How to Take the (long, elegant) Gloves Off and Write Like You

Anyone who ever listened to Jenna Blum do interviews on the A Mighty Blaze podcast will not be one bit surprised to hear that we had a great time talking all things writing but most specifically writing BIG—which Jenna has absolutely done with her current book, Murder Your Darlings. Murder Your Darlings is a contemporary thriller and a real departure from Jenna’s very popular historical fiction—a departure that’s totally in keeping with Jenna’s own enthusiastic, passionate personality. As her agent said, her earlier work was elegant and restrained (although still powerful) but in this one Jenna lets herself loose. We had a wonderful time talking about it, and I know you’ll have a great time listening.

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The Plot and The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz

Last Seen, Christopher Castellani

You, Caroline Kepnes

Join Jenna on tour—she’s absolutely a joy to listen to on writing and probably any other topic! Dates HERE.

And do grab Murder Your Darlings—who doesn’t love a tell-all thriller set in this ridiculous industry we all love so much?

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Episode Transcript Below!

SPONSORSHIP MESSAGE

Hey, this is Jennie. Happy New Year! If you’re a subscriber to the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, you can join us in our Blueprint Challenge, which is starting on January 12. We’re going to be working on new book ideas, books where we’re stuck, and books that we’re revising, and using the Blueprint framework to help us get unstuck, get clarity, get confidence, and move forward. KJ is leading the charge this time with some write-alongs, some Ask Me Anything sessions, and all kinds of good stuff to help you on your way. I’ll be jumping in as well, and I’ll be cheering you as you get your books into shape and get ready to write forward in 2026. Details are in the show notes, and we’d love to have you join us.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Multiple Speakers

Is it recording? Now it’s recording—yay. Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. All right, let’s start over. Awkward pause. I’m going to rustle some papers. Okay, now—one, two, three.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Hey, writers, KJ here. I just interviewed Jenna Blum, and any of you who have listened to her when she does the interviews on the A Mighty Blaze Podcast will not be one bit surprised to hear that we had a great time talking all things writing, but most specifically, writing big, which Jenna has absolutely done with her current book, Murder Your Darlings. Murder Your Darlings is a contemporary thriller and a real departure from Jenna’s very popular historical fiction, a departure that is totally in keeping with Jenna’s own enthusiastic, passionate personality. As her own agent said, Jenna’s earlier work was elegant and restrained, although absolutely still powerful, as you know if you’ve read it, but in this one, in Murder Your Darlings, Jenna lets herself loose. We had a wonderful time talking about it, and I think you’re going to have a really good time listening. Jenna, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us for the Hashtag AmWriting Podcast.

Jenna Blum

You’re so welcome. I am the one who’s honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I am really excited. So, listeners, as you probably heard in the intro, which I haven’t recorded yet, I asked Jenna to join us because she’s doing a big thing. She’s making a jump into a new genre for her, and I can totally relate, and I suspect many of you can too. Her new book, which is out approximately now, as you hear this, is kill your dollar, Kill your darlings. [intended title: Murder Your Darlings] And it is one of those, like, if somebody wrote a book just for me, it would be this kind of book, or this possibly exact book, which is such a thrill. It’s, you know, that combination of the thing that makes me my buy now list, which is, isn’t a thing like that thing where you’re like, if you tell me the book is about such and such, I’m like, yes, yeah, just, just take my money. So it’s that, plus that really great, commercial, friendly, accessible, like the voice I want to read. It’s not—I mean, I don’t know if any of those adjectives thrilled you—but easy reading is hard writing, and nobody knows that more than me, and you do that very well.

Jenna Blum

That is so kind of you, KJ. Thank you. So I’m going to rudely start out by issuing a small correction, but the...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh no.

Jenna Blum

Actually, no, no, it’s fine. It’s Murder Your Darlings. And they’re...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, okay, sorry.

Jenna Blum

Popular phrase. And one of the reasons I call the book Murder Your Darlings, as opposed to kill your darlings, which people tend to gravitate to, is that the book is really about writerly appropriation in the biggest way, about story thievery in the biggest possible go big or go home kind of way. And the phrase kill your darlings is itself an appropriation, which I didn’t know until I started writing this. But the original phrase is Murder Your Darlings. It was coined by a gentleman called Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1914, and he was giving a lecture on good writing, and he said, whenever you think you’ve done something exceptionally clever in your manuscript, by all means, put it in, and then go in and take it out: murder your darlings. And then William Faulkner ran with it, and Stephen King ran with it, and it became really popularized. And I thought, how cool to go back to the original in a book about appropriation. So it’s Murder Your Darlings.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s also—that’s better. I can’t believe I got it wrong, because it has this great cover with the quill and the blood. And I—it that’s, that’s better. It’s just it, I don’t know, kill your darlings has also become a very glib phrase. So to switch it to Murder Your Darlings kind of makes—kind of gives you that record scratch moment of like, oh, oh wait. Oh! Right? So I like it.

Jenna Blum

I appreciate that. Thank you. I mean, I myself was thinking, kill your darling, so I love to, sort of like, care what of that phrase, that Murder Your Darlings had a sort of a weightier sound to it. And despite, like, the joy that I had in writing about writing, and I hope all your listeners just like me, I’m—my must order now books are all about writers, about writers about writing, especially fiction about writing. I had so much joy in that, but the book also has some pretty weighty subjects at its heart as well. So I feel like that weightier murder is somehow indicative of...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well, that brings us really well to the next question that I wanted to ask you, which is, what was your intention around this? This is definitely, you—now I think probably we step out with every book, but this is you stepping out and playing big, which is, you know, is a new theme that we’re talking about around here. So what was your intention for Murder Your Darlings? What did you want it to be?Jenna Blum

I love that you’re doing the go big or go home theme. I always think that way. I’m not a quiet writer, not probably, not a quiet person.KJ Dell’Antonia

You’re not really, no, not—that’s not what I would say. Oh, Jenna, she’s so shy and retiring...yeah. Yeah.Jenna Blum

So I had so much joy and so much fun writing Murder Your Darlings, because all I had to do was unpack my life. She’s such a wallflower. My sister saw a photo of me with a megaphone at a—as an activist at a rally, and she’s like, nobody here is surprised. This is what I’ve been living with for all the years. Anyway. So my intent with this was really just to have some fun, honestly. I have been working on historical fiction, and I’m known primarily for historical fiction, and I was working on historical fiction when the idea for Murder Your Darlings came to me, and I felt like I had two books trying to elbow their way through a doorway at the same time. And because I am more known for historical fiction, and my editor had already green lighted that idea, I was very dutifully working along on it—and it was a terrific idea, I have to say, like on paper. It was an idea on paper that should have been good, but it really wasn’t. There was no juice to it. So I kept writing, and then thinking, right, what was the motivation? What did the character actually want in that scene? And then I would realize I had no idea and didn’t care. And so I was thinking about Murder Your Darlings, which is about a female writer—mid career, female writer who falls in love with a stratospherically successful and very charming male writer and then finds out that he may or may not be killing female writers to take their stories, or is it one of the number of women who are stalking him, especially this very persistent stalker named the Rabbit. And so I had this idea kind of elbowing its way into my head, and I thought, I don’t, I don’t know if I’m qualified to write a thriller. I’ve written a thriller. Who am I to do this? And then I read Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot, which is so good, so contemporary, so fresh, so funny, so smart, so everything. And I stalked her. I called her, got her phone number, called her, and said, how was it for you making this pivot, going from quote, literary fiction end quote, to writing a thriller? And she said, I just write what I want to write and let other people market it. You should write what you write. And I thought, Babu, because I had always loved reading about writers. I’ve always wanted to write about writers, and she kind of gave me—well, she literally gave me permission to do it.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And like you said, it really has some bigger themes around that. Did they come with? Did they come with the idea? Did some of them come with the idea, and some of them had to get pulled in later? Like, how? How did that piece of it play out?

Jenna Blum

Yeah, great question. I am a writer who always knows what her theme is going to be. I would have a mission statement on the board in my study saying, like, here’s what this book is about, and then I hope it reaches the reader through osmosis, as opposed to me being preached. So the plot has to express that idea. But then I am so plot focused when I’m writing and just wanting to get all the blocking down and get this play down so the reader doesn’t get bored that I have to go back through often and shade in the theme and the emotional resonances I hope are there. And one of the very big themes for me in Murder Your Darlings is of codependency, and what makes a smart, successful woman with a stable life, a good community, who’s a teacher, who’s a writer, who has really built her life for herself, fall for somebody who she knows very well may be sketchy AF. It’s like, okay, I’m just going to keep my hand on the hot stove. You know? Why is that? And I feel like, if you know a woman like this, if you were a woman like this, you are a woman like this. I certainly have been this way my whole life, like falling for the sketchy dudes and feeling great shame about it. I thought, I really want to write this book for all of us, or women or men—I should say this is not gender specific.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Jenna Blum

Or that person who’s like, don’t open that door, and you open the door anyway.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah.

Jenna Blum

Why?

KJ Dell’Antonia

And people are like, so many flags, and you’re like, I kind of like flags.

Jenna Blum

But he’s... but he’s so cute.

KJ Dell’Antonia

He looks so good in red.

Jenna Blum

Right? Exactly. And I have to say that the relationship at the center of the book between Sam, the female writer, and William, who’s the male writer, they do have some really rare commonalities too that are hard for Sam to overlook. And she comes from a trauma background, so she can’t trust her own instincts. And so I wanted to, as in all of my novels, work with people who have survived trauma: how they react in the atmosphere and the aftermath, and how their behavior gets kind of torqued or twisted, and sometimes makes it difficult for them to make the healthy decision, which makes...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Right!

Jenna Blum

Good fiction. Good fiction is about people making bad, bad, bad decisions, so...

KJ Dell’Antonia

And you make him real too. He’s not just bad for the hell of it. You know, it’s not—I— that’s one of the things that is a pet peeve of mine in books, is when you’re like, yeah, that person had really bad parents that really messed them up. But why? Like, yeah. I mean, you can’t have everyone and their parents mess them up. And I would totally do that instantly. That’s my beige flag. Would you like to know how their great, great grandparents screwed everyone up with epigenetics?

Jenna Blum

It’s like the poem, right? Is it the Larkin poem? They

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, yeah, “They screwed him up,” yeah, yeah. But I always know, like, who screwed them up? And hey, who screwed them up? And who screwed them up?

Jenna Blum

That’s a funny thing. Thank you for saying that. So William, and a third of the book is narrated from William’s point of view, and then Sam and the stalker the Rabbit get the other two thirds of the book, and Sam and the Rabbit go back and forth, and William has his own narration at the center of the book. I have to say, I loved writing William. I really did. He’s first person, like, in the guy’s skin. He is really arrogant, like, really narcissistic, and he was, and could never use a, you know, five cent word when a $30,000 word will do. But I really loved writing him, because, as you said, you’re right, like, he doesn’t, he doesn’t mean to be any of those things. And I mean, we all recognize a narcissist, which is such a hot word these days, and I mean, he is a legitimate narcissist, but he doesn’t need to be narcissistic. He just is that way, and he has his reasons that are very clear for being that way. And it wasn’t until—this is when you ask him, before, what did I put in afterwards?—it wasn’t until I was really done writing his first draft, and one of my writer friends said to me, but like, what were his parents like? And I thought, I don’t care. Like, I don’t care what his home life was like. I don’t care about any of that. But when I did go into that room, because I knew I had to, there were things in that room that were a chamber of horrors, that were like, truly grotesque. And I thought, this actually makes sense to help explain why he’s motivated the way he is.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And why she would be drawn to him. Like, you know, he’s not just—there’s there is more in there. I, you know, not to excuse, not to excuse William. Is he the first character you’ve written that was, that was like that, deeply narcissistic, and in the first person?

Jenna Blum

That is a great question. He’s not the first character I’ve written who is narcissistic. In my first novel, Those Who Save Us, there’s a Nazi officer who is deeply narcissistic and also totally unaware of his own qualities, which I guess actually defines a narcissist, like they have...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh yeah, yeah. I think if you know you’re a narcissist, you’re not a narcissist.

Jenna Blum

Right? Exactly, right, right. Nobody’s going to be like, I’m a narcissist. Who cares? I love being a narcissist. They’re more like the world serves to please me, and if it doesn’t, then the world is wrong. But this is the first I’ve written from the first person, and in fact, this is the first novel I’ve written anything in the first person. So the Rabbit in this book is first person—the stalker—and William is in the first person. Sam is third person. And I haven’t written in first person since graduate school, and when I did, I was kind of soundly spanked for it. And they’re like; there are graduate school scenes in this book as well. And in Murder Your Darlings, the workshop scenes that I love so much, because I pretty much just airlifted them from the [unintelligible].

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, which is the best. Absolutely.

Jenna Blum

And it’s so fun, so much fun to write, like grad school, boot camp, you know whatever... I’m here for all of that. Murders the people who it doesn’t make stronger, but, but yeah, I remember writing...

KJ Dell’Antonia

So what was that like to—what is it like to switch your normal writing perspective, so the POV to first person? And did you, did you do it from the right away? Or did you, you know, did you write it the wrong way and then switch it? How did—and did it bother you? Were you like, oh, no, I don’t know if I can do this?

Jenna Blum

No. I loved it very much. I loved it so much. And William was actually not even supposed to be in the book, so I can talk about that in a minute, but the first, first person character to come in was the Rabbit, and she wasn’t originally supposed to be there either. It was supposed to be Sam narrating, and the third limited, which is my lane, and I’ve been in that for years and years. And I do love it. I love Sam’s voice as well. But the Rabbit came to me on Christmas Day. I want to say 2023, and I was thinking about Sam’s relationship with William, and how Sam, which is still in Murder Your Darlings, gets very jealous, because she knows that William is really opaque about his relationships with other women, and he cannot resist the charms of the opposite gender, shall we say. So Sam is stalking him. She still stalks him a little bit in this book. And I thought, what if one of the other women were also stalking him alongside Sam? And what would that look like? And I was supposed to be at a friend’s house on Christmas Day. Our whole family got the flu. I was lying in my apartment in Boston feeling wretchedly sorry for myself. It was raining. It wasn’t even snowing. It was a sort of Dickensian awfulness. And I was lying around feeling bad for myself and thinking about this, as one does. And then all of a sudden, I jumped up and ran into my study and put my hands on the keyboard and wrote what would become the prologue of the novel. It is unchanged, in that.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Wow!

Jenna Blum

And she just came out of freaking nowhere. And I will tell you, it was like plugging my hands into a socket. Like, every time I sat down to write the Rabbit, I just felt electrified. Her voice is not my voice. She’s very colloquial. She’s the person who tells it like it is, speaks truth to power, sits down at the kitchen table and says, like, look, here’s what you got to do. You all just follow suit, we’re going to do, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she just really is very plain spoken and very funny and very sarcastic. I think she’s also not me in terms of, like, what she looks like, in terms of her background. She comes from a poverty background. She comes from an abuse background. She’s a bookseller, which actually I was. But it was astonishing that, like, every day, when I looked at my schedule and I knew I had to write the Rabbit, I was like, oh, thank God, because every time I put my hands on the keyboard, she was there. And I just got such a kick out of her—stalking William, stalking Sam. I think she’s amazing. And there’s a big surprise tied up to the Rabbit. So not to spoil anything, but those of you who love, you know, your twists in your fiction will, I think, be—hopefully—be gratified by, by the twist with the Rabbit. William came in about halfway through. I want to say maybe the first draft. I was going Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit, and I was going into the second section of the book, act two, and I was going to continue doing that. And I had this whole outline. Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit, Sam, Rabbit—rising action. I knew all my plot points all sketched out. And then one day, I was like, what if, instead of sort of reheating these leftovers and trying to make the action continue to step ladder up, what if William gets a section in all of his William glory and all of his narcissistic glory? And that kind of gives the reader a little bit more reason to be hopeful for Sam and also scared for her, because we know from his perspective what his life was really like, and he’s not being truthful with her about it. And I called my editor and said, I’m going to do this thing, maybe, with your permission. Like, do you mind if I write, you know, some sample William chapters? And I was so nervous about it. I had this whole defense about it. Here’s why this is going to be good. She was like; I think that’s a brilliant idea. Do the whole section from his point of view, if you want to, if you want to. I think that’s great. And again, sitting down to write, I felt like I plug my hands into this socket. But William grounds the whole book with this sort of dark electricity, I think, because he is...

KJ Dell’Antonia

So you already had it from the other points of view? Did you have it planned, or did you have it written?

Jenna Blum

I had it planned. I had a plan. I had bits of scenes. I had snippets of scenes and chapters. But I have scenes they dearly love that are not in the book at all because William usurped...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Because he can’t—yeah, he doesn’t—well, and he is not there.

Jenna Blum

Access, no. But, I mean, I kind of flipped them inside out in like a pocket, into, like, other parts of the book, so that, like, I know what Sam and the Rabbit are doing during William’s sections. And you see them, of course...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah.

Jenna Blum

From his point of view instead. It was not a darling I had to murder. Like, again, like sitting down to write his point of view was a relief, in some ways, to get out of my own skin. Getting into somebody else’s skin, in the first person, is the farthest you can go from yourself if that character is not, in fact, you. And that’s why I love writing fiction. I get out of my own skin into somebody else’s skin; walk around in that virtual reality. I just freaking love it. It’s the best part—kind of insanity there is.

KJ Dell’Antonia

So with this project, what did you love most about the process? Sounds like there’s going to be—sounds like there’s a competition, because it really sounds like you had—I mean, I’m sure there were some hard moments. We’ll get to that. That’s my next question, actually. But what did you love most? What do you love most about how it turned out, and what did you love most about doing it?

Jenna Blum

I love all the things. I literally have goosebumps when you say this. I mean, it is a competition, because I love this book so much. And I know you’re not supposed to say it about your own books, but I do. I just love this book, and it might be my favorite book that I’ve written. My favorite. I love it so, so much. I hope readers feel the same way. I think one of the reasons I love it so much is I think it’s really funny. Like, there was never a single day where I sat down to work on this book that I didn’t snort laugh, like, in the middle of the scene, because William is so charming and yet so horrible and fatuous and whatever. So he really made me laugh, whether I’m viewing him from the outside or from inside. And the worse he gets the more funny I thought he was. The Rabbit, likewise, in her speaking truth to power kind of way. And then Sam sections allowed me to spill the tea about the weirdness and the wonderfulness of the writer life, much of which is just so peculiar, whether you’re on tour or you’re trying to, you know, zhuzh an idea into being and you can’t quite get it, or, you know, being in a relationship with another writer. I mean, all of those things are just—they’re just nuts. And so every day I sat down and laughed and laughed and laughed and, like, cackled in my apartment, scaring the dog. And I thought it was so much fun. And now looking at the book and, like, holding it in my hands, I can open it to any page and be like, yeah, oh my God, I totally remember that line that was so great. So I hope people have fun with it. The early reviews that have come in have been, thank God, you know, Inshallah, they were great. And that’s what people have been saying. It’s a delicious book. It’s a fun book. It’s a delightful book. Nobody’s ever said this about my books before.

KJ Dell’Antonia

It’s totally very different. It’s totally, really different than your other work, right?

Jenna Blum

Yes. Well, I mean, I think so. Like, when you’re not writing historical fiction, fiction requires—or at least it did for me—because I’m writing about big, serious things, you’re writing about World War Two, it’s probably not going to be all that funny. But I feel like the third person voice that I’ve been using most of my authorial career has been hopefully elegant and restrained, because I really, you know, working with my word choices—every author does—but I’m trying to maintain a very even narrative tone. This one is just so freaking off the chain, because I got to write in a contemporary way. I got to get into the first person, other people’s voices, other people’s experiences. It was interesting. My agent, who’s very, very smart, and she is French, and when I came to her and said, you know that historical fiction that you thought I was writing, it’s actually not that. It’s a thriller. That’s something different. She read it, and I was, again, sort of terrified of what she would say. And she called me, and she was like, [imitating her French accent] “Jenna, I think what you are doing is smart, but more than that, I think it is brave, because your whole life you have hide behind this voice you use for your historicals. And instead, this is like, really, you taking the gloves off. This is your voice. This is you.” And I just felt so validated and empowered by that observation.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That is exactly why we were—we are here. If this is—it’s so, so meet. We are meeting for the first time. Lots of times when I get somebody on the podcast, we’ve never encountered each other, and your vibe is so Murder Your Darlings. And really, you know, at this point in your life and in your career, this is really, you know, who you’re presenting as. And I, of course, don’t know how you presented, you know—maybe we should go back seven years to before a lot of things that have evolved in your life. I don’t know whether you were maybe a little more elegant and restrained yourself. I have no idea.

Jenna Blum

Uh uhh, never.

KJ Dell’Antonia

No?

Jenna Blum

Nope.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I mean, it must feel so great to have released that part of yourself into this much, you know, loved part of your world.

Jenna Blum

It just feels so much easier in a lot of ways. I remember—and I’m thinking about this while we’re talking—lying on the couch and watching the You series by Caroline Kepnes, like, based on a series of books that she’s written that are really tremendously good. And I remember I was looking for a binge at the time. I just finished something that was fantastic. And, like, you know, what am I going to watch? And I clicked into You, and I was so happy that I did because I thought, this woman writes the way people actually speak. Her dialogue is so smart. It’s so Cracker Jack. It’s so spot on. And I am now friends with Caroline. Caroline is amazing, and I remember saying that to her the first time I met her, just as a total fangirl. Like, how did you do that? She was like, this is just how I write, and I have not been giving myself permission for years and years to do that.

But in fact, again, my agent would say to me, you know, [imitating her French accent] “You write these, these book, and you go to your readings and people think they’re going to meet, like, Margaret Thatcher or something, because books are very serious and very heavy and very, you know, weighty about this big topic, and then you are a goofball.” And I am!

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love the French accent you are giving us here. As a student of French, I’m particularly enjoying it.

Jenna Blum

Oh, I’m so sorry then, because my agent hates when I do this. She hates it. She’s like; please don’t use the French accent. I’m like, I have to use it. And she’s in the book, and her name is Mireille, and I wrote her exactly as she speaks. And she—my editor, whose name is Sara Nelson—is in the book as Patricia, and I pulled no punches or even tried to disguise them whatsoever. And they like to bicker over who is more important in the book, Mireille or Patricia. So that’s super fun. But I mean, I do think there is something really liberating about entering a scene, entering a chapter, and thinking, I don’t have to fancify this language. I don’t have to smooth over its edges. If I want to say somebody is sketchy AF, I say they’re sketchy AF.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I don’t have to figure out how someone would have said that in 1942, which is—I mean, I do—I don’t want to—your past work, which I haven’t read all of, but what I have read is very much infused with a humanity and a female power. It may be elegant and restrained, but it’s in there. It’s like, you know, coiled, but it’s in there. So I don’t want to propose that those books aren’t really you. But this is, you know, this is definitely more who you come out of the box as.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, there won’t be such a mismatch with this for readers who are coming to my work for the first time. If you do that and then you see me in person, you’ll be like, oh, this totally tracks, as opposed to... And I think one of the great things about writing fiction is you can be in that sort of disguise. And my previous fiction, the historical fiction—and I did have one contemporary novel in there as well—I think the topics were just not as funny to me. Like, writing life is very funny, and contemporary life is funny. But I think that writing historical fiction enables you to get in a time machine and go back and put on a different set of clothes, and that is reflected in the narration. And this, I think, shares some commonality with my other fiction, in that, like William, I am a friend of big vocabulary. Like, I love my vocabulary. I love to deploy. But it just feels more bouncy to me. Like, it just feels buoyant and super energized. And I love it. Like, I have three more thrillers lined up in my head on the runway that I would love to write.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That’s amazing.

Jenna Blum

So I’m really excited about—I hope this book does well. So everybody should buy it, please, so I can write more thrillers. Please.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Everyone do that. We’re going to put all the links for that in the show notes. So one more question before we turn to me asking you about other people’s books. What was the hardest thing about writing this? I have a guess for what you’re going to say, but I want to hear what you say first.

Jenna Blum

I don’t know if there was a hard thing about writing this book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I was going to say; maybe it was giving yourself permission to do it in the first place.

Jenna Blum

Oh, interesting. No. I mean, that’s more about marketing, in some ways. I had to get permission. I didn’t want my agent to be like, no, this sucks. I mean, she would try to sell it no matter what, but I really...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, you’re such a disappointment.

Jenna Blum

Right? If we must write it. Nash, my editor as well—I’ve been with my agent for 24 years, and I had been with my editor for, like, almost 10 years now, which is pretty amazing.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, that’s the dream.

Jenna Blum

So glad to have one on one shoulder and one on the other shoulder. So I didn’t want them to both be like, oh gosh, she’s writing a thriller, everybody writing a thriller. What was the hard thing about writing this book? I think the fact that I’m no longer writing it, honestly. It’s one of those, like, tough act to follow books. You know, I think about other ideas and I’m like, but they’re not darlings, though. So, like, I really had so much fun with this book that when I was done, I was really bummed. I will say that there is a paragraph toward the end of the book that is, for me, the heart and the soul of the entire book. And I’m always curious about other writers, whether they have these paragraphs that are really the sort of nut graph of the whole piece, to use a journalistic term—like, the whole, the heart of it. And I cannot read that paragraph without crying. And I revised this book eleventy-two times, and I could never get through it without weeping. I read the whole thing aloud when I was in the copy edit stage, and I was like, you know. So, I mean, is that hard? I don’t know if that’s hard, but it was like a part that stabbed me, I think. And then the rest of it is just, like, a pure freaking joy. And I really hope people feel the same way, because, I mean, it’s just—why not bring joy?

KJ Dell’Antonia

Why not bring joy? That is the thing that has stuck with me most about stuff I’ve read most recently about writing. And unfortunately, I’ve already forgotten where I saw it, but someone was saying, if you’re read, why should people read your book? What are you—what are you giving them? They were like, if, if your whole point is, but I worked so hard, that is not how this works. But yeah, like, great. I mean yay. But also, I mean, what’s in it for me, man? I’m the reader, and what’s in it for me? And joy is the answer that I want. So I think it’s going to be the answer everyone else wants too.

Jenna Blum

And, like deliciousness and fun and hopefully—I mean, I write all of my books at the bottom line, at the common denominator, to help people feel less alone in their experiences. So if people read this book and they’re like, oh my God, I was totally—say I’m walking into this relationship—oh my God, oh my God, that’s me, oh my God. Like, I really hope that people see themselves in her.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, it’s the gift of getting yourself, getting out of your head and also seeing yourself more clearly.

Jenna Blum

Yeah.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That, to me, is the hope with fiction.

Jenna Blum

Yep, totally agree. You get to escape. You get to have an adventure. You get to feel the work through somebody else’s experience. And then you also get to feel like, whatever your weirdo experience—all weirdos—like, you’re not alone in that experience. We are here.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love it. All right. Well, switching gears completely, tell me what you’ve read recently where, again, we’ve talked really hard about this—this book was a leap. It was a great leap for you. You’re playing big. What have you read recently where you could tell that the writer was also playing big, going, going to the outside of their abilities?

Jenna Blum

Yeah, I think—I mean, I know so many talented writers. I think they’re just trying out different keys the same way I am. And my answer really runs along my own track, because there are a lot of writers I know who are writing thriller or true crime disguised as fiction type of stuff, who have been primarily and previously known as quote literary fiction, end quote, and just, like, a term that that I don’t like. But when I say that, I really mean when the attention is paid so much to the language and the characters, and you can be a little more experimental in form, et cetera. But I think really, like Jean Hanff Korelitz, who I mentioned earlier.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yep, I loved The Plot and The Sequel. They’re both great.

Jenna Blum

I love The Plot and The Sequel. I did not have the pleasure of interviewing Jean for The Plot, although somebody on [unintelligible] did. But I did have the pleasure of interviewing her for The Sequel. And I was fascinated by, like, that is a go big thing, because everybody’s like, oh, The Sequel is not as good as the original. So even to write a sequel in the first place is going really big in my work.

KJ Dell’Antonia

And then to, to have it be what it was. I actually, in some ways, thought it was better. But, I mean, they were both great. I really enjoyed both of them, but The Sequel was just like, “ooohh, oooww,” in the way it just... Anyway. It was, it was very skillful.

Jenna Blum

I loved that it was really ingenious. And I loved talking to her about thrillers. I was like, how do you do this when you have a plot and you need to figure out, you know, at the end, how do you surprise the reader? And she said, it’s like going down a long hallway filled with doors, and you keep opening a door and closing the door. You know, that’s not the answer to the plot problem. That’s not the answer. That’s not the answer. That’s not the answer. And at the end, you have only one door left, and that is your thriller solution. Like, that’s the twist ending. And I was like, people plan that? I mean, I have to plan everything. I plan going to the market, you know. I’m like that person. And, you know, she didn’t. She doesn’t plan it. And I thought that was [unintelligible].

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, I too am a planner. And that boggles my mind. I don’t mind if the plan then changes, but without—I could not. I cannot operate without the plan.

Jenna Blum

I can’t write without the plan, even if I’m not writing a thriller. So to write a thriller that is still satisfying and not have that delicate calibration of, yes, this is the surprise that I’m going to plant in chapter 39—that’s astonishing. So she is one. And my friend Chris Castellani, who has the book coming out February 17—I want to say its called Last Seen. And Chris is a beautiful literary writer. He had a book called A Kiss from Maddalena that grew into a series of three books. His last book was called Leading Men, and he got a review in The New York Times that said his prose was—I memorized this, not because I’m jealous, don’t worry—was opaline, and likened him to F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I remember calling out that review, and I was like, sir, you should get that as a tramp stamp. I certainly would. And so he has this reputation as this fine, fine literary writer, and he decided to go into true crime slash thriller territory alongside me. And I’m so glad our books are out at almost the same time so we can kind of keep each other company in this venture. So Chris’s book, Last Seen, is about the victims of the smiley face killer, and they are all of these young men who are killed by the smiley face killer, narrating from within the frozen rivers in which they are trapped, dead. So they’re, like, sort of narrating from beyond.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Well, that’s still experimental. He did not fully leave his form.

Jenna Blum

He didn’t, and it’s...

KJ Dell’Antonia

He’s taking his form with him.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, he is, in a way that I don’t know if I have or not. And I would leave that for greater minds to determine. I mean, I hope that what I’m writing is still smart. And again, there’s the big vocabulary, but, but there does seem to be more of a jump in some ways. But Chris—it is a little sort of Virgin Suicides, I guess, but from the point of view of all of these lost boys. But you also get what their family members are saying, or the people who love them, the last time they saw them. And it’s this beautiful, sort of kaleidoscopic endeavor that also provides satisfying answers as to who did this. So he’s taking his craft and applying it to almost a whodunit in a way. And I think it’s really ingenious and really fascinating to watch this track change from the outside, where I feel like it’s almost like T. S. Eliot is writing a thriller—like that’s kind of how it reads—except with more sex and death. And Chris and I are going to speak together at Politics and Prose on March 5, I want to say, and we...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Now I can put that in the show notes, because this will be out. If anybody’s in the DC area, you could hit Politics and Prose.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, come on down.

KJ Dell’Antonia

That would be amazing.

Jenna Blum

We are calling our panel the sex and death panel, or the sex and death conversation, because both our books are so sexy and so deathly. And then my friend Alex George, who I love, said, well, you should invite an accountant to be on your panel, and then it could be sex, death, and tax.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yes.

Jenna Blum

Which we’re not going to do, but...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh well.

Jenna Blum

But that’s funny.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh well, they’ll, they’ll charge sales tax or something. It’ll—they’re still taxes. Taxes will always be with us.

Jenna Blum

Right. Exactly. Sex, death, and taxes. So come on out for sex, death, and taxes. And the book Last Seen. And it’s just—it’s really haunting. It’s a very haunting book.

KJ Dell’Antonia

I love this. Well, I know that what’s next for you is a pretty big tour for this, which I will put all the links to in the show notes, not to raise the bar. But are you? Are you already working at—this is sort of, this is actually more like a craft question. Are you already working on something new? Are you noodling something new? How do you manage this process part of your writing?

Jenna Blum

I’m noodling something new. For all of the ventures into new territory, I haven’t been able to change my spots yet in terms of process, which, for somebody writing thrillers, is not great, because you can, you know, hopefully turn them out faster than fiction. To me, the historical fiction requires so much research that took me much longer to write. But I do have those ideas lined up. I think what I like to do with ideas is I kind of roll them around in my head like marbles to see if they are going to stick around, or if they’re going to roll down a hole and disappear somewhere, like a little rabbit hole. And then you know that they don’t have stick-to-itiveness. All three of the ideas that I’m thinking about are still there. The thing for me is I’m a very single-task person, and when I’m promoting, I’m really promoting. Like, my tour—amazingly bananas. Like, I am going to be in a different place every single day connecting with readers, like Sam in Murder Your Darlings, the heroine. I write to connect with readers. I don’t write for the joy of the writing, although I love this book and enjoyed writing it so much. Like, I write because I want it to meet you guys and be out there, like talking about my book, talking about other books. So when I’m on tour, I don’t actually write. And I was saying this to my friend the other day, Dawn Tripp, who’s also an amazing writer, who wrote Jackie, and has been on tour. She did something like 162—I’m making it up—but she...

KJ Dell’Antonia

I actually saw her at... outside Boston, the Newburyport Book Festival. Oh, I know, which is amazing, which I also will be at. Yeah. That’s a great festival.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, it’s so good. And I’m going to be in conversation with my editor, so if you have any...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Oh, there? At the Newburyport festival? I’m sure—I usually go. So that sounds great.

Jenna Blum

Please come, please come. Because that’ll be really fun, because she can spill the tea on, on, like, how disorganized I might actually be. But Dawn—I was saying—she’s like, oh, I’m home now. I’m so happy I can write. I was like; I can’t imagine how you would have written on that tour. And she said, oh, no, I write every day, because if I don’t, I don’t feel great, you know, I don’t feel great in my own skin. And I was like, that’s just nuts, man. Like, I’m going—I’m done with this book. I’m going to Nordstrom Rack. I’m going to go shopping. I’m not touching another book for five years. But I do, I’m kind of looking forward to being back this summer. I have a couple of months that I think are slower, and I want to develop those ideas. So let’s see if I can, you know...

KJ Dell’Antonia

Let him audition a little more loudly.

Jenna Blum

Yeah, I love that audition. That’s so great. I’m going to steal that, but I’ll credit you.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Yeah, yeah. It’s all yours. All right. This was so great. Thank you so much. This was a super fun conversation, and I’m going to enjoy creating the intro and writing up the show notes for it. And, gosh, I hope everybody goes out and buys this too. It is a wholly enjoyable experience, a great way to cleanse your palate from your January, your December, whatever, whatever that may have been. And now in January, you know, come Murder Your Darlings with Jenna. You’ll—you won’t be sorry.

Jenna Blum

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This is a sheer, pure delight. Thank you.

KJ Dell’Antonia

Thank you. Okay, writers, until next week, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game.

Narrator

The Hashtag AmWriting Podcast, is produced by Andrew Perrella. Our intro music, aptly titled Unemployed Monday, was written and played by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their time and their creative output, because everyone deserves to be paid for their work.

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