Author interview with thriller/suspense author, Mandy Webster

Q: When did you first catch the writing bug? What drove you to persist?

A: As far as I can remember, I’ve been writing stories since I learned to write. The stories themselves are often what drive me to persist. Most of my story ideas that have become novels have been ideas that got stuck in my head and wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote them. At times, it seems I might be a hostage to my own muse! It’s okay though because we get along well—most of the time!

Q: What/who were your early literary influences, and how do you think their writing has shaped you as a storyteller today?

A: My earliest influences have to be the writers whose stories were read to me as a child. I remember my grandma reading Winnie the Pooh, and my dad read the entire Little House on the Prairie series to my siblings and me. Later influences were Mark Twain, Elizabeth George Speare (I LOVE The Witch of Blackbird Pond), and whoever wrote the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High books. Just kidding about the latter two. While I enjoyed reading Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High books at the time, I would later come to despise reading books in a series. I also think I learned what good writing does not look like (*ahem* Magic Treehouse *ahem*).

Q: Does writing energize or exhaust you?

A: When I’m “in the zone,” writing is energizing. Especially when it feels like I am inside the story as it unfolds on the page in front of me. However, when I’m grinding out a first draft, I often write fast and try to crank out the basis of the story as quickly as possible. The drafting step of the novel writing process usually leaves me exhausted and brain-weary by the time it’s complete.

Q: Do you try more for originality or to please your readers?

A: I love to take an established trope and turn it on its head. For example, my novel Valley of the Bees is a futuristic dystopian novel with the requisite love triangle—but the love triangle doesn’t quite end up the way it typically would, with the protagonist choosing one potential mate over the other. If You Didn’t See It Coming is not so much a “who-dun-it” as a “who’s going to do it.” I like to surprise my readers and give them something within their favorite genres with a twist.

Q:  Have you ever gone on a “literary pilgrimage?” If so, where did you go and why?

A: I’m not sure if I would call it a pilgrimage, but I have visited Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons) grew up. I also visited the American Writer’s Museum in Chicago a couple of years ago. I highly recommend both!

Q: Do you prefer to write stand-alone novels or series? Do you make connections between non-connected books?

A: Definitely stand-alone novels. I can’t stand to spend enough time with any one group of characters to write a series about them. I guess you could say that my books are more idea-driven that character driven. I usually have a point that I want to get across, and I don’t want to spend several books getting it across. I’m all for clear, concise, and to the point, which is something you don’t tend to get with a book series.

Q: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

A: Ignore everyone around you. You can write for a living. This is something “people like us” CAN do. Don’t waste time in business school thinking it’s the practical thing to do. It’s not practical if it’s not what YOU are meant to do!

Q: What was the best money you ever spent on your writing career?

A: I’ve actually spent quite a bit of money unnecessarily and have learned the hard way that it takes very little money to do what I do (if we ignore the fact that I need food and a roof over my head and all that!) I must have a decent laptop to work on, but it doesn’t need to be top-of-the-line—just reliable. My Microsoft Office subscription also comes in pretty handy. Otherwise, I’ve never spent money on anything that has shown a return on the investment.

Q:  What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?

A: I’ve never been much of a talker, so just learning that I could put my feelings in writing and get my point across in a way that I couldn’t do verbally was empowering. I did once write a response to a letter in my local newspaper that ended up getting me a lot of attention. I was in high school at a time when people still regularly read the newspaper, and it turned out that a lot more people read my letter than I had imagined would do so. There were a lot of adults who never seemed to notice I existed before who suddenly took the time to compliment me on my well-written letter. Suddenly I wasn’t completely invisible anymore.

Q:  What is your favorite genre to read? Do you write in that genre? Has that always been your favorite genre, or has your taste evolved as you have grown as a writer?

A: My taste has evolved over the years, and I often write in the genre I am most reading. For example, when I wrote Valley of the Bees, I was reading a lot of young adult dystopia. Then “New Adult” became a thing – for a time. That slightly more mature genre gave me the freedom to push the boundaries a bit more in Demons of the Night than I typically would have when writing for young adults. As I got farther away from my graduate creative writing program (in both space and time,) I felt less inclined to read in the genres I was being exposed to by my professors (for some reason, several of them seemed to really push writing in the young adult genre while I was in school).

I had spent so many years in school reading what I was expected to read rather than what I actually wanted to read; it took me some time to figure out what I even liked. In the past few years, I’ve been leaning into the thriller/suspense genre. I love authors like Lisa Jewell whose writing has a bit more depth than some of the formulaic novels you often find in the genre. So that’s what I was really looking to do in If You Didn’t See It Coming and my latest, It Had to Happen.

Q: How do you balance making demands on your readers with taking care of them?

A: I try not to make too many demands on my readers. My goal is to immerse them in my stories to the point where they forget they are reading a book. I’m sure I occasionally throw in words that readers might have to look up, but for the most part, I try to provide enough context so a new vocabulary word won’t trip up the average reader (without writing down to the eighth grade level). I do try to challenge my readers to question their own assumptions in many ways. The ultimate goal is to leave the reader thinking about the story long after they’ve read it.

Q: What – if anything – do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters?

A: As I am always careful to state at the beginning of all my novels, my stories are all “works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.” If someone reads one of my novels and sees themselves in one of my characters, that is on them. If they don’t like what they’ve read and believe the character to be based on them, they should examine themselves to determine why that character resonates with them so much.

Q: What does “literary success” or success as an author look like for you?

A: My idea of literary success has continued to evolve all along my writing journey. In the beginning, I knew I had achieved literary success the first time I wrote a complete draft of a novel. That’s a BIG DEAL, so anyone who reaches that benchmark should be extremely proud of themselves! After that, my next goal was to get people outside of my circle of friends and family to read my books. That another huge feat! Then I learned that the more books I wrote and published (product on the shelf), the more I sold. So, my sales have grown exponentially with each new book.

Now, I’m at a level where I really just want to quit my full-time job and become a full-time creative. This is one of those goals that may never happen no matter how hard I work due to the fact that so much of this kind of literary success just comes down to plain, dumb luck unless you happen to know someone – Oprah? Reese Witherspoon? Jenna Bush Hagar? – who is willing to shill for you. So I won’t despair if I never reach that level of literary success. I feel like I’m pretty successful now, all things considered. So I’ll just keep hacking it out and be satisfied with myself as long as I’m writing.

Q: In your experience,what has been the best way to market your books? Where have you found the greatest return on your investment (whether it be time or money invested?)

A: Sadly, I’ve seen the greatest return on investment doing the thing I like least: selling in person at vendor events. It’s not that I don’t want to meet my readers, but it is exhausting standing at a table all day smiling at all the people who pass and pretend not to see you because they don’t read books. Selling books is hard. Reading is FUN. Why don’t people read anymore? But seriously, this seems to be the best way to get my books in front of people, as long as I don’t accidentally do events where the organizers forgot to market the event!

Q: If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? (Or what do you do “for a living” if you aren’t supporting yourself with your writing – yet?)

A: I’m an academic advisor at a state university in the Midwest. Actually, up until a couple of months ago, I had been working two full-time jobs. I was an academic advisor and a house director for a sorority for two years. The money was great, but after two years of working two full-time jobs, I was exhausted. Not to mention the fact that my writing had really fallen by the wayside, and I wanted to get back to it. Living and working in a sorority was a trip, though. I might have to write a novel about it!

Q: Do you read your book reviews? How do you handle those reviews, whether good or bad?

A: I occasionally do look at reviews. The only ones I don’t like is when someone leaves me a low rating without telling me why. I get that not every book is for every reader, so it doesn’t bother me if it’s obvious that’s the problem. I just wish people who leave bad ratings would provide context both for my purposes – learning what I can do better next time – and for the purposes of other readers who just want to know if the book is for them.

Q: Do you hide any secrets or “Easter eggs” in your books that only a few people will find? Examples?

A: All of my nieces and my one nephew have their names in at least one of my books. They’re usually bit characters, but I like to slide those names in there for my kids. One of my nieces has started having babies now, so I gotta get moving and put her sons in my next book. There is one other easter egg that my writing group pointed out to me while workshopping my latest novel, but you’re going to have to read my books to find it!

Q: What have you written that you found to be the most fun to write?

A: One Bad Cat might be the most fun I’ve ever had writing a book. It is a work of satire with elements of magical realism that literally made me laugh out loud the whole time I was writing it. I would even come back later to work on revisions after letting the draft rest for a while and laugh all over again. I hope my readers find it as funny as I do!

Q: Do you Google yourself? If so, have you ever been surprised by what you have found?

A: I do Google myself once in a while, and I almost never show up on the first page of the search results. Both of the names I write under – Amanda L. Webster and Mandy Webster – are such common names, and there are a lot of people with those names who are apparently much more successful than I am, or at least are better at working the search algorithms. It would be a surprise if I Googled myself one day and found myself at the top of the search results with articles touting my latest bestseller. One can dream!

Q: Have you ever asked an AI tool (Chat GPT, Google Bard, etc.) about yourself? Did the AI tool know who you were? Did it provide correct information about you?

A: I haven’t asked about myself, but I have asked about my books. Google Bard wrote a really nice review of One Bad Cat for me!

Q: What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

A: Getting started. Carving out time to do it. Once I get started though, as long as I have enough writing time scheduled in, I can typically knock out a first draft of a novel in six to eight weeks. Then comes the next most difficult part, which is revising that crappy first draft until it becomes something worth reading.

Q: Does your family support you as a writer?

A: My adult children show no interest in my writing, but they also don’t *not* support it. I let my mom sell books on commission, and I swear she sells more books that I do sometimes. And all my aunts and several of my cousins make sure they get signed copies of every book.

Q: Where did your love of books/storytelling/reading/writing/etc. come from?

A: This is a family thing for me. Books: my parents were always reading. My dad and grandma were always reading to us kids. My grandma was always writing. She had a typewriter in her kitchen that she was always tapping away at while dinner burned on the stove. My dad’s generation says she was the best cook ever, but I think she was really in the middle of writing something big by the time I was old enough to be aware of what was going on. I’m not sure what ever happened to that book. It wasn’t published, and as far as I know, none of my aunts or uncles inherited it. I would love to know what was in it though! My grandma also came by writing honestly—she told me once that her mother wrote soap operas back in the day when soap operas were on the radio.

And then there’s the storytelling—you would never meet a more passionate group of storytellers than my dad and his siblings. I believe I learned how to tell a story long before I learned to write. It’s just a family pastime.

Wow. That’s a lot of questions, and there are still a lot more left! I’m going to leave off for today though and might return with the rest of the questions and answers at a later date. While you’re here, be sure to check out the other authors who have been featured on my website. And if YOU are a published author who would like to be interviewed here on my blog, contact me now to find out how!

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Now that Jack has been forced to reflect on everything he has to lose, he resolves to do better. He’s determined to spend more time at home with his family and repair the relationships that have suffered over the years while he’s been so focused on work. But as Callie’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jack realizes he has a lot more room to improve than he realized – and it might be too late to save his daughter after all.

For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.