They Hooked Me

Files.
Case.
Agenda.
Mystery.
Suspicion.  

These are just some of the words that have caught my attention since I turned double-digit age. Maybe before. My parents read widely in the mystery/thriller genre. They watched movies like The Lady Vanishes, The Thin Man, The Manchurian Candidate, French Connection, and I’ll stop now.

 Bottom line, I was naturally hooked. And I’ve carried that love of whodunnit and howdunnit through my life.

So, when I was approached to write a thriller, my kneejerk reaction wasn’t what you might have expected. Quite simply, it was... “No. I can’t do that. I can’t write the books I’ve gravitated toward and have loved my whole life. They’re SO good, so well-crafted, so twisty.  (Well, most of them are.) I can’t possibly have the skills to write like the authors who I cut my mystery teeth on; people like Donald J. Sobol, Carolyn Keene, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and whatever my parents already had in the house. I can’t possibly write the tense and twisty stories terrific enough to play alongside the movies, TV shows, and books I’ve constantly relished since then.

 

Even though that thought of inadequacy haunted me, the thought of trying gave me such a thrill, I took the plunge.

 I started by turning this little notepad (thank you school visit gift!) into my Thriller Files. Then I proceeded to jot down 100 potential ideas, premises, and twists, my way of testing the waters.

 I've gotta tell you, those waters feel really good. So, now I’m hooked again. And I don’t plan to look back.

 Jody Feldman’s first YA thriller, No Way Home, has been call a pulse-pounding thriller by School Library Journal which was enough to propel her into giving this genre a second and third try. She’s hoping you’ll be able to read these stories once her works-in-progress are in thriller-y enough.