by Gail Giles
2. As in your previous book, Right Behind You, the setting of Dark Song plays a large role in the story’s plot. Can you describe what may have led you to set the two halves of Dark Song in the very different locations of Colorado and Texas?
Colorado was one of the places I found in my research where a murder of this type had occurred. Also, a cousin I love dearly lives in Boulder, Colorado, and this is kind of hello to her.
As for Texas, it’s where I was born and have lived the greater portion of my life. As a setting, it’s a comfort zone for me.
3. In Dark Song you created a character with a seemingly normal, happy life before everything she knows suddenly spirals out of control. Was the fragility of one’s own circumstances a theme you consciously wove into the story? Did the economic recession and financial market meltdown of 2008 play into the plot line of Ames’s father losing his job after nefarious investing?
I was writing the book in 2008 and the recession seemed to fit with the outward changes I needed for Ames’s life. The recession couldn’t just “happen” to the characters, though. The characters have to make the action happen, so I created the father’s gambling and theft problems. The recession ended up being a nice by-product. However, the fragility of life’s circumstances is certainly a theme I had in mind while writing, and how we all either pull together or pull apart was the central theme of the book. Ames summarizes this theme when she thinks to herself, “Did we just love each other when it was easy?”
4. Ames describes a “darkness” inside of her that grows throughout the story, and a number of your books feature characters whose “dark sides” win in the end. Do you believe that everyone has a kind of dark side, as well as the ability to overcome it, as Ames eventually does?
Certainly. I don’t think we can have light without dark, good without bad, etc. Making the choice is what life is about and why I write books.
5. Marc’s obsession with a fantasy of “creeping houses” is one of the scariest things we have ever read in suspense fiction. You came up with the term “creeping houses,” but where did you get the idea?
From a real case about two boys who killed a couple in Vermont. Before the boys wanted to experience the thrill of killing, they wanted to experience the thrill of going through a stranger’s house and touching all their things without the person ever knowing they had been there. The boys did this while the couple was away, and they also did it to someone else they knew. I decided to take it a step further and in a different direction, but the basic idea is the same.
6. You once said that Earl, who is only onstage for brief moments of the story yet is ultimately essential to the plot, is your favorite character. Why is that? Do you have general thoughts about the supporting-role characters in your novels and how you approach them from a writing standpoint?
When you write dark novels, you can get lost in that dark. When you write unsympathetic characters, you can lose sight of what is good or right or moral. You have to have a touchstone character who keeps the center solid—to make it hold. That’s Earl. He’s is good, moral, and likable. He knows who he is and is willing to help, but he also knows when someone is going wrong and needs guidance rather than judgment. I think that he will agree that Ames is not innocent and help her find her way again.
I take supporting characters very seriously when I’m writing because they exist to do exactly as their name suggests: support the story. They must be invaluable to a story or they shouldn’t be there at all. You never want an unnecessary character taking up space in your novel. I spend lots of time deciding who the touchstone character will be, why it will be he/she, and how he/she will enter the picture and become that touchstone.
7. Was Dark Song an especially challenging book for you to write, and if so, why? Alternatively, was there a part of creating this book that was particularly satisfying?
Dark Song was very challenging for me. It was incredibly hard to make Ames a sympathetic character in any way, because like the girls in the real cases I researched, she spirals out of control very quickly and seems to forget about anyone but herself in the process. It took so many revisions and help from my editor, Andrea Spooner, and her assistant, Jill Dembowski, to lead me in the proper direction.
Alternatively, I loved writing Marc. I know—he’s despicable, the baddest of the bad boys—but there was something wounded and vulnerable in him. I wanted to show how Ames could become attracted to him and fall so hard for him.
8. Your books are known for having characters with authentic teenage viewpoints. How do you write so convincingly from a teen perspective?
I remember vividly. Seriously, that’s about it. I can still get that pain that tends to fade from our memories as we grow older. Many adults call it angst, but I still feel it as pain, and I channel that as I’m writing my books about these terribly painful and complex situations.
9. Your books are also known for tackling controversial topics, especially teen violence, and this leads to different interpretations of and reactions to your work. What do you hope readers will take away from your books, specifically Dark Song?
Everyone has a dark side. Experience it through reading, not life. Stay on the right side of the cell bars. That is why I want to make my books a visceral read, so nobody has to experience that darkness again in life.
I know it’s uncomfortable to read about some of my characters. I have received negative responses to my writing from readers who think I support or condone the actions of my characters. I don’t. But I accept that this behavior exists, and I think we have to understand it to change it. Merely judging behavior doesn’t change it. Even self-judgment doesn’t help without understanding the root cause. Exposing things to open air is often not pleasant, but I think it’s necessary for healing. Some of my readers come to my books to be healed. Others come to learn to understand others. Some come to be entertained. I want to reach as many as I can.
10. What kind of writing routine do you have? Is there a specific time and order in which you do things, or do you just allow inspiration to come as it will?
I have a two-step routine that I follow. The first part is that I must write daily, and I have to write at least three hundred words a day or sit there for three hours, whichever comes first. I’d much rather get the three hundred words in. The second part is that I end the day’s writing in the middle of a sentence in the middle of a paragraph, in the middle of a page, in the middle of a chapter. That way the next day, I’m sure I can finish the sentence, and I’m pretty sure I can finish the paragraph, and by that time I’m feeling like I can finish the page, and now I’m rolling to finish the chapter. But then I know I can’t quit at the end of a chapter, so…. Inspiration follows on the heels of work ethic. If you wait for the muse—well, the muse is lazy, and so am I.