interesting. Yeah. And I think that's because, well, I think that's because like an author is, like you said, like you're trying to make sure that you get it right and say like, oh, a police officer would never do this. A detective would never do this. And then in real life,

there are people who would do things like that because they're either trying to solve a case and do whatever it takes or they're just used to cutting corners and thinking that they're not going to be caught. And kind of above the law. Yes. Yeah, that's really fascinating. I mean, ultimately with any of it, I think it comes down to creating the character motivation, right? So that if somebody, you know, whatever choices your characters are making, whether they're lawful or not. And I have, you know, obviously lots of unlawful choices that happen in this book, that they are hope, that they hopefully feel grounded in the reality of that person and that person's sort of view of the world, why they do what they do.

so that it doesn't feel like their action is coming completely out of the blue, that we have some understanding of, okay, well, they're doing this because of that. Right. I mean, that's certainly the, that's the goal. Yeah. Well, kind of talking about how it has kind of a few genres in it, there's also like kind of like a family drama element too. Or there's like there's focus on energy.

generational trauma and kind of just everything. So what was it like shaping that part of the story? That was, I mean, I've, I often have multiple timelines in what I write because I feel like, I feel like, you know, time is a kind of a layered thing that, you know, when you're in a place, things have happened before. And so in some ways making this a, bringing that into a family. it's just sort of like highlighting that, tightening that. I was really, I mean, part of that came from the actual,

the actual true crime element of this. So I think it was kind of loosely inspired by that. So the true crime that's at the heart of this, I discovered it many years ago. I was reading a newspaper and I, you know, read about a man who was a long-haul trucker who had abducted and killed two young women. but what was interesting about him was that his father had done the same thing for many people

and his father was at the time currently sitting in in prison and so there was a there was sort of speculation like could there be a you know a genetic component to this kind of behavior um and I mean I don't know that that's anything that we can ever really know because I mean how would you work out that study that's a what a what a yeah yeah yeah. you know, hopefully your pool, your pool is very small to work from. But I do, I mean, I do think that somebody who, you know, in that case, you know, that man who grew up to be a very violent person had grown up with somebody, his father, who was also very violent, maybe not to him, but certainly to other people. And so that was really, I think that was very much in my mind this idea of what do we inherit from our parents and maybe not even willingly inherit, you know, just. So there are these, there's, you know, two families, kind of there's three because the police officer is also part of it.

But there's mainly two families in this book. And so I just really wanted to explore that idea that we have the victim's family. and we're really following the victim's daughter, but she has grown up with, I mean, the absence of her mother because her mother was abducted and she thinks killed when she was two and a half years old, like when the daughter was two and a half. And that stamp of victim,

like in a lot of ways her mother's been kind of reduced to that stamp of victim, as I think often happens. The totality of a person's life gets reduced to victim. But that stamp has also been placed on the daughter. And so she's kind of growing up with this, oh, you're the, you're the, you know, you're the victim's daughter. You're, you know, it's like the most interesting fact about her, which isn't really fair. But the son, so I also have, that's why I also wanted to have the son of the perpetrator, the son of a serial killer who has been stamped with monster for his whole life. And so they're both, yeah, they're both like kind of grappling with something that they were.

were that was of no fault of their own, right? Like the son, it's not his fault what his father did. He had no say in what his father did, but he has been shaped by what his father did. And similarly, Fiona, my protagonist, it's obviously not her, you know, had nothing to do with her mother's abduction and death, but has been, has been shaped by that. And I just think it's also, it's kind of true to. life too, right? That we are shaped often by what we willingly or unwillingly inherit from family ahead of us. And then there comes a point where you, I think for these characters anyway, they have to also sort of make choices themselves, right? Like, yeah, am I going to only

be defined by what happened when I was very young or can I define myself anew? And they're really struggling with that, which I think, again, is something that is true to life a lot of times. I agree. I mean, some people very actively, they see a parent, or parental figure. Maybe it's not their actual parent, but, and it's like how, how I'm going to actively push against that. I'm going to be, I'm going to go in the opposite direction and others sort of fall into it. And I do think that choice really comes into it, but it's a, it's a, it's a sticky stew that's inside of, inside us of like nurture and nature and all that sort of thing.

And I just think that's really fascinating to explore as a character. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I used to get so scared of being like my parents. And then my therapist, so then I would think like anything, anything that was similar, like, oh, my mom likes this flavor and I like it. my God, I'm doomed to be here. And my therapist had to finally point out, she was like, doing everything the opposite of her is still giving her all the power. And I was like, oh, okay. So you do just have to like do that weird, complicated work of like, well, I think this is who I am just because of how I feel, basically. That's such a great way of framing it too.

Yeah. And making those choices for yourself. Yeah. not in response to, but for your own way forward. Mm-hmm. Totally. So the lake is almost, it's almost like a character in the story and the prolog opens, like talking about it being like a giver and a taker. Yes, give her and taker of life. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. At the beginning. So, yeah, what were you feeling about the lake that kind of like made it so? prominent. I've always, I mean, I love big bodies of water. So, you know, someday I'll get to live, someday I'll live by a big body of water. Yeah. So, I mean, I've always been drawn to, to that. And I think I've always been really drawn to the way that a big body of water, this is, so the lake is Lake is Lake Ontario, so one of the great lakes. But any big body of water, whether it's an ocean or a large lake,

It's both beautiful. It's a place where people go and they like for recreation, but it is also potentially very destructive. I mean, you can drown. It can flood. You know, there's. And I've always really, maybe it's the writer, poet, metaphor loving person in me that just really loves how water is both restorative and destructive.

I kind of like fire. So, yeah, so I, and I grew up, so I grew up, I grew up in Canada very close to the St. Lawrence, very close to the Thousand Islands. And I went on a, I wanted to set something in that, in that area. And so, and I went on like one of those Thousand Islands boat tours. Never did it when I was a kid. Never. Because, you know, when you grow up near the area, you don't, you're not like a tourist in your own area. I did it as an adult and was so fascinated by all these islands.

And I just, that was really, they were really, that was really fascinating to me. Like all these little, some of them, you know, had houses on them and some of them just looked really remote and fascinating. Like, here we are. Like, we're literally at the border of Canada and the United States. There's tons of people around, but there's these little pockets in these islands that, that are, kind of wild in a way and and also kind of hard to get to right like secluded so that was really fascinating to me and then yeah that that the power of water i don't it came really early to me that um it was going to be set on the on the lake and and that this idea that i was also really

interested in this idea that how in a large body of water we don't know what's on the bottom So I started doing a little bit of research into shipwrecks and ghost ships and the rum runners during Prohibition. And I just found that that's so fascinating. Because again, if you go to this area like Lake Ontario, Thousand Island, St. Lawrence in the summer, it's beautiful. It's like the water is sparkling and there's all these, you know, motorboats and people swimming and the cottages. and it's just it's lovely. But there's another side to that. Like if you go in the winter or in the late fall,

which is when the book is set, like in November, it's cold and gray and ugly in some ways. And then there's also all of this like hidden stuff, which is something that I would think about if I would, you know, when I swim in big bodies of water because I'm like, I can't see the bottom.

What could be below me? So I think. I think it was just all of that that made me really want to have this, have this be a setting. And yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the book opens with the line. The lake is the great devourer. It's the giver and taker of life. And it literally is in this book, right? Like it provides a form of escape, which is life.

And it also is deadly. Yeah. Yeah. You've captured it so well because. I'm near the St. Lawrence River on the border of the United States and Canada. Yes. And one of the things that I think that people who aren't from this area or haven't visited aren't aware of is like if you are in the middle of like a very rural area, you know if someone is coming towards you or if there's danger lurking because you can hear a car. You can hear footsteps or something.

but there's such a like weird element like you said especially in the summer when 75% of the people up here have boats and they can come and go as they please so there's this element of like people aren't just on foot and driving cars but there are people in boats that can like do bad things or they can take people and they can like take them by boat and you will never see them again yeah you know yeah so I was I was always fascinated I mean, he has a kid, so I grew up on the Canadian side, but in a part of the St. Lawrence where it was narrow enough that I could see across so I could see the U.S. And I was also, even just as a little kid, was so fascinating, like, that's another country. That's a whole other country over there.

Like, it's, it was so fascinating. And it seemed, so the water was this, was this very visible border, but a, but a border that I could see. I could see across, but I couldn't necessarily cross. and there was something just really juicy about that, I think, as a, as a writer. And, and again, it's sort of, it's where I grew up. So it's, it's, you know, all of the early stories that I would invent for myself, you know, kind of involve, involve that sort of thing. And all of the things that, you know, the secret of things that could happen on the water. We don't know, like with boats.

Yeah. And that definitely have. History has proven these things do have. do happen have happened probably still do happen yeah yes and are still happening like there's a lot of crazy things yeah happening here because like i so like where i am it's easier for me to go into canada to get groceries or go to like a bookstore or something than it is to go to the next town over on the u.s side that's amazing so i just grew up you know oh you want to go to dinner we just cross the border over to canada and we go to a different restaurant or you know whatever and so growing up that just

felt so normal to me. And then like to this day, I still have people that are like, you're going to a different country. Yeah. To like buy groceries. Yeah. And when I, where I grew up, it used to be the opposite. People would go into the states all the time.

Yeah. And it was at that time, it was a lot easier to cross the border. And so I knew a lot of people who, who would, who would go over several times a week. And my brother played hockey and he would play half of his games. We were in upstate New York. and the other half were in Ontario. And I cannot imagine that that happens now. And then during COVID,

I would go up to that area because my in-laws lived in that area and my parents are just on the other side in Canada and I couldn't cross. And it was so hard because I'm like, I can see home, but I can't get there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

I still go back and forth a few times a week. Wow. Yeah. It's an easier abortive. across and other borders. That's for sure. That's for sure. And driving, obviously, not flying, not, you know, you know, it's a different experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very lucky.

So I also always wonder with books that have different timelines, do you write the past first for yourself, or do you kind of write it mostly in the order that it is now, like, published? I definitely don't write it in the order that it is now. now, I often do write one timeline. I don't necessarily start with the past, though the past is often more clear to me than the present because the past has already happened. And I understand where we're going to end up, whereas with the present, I don't necessarily

know how we're going to end. But I do find that I will write, I'll kind of stay in one timeline for a while and figure out the arc of that. and then it's this process of weaving. I have a photo on my computer at one point when I was working on this book where I, I at some point I always break out little index cards. I'm very old school. It's like totally analog, but like little index cards, color coded.

And I put them on like my wall. I just need like a big space where I can put them up. And I can, it's a way of sort of seeing the different strings of time and figuring out how I'm going to weave them together. because it's a careful and somewhat tricky balancing act because you have to keep them all taught for a reader. So you have to, you have to be able to,

you know, like keep them still invested in this particular timeline, even if we haven't been there for a few chapters. And it's something that I, it changed a little bit in editing. I, you know, there were certain things that my editor, in on. I was like, I think it's been a little while since we've seen this, so I think we need to

cut them. But it's, yeah, there's, it's a, it's a kind of, I always think of it as weaving and how to pull the threads, pull the threads so that they're all kind of building simultaneously, even though we can only read one thing at a time. We can't read, yeah, sadly, I know. All of us with our huge TBRs, right? Yes. Like, I can read 16 books at the same time. Yes. And so it's the same.

Like I need you, the reader to be able to still have the, to feel the tension from that thread while I go back to this thread. And then, you know, and, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a balance. It's kind of fun, but it's also sometimes feels like impossible. Right. I can see that. Do you have any questions, Gare? I just don't want to keep steam rolling. Millions, but you keep going because I won't shut up if I start.

Because I just want to know, like, as somebody who does, you know, listen to true crime and crime fiction, do you find yourself, like, more interested or fascinated by, like, missing person's cases? I mean, I don't know that I would say, I'm definitely fascinated by them. I don't know that I'm more fascinated by them. I'm fascinated by this idea that and also, but it's, you know, it's, it would be the the heart wrenching part of it is when somebody goes missing, they don't just disappear. They're somewhere. Yeah. Right?

They are somewhere. But where? Where are they? And I mean, I can only imagine, I've not experienced, and I certainly hope I don't, to actually have somebody in my life go missing. But how incredibly heart-wrenching that must be to know, like, that they haven't just vaporized, like, they are somewhere. And there are families who live with this for years, for decades. You know, and I, I mean, it makes me, I feel like I have a, I can understand as much as I can understand with not having experienced it myself, how just knowing, just, you know, knowing where what happened to your loved one, even if it's not what you

wanted to have happened, but just, you know, having that closure that does give some form of, of closure. So that, that I feel like it would be putting you in this state of suspension. And so that to me is really, I mean, it's both. horrifying and fascinating. I mean, I write thrillers, so that's where I'm kind of to go towards what's horrifying and fascinating. So trying to kind of imagine

being in that state of suspension. So Fiona, the protagonist, her family, has been in that state of suspension. Her mother was abducted and they believe killed by this man, but the body's never been found. Even when other bodies were found,

her mother wasn't there. And so there's this this and I think that would eat away at you. If it was me, it would eat away at me and it eats away at Fiona. Which is why when she, so she goes to kind of give a little background for people who haven't read the book, when she goes back to her home, the place where this happened, St. Rose, the little town on the shore of Lake Ontario. And it happens again. Another woman is abducted. it's how she's she can see this family you know that the family of the woman who's abducted they go on the news

and they make a plea to please whoever's got her please you know give her back um and she can she can really feel and see how this family is at the very beginning of what her family is now 30 years into and and knows how how completely awful that that would be so yeah so the missing person thing is just I think I believe that you have the we have an empathetic imagination and so that's how I

that's how I try and write experiences that are outside of my own personal experiences with my empathetic imagination and so I think the feeling of suspension is something that I can kind of empathetically imagine and and just think wow

how horrible that must be. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many different directions, a story or a true crime case, for instance, could go. And you almost have that hope that maybe they just survived and they're in hiding somewhere. And they, you know, but I think that there are some like things that like haunt me to this day when it comes to like missing persons that you, I feel like captured so well in this story. There was a case from the 80s where a woman had called her boyfriend from a payphone

and he heard her being abducted when she was on the phone with him. And he was driving toward where she was calling from and he met a truck on the road and saw her like banging on the window for help. And when he went to turn around to chase after the vehicle, the transmission blew on his car. Oh my God. And so, and they never found her. Oh, my God. And the Survivor's guilt that he has to have, you know, I think you captured Survivor's

guilt very well and realistic in this book. It almost gave me, I'm going to age myself with this, but it almost gave me elements of one of my favorite movies, The Vanishing. So it's this movie that has Kiefer Sutherland and. Sandra Bullock in it. And there are a couple on a road trip who stop at a gas station and she goes in to get something and never comes out. Yeah. And so he's just like, should I have went in with her? Should I have, you know, is there anything I could have done? How? And it's also like, how did she go into a busy convenience store and completely banish? Yes. And just like the watching him like

go through that survivor's guilt of all of that, it reminds me of elements of this. Yeah. this yeah so yeah um yeah but i just dawned on me when you said that is it reminds me of really good comp for this one is another green book uh called the lake of lost girls because it's like it opens up with the sister like looking at her younger sister and she like looks away and then like the sister has completely disappeared like just by like not looking at her for like 10 seconds wow and there's a lake involved so I hadn't even I haven't even thought of that caught I'm gonna have to I'm definitely gonna have to check that out yeah that sounds but I mean I make you know the survivors like yeah I feel like I would have that and and I can understand how you would never stop looking yeah yeah I don't know how you I don't know how you

stop looking because you know like this something I don't like it's this impossible puzzle and I can understand if you were a police officer as well, if you're a detective. And, and especially, I mean, that you're the story, you told that somebody's like, writing your grasp and then they're gone. Yeah. Like, that would, I feel like that's crazy making. Like, oh, yeah. You would just live in this state of what if, what if, what if? I think that's what the closure helps with is like your imagination can just think of anything when you don't have an answer. So it's like, you can. just keep coming up with worse and worse scenarios over and over again, not knowing if any of it

happened. Yeah. And at least, at least when you, when you find them, even if they're not alive anymore, there's, again, there's some, there's some kind of an ending. I, I don't know that I would call that satisfactory, but there's, there's something. Again, and I'm, you know, trying to use my empathetic imagination because I, knock on wood, have not, experienced that and hope I never do and I hope you don't either. But I imagine that that would be, I mean, and you hear people talk about that. I feel like when you hear the survivors or, you know, family members of missing people when they are finally found and, you know, that there is some sort of, some kind of closure.

Yeah. It was crazy because I was reading it this week. And even like, there are like 1,200 people missing from, is it actually called Alligator Alcatraz or just Alligator something? But so many people who like are calling trying to like figure out where their family members are. And there are a bunch of people have just gone missing. I'm like that would be. And then like obviously that's a little different. We're talking about the government even at that point.

But I can't imagine how like helpless it feels that you just, when will they know? Oh, we don't know. Yeah, it's crazy. It's terrifying. It is. And there's this like resurgence of like people still trying to get answers decades later. You know, like the Amy Bradley case that it was like really popular with the Netflix documentary and the Mara Murray case that like people still talk about. It's just like so sad that like they don't always get answers.

and there's that like tiny hope that like maybe maybe this person was just fed up and wanted to start a new life somewhere and you know you kind of hold on to that hope that maybe that's that's what it was yeah yeah yeah I mean I think I think it's really hard to I I played with that idea like like okay so because this was it was a mystery for me and again I don't want to give give it away but like yeah he in the book like Anna wasn't so this is what he I mean I'm not giving anything way by saying this because it's on the jacket copy like he can the killer confesses that he didn't kill her but she's still gone and I like could she have like just left and reinvented herself like but I'm like I don't even know how you do that in like yeah you know with surveillance and and you know all that sort of thing I don't know I don't know I don't know how you do that at all and also I was going to say like with these with these some of these these real cases these long term cases where we just don't know you had mentioned earlier the armchair detectives but sometimes those are the people

who actually keep something alive and and have found answers and I mean I kind of on one hand I can kind of understand like a police force only has so many resources they and there's always new needs, but as a family member of somebody who's become a cold case, like how heart wrenching that would be to see your loved one kind of get filed as unsolved. And so those, in some ways, those people who, for whatever reason, are armchair detectives, right? Like, in some ways, maybe they are, I think that there are examples of them actually having kept some kind of heat on a case. then where some answers have been found. So it's like, thank, thank goodness for them.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I don't, and maybe they can work. I'm not trying to like say work outside the law, but I think that, you know. Yeah. There are some like, there are definitely some like that really help and, you know, throw some new elements and a new look into a perspective into a case. And then there are those that kind of, especially with like social media kind of have like a toxic.

element to it where they're like, you know, ruining people's lives. And, you know, so like there's like a very fine line. But absolutely. Absolutely. That's and that's, again, this sort of like complicated kind of morality to it where, yeah, you don't want to ruin somebody's life. But if you're, on the other hand, if you're finding something that hasn't been found is that, you know, it's tricky. Yeah, like don't fuck with cats is inspiring. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like saying you know who the killer is. Actually, uh, uh, what white woman missing? Kelly Garrett's novel does a really good job of showing how like, sometimes it turns

into like TikTokers ruining people's lives because they're like, we know it's this person. And other times people are just finding like useful information. Yeah. Yeah. They did that with that, um, that Idaho case of those four college students where like when it first happened, there was a guy that was just trying to walk the two friends to, like a food truck and then they got into their Uber and everybody was like, it's him, it's him. He's he looked at his phone at this time and then like this guy was being berated on

social media, you know, or like the ex-boyfriend who didn't answer their phone calls at 3 o'clock in the morning because he was probably sleeping and they're like, he didn't answer because he was in the, you know, so it's just, it's crazy to like to think that there are, you know, some people out there that are that are doing that. But yeah, you did say that when you were writing this, that you kind of question, did she go and start a new life somewhere? Did something horrible happen to her? And I will say, you balance that so well. Oh, thank you. With one point of view, because I found myself from beginning to end questioning the same thing myself. Oh, good. Like back and forth. Yeah. Like, because you said you, you have to weave those chapters so tightly that when I get Anna's perspective,

every other chapter of hers that I read, I was like, I had a different theory, I should say, you know? Yeah, and I wanted her, I mean, that's like, so we, she is one of the points of view in the, in the book, and I wanted, I mean, part of that is to sort of build her as this full human and not just as victim, but also to build in that, I mean, her life, she is somebody who, you know, and this is not to do with the real case,

but, you know, she, she was in college and got pregnant and had the baby and is now, you know, her life has just taken this huge detour. And I can, I feel like there would be a, you know, this idea of like, what if I could just sort of like walk away from all of these complications that have come into my life and start over and this time take the right path. and and for that to be maybe a possibility and then and then also it's like oh wow what kind of a what kind of a person would ever think about that what kind of a mother would ever think about you know all the things that she thinks about like she must be a she must be a terrible person and she's not a terrible person she's a very human person who right yeah and yeah and is struggling and So that's that's another part of this sort of intergenerational thing is that her daughter is also struggling when we, you know, when we meet Fiona in present day, she is also a mother of a very young child and is struggling herself with with motherhood. And then, you know, and there's a sort of generational component to that, to that too. And that was a really important part of the of the story for me and this idea that what if her mom just, you know,

what if she just abandoned her? Like she's she kind of feels, she's growing up feeling kind of abandoned because she doesn't have her mother in life. Yeah. She has been, whether it was her mom. Yeah, it wasn't her,

you know, whether it was her mother's fault or not. She has, she's growing up without that figure and, and feels a lot of complicated emotions about it. And, um, uh,

and so, yeah, kind of in some ways there's sort of a leaning into like, what if she did just sort of, abandoned me. You know, I think she's aware that her mother was very young when she had her and had been had been in college and had all these dreams and then all of them kind of got pushed aside to have her. And I mean, as a child, knowing that that was your parents' experience,

that's got to also kind of factor into your mental space. Yeah. And you like, you build this incredible monster with, Eddie. And I found it very fascinating that first, there are so many elements of this that kind of remind me of notes of an, notes on an execution. Oh, I love that book. Yeah. Because you have your main characters and you have a lot of secondary characters as well. So no matter how much time they're on the page, you can see how one character of Eddie has affected every single person in this book. And I thought that that was completely brilliant on your part the way that you did it differently for everybody and how they

changed as a person you know after after everything that happened because eddie doesn't really spend a ton of time on the pages no no but but affects every single person in this book and it was so interesting to me to like kind of in my mind like you said with that board and the red strings kind of pieced together how everyone was different and how they were connected. And I just thought that that was completely fascinating. Oh, thank you. I was, I mean, I'm really in, you know, obviously I write about, I write in the thriller genre, so there's going to be violence is sort of part of the package.

But I'm really interested in the long term, but the ripple effects. So I always describe it like, if you think of like the act of violence. And in this case, it was a random act of violence. It was a chance encounter on the road when a car breaks down. And that is totally based on the real story. But thinking about all of the ripples that go out from that. So the act itself is like dropping a stone into water. It disappears.

It's gone. It's not there. You can't see it anymore. What you can see are the effects of it, all these ripples coming out for, you know, however long. In this case, it's through time. and through generations, all of these people who are impacted by the actions of this one person. And there isn't really justification for his actions.

I mean, it's just horrible what he does. Nor was there justification for the actions of the real person, like the real guy who was fortunately also arrested. But the effects of his actions, I would imagine. are for some of the families still being felt. And so I really wanted to explore the sort of long-term effects of, of violence. And I think a random effect,

a random act of violence is also, it's so, it's unsatisfying. It's just, it's going back to those what ifs, right? It's kind of scarier. It's scarier. Exactly.

It's like, you have no control. You didn't put yourself in danger. Exactly. Yeah. Like, like, did they, you know, this young couple, they leave the party, their car is a piece of crap, and it breaks down on the side of the road, and they have to get home. There's no cell phones because it's 1993, and they wave down the first

thing they see, which happens to be a transport truck, and it's just if they'd left five minutes earlier, five minutes later, if they'd taken a different turn, if they'd stop to go to the bathroom, or, you know, all of the ifs, none of it would have happened. But, you know, so how afterwards, when all of these horrible things come out from this act of violence, from this abduction, how do you rectify that? Because I think that human beings are natural. We're sense-making creatures, right? We look for logic.

We look for patterns. We want to understand cause and effect. But when it's this, you know, you have this disappearance of a person, right? So that's really hard to grapple with. And then you have the randomness of it, which, again, underlines kind of like how little control you have, which is, which is frightening. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, you want to think you can keep yourself safe and your kids safe. Yes. Yeah. Especially when you're like trying to make the right choice, like the responsible choice. Yes. Because, you know, these, I'm not going to spoil anything, but these two people on this road, if they would have done the irresponsible thing and got drunk at that party and had to sleep there, none of the best would happen.

Wouldn't have happened. Yeah, they are trying to be good. They're trying to be good parents. They're trying to also be a good couple. They're, you know, they're a really young couple who are in way over their head, right? Like heads. Like this wasn't the plan. They got pregnant.

They decided to keep the baby. They have the baby. and they are doing their best and they are struggling. But I always feel like if this hadn't have happened, they would have made it. They would have been okay. Like they're in a hard place. They're both like in their, you know,

they're like 20, 21 years old with a child. And Ben's been holding down like three jobs. And, you know, it's really tough as it is for a lot of people. And but they're trying. And then this thing happens to them. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely think in an alternate universe that they are little old grandparents right now in a callusack somewhere. Absolutely.

A pet bird or something to keep an entertained. Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't have made for a very interesting book, but. Right. No. But I like to think that too, that in real life, they would have been okay. They would have got through this. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think we've decided that if you liked notes on an execution or the list, like of lost girls you need to go pick this one up good comps and you know many of us if you want to talk about it it's always fun to talk to people i'll never shut up about this book yeah i'll never shut up about this book i will say there's been an ongoing joke with this podcast for years now um because serial killer thrillers are are my trope that i find most fascinating and i always joke with kate that it's hard to do them as time goes on because and the 90s in the early 2000s, it was stereotypical, the trucker, the creepy janitor. And I'm like,

you can't do that anymore because it has to be shocking. And so to have 2025 be here and a book is coming out about the serial killer trucker that is refreshing. It's refreshing. It's refreshing. It's refreshing to the way that you told the story. It is fascinating and it just kept me on my toes the entire time and I cried in this book, which I don't usually cry in books. So I want to say congratulations to you for writing such an amazing trucker, serial killer, thriller in 2025. That is refreshing and outstanding. Well, thank you. And no offense to any long-haul truckers out there. Just, you know. But the ones that haven't gotten caught yet that are doing bad things. Yeah, the ones that are with bodies in their backyard, offense to you.

Offense to you. Yes. We do always ask you, And two, if you've read anything recently that you loved. Oh, my goodness. I've read so many things. It doesn't even have to be recently. Yeah, I've read, I've read so many things that I've loved. I'm currently diving into two books, and they're both fantastic. So I'm, I've just started Rachel Harrison's newest book, Play Nice, which is, I love

her writing. And this one is set in a haunted house. So, you know, up my alley. But it's actually, as she says in the front, it's not haunted. It's possessed. Possessed. Yeah. So I'm, I haven't got, I can't give any kind of spoiler because I'm just starting it.

But I'm really, I love her voice. It's, you know, it's, there's a lightness to it, but, but it helps you kind of get into this darker fun stuff, which is great. And then I'm also, I'm getting into the second book. by Clavis Natera called the Grand Paloma Resort, which is a beautiful book. Did you have used? It's been, I've seen it around a lot.

So I, I produced Imposter Hours, another podcast with Greg Wads and Liz Kienin. And they just interviewed her about coming out tomorrow, the interview is. So the interview is. Yeah, because the book just came out in August. And it's, so Clavis is, I mean, her writing is really lush. Her characters are fabulous. So this one, but this one has a kind of a mystery element to it. And so it's set in a luxury resort in the Dominican Republic,

but it really focuses on the people who work there. And so it's very much about class and it's about family. And there's a, you know, there's sort of a mystery at the heart of it too. So I'm highly, you know, if I can recommend books that I'm not super far into yet. That's totally funny. These are both writers whose work I really love. And they're different. I mean, they're different.

But yeah, so totally recommend both of those books. Yeah. I was so fascinated by her story because she's, she's like working to establish only like the, there are only two bilingual MFA programs in the U.S. So she's like kind of like starting from the ground up one. Wow, I didn't know that. Jersey, I think.

Yes, she's from New Jersey. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm about to see her. We're going to be on a panel together next. weekend at the Saratoga Book Festival. So I will have to ask her about that. And another recommendation for you, and I don't know if you've read it because you said you like serial killer, serial killer books. The other person on that panel is going to be Saratoga Schaefer. And I just listened to their book,

Serial Killer Support Group. Oh, yeah. I haven't read that one, but I've heard. Big recommendation there. Okay. Very, very. fun kind of a different way into the cool serial killer thing yeah that's it's so easy for me if i like don't get approved on net galley to like kind of forget about a book that came out but i remember everyone loving that one i need to try yeah yes i believe it came out in the beginning like around yeah yeah march yeah so yeah it was early 2025 and it got a lot of really great a lot of really great response and when I'm on I'm on panels and I always like to try and read what my fellow panelists are writing and so yeah it's it's great and it's it's it's the serial

killer thing but it again it's kind of a fresh fun yeah yeah you can kind of guess from the you can kind of guess from the title sort of where it's going so yeah yeah yeah so there's three recommendations for you yeah have you um there's uh too old for this by samantha downing Oh, I haven't read yet. It's a really, really snarky, fun, refreshing serial killer story. Because that's a serial killer who's like in their retired. Yes, yes. She wants to play bingo and gossip with her friends.

Yes. And then, you know. She has to come out of retirement. And she's a little pissed about it. You know, because it's an inconvenience to her. Yes. So I was doing with this. Yeah.

Like, I just. geez don't i have enough on my plate with like bingo and you know everything so yeah yeah yes yes yes it's very refreshing and snarky and fun it is i really enjoyed it that's awesome it really is great well everyone else needs to go read keep this for me though as we're talking about book recommendations for sure um and yeah dms are great i love i love talking to readers it's the best. Same. Readers, writers. I'll talk to anyone about something book related. Yeah. But yeah, thank you so much for talking with us about it. Thanks for having me on. This was really fun. Yeah. Yeah.