Before I can sit down and write a 350-page novel, I need three things—a dream, a memory, and a true story that fascinates me. Only then can the alchemy begin.
1. The Dream:
Each one of my novels was inspired by a dream. Before I wrote “A Breath After Drowning,” I had a dream that my husband and I came home and couldn’t get our front door open. I slid the key into the lock but it wouldn’t turn. Inside, the phone was ringing off the hook, and I knew in my heart something horrible had happened. That dream was the seed that grew into my new novel.
Dreams contain an underlying truth. What did this one mean? I was suddenly homeless. I’d lost my identity. An unknown force was threatening everything I held dear. I’d been locked out of my own home—this ignited my imagination, and I became obsessed with its literary implications.
2. The Memory:
My father was admitted to a psych ward after his first suicide attempt. I remember visiting him there when I was sixteen years old. The clocks in the waiting room told the wrong time, and the magazines were three years old. Dad shuffled toward us in his pajamas and bathrobe. He looked washed away. His eyes were faded. He talked to us as if he’d forgotten who we were. As if something alien had replaced him. This memory still haunts me, and it inspired the pivotal scene in “A Breath After Drowning” where, as a young girl, Kate visits her mother in the asylum.
3. The True Story:
The murder of Jessica Lunsford effected me deeply. She was a nine-year-old girl from Florida, who was murdered in 2005. Her body was found 150 yards from her home. She’d been buried alive. Her death was so tragic and cruel, it filled me with anger and sadness. I couldn’t imagine how her parents coped with such a loss, and so I gave their terrible pain to my main character.
In my novel, “A Breath After Drowning,” child psychiatrist Kate Wolfe’s world comes crashing down when one of her young patients reveals things about Kate’s past that she shouldn’t know—things involving the murder of Kate’s sister sixteen years earlier.
In writing this book, I felt a powerful connection to Kate, a connection so strong it propelled the book forward. She took the dream, the memory, and the true story, and she put it on her shoulders—I followed.