Secrets to Domestic Suspense

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We love domestic suspense around here! Such a sinister thing, isn't it? To know that someone in your orbit,  someone you trust, has it out for you.  I remember when Kaira Rouda’s book  BEST DAY EVER came out. And it was a wow, all the buzz. And since then, she’s continued to make her massive mark on the suspense world, coming up with newer and twistier and more gasp-worthy stories every year.

 

And hurray, lucky us, today Kaira is giving away a copy of her newest blockbuster,  THE NEXT WIFE!  (Look at that cover!) Which was been the number one domestic suspense on Amazon since even before it was formally published! And stayed and stayed and stayed in that exalted position. Fantastic.

 

And even luckier for us, Kaira is here today to tell us her secrets. Grab your pencils, writers. And readers, see if you agree.

And yay, a giveaway! A copy of THE NEXT WIFE to one lucky commenter!

(US only, please...the postage rates to countries outside the US are astronomical.)

 

The Secrets to  Domestic Suspense

 By Kaira Rouda

 

In my career I’ve published seven novels, two romance series, and a nonfiction book for women entrepreneurs, but my favorite type of fiction to write, hands down, is domestic suspense. I love it and if you’re considering writing a novel in this genre, or you’re already deep into your manuscript, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned along the way.

 

 

1. Be Original

Today’s market is bursting with domestic suspense novels, which is wonderful for us readers, but it makes it tough for writers. You must come up with an original story, with believable twists, that hasn’t been done before. That’s the true challenge these days, in my opinion. Dream up a story no one has read before, and you’ll have yourself a winner. You can do it: you’re the only one who sees the world the way you do. It’s your super power.

 

2. Chapter Endings Sizzle

This may seem obvious, but for some reason, I have to remind myself of this tip when polishing each manuscript. The last sentence of every chapter must keep your reader turning the pages. The best reviews I receive are when people tell me they couldn’t put the book down. Keep them reading, keep them up past their bedtimes, and you’ll have a great domestic suspense.

 

 

3. Remember, today’s readers are uber savvy

Don’t try to trick your reader and don’t underestimate them, either. Twists for twists sake aren’t entertaining, they’re annoying. Make sure you read widely, like your readers do. An avid reader makes for a great writer.

 

 

4. Consider condensing your timeline

I love a short time line for my domestic suspense stories. BEST DAY EVER was twenty-four hours, while THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER takes place over a weekend. THE NEXT WIFE is a week. My upcoming novel in 2022 is a weekend again. This sort of timeline, I find, keeps the momentum going.

 

 

5. Keep it close to home

I call my novels suburban suspense. I’m a product of the suburbs and that’s the setting that comes to life in my imagination. Perhaps you are a fan of small towns, or the big city, and that setting speaks to you. That’s great. Any setting works for domestic suspense, but you must remember to keep the focus on the interactions between a group of characters, and not on broader issues your setting or the headlines may inspire.

 

It’s realism in setting but not too serious or political in tone. I’m always tempted to add in angles that take the reader out of a fast read, and to a darker social issue. My agents and editors are quick to pull me back to the suburbs. Of course people die in domestic suspense and bad things happen, but the bad guy is someone your character knows--not a looming threat from beyond.

 

What do you think makes a good domestic suspense novel? What pulls you out of the book? What are some of your faves?

 

HANK: Oh, great question! I think—it’s annoying when someone is SO obviously bad but the main character, male or female, seems unaware of that, or rationalizes away their weird actions. SO the reader is screaming: SHE IS LYING!-- but the character can’t seem to hear that.

 

How about you, reds and readers? And a copy of THE NEXT WIFE  to one VERY  lucky commenter.

 

 

 

Kaira Rouda is the author of four novels of domestic suspense including BEST DAY EVER and THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER. Her latest, THE NEXT WIFE, came out May 1, 2021. Her next novel, SOMEBODY’S HOME, is out in 2022.

Follow her on social media @KairaRouda and visit her website for more!

The Scoop on author J.P. Smith, a guest blog

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: J.P. Smith made a splash (no pun intended) with his first foray into thrillers, THE DROWNING. Now he's back with a delightfully creepy tale of domestic suspense, IF SHE WERE DEAD. This thriller, which Publisher's Weekly calls "taut and twisted," features an author who may or may not be ready to leave her married lover; his wife, who may or may not want to be friends; and the man in the middle, who may or may not be telling the truth... How does J.P. handle all this? He's going to give you the scoop today.

The Scoop on author J.P. Smith

My Favorite Unreliable Narrators

The unreliable narrator has, I think, always been a staple of the thriller genre (as well as literary fiction—Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier is famous for it). Having a narrator who seems perfectly innocent and relatable while engaging in planning, say, a homicide, is both a great challenge and, if you can carry it off, great fun to write. I think of Dorothy Hughes’s classic noir In a Lonely Place,  much darker than the movie starring Humphrey Bogart. And there are Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels. It’s all about co-opting the reader into becoming comfortable with this character before the more sinister side is revealed. And the notion that Ripley is so matter-of-fact in how he carries out his crimes (including, of course, murder) makes it even more chilling. 

My Secrets for Building Suspense

I really learned how to write thrillers by writing screenplays in that genre. Scripts are highly-structured things, and it’s always vital when writing them that you always wonder what the audience is thinking from one scene to the next, so you’re constantly playing upon their expectations, throwing plot reversals at them and ratcheting up the beats and plot points until, one hopes, the audience holds its breath until the final moments of the last act. It’s about subverting their expectations, because all readers and viewers come in believing that they know how the book or the movie will roll out .

On the surface, If She Were Dead seems first and foremost a novel about obsession and betrayal, but it’s also a book about revenge, about how a novelist, in this case Amelie Ferrar, can allow her imagination to carry her into a far crazier territory than she could have ever anticipated. And yet she’s a best-selling writer, featured in Vogue, drawing huge crowds to her signings and readings. 

Writing an “unhinged” character

I wrote a female protagonist before, in my fifth novel, Breathless, though that’s a very different kind of book. Unlike Jill Bowman in the earlier novel, Amelie has a public face that she feels she must maintain at all times, presenting a person of poise and composure, flush with the success that comes with being a bestselling author. While inside she’s breaking down, losing the thread, moving into a dangerous zone. As with Catherine Deneuve’s character in the film Repulsion, her world begins to shatter into pieces. 

My End Process

I had the ending before I wrote the book. Yes, the tail wagged the dog. It came to me one day: how to reset history and to get revenge upon someone who is suddenly beyond your reach, forever denied to you.

For the reader, Amelie becomes the world of the book. You play by her rules, you follow her path, you watch how her future takes shape, and you let her manipulate you. 

My most influential authors

I came to the genre from certain French writers. While living in England in the late 70s, and I was teaching myself French, I fell upon the works of Patrick Modiano, who back then was neither very well known in America and a long way from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

His works, although they don’t conform in a formal way to the thriller and mystery genre, are really mysteries. The narrator, who stands in for Modiano, is like a detective, looking for clues into his own past, his own enigma, or searching for a missing person. I also discovered René Belletto, not at all known here in America, whose works mixes genres—literary, crime, thriller, and even at brief times science fiction. But it’s his thriller writing that comes at the genre from a particularly wry angle—never resorting to the usual tropes of the genre—that intrigued me. 

I came to admire the great Jean-Patrick Manchette, whose thrillers are now much better known here thanks to the translations that have been published. Whether writing about a political kidnapping that goes horrible wrong, or a hit man on the verge of retirement who is brought in from the cold to take on one last job, his books are always worth reading and rereading

The Writing Life

For forty years I’ve written every day. I don’t outline as I would a screenplay. Writing a script is like making a puzzle and then scattering the pieces in a particular way so the audience watches it being constructed on the screen before them. You really do have to know how it’s going to end before you start on the first page. 

A novel is more of a journey. We follow one path, come to a crossroads, follow another path and maybe even find that the story we began writing has taken a new direction. I generally have an idea how it’s going to end, though sometimes I even surprise myself by the detours I take.

As for If She Were Dead, I began it some twenty years ago, completed a draft and set it aside. It was missing something. I had a character I very much liked, but I needed to take her to into a darker realm. I returned to it often, revising and rewriting, until I realized that this was, in fact, a sometimes darkly-comic thriller about obsession and madness and revenge. 

JULIA: What are some of your favorite stories of obsession, madness and revenge, dear readers? Do you like an unreliable 

narrator? And what exactly are the differences between screenplays and novels?

You can find out more about J.P. Smith, his novels, and his other writing at his web site. You can friend him on Facebook, talk books with him on Goodreads, and follow him on Twitter as @JPSmith8. If She Were Dead will be published by Poisoned Pen Press/ Sourcebooks on January 7, 2020.

Carla Buckley Talks Domestic Suspense

INGRID THOFT

I'm so excited to welcome my wonderful friend and writer Carla Buckley to Jungle Red.  Carla and I have been conference buddies since my first book came out, and it's always a treat to spot her across the hotel lobby and spend time catching up.  Carla's latest book, The Good Goodbye, was just released in paperback, and it's a perfect summer read.  It's suspenseful and nuanced, but I'll let her tell you all about it!

INGRID THOFT:  The Good Goodbye is the story about two young women who are cousins and the way their families intersect, both good and bad.  A theme running throughout the story is how well can you know another person, even your own child?  What prompted you to write this particular story?

CARLA BUCKLEY:  First of all, thank you, Ingrid, for inviting me to appear on Jungle Red. It’s a true honor.

IPT: It really is my pleasure!

CB:  As for your question: I’m endlessly fascinated by the secrets people keep from one another, especially from those they love the most. One of the biggest surprises I’ve had as a parent is the realization that around the age of eleven or twelve, children really do start to lead separate lives. They keep secrets. They experiment and push boundaries. For better or for worse, they make their own choices. All you can do is hope they remember the lessons you taught them back when they were little and (maybe) paying attention.

The inspiration for The Good Goodbye was actually twofold. I’d been in the middle of writing my previous novel when it suddenly struck me to structure my next novel around a key event, told from three points of view. One narrator would tell her story from a point in the past leading up to and stopping at the key event. The second narrator would tell her story from the moment of the event onward. And the third would skip back and forth in time. Together, they’d end up painting a full and complete picture of what really had happened in these families’ lives. 

But what should the key event be?

Several years ago, a dramatic story played out in headlines across the nation. The two families involved ended up writing a memoir about what had happened to them. Their horrifying experience raised haunting questions in my mind, and I tucked it away for a time when I might be able to explore what it might be like to walk in their shoes.

IPT:  You’ve been featured on conference panels about the “domestic suspense” genre.  Is that how you’ve always thought about your work?  Do you think that’s an apt description of the stories you tell?

CB:  When I sold my first novel back in 2007 (The Things That Keep Us Here) the question that cropped up between my agent and my publisher was, what is this book and how do we categorize it? Back then, there was no such thing as a domestic thriller, or at least, there was no such term.  The Things That Keep Us Here talked about a deadly flu pandemic but played out in the setting of one family’s living room, and that’s pretty much what all my stories do.

I take families in crisis and make things worse. I don’t tell you what the President is doing, or what the terrorists are up to. I just talk about real people facing real dilemmas. I want my readers to be able to put themselves in my characters’ shoes; I want them to ask themselves the same, hard questions. I don’t know why domestic thrillers are on the rise—but I’m glad they are! 

IPT:  Two of the characters own a restaurant in the book, and I love your descriptions of the food, but also the specifics of running a restaurant.  What kind of research did you do?

CB:  Okay, I confess. I picked a restaurant because I thought the research would be fun. I mean, I’d have to go to a restaurant. I’d probably have to eat there, too. I watch Food Network. I love "Top Chef." I wanted to find my own top chef and ask this burning question: how is it possible to be passionate about working so hard to make something that lasts so briefly?

I knew what kind of restaurant I wanted to write about—beautiful, intimate, with one-of-a-kind menu items, and a devotion to locally sourced foods. Most importantly, it had to be run by a female chef. I was lucky to find it in real life just a few miles away: [One] restaurant in Chapel Hill. I showed up one morning before the restaurant was open for lunch and introduced myself to the executive chef, Kim Floresca. Over the course of several weeks, she showed me around her restaurant, and answered a million questions. I watched her prepare food, interact with her staff and customers, and then one magical night, I and my husband had an incredible meal comprised of items she’d specially selected. 

And Kim gave me the answer to my burning question: the joy in being a chef is all about bringing people together.

Being interviewed by your friends is always more fun!

IPT:  That's one of the perks of being a writer!  You get to chose your subject matter!  So what has surprised you most about being a published author?

CB:  I never imagined, when I was growing up and dreaming of one day being published that I would end up writing about family life in the suburbs. I wrote eight novels about everything else, and every single one was rejected. It wasn’t until I turned to my own life to talk about the things that truly mattered the most to me—discovering who you are and what you’re made of when you’re driven to your knees by circumstances outside your control—that I finally broke through. My hope is that my readers see themselves in my stories and ask themselves: what would I do if something like that happened to me?

IPT:  Is there a wannabe book lurking in the back of your brain, something you would write if you didn’t have to consider agents, editors, and fans?  A romance?  Essays?  Cookbook?

CB:  There is! There are two of them, actually. One’s a young adult novel, and the other’s set in North Dakota in the middle of winter. They’re both dystopian and somewhat bleak, so I’m a little afraid of what that says about what’s lurking in the back of my brain. 

IPT:  It says you're a writer!

Carla will be joining us today, and two lucky readers will get copies of The Good Goodbye.  Comment to enter!

The Good Goodbye
The first thing you should know is that everyone lies. The second thing is that it matters. 

On her way to her nineteenth wedding anniversary celebration, Natalie Falcone leaves the struggling restaurant she owns with her brother-in-law, Vince. She doesn't speak to him on her way out; they haven't spoken in months. But out on the sidewalk, she gets a phone call every mother dreads: It's from the emergency room where her daughter, Arden, attends college. Arden's been in a fire, along with Natalie's niece, Rory—Vince's daughter and Arden's best friend.

Natalie rushes to the hospital and learns that both Arden and Rory lie unconscious, and that another student has died in the blaze. The police suspect arson.

As the investigation mounts, Natalie struggles to piece together the elusive details of Arden's and Rory's freshman year. Growing up, Rory was charming, popular, and charismatic, while Arden was artistic, perceptive, and reserved. They were different yet inseparable, more like sisters than cousins. But the case unearths a different portrait—of a complex friendship, a love triangle, a fight, and a girl who was struggling more than anyone realized. To discover what really happened that tragic night, Natalie's and Vince's families must confront the one truth that ultimately emerges: Nothing is ever exactly what it seems.


Carla Buckley was born in Washington, D.C. She has worked as an assistant press secretary for a U.S. senator, an analyst with the Smithsonian Institution, and a technical writer for a defense contractor. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, an environmental scientist, and their three children. She is the author of The Good Goodbye, The Deepest Secret, Invisible, and The Things That Keep Us Here, which was nominated for a Thriller Award as a Best First novel and the Ohioana Book Award for fiction. She is currently at work on her next novel. 

Mysteries for Readers who Don't Like Mysteries

INGRID THOFT

Can you believe it?  There are actually readers out there who don't like mysteries?!

A friend, who falls into this category, recently asked me for some mystery/thriller/suspense suggestions, a mystery gateway drug, if you will.  I had a few ideas, but I thought, who better to make recommendations to a reluctant mystery reader, than the Reds and all of you?  Here are my choices.  What would yours be?

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is one of the greats of suspense fiction, and its ongoing popularity would suggest it appeals to a broad readership.  The creepy characters and setting and the beautiful prose are sure to delight those who usually steer clear of the suspense shelves.

I always suggest newbies start with A is for Alibi, but every Sue Grafton book is a treat.  Why would I recommend a novel featuring a private investigator to non-mystery lovers?  Because Kinsey Millhone is a knock-out character.  Readers become engrossed in the story, but Kinsey is the real draw.  Once you spend time with her, I'm convinced you'll make quick work of the whole alphabet.

The third book in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series, Faithful Place is mesmerizing and transports readers to a small neighborhood in Dublin where everyone knows everyone else's business, and yet, dark secrets remain.  The sense of place is so powerful and the drawing of the familial relationships is so sharp, I dare any reader to put this one down.

So tell me Reds and readers, which books do you recommend to readers who (gasp!) don't like mysteries?

Why I'm Glad My First Book Is An Anthology: a guest blog by Sarah Weinman

 
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  Back in 2003, before YouTube, before Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest, young Sarah Weinman was a crime fiction lover who decided to start a "weblog," as they were then known. Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, with its book reviews, author interviews, tales of true crime and news of the publishing world became a daily must-read for writers, readers and publishing insiders. Its success boosted Sarah to national visibility: she became a columnist for the LA Times and the Baltimore Sun, an editor at the publishing industry news blog GalleyCat, and eventually led to her current job as an editor at Publishers Marketplace.

Along the way, she became the go-to historian and literary scholar for all things crime fiction, appearing in publications such as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The  Guardian. Her short stories have been anthologized in several books, including Dublin Noir and Damn Near Dead, and have appeared online as well as in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

You can see why we're excited to have Sarah here at Jungle Red Writers. In fact, we think she has so much to say of interest to our readers that we've taken the unusual step of inviting her as our guest for two days running. Today, she talks about a particular kind of sleuthing: that of bringing forgotten women writers back from obscurity.

In the book world there are dreams so many writers dream they almost feel like cliché. Publishing a novel before the age of thirty. Cracking a major bestseller list. Seeing hundreds or thousands of fans at a book signing. Winning a prestigious award. Finding that signature character that will be read and remembered years after leaving the mortal coil.

Having indulged in a few of these reveries myself – and hey, some of them are still within the realm of possibility – I'm no stranger to grand writerly fantasies. But I know that when I look back on whatever further career develops, I'll be glad my first book was an anthology. Especially this anthology. Here's why:

It's not about me. Yes, my name's on the book, I wrote the introduction and selected the stories. And, aside from Dorothy Salisbury Davis, still sharp and spry at the age of 97, I'm the only living representative readers and media can contact. But what would make me utterly giddy is if Troubled Daughters,Twisted Wives spurred current readers to go out looking for what else the authors in the anthology wrote. Which leads to...

If reissues happen as a result, the anthology is already a success. In some instances, backlists are readily available. Patricia Highsmith's, thanks to W.W. Norton and Grove/Atantic, and Shirley Jackson's thanks to Penguin and FSG. Helen Nielsen's, thanks to Prologue Books. Open Road filled in the gaps for Dorothy B. Hughes that NYRB Classics and The Feminist Press hadn't, and also sell much of Charlotte Armstrong's ouevre, too. Stark House Press has been doing yeoman's work with many books by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and Vera Caspary's greatest suspense novels are also under The Feminist Press's watch.

But Margaret Millar's work remains, for the most part, shamefully out of print. The same goes for Davis, Celia Fremlin, Nedra Tyre, Joyce Harrington, and Miriam Allen deFord. The greater the awareness of these excellent writers off of single stories, the better chance of more permanent fixing in the literary and crime fiction canon.

I learned some valuable skills. The key reason I began work on TroubledDaughters was to give proper due to 20^th century domestic suspense fiction, and the female writers who found their voice within this category. But I also wanted to learn about aspects of book publishing I wasn't exposed to as a reporter, critic, and occasional pundit.

People in the book business speak of permissions with grumbling impatience, and there were certainly times – luckily, not that many – when negotiating with an agency or author estate spiked my blood pressure. But those moments were easily counteracted by the satisfaction of being able to tell the child or grandchild of one of the authors that yes, their work would be discovered by a new audience. And yes, I thought the work was good and still held up well and resonated further in the 21^st century.

An anthology requires old-fashioned detective work. There were mean streets and blind alleys and wild goose chases and lots and lots and lots of waiting, the same as any detective, working for a police department or a private firm, knows. Some estates or rightsholders were so readily available it took less than an hour to track down. Others took weeks or months. And, in the case of Miriam Allen deFord, the matter of who controls her literary rights is such a mystery that even the daughter of the Bay Area-based ACLU lawyer who was deFord's executor until his death in 1998 didn't have an answer. That's a whole other story I'd like to tell someday – hopefully with a gratifying resolution.

The stories are terrific. These fourteen women, along with dozens of their contemporaries, knew how to tell a chilling suspense tale that is impossible to put down until the reader is done. I still recall my own vivid sense of horror or wonder or voiced-out-loud amazement at these stories, wondering how so many of them had all but been consigned to the dust pile. Now, I hope, they won't ever be again. 

Please join us tomorrow for our group interview with Sarah! You can find out more about Sarah Weinman at her website (currently undergoing renovation) and at Domestic Suspense. You can friend her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter as @sarahw, and check out her Tumblr. 

BREAKING NEWS: And we are DEAD ON THE LEVEL (see above)--a signed copy of Sarah's new book to one lucky commenter today..and one tomorrow! Hurray! (And hurry..it could VANISH IN AN INSTANT.)