New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than eighty books and a two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award finalist. The Good Sister, first in a trio of social networking suspense novels, was on Suspense Magazine’s Best of 2013 list and optioned for television, followed The Perfect Stranger and The Black Widow. Lily Dale, a new adult cozy mystery series, along with her next suspense trilogy, Mundy’s Landing, will launch in the fall of 2015. She lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband of 23 years and their two children.
- What is your writing routine?
I’ll confess that I’m perpetually driven by the knowledge that I’m living my childhood dream and the terror—yes, even after 22 years and 80 novels—that it can all evaporate tomorrow. That’s always been my motivation to work as hard as I can to create work that is as strong as possible. I’m a reluctant outliner. I’m blessed with an editor who allows me to hand her the first chapter or two of a new novel, along with a very broad idea of where it’s going to go from there. At this stage of my career, promo and travel take up between a third to half of my time, and I’m contracted to write three full-length novels this year and the same next, so I’m forced to be extremely disciplined about the writing itself. When I’m home, I put in 12-14 hour days seven days a week so that I can live and breathe the characters, plot and setting. I do take an hour out to swim daily laps (I listen to audiobooks on a waterproof iPod while I swim!), and I try to cook and eat a late dinner with my family every night. Those are the things that keep me sane (though some might argue with that adjective).
- Tell us about your current project.
I’m in the midst of releasing a trio of social networking thrillers from HarperCollins. The first,The Good Sister is about cyberbullying and a fictionalized Facebook; the second, The Perfect Stranger, is about a group of bloggers who happen to be breast cancer survivors; and the third,The Black Widow is set against the world of online dating and features my first Hispanic heroine and hero. I’m under contract with Harper for a new suspense trilogy set in a fictionalized Hudson Valley town, Mundy’s Landing, with a notoriously bloody past that stretches back to the first settlers. The trilogy launches with Blood Red, and I’m halfway through the second book, Blue Moon, to be followed by the third, Bone White. Finally, I’m super excited to have been given the green light to announce that I’ve sold a new adult cozy mystery series, Lily Dale, to Matt Martz at the new Crooked Lane Books, and that will be part of the imprint’s launch in fall 2015.
- Which writers, living or otherwise, would you host at a dinner party and why?
I make a living creating and resolving fictional mysteries, but I just love a real life cold case. So I’d invite Agatha Christie, whose famous 1926 disappearance (and reappearance a few weeks later) remains shrouded in mystery; Ambrose Bierce, who vanished in 1913 and was never heard from again; and Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose autobiographical novels were rumored to have been ghostwritten by her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. They all took their secrets to the grave, and I’d love to solve the literary mysteries they left behind. Oh, and of course I’d include Dorothy Parker, simply because I adore her dry wit, her love of a good cocktail, and her utterly relatable quote: “I hate writing, but I love having written.”
- What do you enjoy about your MWA membership?
Writing is a lonely business, and MWA isn’t just a professional support system—it’s a personal one. Simply put, these are my people and I cherish them. We understand each other in a way that very few in our “real lives” can; we have fun together; we give each other advice. Our relationships unfold primarily over the virtual water cooler (the internet) and of course, over very real barstools at conferences and conventions!.