Kate White Q&A
What made you decide to write mysteries and thrillers?
Like so many women, I read and loved Nancy Drew books growing up and for a while I was obsessed with the idea of being someone like Nancy myself. When I realized I was never going to find a job as a girl detective, I began dreaming of writing suspense fiction instead.
But you had a career in magazines for a long time.
Right. I also loved magazines when I was younger, and after winning Glamour Magazine’s Top Ten College Women contest my senior year in college, I got a job there. From that point I moved up in the magazine business, eventually spending fourteen years as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan—one of the most fun jobs imaginable.
How did you finally decide to make the switch to being a suspense author?
Before Cosmo, I was the editor of Redbook, and one day a woman came into pitch a horoscope column—a meeting I took as a courtesy. While she was there, she asked to read my palm and as she was sitting in my lovely office with people buzzing outside in the hallway, she said she could see me working someplace totally different, in a small office all by myself. Her comment helped re-awaken the passion I’d had when I was young to be an author. I started working on my first mystery and felt so alive from the experience.
When I was tapped for the Cosmo job, I was afraid I would have to put the book aside—the job was incredibly demanding, and I didn’t want work to interfere with being a mom. But I eventually realized that if I got up early on weekends and wrote before my kids woke up—and also wrote for an hour each weekday before my staff showed up at Cosmo—I could churn out plenty of pages.
I wrote eight novels while at Cosmo. As much as I loved my magazine job, it was tough to do both, and when the magazine business began to collapse, I left to become a full-time professional author. It’s been wonderful.
Your new book, I CAME BACK FOR YOU, is your nineteenth suspense novel. Does it get any easier with each book?
Ha, in some ways, no. Writing can be hard and frustrating, especially when you’re not happy with what you’re producing. And by the time you’ve done nineteen books, maybe you’ve already had one in which the killer turns out to be the husband or the detective or the vicar (kidding, I don’t have any vicars in my books), so it’s “Now what?” But on the flip side, I’ve got my process and my systems down by now, and that’s very helpful.
How do you solve the “Now what?” problem?
I use a very simple tool I’ve heard many suspense authors swear by: keep asking “What If?” For instance,
— What if the cheating husband really didn’t do it?
— What if he didn’t do it but he inspired his mistress to do it?
— What if his mistress did it as revenge, without his knowledge, and set him up to take the fall?
It’s a great technique not only for developing plots but also for creating killer twists. And honestly, it’s a great tool to use in life in general.
I CAME BACK FOR YOU is about a mother, Bree Winter, whose life is upended when the serial killer thought to have murdered her daughter gives a death bed confession saying he killed four college-age women but the daughter wasn’t one of them. And now Bree is left with the horrible burden of not knowing what really happened. She sets out in search of the truth, no matter what risks are involved. Where did the idea come from?
I’m not really sure. With some of my books, I know the spark came from a news story or something I read or heard, but this one just seemed to appear one day. I think I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of someone discovering that something they always believed to be true…isn’t. How do you move forward from that? I think the story grew from pondering that question.
The first six chapters of I CAME BACK FOR YOU are set in Uruguay. Why did you pick a country that’s not on many people’s radar?
My husband and I love South America, especially Uruguay, and we bought a small beach house in that country fifteen years ago. We spend the winters there, which is their summer. It’s an amazing place: progressive, beautiful, and full of character. I loved the idea of giving readers a glimpse of it.
But that wasn’t the main reason. The book opens eight years after Bree’s daughter has died, when Bree is finally starting to feel somewhat whole again and living with a new romantic partner. Then the serial killer’s confession upends everything, forcing her to return to the college town where her daughter died. I wanted her to come from very far away—from a completely different world—to emphasize just how high the emotional stakes are for her.
Do you always know how your books are going to end right from the beginning?
Yes, always. I never begin a book without knowing who the protagonist is, who the killer is, the inciting incident, the twist, and the ending. But I usually let all the other parts of the book evolve as I go. My wonderful author friend Lisa Unger sometimes talks about the pleasure of being in a “dream-like” state as you’re writing and to me that only happens if I let my imagination run free.
What advice would you give an aspiring thriller writer?
Read constantly and not just thrillers but high-quality fiction and craft books, too, like Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Stephen King’s On Writing. Join a writers’ group where you share pages or ask that of a few trusted friends who actually read your genre (not your mother!). Be wary of meanies but be willing to take criticism without saying, “Yes, but….” And read Jane Friedman’s terrific piece on how to get published.
Is there anything you’ve learned from other thriller authors?
Oh, a ton. My favorite came from the author Chris Pavone. He told me that when he’s writing, he regularly asks himself, “Is enough happening on these pages?” As a thriller author, I know I’m supposed to have a lot happening, but Chris made me see how invaluable it is to step back every few pages and make sure that’s actually true. A simple trick—but an essential one.