In Everyone Here is Lying, I began with the idea of a difficult child. I imagined a child pushing her father’s buttons to the point where he struck her, shocking them both. I knew the child would disappear, but that’s all I knew. I wanted to explore family dysfunction (a favourite theme of mine) but this time I wanted to look at parents who had struggled to parent a particularly challenging child and what it had done to each of them and to their marriage. It’s a complex issue. Every family has its problems but this one—parents divided on how to manage their troubled child—was very interesting to me. It gave me scope to explore all sorts of things, and to dive deep into my conflicted characters. The father is also having an affair. But all sorts of people are involved in the disappearance of this child in unexpected ways. I had a lot of fun writing this one.
I like to have unexpected twists in my books, and this one is no different. I like to upset expectations and turn things on their head. Of course, I can’t give anything away here, but there’s a gasp-out-loud moment. There are also some sympathetic characters in this one, characters who you really feel for. Life can be very difficult, and sometimes things are out of your hands, and I explore that—that lack of control, and how it feels. But sometimes people make bad decisions and that’s what I find drives my plots. I like to watch the train wreck that follows from those bad decisions, but I want the reader to understand why the character has done what he or she has done, and to see how it could believably happen. People aren’t all bad or all good; they’re complicated and often irrational, especially when under pressure. I like to get caught up in their emotional crises, complicate things, raise the stakes and see what they do and where their actions take them. Plot and character are so closely intertwined. The character acts, and that’s what drives the plot. But the characters have to act authentically—the characters generate the plot for me. I never adapt a character to suit the plot.
This is why I like to write from multiple points of view—I get right inside the various characters’ heads and experience what they’re experiencing, so it drives what happens next, and makes for a rather emotional experience—both for me writing the book and for those reading my books.
I also like to raise a lot of questions in my books, questions that the reader wants answered. People are naturally curious, and they will read to find out what they’re dying to know. When I wrote my first thriller, The Couple Next Door, I set out to write a page turner. And that’s what I try to do every time. I love it when readers tell me they couldn’t put my books down.
Everyone is Dying by Shari Lapena (Transworld) Out Now.
Welcome to Stanhope - a safe neighbourhood. A place for families. William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he's been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery's family declares her missing. Suddenly Stanhope doesn't feel so safe. And William isn't the only one on his street who's hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery's neighbours become increasingly unhinged. Who took Avery Wooler? Nothing will prepare you for the truth.
More information about Shari Lapena can be found on her website. You can also find her on Twitter @sharilapena and on Facebook and also on Instagram @sharilapena
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