started? I actually

started it just for that.

So I love the Gothic novels.

That's what I grew up reading.

Those are the ones I love.

I'm just fascinated by this notion of this kind of trope, we call it in this day and age, that we all come back to, that you are either my biggest, grandest love in the entire world or the person that's going to kill me.

It's kind of fascinating.

Are you reading anything right now?

which is

a state long on geography and short on resources.

And then to make it an extra challenge, You'll Be Sorry has to do with, you know, centers around a 30-year-old crime.

We're in a small, isolated mountain town in New Hampshire, which may or may not bear a startling resemblance to where I live in a town of 800 in New Hampshire.

And 30 years ago, so in 1998, on a dark and stormy night, a family of six disappears.

Like the local police chief is brought there by their stray dog who has blood on his fur and there's, it looks like a meal has been started and a jigsaw puzzle has been started and a book is half read.

The family's gone.

And then by going through with them actually was like, this is how it's going to happen.

when you're writing if you're thinking, "Okay, is this character gonna show up in a future book?" How has that process shifted for you?

So I would say the fundamental thing that has brought me to suspense is psychology.

If I was not a suspense novelist, I'd be a criminologist.

Just humans to me are endlessly fascinating in our complexity, and I think one of the reasons, again, we're drawn to what is the nature of evil or... is because we can't see it.

Humans are that complicated.

We wish they all look, the bad guy looked like the clown from It.

That would make our lives way easier.

Can you give us some insight into the kind of conversation you might have with another just amazing writer like yourself?

Yeah.

I mean, it takes place in a small town that's so quaint and picturesque and tourists flock to it.

And as the white people, New England churches that nothing bad here is supposed to ever happen, except it did 30 years ago.

I mean, there's this infamous crime scene.

It looks like the family sat down to dinner.

There's food on the table and a partially started jigsaw puzzle.

That's it.

See,

yeah um and i thought you could open because there's a lot we're going to talk a bit about this town and about this new setting but i thought you could open up and talk about what you've hidden in i think two of the books um or one of the books here for the poison pen and what role that plays and how that's emerged and what it looks like and how weird it is and how priceless it is

Thank you, Greg.

And I am so excited to be here with Barbara and Greg.

And I love the Orphan X series.

And I just finished Nemesis the other night.

And I did read already The Delivery, the short story.

And I think You'll Be Sorry is scary.

Actually, I wanted to ask you, are there any people in law enforcement or or investigators that you can kind of call to vet some of those questions, like would this actually work out, procedural details and things like that?

She's an in- very interesting character.

Love Frankie.

I think she hit a huge chord with readers.

She's broken, and she's trying to find her way.

She is that woman who in her younger life made all the wrong decisions.

But, I mean, she doesn't have this terrible, tragic past.

Her parents loved her, and she...

[laughs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah

... "to be able to get it until months or years down the road," or they, they might not print it for long, and it's not gonna be around.

So th- there were very few that I was feeling that angst about.

What I loved was going around over the weekend and going to some of the, the smaller stands and, and where we'd picked up copies or games that we'd already bought from, you know, previous cons and things, and they were like, you know, "We've sold out," or, "We've only got three copies left." Uh, and that's what I love around UKGE of it's not all just about the hot, big, new games-

... at the box, basically.

Well, the two people running, I'll say there is a woman.

She's got a bag across her chest.

She seems to be wearing jeans by the look of it.

And like getting to know them and reporting them out in order to get to the point where I feel good enough to write an actually halfway decent second draft.

Well, do you ever work backwards? So I have a book that comes out this August called, um, let's see if I can remember that one.

Oh, You'll Be Sorry.

That's it.

See, I'm, can't keep track of my own titles anymore.

I knew from the very beginning in that book an entire family of six has disappeared in the middle of a dark and stormy night 30 years ago.

So I do know at some point I'm going to have to account to what happened to the family.

Right