Hallie's paperback launch: You'll Never Know, Dear

HALLIE EPHRON: There are few moments in a writer's life that are more unalloyed pleasure than opening a box of brand spanking new, hot off the presses copies of your book. Here's the box of the paperback edition of You'll Never Know, Dear which appeared on my doorstep in the middle of the blizzard before last, and will officially ship next week.

The cover is my favorite of all my books. It's sweet and creepy, though I wish the doll's eye could blink. And go click.

This was the first book I've ever written that's based on someone else's idea. It was a friend and neighbor, Mary Alice Gallagher, who told me about helping her mother move out of their family longtime family home in Fayetteville. Her mother, Blanche, was a doll maker. All over the house, and especially from under beds, Mary Alice pulled out boxes and boxes of doll parts.  

Put that in one of your books, she said.

I couldn't shake the image of those doll parts. So I wrote about them, and ended up with this story:

Forty years after the disappearance of a little girl and the doll her mother made for her, the doll comes back. The novel is about finding the girl.

The book has been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award. It was named one of the top ten mystery/crime novels of 2017 by Audiofile Magazine and received an Earphones Award.

My favorite part of writing a novel is research. I had to go to Beaufort, SC—I set the story there, though I call it Bonsecours. And of course I had to learn about how to make and repair dolls.

One of my first research trips was to a woman whose home is a doll hospital. Every room was chockablock with dolls. On every shelf. Rag dolls hanging like ripe hams from rafters. Doll parts were neatly catalogued in boxes.

I quickly lost my squeamishness about doll parts. Even the eyeballs. They're sweet.

Here are some of the arcane bits of knowledge I acquired while researching the book. Because hey, you never know when you'll need to uncloud a doll's eyeball.

- How to uncloud a doll's glass eyeballs: Clean with Q-tip and vinegar, and if the cloudiness has spread inside, hold blow dryer to eyes, 10 minutes at a time.

- How can you tell if doll's hair is human: Burn it. Human catches fire right away, flashes, then balls up into dark ash that you can crush into a dark powder with a distinctive, unpleasant odor. Synthetic hair melts and curls up into a hard ball and has a plasticky, chemical smell

- How can you tell if a hair is from a dog or a human? Look at it under a microscope.

More than you needed to know, right?

- How to cock a break-action shotgun: Close it; when closed it’s cocked and ready to go; it kicks like a mule when fired and you can easily bruise your shoulder

- What DNA do you need to tell if 2 women are sisters: theirs and (half the time) their mother's

- How could a woman kill someone on a shrimp boat and make it look like an accident? You'll have to read the book.

If you haven't read it, the paperback is available now for pre-order, shipping March 27. And, did I mention that the audio book is an award winner?

Barnes & Noble

Amazon

Walmart

And if you're looking for me, here's where I'll be speaking in the coming months: 

• April 9 7:30 PM S. Windsor CT Public Library Murder & Mayhem bookclub
• April 14 9:30 AM SinC/NE Writing Workshop at Milton Public Library 9:30 AM (All about writing compelling characters)
• April 24 7 PM Peabody Institute Library, Danvers –about the writing life, the craft of suspense, and You'll Never Know, Dear
• April 25–26
 MWA Edgar Awards Symposium & Awards Banquet
• May 11, Newton Free Library Book and Author Luncheon
• May 18 Penn Writers 2018 Conference, Lancaster, PA
• June 8-12 Yale Writers’ Conference
• June 21–24
 Capitol Crimes (Sacramento SinC) Writing Retreat


• August 10–12
 Writers Digest Conference 2018 NYC

• October 19–21
 Surrey International Writers Conference

Hallie Ephron's YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR launches today!

JENNN MCKINLAY: Hallie, I loved You'll Never Know, Dear!!! The suspense was top-notch, an absolute page turner, but what resonated with me beyond the excellent edge of the seat must know what happens next writing was the complexity of the mother-daughter relationships you drew so well throughout the book.

How did your own life influence the creation of these characters and their relationships?

HALLIE EPHRON: My mother was a complete enigma to me. I hope to my daughters I'm an open book. And yet... I wanted to explore how family "history" often papers over secrets, and kinship is earned, not inherited.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I second the triple exclamation marks!  Readers can tell a Hallie book instantly--they're suspenseful, textured, and a little bit (or more) creepy--in the sense of "what's really going on here?" And we can't wait to find out. Still, this book is somewhat of a departure for you. New suspense territory. Do you feel that way?  If so, why'd you tackle it?

HALLIE: I suppose it IS new in a lot of ways. Setting it in the South felt like stepping off a cliff, but my doll makers who sit out on their porch and sip sweet tea belonged in the South. Library Journal's review called it "A satisfyingly creepy read for fans of Southern Gothic fiction."  Yay!

Another leap: it's about dolls. Learning about dolls and doll making was a fun challenge. And then of course, making it pay off in the plot.

INGRID THOFT: Hallie, this book was so creepy and atmospheric and had such a strong sense of place.  It left me wondering, how did you choose the setting? 

Did you discover the setting first, and then put the story there or was it the other way around?  Did you go to South Carolina to do research?  The dialogue also captured the place with turns of phrase and a cadence that was perfect.  How did you pull that off, being a Bostonian of many years?

HALLIE: Oh, Ingrid! Thank you so much. I really worked at that. Once I realized the story belonged in the South, I picked Beaufort (BUE-fert), South Carolina. I’d been there twice. I wrote half the book, coasting on memory. Then I booked a plane ticket and a room for four nights at an inn (pictured) in the center of the historic district where I imagined my characters lived. I used that house as the neighbor's house in the book.

Beaufort was just as gorgeous as I remembered. Live oaks dripping with Spanish moss line the main streets. It has a spectacular

river-front park and esplanade. Shrimping boats like the one Officer Dan jumped off in Forrest Gump (filmed in Beaufort) chug up and down the river. (That picture is me and shrimper Steve Kerchner, practically a relative.) Anyone walking in the marsh’s thick gooey mud risks having their boots sucked right off their feet. The tide rises and falls 9 feet, so if you get stuck in that mud, you're a goner.

It's the perfect setting for a suspense novel--just the right balance of unique local color and menace.

On the dialogue, I confess I found a series of YouTube videos: Sh%t Southern Women Say. Four Southern babes and they're completely divine. Over the top. I took notes and dialed it back. Thank you, Ladies! I'm a FAN!



DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, I loved this book. I think it's your best yet, and that's saying a lot! So, tell us about the dolls. I don't even like dolls and I was fascinated. I had no idea doll collecting was such a big and complicated thing. And the portrait dolls! Is there really such a thing? How interesting and slightly creepy. Was it the dolls that gave you the idea for the plot, or did mother-daughter-missing sister idea come first? Either way, it's a brilliant combination.

HALLIE: The story was inspired by a chance conversation with an old friend, Mary Alice Gallagher. She told me about having just returned from helping her elderly mother downsize and move out of their family’s North Carolina home. Her mother was a doll maker, and the house had been full of dolls and molds and glazes and paints for making porcelain portrait dolls (there really is such a thing).

Under every bed, Mary Alice found boxes and boxes of doll parts. Legs. Arms. Torsos. Wigs. Eyeballs. And eyeball-less heads.

When I got home, I couldn’t shake that image. From the start, I knew that the story would be about a little girl who disappeared with a unique porcelain portrait doll made for her by her mother. I knew the book would open forty years later when the doll comes back.

It took me a long time to figure out what happened to the little girl, but from day-one I knew that doll parts would provide the key to unlocking the mystery.

LUCY BURDETTE: I've said this before and I'll say it again--one of your very best, Hallie! You've already had lots of great questions asked about this book, so I'm wondering...how do you move from these characters and this complete story to a new book?

It's not like a series, where the writer can say, oh yes, here's where I'm headed next time: This character can become embroiled in an investigation for this reason, and in Hayley's life, this will be going on... How do you make the shift to an entirely new book?? Do you feel finished with these people by the time the plot is wrapped up?

HALLIE: I hate starting over because it's so much easier for me to edit than to write first draft. But i don't feel remotely tempted to pick up my characters where I left off. I'm finished with Lis and Vanessa and Miss Sorrel and they're finished with me.

RHYS BOWEN: Hallie did you grow up loving this edge-of-seat suspense? Which writers influenced you?

HALLIE: I did love Alfred Hitchcock movies. He had a talent for imbuing the everyday with menace. He didn't have dolls in his movies, but here's an odd fact: He gave his star from The Birds Tippi Hedren's 6-year-old daughter (actress Melanie Griffith) the gift of a painfully accurate wax doll figure of her mother in a miniature coffin. That's beyond creepy.

Not nearly as creepy: here's a doll my friend Mary Alice Gallagher's mother made for Mary Alice's daughter, Cate. It's going on book tour with me! So please, come to one of my events and I'll take a picture of us three and post it on Facebook. My events.

Why dolls creep us out & You'll Never Know, Dear

HALLIE EPHRON: Many people take one look at the cover of my forthcoming novel, You’ll Never Know, Dear, and say, “That is so creepy!” My very own daughter posted the cover with this advice to her Facebook friends: “Avoid nightmares by keeping its cover side down.”

I adore the cover. I call it arresting. I love those electric green eyes. I’m looking for someone who can turn the doll’s face into an animated gif that blinks (and clicks as it does so). That would be creepy. That would be great!

The book is about a doll—a porcelain portrait doll--and a little girl who disappeared with it. Forty years later, the doll comes back.

The main character is that little girl’s older sister, now in her forties, who still feels responsible (she was supposed to be watching her sister.) At long last she has a chance to find out what happened. Maybe even find her lost sister.

Maybe.

I promise you, the dolls in this book are not creepy. Well, maybe a little. And, okay, I admit, the doll parts are—legs, heads, eyeballs. A little.

Why do we find dolls so creepy? And why is it, the more realistic the doll, the creepier it is? I suppose it’s of a piece with masks and clowns and mannequins. Human but not. But why don’t robots engender the same response?

The official pub date for the book is June 6, 2017. These weeks in the run-up to that date are fraught. It’s excruciating… waiting for the first readers to weigh in, for the early reviews. Believe me when I say every insecurity an author has balloons.

Which reminds me: those Macy’s Thanksgiving Day blimps are also terrifying.

Giveaways and down-pricing
The good news is that my publisher is pulling out all the stops, down-pricing my earlier books and giving away advance reads copies of the new one.

YOU’LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR Win one of 10 advance copies
Deadline: May 5 12 PM EST! Enter for a chance to win!

NEVER TELL A LIE
Goodreads giveawayMy first standalone suspense. A young couple are about to have their first child. A woman from their past shows up at their yard sale, goes inside the house, and never comes out. A starred review in Publisher's Weekly called it a "deliciously creepy tale of obsession."
Enter by 4/27! We’re giving away 25 print copies!

Bargain priced! NEVER TELL A LIE e-book
Until April 24. Bargain priced ($1.99) and comes with a preview of You’ll Never Know, Dear
CLICK HERE, then pick the retailer of your choice.

Today's question: What were you afraid of? Dolls? Clowns? Mannequins? Or did your fears run more to amphibious creatures and bugs?

And one more giveaway! An advance readers copy of You'll Never Know Dear to one lucky commenter today!

What We're Writing: Hallie in the final lap

HALLIE EPHRON: I’m writing the final fifty pages of a new suspense novel currently titled You’ll Never Know, Dear. At last all the pieces are coming together and the final shoes are dropping. I know who did it (I think), and I know how, and I know why. I just have to write it. 

It’s been a long haul. In the fall of 2013, a friend told me a story about her mother, an aging Southern belle who made porcelain portrait dolls. That became the inspiration for my book’s Miss Sorrel. 

It's the story of a little girl who, along with her favorite doll -- a porcelain portrait doll that her mother made for her -- went missing forty years ago. The book opens with the doll coming back.

  

Here’s a bit from the middle of the opening chapter. Miss Sorrel is the seventy-something-year-old mother and Lis is her forty-something daughter (the sister of the little girl who disappeared). In this opening, Lis and Miss Sorrel are having lunch out on the front porch of their home in South Carolina when a car pulled up in front.

-->

The car sat there for a few moments, its engine wheezing before it shut down. The woman who climbed out wore sunglasses. She had on tight jeans and a V-neck, flowered T-shirt. With a practiced gesture she tossed back the long dark hair that hung past her shoulders, leaned on the open car door, and gazed across at the house. At Lis and Miss Sorrel watching her from the porch.

 “She’s early, dammit,” Miss Sorrel said under her breath as she levered herself from the chair and waved. “Evelyn’s not even here.” Evelyn Dumont lived in the grand pink house on the corner lot next door. It had wide verandas in front on both floors. Evelyn and Miss Sorrel had been making and repairing dolls together since, well, since before Lis could remember. Both widowed, as they’d aged they’d grown more or less fused at the hip.

“Miss Richards? Hello there,” Miss Sorrel warbled as she gestured to Lis to get rid of the food and dishes. She adjusted the scarf around her neck. “Come right on up.”

The woman, who looked far too unfinished to be Miss anything, reached back into the car. She pulled paper shopping bag from car and a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup, straightened, and bumped the door closed with her hip. She tugged down her top which had ridden up, exposing a roll of flesh bunched over her low-riding jeans.

Miss Sorrel’s typical clients were older women who arrived in church clothes, taking special care of their injured or simply aging dolls which were swaddled in blankets or packed in boxes with tissue paper. Not this one, not the way she was swinging that bag, oblivious to the coffee that was dribbling onto it from the cup.

The woman – the getup said eighteen but the face said closing on thirty – climbed the steps to the porch. Lis could tell the moment when her mother could actually see her because that’s when her expression soured from welcoming to eau to manure. And then, because of her excellent breeding, her mother turned up the corners of her mouth in a bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Lis went inside and cleared the kitchen table and sponged it down. Then she lay down a yellow swaddle blanket and a fresh pair of purple latex gloves for her mother to wear when she examined the doll.

Miss Sorrel and Miss Richards came in, followed by Binty. The low-ceilinged kitchen felt claustrophobic as it filled with Miss Richards’s cloyingly sweet perfume smell -- gardenia squared. The girl set the bag on the table and shoved away Binty who was trying to bury its nose in her crotch. Was that a tattoo in the small of her back?  Lis only got a quick peek, but it looked like Harley Davidson eagle wings.

“Darling, would you get my log book?” Miss Sorrel said.

Lis walked through the passageway to her mother’s work room. She flipped the light switch and banks of fluorescent lights that hung low over a pair of worktables tinked to life.  On one table lay an aging hard plastic doll and a can of fixative, its chemical smell still hanging in the air. From a drawer she pulled out the aging theme book in which doll repairs were carefully logged. She also picked up the digital camera they kept in the drawer. Every doll that came into the house was photographed as well as catalogued.

When she brought the items back to the kitchen, Miss Sorrel had opened the bag the woman brought and was peering inside. Her face was so white that the spots of rouge on her cheeks stood out like a clown’s face paint.

           -- Hallie Ephron, from You'll Never Know, Dear