First up — the paperback of Listen for the Lie is out today!

It’s got some fun bonus content in the back, plus a slightly different cover! Go grab your copy today!

A Listen for the Lie TV Show!

I also announced some big news at the LA Times Festival of Books last weekend! Universal has optioned Listen for the Lie for TV! Writer Rachel Shukert (Glow, The Baby-Sitters Club, Nine Perfect Strangers) is adapting, and I’ll be an executive producer on the project as well. I got to do a panel at the LA Times Festival of Books with Rachel, executive producer Sue Naegle, and Jordan Moblo (executive vice president of creative acquisitions and IP management at Universal Studio Group — but you probably know him as Jordy’s Book Club!), where we talked all about the adaptation.

You can read about it in the LA Times.

Edgar Awards

I had the honor of attending the Edgar awards in NYC this year, as a nominee for Best Novel. It was so fun to meet my fellow nominees and get to celebrate all the great mystery works published this year. Congratulations to Charlotte Vassell on her win for The In Crowd!

(Side note: The softer water in New York City really made my hair so soft and shiny!! Now I feel like I need a water softener for the super hard Los Angeles water. I miss you, NYC hair.)

I also got to see some of my publishing team while I was there — my first time meeting my editor Ryan, and the associate publisher of Celadon, Rachel! My agent Faye also joined us, and it was so fun to hang out with everyone.

Lastly, I got to see a show while I was in New York City! Maybe Happy Ending was so sweet and charming. Highly recommend if you’re looking for a fun new musical to see while in NYC.

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Ebook Sale!

Do you have a copy of Listen for the Lie in ebook yet? If not, I have good news! It’s only $6.99 from September 9-15!

Click here for all the links to buy!

Six Months of Listen for the Lie

I posted on Instagram last week celebrating six months since the book was published. It feels like forever and also like it went by in a flash!

Since I last sent this newsletter, the book debuted on the New York Times Bestseller Hardcover Fiction list, and then spent five months on the Audio Fiction list! I did some silly pictures with the updated hardcover with its fancy “New York Times Bestseller” addition, because there are only so many ways you can take pictures with your own book. Just trying to mix it up here.

Also:

• Loved being interviewed for this “Inside the List” piece in the New York Times!

• Amazon and Audible chose Listen for the Lie as one of the best mystery/thrillers of the year so far! And so did Apple and Barnes & Noble!

• Lots of summer “beach read” love for Listen for the Lie over at Goodreads, Southern Living, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, and Julia Quinn for the Today Show!

“Are you writing another thriller?”

I’ve been getting this question a LOT. The short answer is: “yes!”

The longer answer is: yes, and I’m working very hard on it right now! In fact, it’s the only thing I’m working on (writing-wise, I mean. I’m also working on my glutes since reading this article in the NYT about “dead butt syndrome.” But in terms of writing, it’s all murder all the time over here).

I don’t have much else to share with you about the next book yet, unfortunately. I can tell you that it will be another darkly humorous murder mystery with an unhinged main character. I’ve been tagged in a lot of (very good!) reviews that call Listen for the Lie “unhinged,” so I think that’s my brand, since it comes naturally. Write what you know and all that.

Once I can share more information, like a cover or release date, I will definitely post about it here! If you haven’t subscribed yet, do that now to keep up with all the latest news!

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A Few Book Recommendations!

I’ve read a ton of great books this year, so please let me quickly recommend a few excellent ones to you:

Long Bright River and The God of the Woods by Liz Moore — Really excellent literary thrillers. The various timelines in The God of the Woods were so well done.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach — Somehow both dark and uplifting, this is definitely one of the best books of the year!

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe— One of the weirdest plots I’ve read this year, and I mean that in the best way possible.

The Guncle and The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley — funny, sweet, and heartwarming! These books were a joy.

Honey Isabel Banta — Loved this engrossing story about an early 2000s pop star.

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian — Grumpy/sunshine romance set in New York City in 1960, and probably my favorite romance novel of the year! And if you haven’t read We Could Be So Good, the first book in this series, I highly recommend it!

I am so thrilled to share that Listen for the Lie is the Good Morning America Book Club pick for March! Getting to work with the GMA team has been a dream come true. Watch the announcement here!

I’m also so excited that the book was chosen as a Book of the Month main selection for March! And the lovely people over at Apple made it one of their Best Books of March, and named the audiobook a must-listen (the audiobook really is amazing!!!). Plus, it’s an Editor’s pick for best Mystery, Thriller and Suspense this month at Amazon!

Events

I’m doing a few signings over the next couple weeks, so I hope you’ll come see me if you’re in Los Angeles, Austin, or Houston!

Los Angeles – March 13 at 7pm –Launch Party at Book Soup! I’ll be in conversation with Mackenzi Lee.

Austin – March 19 at 7pm – Vintage Books and Wine, in conversation with Chandler Baker

Houston – March 20 at 6:30pm – Murder by the Book

5 Years Later

It’s been a 5-year journey from idea to publication for Listen for the Lie, and I’m so excited that I can finally share it with you all. I hope you enjoy reading about Lucy and Savvy as much as I enjoyed writing them. ❤️

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The book was chosen as a March Indie Next Pick! Support from indie booksellers really means the world to me, so I was thrilled to see my first adult novel chosen for this list!

And it’s also a Library Reads pick for March! Public librarians all over the US vote on this list, and I’m so honored they included Listen for the Lie! Thank you, librarians!

Also — my publisher is giving away signed copies over on Goodreads. Go enter!

Have you pre-ordered yet? There’s still time! Head over to my website to grab your copy!

Embracing Change

I moved in January. I didn’t go far – just to a different unit in my building. If you follow my Instagram stories, you may have seen me post about the flooding in my last apartment. It was a ground floor apartment in a large building, and unfortunately, if the people living in the units above you frequently clog their garbage disposal, all that water eventually backs up into the ground floor unit and comes up the sink with a vengeance. It’s a common issue in big buildings, and there wasn’t really anything else the apartment complex could do (they’d already done Hydro-jetting to clear out the lines and asked all the people living above me to be more careful with their garbage disposals, but it kept happening).  

This probably sounds weird, but I decided to just deal with the flooding for a while. When it happened, it was bad, but it was occasional. Moving’s a hassle, and this isn’t the first place I’ve lived where I’ve had to deal with plumbing issues. When I lived in a house in Austin, it also flooded. That one was caused by the builder leaving a nail in a pipe, which rusted and fell out a year later, causing significant flooding underneath the floors (I had to figure this out myself after a condescending plumber tried to tell me I just used the dishwasher wrong. How do you use a dishwasher so wrong that it floods the entire first level underneath the floors? It’s a mystery).

Am I cursed? Probably. But, to me, water invading your living space is just what happens. By the fourth or fifth time, I had my whole apartment set up for the inevitable surge of dirty water coming my way. Nothing important was ever ruined, I just got another visit from maintenance guy Martin, who thanked me for being nice about it all (yelling at poor Martin wasn’t going to help anything). I was in a routine – a weird one and kind of gross one, admittedly – but I was used to it. Comfortable.

But, in early January, I started thinking about the year ahead, and how change is rarely a bad thing. I hesitated back in 2020 when I started thinking seriously about moving back to LA, overwhelmed by the logistics of it. It would have been so much easier to just stay put, even though I was unhappy. But now, three years after moving back to California, I’m so glad that I didn’t listen to that little voice that always resists change.

I hesitated about Listen for the Lie. I gave up on it a bunch of times, including once just a few months before I queried for a new agent with it. I tried to talk myself out of change – YA was comfortable, familiar. But moving over to adult and thrillers ended up being the absolute best thing for me, and I look back at the 2021 version of me who took the leap and – again – feel grateful I didn’t give in to inertia.

And so, with that in mind, I found a nicer, third floor apartment and dealt with the hassle of packing and moving. It was absolutely worth it. While there are benefits to a ground floor apartment (it’s very easy to take the dog out), I forgot how nice it is to see the sky from your apartment. I can actually use my balcony! I can leave the blinds open to let in the sun without worrying about all the people passing by staring into my apartment!

I’m glad I was reminded again about how great change can be, especially as I head into a new phase of my career. Change is often scary, but I never regret it.

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A LISTEN FOR THE LIE box!

My publisher has put together an amazing box they’re sending out to some lucky bookish influencers! You can see me unbox it over on Instagram, and here it is:

That’s an advanced copy, a mug with the title of the podcast from the book on it (Listen for the Lie with Ben Owens), and a 285 calorie1 brownie (it’s a thing in the book). I’ve never had one of these influencer boxes before, so I am super excited about this one!

I can’t believe we’re so close to release, but also it feels like it sort of snuck up on me. The wait for this book was pretty long – over two years from the publisher buying it to release – but now it’s right around the corner!

The speed of publication is actually one of the things that’s been really different for me about my adult debut vs the young adult debut. Acquisition to publication of Reboot was only 15 months, which is pretty fast for traditional publishing. In fact, everything about YA back then felt like a frenzied rush, like someone was standing on the sidelines of my career screaming, “go, go, go!!!” Publish as fast as possible, hit the trend on time or perish, submit the next one, go, go, go!

I really didn’t mind the wait this time. Amy of 2013 needed to chill out, and Amy of 2023 was actually old enough and wise enough to do it (mostly, anyway. But I have always very much identified with Leslie Knope when she yells, “I am super chill all the time!” So. My level of chill is relative, maybe).

Transitioning to Adult

Speaking of YA! I wrote last time about how Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train got me thinking about writing my own adult thriller for the first time, but I thought I’d share a bit more about how that process of changing both age category and genre unfolded for me.

In 2018, I was writing the early chapters of All These Monsters over and over (and over and over). The first few chapters of that book focus on Clara’s abusive home life before she leaves to join a monster-hunting squad in Europe. The abuse story line in ATM is very important (it’s the whole point of the book, really, including the title), and so grounding the reader in the reality of that abuse before getting to the sci-fi action stuff was crucial.

I rewrote the early chapters in so many different ways, trying to get it just right in as few words as possible (pacing is everything in YA). A million rewrites later, I managed to do it, but I’d left out a lot of stuff. I wanted to explore some darker themes, themes that seemed better suited for older characters. I decided that I should take whatever it was I was trying to do (it was still murky at that point) and put it in an adult book.

It was months before I started Listen for the Lie, and there were some detours and false starts along the way. I wasn’t able to fully commit to it at first because my contracted YA books came first, and I was nervous about making a sharp turn out of YA and sci-fi/fantasy. Authors are usually advised to stick to what we’re doing, even when things aren’t going that great, because jumping to a whole new category and genre means starting over, which is risky and difficult.

I spent a lot of time trying to talk myself out of writing it. My favorite scenes to write (of every book) have always been the quieter moments, the witty banter and the character revealing scenes, but I still had this bizarre fear that I didn’t know how to write a book with no explosions or fight scenes.

Plus, I wasn’t sure that my idea of adding significant parts of a podcast to the book would even work. I wanted the podcast to unfold mostly in real time, and attempting to get that to line up with Lucy’s chapters and her own discoveries seemed incredibly difficult.2 I had doubts about everything — the writing, the career change, the plot — but I couldn’t stop thinking that if I could pull it off, it could be so great, and so fun.

I was reading this interview with Margot Robbie recently, and she mentioned needing to be 90% sure a project is going to work. Robbie is most famous now for starring in and producing Barbie, but in Hollywood, she’s well known for her production company, LuckyChap, which prioritizes making films by women writers and directors. She talks here about that 90% confidence in Promising Young Woman, one of the films she produced:

I think this is also very true of writing a book, especially when you’re taking a risk and doing something new. I don’t think that most writers sit down with 100% confidence that what we’re doing is going to come together in the end. In fact:

Two years! I’d been writing Listen for the Lie for two years3 and I still wasn’t 100% sure it was working. I can’t really even say that I was 90% sure. Not all the time, anyway. But I think in the moments when it counted — when I decided to start writing it, every time I decided to go back to it, when I queried for a new agent — I was 90% sure, and I managed to ignore that annoying naysaying 10%.

And in the end, it came together! I could, in fact, write a book with no explosions! I did still add in one or two fight scenes, though. Is it really an Amy Tintera book if no one gets punched in the face?

In conclusion, do the thing, even if there’s a voice telling you that can’t or that you shouldn’t. And eat cookies (or a brownie!) whether it comes together or not. You deserve them.

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3 Months to LISTEN FOR THE LIE

As of yesterday, December 5th, we are three months out from Listen for the Lie! My publisher is giving away 50 print copies on Goodreads, so go enter! And don’t forget to pre-order!

“I like to drink my wine straight from the can.”

If you follow me on Instagram, you may remember that I did a wine advent calendar last year. 24 days of wine turned out to be a bit much for me, but I found a different one this year:

When I saw this, I immediately thought of the line Lucy, the main character in Listen for the Lie, says near the beginning of the book, while poking fun at her boyfriend’s wine snobbery: “I like to drink my wine straight from the can.” Like Lucy, I also enjoy cheap wine straight from the can!

I just started this baby yesterday (because I leave for Texas on the 19th, so it’s like a Texas countdown? I don’t know. I was unclear on when to start a 12 day advent calendar). Sorry, wine snobs. It’s all canned wine from here on out.

UK Cover

In case you missed it on social media, my UK publisher revealed their cover of Listen for the Lie:

I love this bright, fun cover with a bloody knife (and even a splash of pink!). It comes out March 14, 2024 in the UK, and you can pre-order now!

I also wanted to share the lovely blurbs that have come in for the UK edition:

A huge thank you to all the authors who took the time to read!

The Books That Inspired Listen for the Lie

Whenever people ask me where I get my ideas, or how I overcome writer’s block, I always tell them the same thing – I read. In fact, I sort of lied last newsletter when I said I don’t have any writing advice, because I do have one piece of advice that I give everyone – read. If you want to be writer, read widely. Read your peers – especially recently published books, and books in your chosen genre so you have a handle on the market.1

Since I was struggling with writing this year due to brain fog, I took my own advice and read more books than usual, hoping for inspiration. That included a reread of The Big Three (I just made up that term for them right now, but I like it) –

1. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

3. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

If you’re a thriller reader, you’ve probably read these (and if you haven’t, you should!). They’re three of the most popular books in the category for a reason, and they made a big impact on me and my writing.

It was Gone Girl that kicked off my interest in thrillers, back in 2014. I didn’t read much adult fiction at the time, or thrillers at all, and I loved it. I loved the voice, the plot, the twist that I didn’t see coming. The ending! Maybe I’m weird, but the ending made me laugh. Perfection.

Then, the next year, The Girl on the Train came out. I loved that one too. Three complex women telling me a story? Yes, please. (I reread this one on audio, and if you’ve never listened to it, I highly recommend it! The narrators are amazing.)

Those two books opened up the thriller world for me and got me thinking about writing my own. But in 2015, I’d just sold the Ruined trilogy, so I didn’t really have time to start working on an adult book. Plus, I found the adult thriller market confusing. There were mysteries and cozies and literary thrillers and crime fiction and police procedurals and domestic suspense and sometimes books that weren’t really thrillers at all but were labeled that way. I spent years sorting through it all, reading and exploring before I started to write. I’m the kind of writer who needs to have a strong handle on the market2 before I start writing.

Then, in 2019, The Silent Patient jumpstarted my work on Listen for the Lie. I’d begun work on the first draft a couple months earlier, but things were moving along sluggishly. I still wasn’t committed to it, didn’t quite have the voice, and I definitely didn’t have much of a plot yet.

But reading The Silent Patient kicked my thriller brain into high gear. In fact, you can see the proof on my Instagram. On September 14, 2019, I posted this on Instagram, saying I’d read it the previous week:

And then on September 30, 2019, this:

This is the first draft daily word count journal for Listen for the Lie. I finally got over that first draft hump once I read The Silent Patient. I was stuck until I read that book, and then suddenly I was banging out words nearly every day. Reading! It works!

(Side note: In a funny twist, after some publishing shuffling, I ended up with the editor and entire publishing team of The Silent Patient. Needless to say, I was thrilled by this turn of events.)

2023 in Books

Besides the reread of The Big Three, I read so many great new (to me) books this year!

I started the year with Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, and what a great way to kick off 2023, because I adored that book. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano made me cry, but in the fun way, and The Guest by Emma Cline made me cringe, but also in the fun way. I really enjoyed Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson, and her modern take on a wealthy family. I picked up Luster by Raven Leilani after reading that she has a strong, distinct voice (I am always on the lookout for voicey adult fiction), and boy were they right about that. I reread sections of this book to get inspired to write some days.

You know why Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Grams is so popular? Because it’s great! It’s really great, and one of my favorite books I read this year. I also finally read Misery by Stephen King and freaked out about how good and how scary it was. I actually read three excellent books about writers this year that scared the crap out of me — Misery, The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and Yellowface by R. F. Kuang.

This is the year I discovered Sally Hepworth! The Good Sister, The Soulmate, The Mother-in-Law. I love Sally’s take on domestic suspense. Other thrillers I really enjoyed: All The Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham, The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley, The It Girl by Ruth Ware, Good Bad Girl by Alice Feeney, Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker (blood thirsty toddlers!!), Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty (late getting to this one and I was wrong to wait! So good!!), The Murder After the Night Before by Katy Brent (out in February), and The Push by Ashley Audrain (I’m traumatized).

I read four celebrity memoirs, which is very weird for me, but I guess I was in the mood. Spare by Prince Harry, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, The Woman in Me by Britney Spears and Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry. All great, all disturbing.

I read more thrillers and fewer romance novels in 2023, but I still squeezed in a few! I adored Happy Place because Emily Henry can do no wrong. I loved We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian, and Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld was also a win for me.

That’s all for 2023! Happy Holidays! I hope you eat LOTS of cookies.

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Hello! It’s November! I’m definitely a fall person, especially because I live in Los Angeles, which means that I get to have all the pumpkin things and still enjoy 70 degree weather every day. I’m also a baker, and over the years I’ve found some truly great pumpkin recipes – I highly recommend these pumpkin bars, this pumpkin bread, and this pumpkin sheet cake.

No One Falls Down The Stairs In My Books

One of the reasons I haven’t sent out a regular newsletter until now, despite doing this author thing for ten years, is that I didn’t know what to do with this space. A lot of writers provide writing advice, but that’s not really my thing. My writing journey is helpful to no one, because it’s this: When I was about eleven years old, I read a book with an ending that pissed me off (the love interest suddenly fell down a flight of stairs and died), and I said, “that’s some bullshit, I’m going to write my own book and it’ll be way better.”

My “book,” which was about 20-30 handwritten pages, was not better. But I did actually start writing books after that, and I had six novels finished by the time I graduated high school (none of them were better than the book about the guy who couldn’t handle a flight of stairs). I can definitely talk to you about craft, point you to books to read, tell you how I plot, but when people ask me how I do it, how I write, my honest response is something along the lines of, “I don’t know, man, my brain is weird.”

So I probably won’t use this space to give you much writing advice. There are better places for that.1

Instead, I’m going to tell you about my weird brain, and how it betrayed me last year.

Weird

It was August 6, 2022. I know that for sure, because I was on a date, and we’d just seen a matinee of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Afterward, we went to a rooftop bar in Hollywood. I remember looking out at the skyline, thinking this was a very nice day, but I felt weird. And now that I thought about it, I’d felt weird for a while.

I was spacey and out of it all the time. I caught myself staring into space constantly. At movies, people around me would start laughing, and I’d realize I had no idea what they were laughing at. I thought I’d been paying attention? My brain felt like mush, and it was that day in Hollywood when I realized this constant fogginess I’d been experiencing probably wasn’t normal.

There was no trigger for my brain fog. I know what you’re thinking – Covid! – but I hadn’t had Covid yet in August of 2022. And even if I had caught Covid and didn’t realize it (which seems unlikely, given how hard it hit me when I finally did get it), having no other symptoms of long Covid except the brain fog seemed unlikely.2

My doctor couldn’t pinpoint a reason either – my blood work was fine, except for a slight iron deficiency. My iron levels went up with supplements, but the brain fog persisted. I wasn’t particularly tired, ruling out chronic fatigue syndrome. Sleep disorders, anxiety/depression, autoimmune disorders, hormone imbalances – all considered, because brain fog is a tricky beast.

One of the main recommendations for brain fog is exercise and sunshine in the morning, which was immensely frustrating to me, because you know how I start every day? How I’ve started nearly every day for the past ten years? I take my dog on a long walk.  

But I added hiking to my exercise routine, because I figured it couldn’t hurt. And it didn’t! I enjoy it! It did not help the brain fog.

Getting B12 injected into my butt from the “health optimization” center next to the grocery store for rich people (Erewhon) also didn’t help. Drinking more water didn’t help. Reading more books didn’t help. Taking breaks from writing didn’t help. Less screen time, writing by hand, writing outside, getting glasses, less coffee, less alcohol, more protein, more fish, more exercise, less exercise, going on vacation, curtains to make the bedroom darker – nothing helped.

At times, the brain fog would get so bad that I’d forget to be worried about it. The panic would sweep back up every once in a while – holy shit, you can’t write, the brain fog is too bad, remember?? – but then it would be gone again, sinking beneath the fog as I stared blankly at nothing.

Eventually, I did hold on to the panic long enough to remember to start acupuncture, and that is the thing that finally helped. The first guy I tried was not great, but the second one had me feeling better within two weeks, with significant improvement in six. I’m not a hundred percent (and I’m still exploring some options with my doctor), but at least I can think clearly some of the time. At least I can pull my brain back to writing most days.

The brain is weird (not just mine), and I have learned to appreciate it just a little bit more now. My brain is weird, man, but it’s finally going to let me do some writing again.

Next time: I read a lot of books this year while trying to beat the fog, so I will recommend some! I reread a bunch of the thrillers that inspired me to write Listen for the Lie, and they all held up, which was delightful.

For now, I may not have writing advice, but I do have this advice for you: Don’t let the people next to Erewhon inject B12 into your butt. It doesn’t work.

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“Watch out world, I’m entering my murder era!”

I’m delighted to share that my first novel for adults, LISTEN FOR THE LIE, will be published March 5, 2024 by Celadon/Macmillan. It’s a darkly humorous mystery/thriller with a deeply sarcastic main character who makes inappropriate jokes about murder even though everyone thinks she’s a murderer (that quote above is hers). I can’t wait for you all to meet Lucy.

Here is the beautiful cover, which we officially revealed yesterday:

Yes, Stephen King really did call it “a world class whodunit.” I can’t believe it either!

In fact, I kind of can’t believe this cover — with all those amazing blurbs — is real. If you’d shown this to me in 2019, when I first started writing the book, or in 2021, when I was querying for a new agent with it and got so nervous that I stopped sleeping, I would have laughed. I would said, “keep dreaming, Amy!”

But this is apparently real life (unless the Wachowskis were right about The Matrix), and LISTEN FOR THE LIE is coming your way in less than five months! Here’s what it’s about:

What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.

The truth is out there, if we just listen.

Want to pre-order it? Of course you do. Alex Michaelides said it was “an extremely successful high-wire act, balancing between dark comedy and darker thrills.” You definitely want this book. Pre-order links on my website! You can also read an excerpt over at CrimeReads! Or add it to your Goodreads!

I’ve been getting a few of the same questions about this book, so I have answers for you below!

This is an adult novel?

Yes! This is my adult debut. The main character is 29 years old. LISTEN FOR THE LIE is for fans of Jessica Knoll, Alex Michaelides, or Liane Moriarty (who, by the way, said LISTEN FOR THE LIE was “laugh-out-loud funny, thrilling and twisty, edgy and scary, but also surprisingly sweet.”). Teens who are already reading those types of books may enjoy this one, but it is very much an adult novel!

Are you going to write more YA? What about sci-fi/fantasy?

Right now, no. I’m in my murder era! I loved my time in YA, but I want to whole ass one thing, as Ron Swanson would say.

Will I like this book if I enjoyed your YA books?

Yes? I hope so? I mean, Courtney Summers, YA legend, said this about LISTEN FOR THE LIE: “This bitingly funny and subversive thriller is one of the freshest and fiercest you’ll read this year.” So don’t take my word for it!

But seriously, if you enjoyed my feminist take on sci-fi and fantasy, and you appreciate my tendency to make jokes at inappropriate times, I think you will like my adult thriller too! If you, like Callum, laughed at that part of REBOOT when Wren told him not to scream when she broke his bones but crying was fine, then stick around! My morbid sense of humor hasn’t changed.

Is LISTEN FOR THE LIE the first in a series?

Nope, it’s a standalone! I’m working on my second adult mystery/thriller now, which is unrelated to LISTEN FOR THE LIE, but will have similar dark comedy murder vibes.

How scary is LISTEN FOR THE LIE?

Not very? It’s a mystery/thriller, not horror, so no jump scares or anything like that. Think Alice Feeney, who said that the book is “original and deliciously dark with a wicked sense of humor.” So, it’s dark! But also funny!

(I promise I’m almost done being insufferable about these blurbs.)

Will there be an audiobook?

YES AND I’M VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT! The true crime podcast in the book is a big part of the story, and I can’t wait to hear what the people at Macmillan Audio come up with. More soon about the audiobook!

That’s all for now, but I will be back soon to talk more about how LISTEN FOR THE LIE came about, all about switching from YA to adult, and how the first one of the amazing blurbs for this book arrived in my inbox while I had Covid and eye shingles at the same time and I thought I was dying but at least I got some good news first!!

In the meantime, you should pre-order LISTEN FOR THE LIE. After all, Chandler Baker said it’s “hands down the most fun I’ve had reading about murder,” and you don’t want to miss out on that!

(Okay, I’m done being insufferable.)

(For now.)