Nassau Court is an attractive subdivision in Bethesda, Maryland that’s perfect for families — nice homes, plenty of space, good schools, and friendly neighbors. Couples Scott and Aimee, Lisa and Marcus, and Gwen and Anton socialize every weekend, help out with each other’s kids, and are good friends.
But when one of the husbands is found dead, the layers of artifice are quickly peeled back, and what once looked like perfect lives begin to fall apart, piece by piece.
The genial, sociable atmosphere quickly turns dark, with steadily escalating tension, unexpected twists around every corner, revelations about how dark human nature can be, and an ending that is as shocking as it is shattering.
Trust the process (i.e. yes, it’s okay to feel seasick and gloomy when you start).
After having written four books, you’d think I’d know that I always start each new book reluctantly, the words coming begrudgingly, accompanied by a vague sense of nausea and the feeling that I have no idea what I am doing. Yet it hits me anew each time. One day, in the midst of writing YOU DESERVE TO KNOW I entered the kitchen and my husband took one look at my face and said, “Let me guess, you have no idea if this novel is going to work.” Turns out, I say that every time I write a book. I am currently in the queasy stage of my fifth novel, but I am better able to see it for what it is — a necessary phase, not a determination on the worth of my project.
If you build it (your fictional world), they (the ideas) will come
I am not a writer who writes every day between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. with a pee break at 11, no matter what. There’s nothing I hate more than sitting in a chair, staring at a blank screen, except maybe having to toss out thousands of words I wrote because I didn’t know where I was going with my story. I only sit down to start a novel when I have a general idea of the whole thing — plot, setting, main character, tone. Until then there are dogs to be walked. Yet, I am not a detailed plotter. I have had to learn to trust that once I have built up enough story pressure in my imagination to start writing, like a tea kettle that starts whistling, the rest will flow. My characters get more interesting the deeper I get into the book. Take my murder victim in YOU DESERVE TO KNOW. He got his start as “husband no. 3” but after a few pages he emerged a writer, and not just any writer but a failed one, with great literary aspirations (yet little to back it up), and a dead mother who wrote beautiful prose that he may or may not have cribbed. The more I wrote about him, the more interesting and complicated he became, but it was only through writing about him that he was revealed to me.
Writing is great therapy (aka living well may be the best revenge but writing comes close).
Someone did me dirty once. Maybe someone did you dirty once as well, and you, like me, wondered if there was going to be any cosmic comeuppance for this evil-doer, any karmic retribution or at least acknowledgement that they did a bad, bad thing. Maybe you too experienced a profound sense of unfairness when you realized that was not going to happen. But did you sit down and write a novel and, inspired by your tormentor, create a character so vile and twisted that you cackled with glee as you wrote? I did, and it felt great, and my therapist called it sublimation, which is a fancy word for using your pain productively for your art. And it’s cheaper than therapy, too.
Genres are like lines in a coloring book, some people like to scribble outside of them
What kind of books do you write? I always hesitate a nanosecond when people ask me that. If I say mystery, they might imagine Hercule Poirot, with his ever-present pocketwatch. And no that isn’t right, but neither is the term thriller, conjuring visions of Jason Bourne racing through the streets of Berlin. Psychological thriller often means unreliable narrators (mine tend not to be) yet I resist th term domestic suspense as too small, cramped, claustrophobic. A reviewer once described my books as “suburban noir” and I loved it. The dark side of suburbia. Of course, there is no officially sub-genre called suburban noir. The Library of Congress categorizes my book as suspense fiction. I’ll take it. I’ve learned to write what I want and let other people worry about labels. I cannot imagine trying to reverse engineer a book to meet a subgenre’s conventions, although I feel like I have read a book or two that fall into this category.
Start the next book is almost always the answer
When you are in the dark about sales — as in how many, and where, and what moves buyers? Or when you want to tear your hair out and scream WHY when your book club raves about a terrible, awful, no-good book. Or when you’ve found an incandescent little novel that makes it worth getting up each morning and you realize no one else has ever heard of it and you wonder how can such genius go unheralded. When you worry if your agent will ever call you back. When you try to figure out what strategy you should take on Facebook/Instagram/X/TikTok that won’t make you want to drink arsenic. When you think the font on your last book is why it might not be selling so well. When a celebrity chef/athlete/influencer writes something in your genre and gets a seven-figure advance. Start the next book. The answer is always start the next book. Edited to Add: sometimes the answer is chocolate.
Aggie Blum Thompson is the author of four novels of domestic suspense that are set in the D.C. area. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a reporter, covering cops, courts, and trials, with a healthy dose of the mundane mixed in. Her writing has appeared in newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. She lives just over the Washington D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband, two children, small cat, and large dog. She is currently at work on her fifth novel.
Aggie Blum Thompson: Website
You Deserve To Know: Bookshop.org | B&N | Libro.fm | Kobo
