Interview: Leslie Baird on Salomé, literary suspense, and the allure of charisma

Leslie Baird’s debut novel Salomé is a hypnotic blend of literary suspense, psychological intrigue, and gothic atmosphere, following a young American woman who becomes entangled in the orbit of a charismatic French family and the enigmatic woman at its center. When I reviewed the novel, I was struck by its dreamlike sense of place, its exploration of longing and vulnerability, and its willingness to venture into stranger, more unsettling territory than readers might expect. In this interview, Baird discusses the cult-like power of charisma, the French landscapes that inspired the novel, the emotional foundations beneath its mystery, and why she is drawn to stories that take risks and embrace the unexpected.

Q: Courtney is drawn into Salomé’s world almost immediately. Were you interested in exploring why intelligent, perceptive people can still be captivated by charisma and mystery?
A: I’m fascinated by cults. Not only organized groups, but how even something as ubiquitous as marketing copy can leak over into cultiness. (Shout out to Cultish: the Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell.) How quick we are to align with something, as humans seeking a safe group. And there are so many levels to this, which is fun to tease out in writing. Courtney may be able to scoff at a person who subscribes to Marco’s vitamin MLM subscription, but wasn’t she just as naive when a pretty French woman paid attention to her?

I’m interested in cults because I believe, perhaps wrongly, that studying them will keep me from joining one. I can be incredibly naive at times, and I don’t necessarily have a good sense for people being predatory until it’s too late. Cults operate on charisma. If they were full of off-putting, unintelligent people, they’d have a real recruitment problem. A couple of times in my life, I’ve seen someone change their demeanor in order to charm a therapist into seeing a completely different version of them. That’s the kind of charisma that terrifies me, and the kind that fascinates me when it shows up in stories. It’s dangerous and disturbing, but often magnetic all the same.

Q: The setting feels incredibly important in Salomé. France almost becomes a character in the novel. What drew you to that particular atmosphere and landscape?
A: The most face-value answer is that France is the place I’ve spent the most time, other than fifteen years in Nashville and my childhood in Alabama. I studied in France, then spent a summer working on organic farms in the region where Salomé is set. When I started writing the novel, I desperately missed France. I didn’t make enough money to travel internationally for several years. So as I started writing Courtney, I imbued her with a longing for France, and who she is in France. Courtney is a curious and intelligent character, and it was fun to let France be a weak spot for her. She’s naive about it and loyal to it. And don’t we all have something like that in our lives?

Q: The novel touches on grief, longing, and the ways people become vulnerable when searching for meaning. Were those emotional themes present from the beginning, or did they emerge as the story developed?
A: By starting the novel with a character in motion, I had to decide what she was running from and what she was fleeing to. While it would be plausible that she was simply on vacation, that might not be propulsive enough to sustain the whole novel. I saw one review that called Salomé a bildungsroman of sorts, which made me smile, because when I described it to my professor back in 2022, I told him it was kind of a coming-of-age for millennials who needed a solid extra decade to land on their feet on the other side of the recession. (“Marriage? Lincoln, I’m only 27. What am I? A child bride?”)

From draft one, Courtney was running away from her mother’s illness, and running toward a past version of herself. Salomé was always able to offer solace, as her father was deceased in every draft I wrote. But the themes very much emerged as the story developed, particularly the immortality aspect. The more I wrote, the more I realized that it was a constant underscore for the whole novel, particularly Courtney learning to be in the present moment toward the end of the novel, in her own way.

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Q: Readers may come into Salomé expecting one kind of literary thriller and discover something stranger and more layered. Did you intentionally want to play with genre expectations?
A: The only thing I truly had in mind at the beginning of the writing process was that I wanted to write something with a plot. I wanted something to happen. On occasion, I like a “no plot, just vibes” book, and I’m always impressed when this style can capture my interest for 300 pages, but I strongly prefer books that are character-driven, but where something happens. The genre-bending was a surprise to me, too! I was throwing spaghetti at the wall without an end product in mind, so I figured… why not?

Q: You hold an MFA and have worked as a ghostwriter before publishing your debut novel. How did those experiences shape your approach to writing Salomé?
A: I wrote the first draft before either of these things happened to me! I finished the first draft in October of 2019, and got into grad school the following spring. I got my first ghostwriting gig in the summer of 2022, and since then, I’ve written around twenty full books. (Mostly nonfiction!)

That was the hardest, most grueling bootcamp ever, but it made it where I could write a decent first draft in six months. I got so much faster because I learned my own process. I like a light outline to make sure I end up with something novel-shaped, but isn’t stifling. I don’t hesitate to leave __ spots in my draft if I can’t think of the right word, and I do not let myself stop to research until the first draft is complete. That is a hole I simply will not come back out of!

Q: For readers who finish Salomé and want more stories with literary suspense, gothic undertones, or unsettling psychological tension, what books or authors would you recommend they pick up next?
A: Mayra by Nicki Gonzalez and The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim

Q: Salomé is your debut novel, but it feels incredibly assured and ambitious. Now that readers have entered your fictional world, what themes or questions do you find yourself most interested in exploring next?
A: “Ambitious” is absolutely a fitting word, both in the sense of how the novel succeeds and also where (I think) it fails. Ultimately, though, I’d rather read a novel that takes risks and goes there than one that doesn’t.

I have written a second novel which also explores cult mentality, groupthink, and the susceptibility of kind, empathetic women to fall prey to a narcissist. The third novel, which I’ve been working on slowly, explores class and money more than my other ones. There’s another one taking shape slowly, with a very unreliable narrator. All of these novels get kind of weird, but not as weird as Salomé!

Author Bio

Leslie Baird is an author and ghostwriter. She holds an MFA in fiction from Sewanee, the University of the South, and lives in Europe. Salomé is her debut novel.

Connect with the author

• Instagram
• Email Leslie Baird to request a Zoom session for you and your book club: lesliebairdauthor@gmail.com

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