PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER INTERVIEW: ALLIE REYNOLDS
2021 is a weird time for everyone right now with debut authors hit by the lack of a traditional marketing window for their precious first book out the gate. Despite that, Allie Reynolds and her Headline publishing team managed to get her big publisher auction debut Shiver widespread coverage leading into its UK release two weeks ago. High-profile author blurbs and Waterstones promotion, amongst other activity, has given this fresh take on the psychological thriller genre a good chance of emerging from the pack which it deserves for its finely paced story and atmospheric snowy setting. I spoke with Allie at the back end of 2020 from her Gold Coast home in Australia to find out more about the former British snowboarder's career switch, inspirations and what the future holds.
Are you still pinching yourself with how the last couple of years has gone?
It has been an absolute dream. I suppose when I was writing it, I never knew if I would find a publisher. I kind of thought it was a niche book that might just be of interest to snowboarders and there weren’t that many thrillers set in ski resorts. I have heard from a lot of readers so far, who enjoy the insight into this world that they didn't know about.
How much tweaking did you have to do in order to bring the snowboarding side of it to life?
I had to add in about 20,000 words, partly because my US editor had never been to a ski resort and wanted explanation and clarification of what a halfpipe and tow lift was, in case readers couldn't visualise them.
Where have your biggest writing style influences come from?
Lee Child is a big influence. I am a massive fan. There is something really addictive about his thrillers. He tends to write in very short, sharp sentences. He writes in very simple language, there's no fancy bits or frilly bits or pretentious bits - it is just all about the story and I love that as I don't want to be pretentious in my language. You can absorb his words easily and that is the writing style that I try to emulate. I seem to mainly read female psychological thriller authors like Jane Harper, Erica Ferencik, Ruth Ware and Clare Mackintosh, a lot of the British authors. I love debut thrillers as they often have high concepts that are different to anything that you have seen before. Clare's books seem to have characters that feel things quite deeply and you care about them. I am trying hard to do that, because that is what I like reading.
The emotional depth of the characters in Shiver is one of the things that I picked up on, so where did the light-bulb moment come for that?
I never read any craft books until the last few years. I was a foreign languages nerd, and I didn't study English literature past the age of 15. I was just trying to write novels without knowing anything about the theory and struggling massively. Some of the craft books contradict the others, so I don't follow them rigorously, but I take the bits that I like from each one and form my own little note file of what I want to use. The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass is one I really love and looks at emotion separately and the psychology of what readers might feel, even though it is challenging to understand. Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham is a little bit dated, but he talks about the scene and the sequel when the characters are processing what has happened and formulating a new path. Everything is about pace in thrillers these days and this part often gets cut out. He explains about writing in scenes, not chapters. Get in late to a scene and finish early on a cliffhanger. It is quite strange the process of how I came up with the characters. When I started out, I was researching snowboarders by watching YouTube videos of current top athletes, their mannerisms, the way they speak and just trying to get inspiration. Two of them started out as real, pro snowboarders but then they morphed as I wrote into something completely different. With Milla, there is a lot of me in there but hopefully not as competitive. I wanted to overhype that flaw of hers as it kind of drives the whole story in the end. I am a massive fan of John Truby and he always talks about how your main character must be an underdog. Another of his big focuses is how the character's flaw should drive the story. Almost every event that happens in the book happens because Milla is competitive. I liked the idea of Curtis being a hero with strong morals. Robert McKee talks about having characters that you would like to be or admire and look up to. Having a pull for the reader. I guess Saskia is the shadow side of Milla. The villain should have some aspects of the heroine, but then they take something too far.
Were you worried some readers might get put off by the snowboard circuit romance part of it?
I did wonder how the romance would go down as I had heard that UK readers do not especially like romance with their thrillers unlike Australia and the USA, where romantic suspense is a bigger genre. I was trying to get the fact that everybody knows everybody in that winter resort scene. Relationships might make or break and the following year somebody is seeing somebody else.
Did you also have it in the back of your mind that the women's psychological thriller genre boom might fade before your book even got out there?
I did worry that the psychological thriller boom would finish while I was writing it, but it seems to be going on longer than anyone anticipated. You always wonder when a dark situation like COVID-19 happens that people might look for something uplifting instead, but I see Shiver at the lighter end of that spectrum. I shy away from anything really dark or violent. It has been called a locked room mystery because the characters at the reunion play an icebreaker game, and whoever created the game clearly knows the dark secrets of their past. They are stranded in a closed environment. And Then There Were None was a big inspiration. The way they are invited by false pretences and realise early on they are not sure who it was.
It felt very cinematic reading it, so I assume screen rights have been snapped up?
The TV option was sold to Firebird Pictures straight after the publisher auction and, fingers crossed, it gets made. Julian, at my agency Blake Friedmann, really took care of rights. I got really lucky with my agent Kate Burke too.
What can we expect next now you have your foot firmly in the door?
I need silence at the starting phase of the book and time to think, so it was impossible trying to write the second book during lockdown homeschooling with my kids, but I am trying hard to finish it soon. It is quite a strange process compared to Shiver as I didn't know if anyone would read it. I was unselfconscious and sort of feeling my way along. This time it is very different as I have constant promotion work going on for Shiver. My next book is set here in Australia on a beach in a totally different environment with a fresh set of characters, so it is quite hard switching back and forth. You hear about second book syndrome. It is terrifying writing to a contract full stop, where you have to write the same but different. You are trying to capture everything they liked about your first book but trying to make it different enough. It has a sports focus in this second book a little bit as well, as athletes interest me, and we haven't seen them much in fiction.
Find out more about Allie and buy Shiver HERE.
