Hunting Annabelle, page 26
Acknowledgments
As with all works of fiction, Hunting Annabelle was a collaboration. My agent, Lauren Spieller, was my most influential collaborator, and her expertise drove crucial revisions that proved integral to the book’s success. I also want to thank Michelle Meade, my editor and the deliverer of feedback that both nourishes and challenges me beyond measure. Without these two women who manage to be both blunt and kind, both coach and cheerleader, both partner and friend, there would be no Hunting Annabelle. I cannot thank them enough for taking a chance on me, and on Sean. This book was similarly influenced by the masterful input of Mary Widdicks and Tracie Martin, my co-conspirators, critique partners, therapists and sometimes hostage negotiators. Other invaluable readers and interviewees included Laura Park, E.J. Zain, Christopher Hanson, Meghan O’Flynn, Ethel Lung and Dr. Treasa Davis.
One must acknowledge that behind every novelist lies a family who patiently tolerates bouts of muteness, ecstatic highs and despair-soaked lows. I’m blessed beyond measure to do life with fellow artists who understand and support the creative process, and I can’t thank them enough for their contributions to my work. My mother and daughter are my intergenerational adventure companions and best friends, and I’d have dedicated this book to them if it weren’t such a very creepy book that cannot really be dedicated to anyone without raising serious concerns. My partner/live-in musician is always there to provide creative support and reminders that I am not alone in this journey. My father, provider of counter-inspirational anecdotes; my close friend, who printed and bound my very first book fifteen years ago; my cherished family and lifelong friends—these people have shared my sacrifices and given me the chutzpah to persevere.
HUNTING
ANNABELLE
WENDY HEARD
Reader’s Guide
A Conversation with Wendy Heard
Hunting Annabelle is an enthralling psychological thriller that digs into themes of identity, desire, violence and redemption. What was the inspiration for this story?
This story was built around an idea I’d been mulling over, that all of us have this potential within us to do Bad Things. Ever been on a bridge and wanted to jump off? Ever wanted to yank the steering wheel and drive off a cliff? Ever wanted to stab yourself or someone else with a knife you were holding? The French term for the self-destructive impulse is “L’Appel Du Vide,” or “The Call of the Void.” Freud spoke of a “death wish”; modern researchers dubbed it “High Places Phenomenon.” I wondered, what if the impulse were directed outward? What if someone had succumbed to the urge—just once? Would they live the rest of their life knowing they couldn’t be trusted?
Thus, Sean was born, and with him my desire to do a really tight first-person narrative and give us a glimpse of a life lived just one step closer to the line.
Sean is the ultimate unreliable narrator—his dark past and violent urges make him the perfect suspect in Annabelle’s disappearance, yet his clear sense of regret and shame around his previous crimes, and his determination not to cause anyone else harm, are quite convincing reasons to believe he’s innocent. Can you talk about what it was like to write such a dynamic, compelling character?
Writing Sean was an exercise in authorial indulgence. I was free from the normal rules of writing protagonists. I didn’t need to worry about keeping Sean a “good guy,” forcing him to stick to the hero’s journey. He is both good and evil, both trustworthy and unreliable. He is a character with whom I had freedom to explore and act in big ways, and writing him was a pleasure and a relief. I miss him all the time.
What is a “good guy,” anyway? Is it someone who naturally does no wrong, or is it someone who fights the potential for evil within himself? What should we be judged on, our nature or our efforts? What’s a little murder between friends?
What was your greatest challenge writing this novel? Your greatest pleasure?
This book touches some raw nerves, and I’ve joked that its actual title should be Trigger Warning For Everything. There are so many layers here: sexual assault, racism, violence against women, police brutality...it was all hard to write, and it all touched nerves for various personal reasons, but it felt good to write these things down and let the light hit them. To be honest, when I wrote this book, I did not know it would get published, so I didn’t worry about what anybody else would think; I just wrote my guts out, and then later I had to deal with the reality that it would be public. There’s a lesson in there about the authenticity of art when you dare to expose your most vulnerable self, strip down to your skin and let your truth show.
My greatest joy in this book was the love story, which was a tribute to “Annabel Lee,” the Edgar Allan Poe poem that got me writing these types of stories in the first place. I wanted to write a truly gothic romance. Blood-and-dirt-smeared kissing scenes with corpses nearby? Check. Murder-makeout-murder scenes? Check. Psychotropic roofie sex scene? Check. Look, it’s inspired by Poe. It’s going to be dark, twisted and maybe just a little bit wrong, but that’s what makes it so, so right.
Can you describe the writing process for this novel? How did the story evolve as you worked through it?
I always write a ton of drafts. My agent says that for me, the magic really happens in revisions, and this is very true. Each time I run through the manuscript, I strengthen the characterizations and settings, fine-tune the mystery elements, and all that other good stuff. I think this book went through a grand total of thirteen drafts. As I revised the book, I came to more deeply understand Sean and his mother, who was the most elusive character for me in this piece. I felt this antagonism coming from her, but when I realized there was an ocean of love and fear underneath that mask of control and cunning, I understood her (sometimes self-centered) motivations for keeping a lid on Sean’s behavior. Annabelle was clear to me from the start, and I have a whole draft of this story just from her perspective so I could keep the timeline and clues straight. Maybe someday I’ll put it up on my website. If you think Sean’s mind is a twisted place, you should check out Annabelle’s inner monologue.
You’ve set this story in Texas in the 1980s—what made you choose this time and place? Why were these choices so crucial to the narrative?
I lived in San Antonio for four years in my twenties, and I’d been wanting to write about the experience of being a fish-out-of-water Californian living in Texas. For craft reasons, I wanted to structure the story so Sean was racing against the clock, waiting for the detectives to get ahold of his juvenile records from another state, and that would be boring in 2017—it would be a matter of sending a single email. I also wanted this ambiguity of not having cell phones, this hunting around, scrawling phone numbers on scraps of paper, fumbling change out of pockets to shove into pay phones. I also thought the grittiness of the eighties served as a metaphor for the grittiness of the content. In so many ways, the eighties were a perfect fit, and the second I considered setting it in that decade, I knew I had hit on the right idea.
Do you read when you’re working on a project? Or does it distract you from your stories?
I’m always working on something, whether it’s edits or a draft, so I have to be able to read while I write. That said, I read things that inspire but do not compete with what I’m making. For example, while writing Hunting Annabelle, I was able to read and be inspired by many domestic thrillers, crime thrillers, sci-fi thrillers, British procedurals and historical mysteries, but I was unable to read American Psycho or watch Dexter, both of which were recommended to me as “must-consume” for the writing of this book but which felt too close to my concept. I did read quite a bit of work from the 1980s for research as well as devour a lot of film, music and TV from that era.
ISBN-13: 9781488095405
Hunting Annabelle
Copyright © 2018 by Wendy Heard
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Wendy Heard, Hunting Annabelle
