And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(96)

Sometimes authors must put themselves in the headspace of their characters when they write. Did it feel different writing Packard’s perspective versus Emmett’s? Did you find one to be more difficult?

Emmett’s headspace sounds like a radio tuned to static. He has very base instincts—eat, drink, smoke—that drive him. In the background is the constant hum of his pain. I needed his actions and the basic need for self-preservation to propel his chapters rather than rely on a lot of internal thoughts to justify his motivations. It was definitely more fun getting to know Packard. He’s got a backstory and unresolved issues that will carry into the next book. He’s pretty uptight, but I’m hoping he learns how to relax and live a little more as his adventures continue.

What books are on your bedside table right now?

I’ve followed Hanif Abdurraqib on Instagram for a while, read a book of his poems, and just started reading A Little Devil in America. My friend Lisa said reading George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain was life-changing, so that’s also on deck. She gave me a copy of Haruki Murakami’s new collection of short stories, First Person Singular, that I will get to sooner than later.

In thinking about a character like Jesse or Sam, who steals medication from the elderly, or a character like Emmett, who kidnaps women but wants to protect Jenny, it seems like most of these characters aren’t entirely bad. Can you talk a little bit about the moral ambiguity that comes up in this story?

All-good or all-bad characters aren’t interesting. They can’t surprise us when they have only one way of reacting. It helped me as the author to instill them with moral ambiguity by seeing them beyond their primary function in the story. Emmett is a kidnapper, but he was also someone’s son, someone’s husband. Sam is a small-time drug dealer, but he’s also from a wealthy family and the sheriff’s grandson. Giving them a backstory and knowing something about the other forces in their lives helped create that push-pull that I hoped would make them multi-dimensional characters.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

I’m going to be older than the average debut novelist by the time this book comes out. So what? It takes as long as it takes. After a lot of years working as a project manager, I realized I could manage my writing goals like a project by defining what success looked like, identifying the deliverables I needed to create, and devising a schedule for completing them. I know how contrived that sounds, but it worked for me. When life threw me curves, I adjusted the plan. The important thing was having a strategy for completing what I wanted to do, which was publish a novel.

Even more important than the plan was finding a writing community. The feedback I got from other writers helped keep me motivated and ultimately made this book what it is. Thinking and talking about other people’s work helped me see my own writing in a new light. Find a thoughtful reader or another writer whose opinion you respect, and trust them when they tell you what is and isn’t working. Keep writing. Keep dreaming. Follow the plan.





Acknowledgments


When I was a kid I thought books came from libraries. I thought the librarians went in the back room, put on hairnets, and manufactured the books, just like grocery stores made all the food on the shelves and hospitals made babies. It took longer than it probably should have for me to grasp the idea that books were written by writers. (Still not really clear on all the baby business.)

I was ten or eleven years old when I got tired of the kids’ section at the library and started wandering the adult stacks. A book with a weird title on the spine—Cujo—and a snarling dog face on the cover kept catching my attention. Stephen King was only eight books into his career then and was probably the first person I recognized as a writer. He was the first writer whose books I sought out because of the name on the cover. I distinctly remember thinking that if writing about a dog that wants to eat people was a real job for a grown-ass man, then I wanted to do that, too.

A lot of years passed between then and now. Life moves to its own rhythm. I majored in English at the University of South Dakota. I moved to Minnesota. I started to get an MFA in creating writing, then dropped out. I started to get a master’s in rhetoric, then dropped out. At the Loft (loft.org) in Minneapolis, I met author Mary Gardner, who taught a novel-writing class that I took several times. Mary became a friend and a mentor for many years. She told me I could write when I needed to hear it the most. The world lost a generous writer and teacher when Mary died of COVID-19 on Christmas Eve 2020.

I met my friends Lynn Filipas and Barbann Hanson in one of Mary’s classes. They read the two books I wrote before this one and encouraged me to keep going. Gretchen Anthony and Laska Nygaard read this book a chapter at a time, then draft after draft. There’d be no book without their friendship and support.

My undying gratitude to my agent, Barbara Poelle, for making my writerly dreams come true, and to my editors, Anna Michels and Jenna Jankowski, for connecting with the story I was telling. Thanks to everyone at Sourcebooks who turned the voices in my head into the book in your hands.

Thank you to the Scott County Sheriff’s Office for allowing me to attend their virtual community academy. I learned a lot about the work of a sheriff’s deputy and how a department is run. The rest I googled or made up to suit the needs of the story.

My mom and dad kept books in my hungry, hungry hands and gave me the love and guidance I needed to keep pursuing this dream for as long as it took.