I expect some readers who are familiar with my literary works will wonder what I’m up to. That was the case when I started writing hi-lo or literacy learner books for adults and later YA.  Why was the writing so different from my literary novels? The answer, of course, was that I was writing for a different market, the educational market, with different expectations. Now, with The Almost Widow and The Almost Wife, I’m writing for a somewhat different market from my past novels, a more “commercial” market. But maybe the writing is not so different as all that. In both The Almost Widow and The Almost Wife, you’ll still see the small town and rural settings, the family drama, and even the touch of magic realism that has characterized my past works.

 

So why did I decide to write a thriller? Well, we all reach a point in our careers where we want to try something new. I love writing literary novels and will never stop. But after thirty years of writing literary, I needed a break, to breathe new life into my work for myself. I’ve taught and edited other writers as they worked on their own thrillers for over two decades, so I was already very familiar with the form. When I started writing hi-lo books for adults about fifteen years ago, I found the thriller a useful structure for keeping readers engaged. And I’ve always threaded thriller elements into my literary books, starting with my very first novel The Cure for Death by Lightning. The structure is one of my favorites to work with, along with the gothic and the virgin’s or female hero’s journey. And, again, I’ve always written about the domestic, the darkness and drama (and thrills) found in our everyday lives.

 

So, yes, The Almost Widow and The Almost Wife are departures from my past novels on the one hand; but on the other, not so much. In the end, as NYT bestselling author Kelley Armstrong wrote in a blog she did for my site years ago, the differences between a literary and a commercial novel aren’t so great. Whether writing a literary novel or a thriller, the writer must provide the reader with deep characterizations and an engaging story that offers the satisfaction, the joy, the thrill, of the reading experience.