Bookwild - The Vineyard Remains by Addison McKnight: A Moody Martha's Vineyard and Two Women at Odds with Each Other

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

This week, I talk with writing duo Addison McKnight, Nicole Moleti and Krista Wells about their new thriller The Vineyard Remains!  We dive into the process they used to write with each other, their initial idea for the book, and the book's similarities to The Affair and Bloodline.Addison McKnight's InstagramAddison McKnight's Website 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 I got to talk with the writing duo that is Addison McKnight. It is Nicole Mulletti and Crystal Wells, and they came together to start writing fiction together. Actually, they both been writing nonfiction for a few years. And their newest book just came out called The Vineyard Remains, a desperate murder committed by Angela Miller's mother to where Angela's life apart and brought her to Martha's Vineyard to live with her wealthy grandparents. It's where her cousin Kiki King was born and raised, and Kiki now wants nothing more than to see the world beyond its sandy perimeter. Kiki's mother escaped it.

She took a late-night swim off Tashmo Beach and was never seen again. Once bound by broken childhoods, Angela and Kiki have grown up divided. By their obsessions, their love for the same man, and their own conflicted journeys of motherhood. But when a small box of bones is unearthed in the woods, Angela and Kiki discovered there's so much more to learn about each other, their families, and the dark side of the picturesque island they call home. It's time for Angela and Kiki to expose their secrets to finally end a cycle of family drama and anguish and to forgive and make peace with the past on their own terms. This was, it really reminded me of the affair, kind of with the touristy location, and the two

characters stories are kind of at war with each other. They're in love with the same man, as you heard in the synopsis, which obviously is a big part of the affair as well. But it really reminded me of that show. It also reminded me a little bit of bloodline, just like the really dark, moody vibes on an island and there's kind of like a black sheep of the family. So if you liked those two, there's a pretty good chance that you'll be interested in this book. But I got to talk to about how they write together, what drew them to writing in the thriller genre, and what their inspiration was for this book. So let's get into it. I am super excited. I'm always fascinated by people who write together and how that works, so

I'm super excited to dive into that. But first, I know I read your, I read your guys' bios, and I know you guys wrote a lot of nonfiction before you guys started writing fiction together. So when did you guys know that you wanted to write a novel? Like when did that come about for you guys? I'll say for myself, I think it was like a lifelong dream. I went to college anticipating I would become a writer in some way and I became disheartened when I saw what that might look like. I was in New York and it was obviously going to be very difficult. So I went to school for screenwriting and I got a couple internships and I just realized like I didn't know if I was and and you know the biggest thing is I didn't have a great idea so I shifted gears and I'd start well jobs public relations

writing grant writing and ultimately I became a makeup artist and I was doing nonfiction beauty writing parenting writing and so that kind of took over but then I got finally many years later, I got a great idea. And that's really what you need to start your journey as a fiction writer. And Krista got roped in with me. Yes. So I had always wanted to write a nonfiction book for military spouses on coping with deployment and nonfiction issues and under employment and the work that I was doing.

I had always thought it would be good to reach a broader audience and have a book so that I'm not just connecting with my one-on-one clients, but I'm able to. to share with the broader community of women that what I was doing in my office. I always wanted a book as a platform. And then when Nicole came to me with her amazing idea, at first I just wanted to help her with the research, but I found that I wasn't working on anything else. Like I just, anytime I had a free moment, I was trying to help her or send her ideas. And all of a sudden, she was like, why don't you just try one character?

Yeah. So I did get bullied into it. So were you guys friends before it, I'm assuming, or did you guys run into each other in a writing context, or how did you, how did that happen? We met at the hairdresser, and we got talking and talking, and we both realized that we loved writing, and we talked about writing,

and then we became friends after that. And before we had the book idea, we were friends and supporting each other's separate writing careers. And then obviously as we started working more and more together, we got our families, friends, and, you know, connected everyone. Yeah. So that was, so an imperfect plan was the first one that you guys wrote together. How did you guys approach the writing process as two separate people working on one book?

So I kind of started, as I said, it was my idea and that I was like, I'm writing this book. and Krista was very helpful with research and say she would call and say oh my god make sure you include this and did you know this and so the book was about infertility and so she provided a lot of information and insight so I said well how about you be this character which she ultimately became Greta which is the character that suffers infertility and um I said okay I don't want to like all that research stuff like that sounds great for you to look at. I'm going to focus on my dark and scary character that is, you know, in the woods and all this kind of creative, scary stuff. So that's how we kind of originally split it up.

And it worked for us. We both have six jobs and we, I mean, between us and six kids between us. So we have very crazy schedules and it worked for us to say, okay, let's write three chapters each of our character and then come together. And that just, it worked and that's how we still do it. So do you guys develop the characters? So if you're kind of writing the separate characters, do you develop the characters kind of separately on your own? Or do you guys like talk about like plot beats of like what's going to happen and then kind of fill in like with the characters or like how do you guys approach that? I think we each take our own character. So we would do the character development of our own character on our side,

but we would get input through the editing process. So I would write three chapters as Greta, and she would write three chapters as Colette. Or in our most recent book, The Vineyard Remains, I wrote three chapters of my character, and she wrote three chapters of her character. And we know the general plot. We usually don't know the ending.

We leave that to the last minute, the ending, but we kind of have a general sense of our own character. character and then through the feedback of the other one, they'll ask questions that will help you to further develop our own characters. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a process like with the vineyard remains, we have two women and they're very different and they have different characteristics. So we say, okay, Kiki hates Martha's Vineyard. That's her big defining characteristic. But why? And Krista would say, well, why? I mean, we need to know why and what happened. And so you develop the character obviously as you write, we get more and more, oh, I have this great idea for our chapter and it will

really show why she hates Martha's Vineyard. So obviously we dig deeper as we get deeper into our chapters. But we kind of figure out the bones and our big thing that we always know first, which is like the beginning of our idea is the inciting incident. So that we know like, okay, this is what's going to happen. And then we kind of move out from that incident. Yeah. So what was your initial idea for the vineyard remains? We got that idea sparked from our first book. So our first book had a horrible crime in it. And at the end of that book, we kind of, you know, the book was over and we were out having a coffee together at Panera. And we said, where would you go if all of that happened? Like if you were a mom and you went through this horrible tragedy, where would you go and hide?

and we both kind of came up with that we would go to Martha's Vineyard. And it was coincidental that I had a history going there in the summers as a summer tourist, and Nicole had actually worked on the island in the winter. But it was our first thought of it's kind of a place to go and hide from a tragedy. Something's happening on my computer. Hold on one second. It's just open. I thought something was about to play.

okay sorry about that um so yeah uh it sounds like it came from the end of the book and i know you guys are kind of close to martha's vineyard then so is that like so did you ever did you go there at all for like research purposes yes we did so it's not super close it's about what two and a half three hours yeah like three hours and then you have to get on the boat for an hour yeah it's difficult to get to, unlike any island probably. But everyone thinks of it as this idyllic. Have you ever been there? No, I haven't been.

No. Okay. So everyone thinks of it as this idyllic island where president's vacation and it's all perfect and beautiful and great, which it is. However, after Labor Day and the winter is, there's a little bit of like a dark underbelly to the island. So we had that conflicting view of the island. from our own personal experiences, and we thought that was really interesting.

So we kind of dug deeper into that and what that was like. I mean, Krista knew nothing about anything about the island except being a summer tourist. Yes, and when we went through research, we had a great time. We actually visited the Martha's Vineyard Jail, which was in our book, and it looks like a bed and breakfast. It's a beautiful building with a white, put the fence, and high, hydrange us and we actually went into the jail and spoke with the people that run the jail and they said our character would only be there for a little bit because she's a woman. So we learned a lot and

it was it was just a very fun place to go and do our research. Eat lobster ice cream, things like that. Yeah, they have lobster ice cream there and we both had been there and had never tried it, but we were like, we better taste it so we can describe it appropriate. And so we got lobster ice cream. And we talked to a lot of locals. And going to the beaches, I don't know. So Jaws was filmed there. And there's a famous bridge called the Jaws Bridge that we feature in our book.

So it's kind of a right of passage. When you go to Martha's Vineyard, you have to jump off this bridge. It's a big scene in the movie. So we went there. So we just wanted to make sure we got everything right. Yeah. When you're talking about that kind of like the contrasting idea that it's like this really

pretty place that like tourists go to, but then it's totally different in the offseason. When I was reading it, it reminded me, I don't know if you watched The Affair on show. Yes. Yes, that was one of our, that is like our biggest. Yes, that is our biggest inspiration. I love that you said that. Yeah, he's one of the Montok and like everything like that show showed like how that vastly different it is and I think it does like appeal to like the thriller genre to have settings where you're like oh everything seems really nice but like for the people who actually live there it's actually kind of a struggle or not as pretty all the time it also reminded me of bloodline I don't know if you ever

those are my god that's our favorite oh my gosh that is crazy those are the two more we kept saying to each other let's do bloodline meets the affair Oh my God. And then we were like, oh, and then we were like, no, I think we have to put book. We have to have book comp. We have to have book comp. Yeah. We kept telling each other it was bloodline meets the affair. Oh my gosh. That is wild. That literally was what I was telling people were like the two things that it reminded me the most of. And I haven't read anything like setting wise recently that reminded me so much of the affair, especially. Well, thank you for saying that because we are. entering into our, you know, spring summer, we anticipate this being a big summer read. And a lot of times people think of like an Ellen Hildenbrand, like Beach, Nantucket kind of book, which we love. And

we're getting so much feedback. So already people are on spring break reading it. And they're saying it's a page turner. They can't put it down. And it is very beachy summer vibe. But it is a little different. It does stand out because it's not like all those other books, you know. But if you want to have a little bit of like dark and twisty with your Nantucket Martha's Vineyard vibe. This is for you. Yeah, that's a really good blur for it for sure. I talk about the affair on this podcast so much. I bring it up all the time. So for everyone that's been hearing me talk about it forever, this is finally the book that we have to match it. Oh, great. Yeah. Was there, was there anything different about writing this book compared to the first book that you guys did together?

Yes, it took longer. So our first book, we wrote it in a couple months, and then this one took much longer because I think as you know more, as a writer, I didn't know anything for book one. I literally, like they said, fix the second half of her arc, and I'm Googling what's an arc. I mean, I wasn't quite up to par. But with this book, because we knew more about some of the writing rules and things, it took a little bit longer to flesh out the characters. Yeah. Yeah. And we also, yeah, and too, like we were just saying about the location, we really had to work a little harder to get that right.

And our first book was in Connecticut where we live. And it was very easy for us to describe everything and make sure we had that right. So that took a little extra work. And then the third thing that was very different about this book is that the characters are not quite likable. they've been through, they've both experienced trauma and that manifest in different ways throughout their journey and in their personality. So when you're reading a book, you know, for our agent and our editor and our publisher, they say like you want the reader, it's not fun to read a book if you don't like the character. So you want to have to, there's a balance, you have to kind of

make sure that the reader doesn't shut the book and say, I hate these people. But at the same time, we wanted to keep a very authentic storyline for two women who had experienced trauma. Yeah. Yeah. And their trauma really mirrors each other's stuff. They just kind of like handle it differently. That's kind of like the big difference with like Kiki just like wanting to get away from the island and that not being the same for both of them basically. because I do love books where like it's kind it's not like this one was necessarily cat and mouse isn't what you would call it but like since there are the they both kind of want very separate things but they're like at odds with each other too it kind of has that same vibe too because like even though both of them are making like poor decisions that like maybe people wouldn't always like them you can't understand where they're coming from because of the trauma that they've been through and so then you are like each chapter you're like who am I

pulling for? Like, who do I want to get the, like, happier ending? Like, you feel that tension that's similar to, like, a cat-house thriller throughout it. Yes. Thank you. A lot of people have told us that they switch who they're rooting for back and forth. So I thought that that was kind of a fun outcome.

And we tried to make the island itself a character as well. So it wasn't just focused on the two women's trauma, but that the island was a place they wanted to leave and a place where one of the characters wanted to embrace her. So in that making the island such a strong influence in the book was a goal of ours. And we have gotten really good feedback that people say that regardless of the trauma, they want to go there and visit. Yeah. Yeah.

I definitely do. I mean, it was so atmospheric. You can tell that you did like want to make the island kind of its own character as well. Like you really are, you like feel the setting a lot for both of them or from both perspectives. But it also kind of spans kind of a long period of time in their life. So how did you kind of like decide like how far like back and forward to go in their life? Or how did you kind of like keep all the details straight since it does span in a while for both of them? It was very difficult.

I'm not going to lie. We had charts and timelines and birthday calendars and especially with two. of us and saying like, you know, you have to make sure you're right on both sides. But because the book, the premise of the book was based in childhood trauma, we had to include those traumas and memories and kind of show how they grew and how this whole thing happened. So it was important that we went back a little bit in time. And then when COVID happened, we said, oh, God, we don't want to write about like now, you know, it was a weird time. It was a weird time. where everybody was kind of like, do we go back and add COVID into all of our books?

So I think we just, we said that's not what we wanted to do. So we cut it off a little bit earlier. So we didn't have to address that. Yeah. And we wanted it to be realistic because people that go through trauma are often in codependent relationships for a long time. So if you're just dating someone a week or whatever, it wouldn't be as authentic as someone that sticks around for really long time in a bad relationship.

And on a small island, people date similar people. So we wanted to really kind of be true to what would actually happen and not have it be a quick, you know, like really feel the frustration of someone being in a codependent relationship. Yeah, totally. That could be when I was reading it and you were mentioning some people are like, they're kind of unlikable characters. It is, sometimes you are like, why are you staying with this person? but like when you have the full scope of everything that both characters have been through, you do understand like why they would say, like you're saying in a codependent relationship for Yeah, we all have a friend where we're like, why is she with him?

Yes. Yeah, totally. And it's just sometimes that is how it works out when you're in a codependent relationship like that, especially. So both of your books are thrillers. What drew you to writing thrillers? you always been thriller readers or kind of how do you how do you pick to go with that genre? Readers, yes, but also as you said earlier, Bloodline and Ozark and the affair and I mean,

we just love, I think a lot of women do for whatever reason this became since Gone Girl, the hot new thing. And we actually, since we wrote our book, we've met a lot of authors and one of our favorite authors who wrote the plot and wrote the undoing. Did you watch the undoing? It's amazing. Oh, you have to watch it. It's so good. So anyways, when we're not watching TV, we want to write really compelling, dark and twisty stuff just because I think mostly because we love it so much. And I think that that is like, for us, there's a few things that we love the most. And we're coming up with those amazing twists is our favorite thing. If I, if I think of something or Krista thinks of something about, oh my God, call me.

I thought of the most amazing thing. And we pray with our fingers crossed that the other person will say, I love it. Yeah. That means we can, like, move forward. Oh, I don't know if you see Christo. She disappeared. Oh, there she is. Oh, she's going in and out.

Yeah, I can see her now. Yeah, that's my favorite part of reading thrillers for sure is like hitting the twist and pacing. like the pacing of thrillers has always been like what I end up preferring typically over other fiction books as well. Yeah, we love it, Paige Turner. Yeah, totally. So, what was my other question? I already asked you what was different about writing this book. Are you guys working on another book together as well?

Yes. Right now, our next book is about, I'm a real estate agent. Yeah. And our next book features a realtor as of the main character. And a crime occurs in a home that she has to sell. And she really prays that someone buys it sight unseen, which in this insane housing market at this time is really happening. People are just buying houses like in 30 seconds without looking at the, you know, no inspections, not even looking at anything. So it really could happen. and so someone and so so someone buys the house site unseen and little do they know that there is a crime has occurred here and i'm the character that moves into the house and my character's a kleptomaniac and so she is hiding her purchases and as she's tucking them into the wall she's learning about the home's past and the crime that's occurred in the home Yes, and what's really scary,

Spuck for me hiding bags from my husband. It's relatable, so. I don't steal the things, but I sneak them in the house. Yeah. Well, that sounds like, that sounds like a lot of fun. I'm excited for that, to hear more about that one. Is there anything that you guys have been reading recently that you've loved?

I just read By Baby, by Carolla Lovering, and it was really good. It was like, it kept, there was a little bit of tension throughout the whole book. It was just really, really good read. And she inspired my blue nails because she had blue nails at her book signing that matched her cover. So I did copy the nail thing from her as well. But it was a great book. I just read it.

It's a quick read. Yeah, it just came out. I mean, hearing a lot of good things. I'm reading a book by Jean Kwok. She wrote Girl in Translation ages ago, which I just finished, which was amazing. And now she has a new thriller. And we actually are going to meet her in a couple weeks in New York. So we're excited about that.

And this didn't come out yet. But the plot, which I mentioned earlier, now has a sequel called The Sequel, which is coming out soon, which I'm super excited about. Yeah. That sounds super exciting for sure. where can people follow you to stay up to date with everything you guys are working on? Addison McKnight official on Instagram. We do have a website Addison McNight.com so that we keep everybody up to date of books, book signings. If you want to go to Martha's Vineyard, we're having a book signing in Martha's Vineyard on Memorial Day weekend at Egerton Books.

And we would love if a podcast listener came up and said that they booked their trip to the vineyard to meet us. Yes. be so cool. Yeah, that would be great. Sorry, I'm leaving. That's awesome. Well, I will put those links in the show notes so that everyone can keep up to date with all of that. And thank you for being on the podcast.

Thank you for having us.