Any event that happens in The Hamptons has got to be the biggest and best. Of course, it does. And, so it was last weekend with the HamptonsWhoDunIt. Billed as the only event of its kind in the whole NorthEast, the inaugural Mystery and Crime Festival in East Hampton, New York, attracted more than 4o bestselling crime fiction and true crime authors including guests of honor, Michael Connelly, Anthony Horowitz and Lisa Jewell.
They came to entertain, inform and to talk about their writing processes, their characters; what they enjoy writing and what scares them.
But, First Some Breaking News…
Nita Prose whose debut novel, The Maid was a #1 New York Times and International bestseller revealed that she is writing a second novel which will be a sequel to The Maid. Naturally, it will star Molly Gray, the socially-awkward-maybe-slightly autistic protagonist of Nita’s first novel.
Nita appeared on several panels, one of which was billed, From Editor to Edited. Asked how different it was being an author rather than an editor, she she used the analogy of a labyrinth: A writer goes into a maze, and he/she has no idea of what’s going to happen/how they’re going to get out of it, she said. “But an editor stands on a ladder above the labyrinth and sees where all the dead ends are.”
How Maid Molly Was Born
A vice-president and editorial director for Simon & Schuster, Canada, Nita said she got the idea for The Maid when she was staying in a hotel for the London Book Fair. Returning from an early morning run, she bumped into her room maid who was holding Nita’s dirty, sweaty track suit pants which Nita had left strewn on the bed. “That maid was my room maid for a whole week. She knew everything about me. I realized then what an intimate and invisible job it is.” Molly was born, fully-voiced, on Nita’s trip home.
… And, Watch For “Bad Boy” A.J. Finn To Resurface
Some readers, like me, might recall the burst of bad publicity that erupted around A.J. Finn in 2019 –about a year after his psychological thriller, Woman In The Window hit the #1 spot on the NYT Bestseller List.
A.J. was scheduled to deliver his second novel to his publisher in 2019 — but that never happened. And, he himself appeared to go to ground. Until he popped up, in fighting form, last weekend at the HamptonsWhoDunIt as a Founding Honorary Co-Chair along with author Alafair Burke.
Sitting on the same panel as Nita Prose (above) he described how his second novel was more difficult to write than WITW. He said he went through draft after draft after completing an outline of about 23,000 words. “One-third of the way into writing it, I changed everything, and the book went to 191,000 words.”
Long-time East Hampton Resident
Having been an editor with William Morrow (the same publisher who bought WITW) A.J. knew this was double the length of a genre novel. “But,” he added “trying to disassemble a novel is difficult. You have to be careful not to yank out something that is vital to the plot.” His second novel does not have a title as yet, but is scheduled for publication in early 2024.
In between panels, I asked A.J. how he had landed the Co-Chair gig for the Festival. He told me he had grown up in the area, and that his mother, Pam Mallory was a long time resident of East Hampton. Pam had gotten the idea after attending a similar festival in Iceland. She suggested it to, among others, Carrie Doyle, a Village Trustee and a crime fiction author herself (The Murder Game.)
“I also know many authors,” added A.J. “and was able to get them to attend the Festival.”
Lisa’s Lovely Lunch
I bumped into fellow Brit, Lisa Jewell –author of 22 novels, most of them bestselling psychological thrillers — after one of her panel appearances. Lisa and her sisters were walking towards the center of town, looking for somewhere to eat. I was walking back, having just found the delicious Tutto Caffe, tucked off Main Street.
The following morning, Lisa thanked me for suggesting it, and said two of her fans had walked past as she and family were having lunch. “They stopped to tell me I’d found the best lunch place in town. Then,” added Lisa, “they picked up our check!”
Extreme Pantster
As a guest of honor, Lisa (The Family Upstairs, The Family Remains) made a solo 50-minute appearance with moderator Abby Endler, a senior publicist for Penguin Random House. Abby also blogs about books at crimebythebook.com. During that panel and another the following day, Lisa talked about starting with just the “bare bones” of a novel based on a couple of elements, one of which will be a character “who I’d like to inhabit for a few months.”
“I have one idea a year and I write one novel a year so, I carry on until I’m finished because there is no other novel to go to.” She describes herself as an “extreme pantster” which means writing without an outline, not knowing exactly what the plot is or where it’s going.”
It’s a process that fellow panelist, Clare Mackintosh (The Last Party) tells the audience gives her “hives” just hearing about it.
Lisa laughs: “I don’t know how I do it. You have to have a lot of faith in your process to work without a plan. Things have to be happening all the time in the book; and you have to keep information back all the time. The worst bit for me is to make sense of this dog’s dinner at the end.”
Authors Who Dislike Research
Lisa said she likes to write about families and about houses, and what happens the other side of the front door. For one thing, she says, “I don’t want to do research and you don’t have to if you’re writing about families.” For that same reason, she avoids writing any sort of police procedural-type thriller. “You can’t make it up as you go along. You have to talk to police and detectives to know how they work and the lingo they speak.”
Liz Nugent (Little Cruelties, Unravelling Oliver) agreed with Lisa on their dislike of research. “All my books span the course of my own life because I’m too lazy to research what happened in years outside of it.”
Even so, she can still sometimes get things wrong. Liz described a Bob Dylan concert which she herself attended in real life in the 1980s in Ireland and which one of the characters in Little Cruelties attends. “But, my editor looked it up and told me I got the running order of the concert wrong!”
Tips & Advice?
For any author wannabe or rookie author looking for tips and advice from the bestselling authors at the Festival, there was plenty to be had.
The very first panel of the weekend featured Riley Sager (The House Across The Lake) Wanda M. Morris (Any Where You Run) Stacy Willingham, (whose debut chiller, A Flicker In The Dark made the NYT bestseller list) and Irish novelist, Liz Nugent (Little Cruelties).
Asked what inspired them to write dark stories, Riley Sager replied that his first published thriller The Final Girls was born out of the frustration of having lost his job and the death of a friend. “I was mad at the world ,” he said.
Frustration also prompted Wanda Morris to pen her second novel (after her bestselling debut, All Her Little Secrets.) “I was confused and angry after the 2020 election. I started researching the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the murder of three civil rights workers. We were handling things pretty poorly back then, and we’re still handling them pretty poorly. I set my second novel in 1964 in the Jim Crow South. It was my way of working things out.”
Best Advice
As for the advice these bestselling authors would give to as yet unpublished authors?
Liz Nugent advised: “Never ever submit your first draft because editors are always looking for any excuse to move you off their desk.”
Stacy Willingham talked about not quitting. She said it took seven years for A Flicker in the Dark to get published. “I was rejected by more than 100 agents. It took a lot of behind-the-scenes slogging.”
“Yes, stick with it,” agreed Riley Sager. “I was rejected by so many agents. It was the third book I wrote that was the first to be published.”
Stellar Lineup
Unfortunately, I could not attend every day of the Festival or all the panels scheduled over the three days. There were other dynamite authors I really wanted to meet like Megan Abbott, Alafair Burke and Michael Connelly to name a few more in the stellar Festival lineup. But, I just ran out of time.
Still, I came away with a nice memento: an ARC of Lisa Jewell’s upcoming release (not available till August in U.S.), None of This Is True. I’ll be posting a review on Goodreads, soon.
What a stellar lineup of authors. You must have been in Seventh Heaven.
It was truly fabulous, Greg. Loved to hear those bestselling authors talking about what they love to do! And, the Hamptons in April — before the summer crowds take over — well, just heaven!