Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein, I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewee’s mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is Laura Griffin, author of Midnight Dunes Laura is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books and novellas. She is a two-time RITA Award winner, and her book Desperate Girls was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Publishers Weekly. Booklist magazine calls Laura's popular Tracers series "the perfect mix of suspense and romance.”
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
The spark of the idea for Midnight Dunes happened when I moved into a house built in the 1940s, which we had bought from the estate of an elderly lady who never married and lived in her central Austin bungalow with her sister for more than fifty years. My first project was painting a spare bedroom, so I climbed up on a ladder in the closet and discovered all these old postcards from a road trip this woman had taken in the 1960s. I was fascinated by the idea of the many stories a house holds—secrets about people and their lives and their love affairs. As a suspense writer, I took that idea and gave it a creepy twist—what if you moved into a house and discovered something that made you think a murder had happened there?
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
When you’re planning a story, picking just the right setting is always important. As a teenager, I went on a camping trip to North Padre Island on the Texas Coast. We slept in tents and bodysurfed in the waves and spent sweltering afternoons in the shade of the van—windows open—playing Texas Hold Em. I fell in love with beach camping that weekend.
This coastal setting has come back to me again and again, and sometimes it takes on a sinister form. In Midnight Dunes, a body is discovered in the towering sand dunes of a beachside campground. Law enforcement swoops in to answer everyone’s burning question. Who was the victim? Meanwhile, a young woman moves to the island. She is cleaning and settling into her rental house when she finds an array of strange clues that make her believe her quaint beach bungalow might be the scene of a brutal murder.
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
That happens to me all the time! In some books, I even decide to change the villain after the story is well underway. If I think the killer’s identity is too obvious, I have to shake things up.
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
I got my start as a newspaper reporter, and I am still a bit of a news junkie. I am constantly reading headlines and filing tidbits away for future stories. One small forensic detail that I read about somewhere could end up being the basis for an entire plot.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
Often, I’ll be conducting research for one book and come across something that I think might be a good basis for a future story. I’ll start gathering articles, books, whatever I need, and then when it’s time to plunge into the next project, everything is right at my fingertips.
I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
My writing buddy is my sweet twelve-year-old Weimaraner. She sleeps in my office while I work and nudges me out of my chair for walks. Dogs are wonderful companions for writers because they force you to stretch your legs and get some fresh air—which helps the creativity flow.