February 2024
An interview with Andrea Bartz, adventures from a pink chateau, and you can be my Silver Springs
What’s new
Here’s the biggest thing that’s new: I’m writing this newsletter to you from an 18th century chateau in Orquevaux, France! I’m here as part of an artist residency for the month, and this couldn’t have been better timing—this place has been so inspiring. I’ve written 25k words! They’re garbage words1 but everything can be edited—that is the beauty of writing, no?
This place has shaped my third book into the weird, wild, surreal crime novel of my dreams2 and I’m so grateful, and so lucky and privileged, to have been able to make this dream a reality. I’ve had the chance to form beautiful friendships with fellow artists who inspire me, and have had a handful of truly unbelievable moments here (including having a screening of the film “Days of Heaven” in an 18th century chateau salon while sitting next to the lead actress in the film. I think I’ll remember exactly how magnificent that felt for the rest of my life).
The month is coming to an end, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.
In other news, The Hurricane Blonde is out in the UK in a mass market format with a new cover! Run and grab her, friends across the pond!3
Andrea Bartz is a journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Spare Room, The Lost Night, The Herd, and Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Vogue, and many other outlets, and she's held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among other publications.
Where do you go to refill your creative well?
I'm lucky to live near Green-Wood Cemetery, a national historic landmark that's more like a beautiful park than a graveyard. (Yes, it inspired Brinsmere Cemetery in THE SPARE ROOM!) I find wandering around it inspiring for two reasons: 1, it's gorgeous nature and that's always creativity-sparking, isn't it? But also, 2, being in a peaceful place surrounded by physical markers of death reminds me my time here is so limited and if I want to leave a lasting impression, I need to keep writing my little books. Does that sound macabre? Once a thriller author, always a thriller author!
What’s a craft technique you're dying to try out in a future project?
I haven't tried it yet, but I'm so intrigued by authors dictating scenes instead of sitting down and writing them. I want to try it for my next book; it might not work for exposition, since my prose is awfully flowery, but I could see it being a game-changer for writing dialogue.
How would you describe your author brand?
I write feminist psychological thrillers that fail the Bechdel Test for men [Editor’s note: Right on!! 👊] and treat female friendships with the same gravitas as romantic relationships!
So much of success in publishing is out of author's direct hands—how much your publisher puts into marketing you, how to get the right readers to find your work. But not everything is! What have you found to be successful in building your brand as a writer?
I'm very lucky to actually enjoy making silly videos on TikTok and interacting with readers on Instagram. Most recently, I launched a Substack to connect with fans and aspiring authors directly. I have no idea if any of it translates to sales, but I love making personal connections with readers, because everything else can change—my publisher could drop me, my agent could quit, my contracts could go poof—but readers are the ones who make you an author.
What are you craving to see (or see more of) in books, movies, tv, or other art?
As a larger and larger proportion of people (women especially) are childfree, I'd love to see more positive depictions of that lifestyle. In THE SPARE ROOM, my main character (like myself!) went from thinking she obviously would have kids to realizing that that was her internalizing external pressure and messaging. By the end, she's not sure she'll have kids, and she's okay with it.
In pop culture, we often see ambivalent adults become parents and then feel THRILLED about it (I'm looking at you, Brooklyn 99 and Parks & Rec), or the childfree characters fall into stereotypes: crotchety jerks, folks who hate kids. I'd love to see that narrative shift!
Backlist beauties
Recommending: Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
Year published: 2019
This book. This goddamn book.
I have had this book for a few years, and I’ve put off reading it because I KNEW it was going to wreck me emotionally. I was prepared for that! I knew!
I didn’t know it was also going to wreck me as a writer. Like full, lying on the ground in the existential angst of it all, wondering why I even fucking bother when there are books like this in the world.
The story of Disappearing Earth is both very simple and also not. In the first chapter, two young girls go missing in the deep wilds of Kamchatka, an extremely rural part of Russia. Every chapter thereafter is told from a point of view of a different woman in the Kamchatka community in the twelve months that follow the girls’ disappearance (accounting for an entire year). It’s a genius structure that allows Phillips to build out the world of Kamchatka, develop deep character studies, and subtly move the plot and mystery along. It’s a novel, but it’s also a set of interconnected short stories.
I’ve never read anything like it, and, once I picked myself up off the floor both physically and metaphorically, it did beautiful things to my heart, brain and creativity. It made me think more deeply about novel structure, and all the possibilities therein, than I have in years. Maybe ever.
My open tabs
What was that thing Hemingway said, “Write drunk, edit listening to Fleetwood Mac”?
Have not yet gotten a chance to check out the “Rael” documentary series on Netflix (even though it’s in French! So it would be thematically perfect!) but I did very much enjoy Clémence Michallon’s review of it.
Eager to check out this Argentinian noir when Noir City Hollywood rolls around!
My dad (Hi, Dad!) sent me this article about con artists and I’m saving it to treat myself on the long flight back to LAX.
Some of the artists at the Chateau with me took a trip to Switzerland one weekend and checked out this palace, the Grand Chalet of Rossinire—the largest wooden structure in the world—that was also once home to the artist Balthus, and is currently home to three wolves, a serval, and a Bengal cat (and some people).
Here’s a real sentence I actually wrote the other day: “I stared at the memorial memorializing the dead men.” Oh really, Halley? Is that what memorials do? It’s like when a chef does a dish four ways; how many different parts of speech can she create out of one word in a single sentence, folks?
Somewhere, my beloved agent Sharon is perking up her ears like, “Uh, what’s this now?? Should we run this by me first??” C’est la faute de la chateau, Sharon! Vive la France! Vive la fromage!!
Although I guess at this precise moment…same side of the pond, ish?
Yes to your new book cover (!!!), books about female friendship over romantic relationships, and Fleetwood Mac. This brought me so much joy today. Thank you, Halley!
“weird, wild, surreal crime novel”? I can’t wait!