Undone by Karin Slaughter
Karin Slaughter, the #1 internationally bestselling author of FRACTURED, has sold over 17 million copies worldwide. Publishers Weekly lauded her newest book, UNDONE, in a starred review: "Bestseller Slaughter brings together characters from her two series for the first time with electrifying results...[she] ups the emotional ante with every twist and turn in this disturbing thriller."What's was the most difficult part of writing UNDONE?
BEYOND REACH, my last Grant County book had a pretty explosive ending. My next book was FRACTURED, which is about Will Trent's world, so I didn't really have time to sit down and consider the emotional fall-out of what had happened in the previous book. I'm being very cryptic here so as not to spoil things, but those who already read the book will know what I'm talking about. The ending of BEYOND REACH was the hardest thing I've ever written. As difficult as that was, talking about Sara in UNDONE was even harder.
What's your writing routine like?
I'm very lazy most of the time, but when it's time to write, I'm crazy busy. I block out some time and go up to my cabin in the North Georgia mountains where it's just me and the bears and work for weeks at a time. Usually, I'm pulling twelve to fifteen hour days. It's really rough, and I would not recommend my writing routine to anyone.
I suppose it comes from having such a finite amount of time to work on writing way back in the day when I was struggling to get published. I had a full-time job, and then I had to block out time on nights and weekends to write. Even though my only job now is to write, I still write on the same schedule as I did before.
How do you balance working on different series? Does it present any special challenges?It's fun going back and forth between the two series, though of course now that I'm combining them, I don't know if I'll come up with something else or just keep plugging along. I really love how Will's world collides with Grant County in UNDONE, and I'm enjoying working on BROKEN, which is the book out in 2010. It opens with Lena finding a body in the lake, and then some bad things happen and Will Trent shows up.
You've traveled the world touring---what's the most unusual thing that's happened to you abroad?
I fractured my ankle in Dubai at the beginning of this year. That wasn't exactly unusual (unless you mean unusual as in it never happens), but it was very annoying. The flight back got diverted because of bad weather, and I was stuck on the plane for eighteen hours. I don't want to do anything for eighteen hours, even if it's fun. At one point, we were in Philadelphia and they opened the door to let on the ground crew, and if I hadn't been hobbled, I would've bolted into the snow storm and run screaming down the runway.
If you could have dinner with three writers, living or dead, who would you pick? And what would you want to eat?
Hillary Clinton counts as a writer since her books have sold around eleventy billion copies, right? I met her once during the primaries and was blown away. I've met Bill Clinton, too, but his wife was far more impressive. For a second person I'd like Katharine Hepburn. I wrote her a fan letter when I was a kid and she wrote back. This event made my childhood in ways I cannot begin to describe. Third would be Metta Fuller Victor. She wrote the first book-length American detective novel, and no one really knows her name.
For dinner, I think it'd have to be beer and pizza. I'm not at all down with the fancy. (We'd need water for Metta, though, since she was Mormon)
Contributing editor Tasha Alexander attended the University of Notre Dame, where she signed on as an English major in order to have a legitimate excuse for spending all her time reading. She lived in Amsterdam, London, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut and Tennessee before settling in Chicago. ThrillerFest
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