Karin Slaughter is the author of more than twenty instant New York Times bestselling novels, including the Edgar–nominated Cop Town and standalone novels Pretty Girls, The Good Daughter, and Pieces of Her. She is published in 120 countries with more than 40 million copies sold across the globe. Pieces of Her is a #1 Netflix original series starring Toni Collette, and WILL TRENT, based on her Will Trent series, is on ABC (and streaming on Hulu in the U.S., and Disney+ internationally). False Witness and The Good Daughter are in development for television. Slaughter is the founder of the Save the Libraries project—a non-profit organization established to support libraries and library programming. A native of Georgia, she lives in Atlanta.
Karin was kind enough to chat with Heather Fitt about her new novel, After That Night.
Heather:
I started reading your books quite a few years ago now, so I'm quite familiar with Sara's story. I wondered what made you go back and revisit the circumstances around her sexual assault.
Karin:
I really did it in a deliberate way. I knew from the beginning that I would want to tell more about her story, but I was looking for the right opportunity and the right circumstances. It felt like now was a good time, especially considering what's going on in United States with the erosion of women's rights. I thought, let me talk about that through Sara, who's a very sympathetic character, and talk a lot about what happens after sexual assault, because I don't think we really get those stories. We only get the immediacy of the horror of it, but we don't talk about what happens after that night.
How does it affect her life? Her relationships, her goals, and her career? And it's something that continues to happen, because does she tell people she meets? New friends, like Faith? And how does she tell Will, who's the person she's going to marry? Because there's a lot of expectations around delivering that kind of news and handling the other person's reaction. And I just thought this would be a really good time to talk about that, and to put it in the context of a really heart-racing thriller.
Heather:
It's really obvious from your books, that research plays a massive part in your writing. Do you have a group of people who guide you through? Or are you more of a books and Google kind of researcher?
Karin:
It's a combination – on the medical stuff, from the very beginning, I've had a friend who's a doctor, and he worked in the emergency department, and he did Lifelight, and he taught at a college and so he's very well-rounded. I'm his favourite medical students because I ask lots of questions, but I can't kill anybody. He's just really been helpful through the years of making Sara, the most highly skilled doctor on Earth. Let's be honest, the cases she gets are pretty horrific. She's always there, knowing what to do, exactly how to do it, and that's thanks to him.
But I have some police detectives, I have trauma therapists, I’m really lucky that I have a large network I can call on: lawyers, prosecutors, defence attorneys, to answer questions for me if something comes up in the book.
Heather:
Do you enjoy the research side of it?
Karin:
I do. I mean, if you're anything like me, you could just do research for a living if someone paid you to do it. I'm constantly having to pull myself from going back down a rabbit hole. Because I'm just interested in a lot of every little thing, and I want to know more about everything. I have to pull myself back.
You can't really show off about your research in a book either. Particularly in a thriller, you can't stop the action to show off how much you know about, I don't know, women's sanitary products, or the history of motor sporting or whatever. You just have to really pull back away from that and say, No, I need to keep moving the story forward.
Heather:
It must be really hard to leave all that research behind for the sake of the story and only put in what you absolutely have to.
Karin:
Yeah, but the great thing about writing a series or knowing I'm going to have at least one more, or two more, books published is, I can save it for the next one.
I don't necessarily get to use it in the next one, but it makes me feel a little better about not using it, if I think about it that way.
Heather:
You’ve written twenty-three books now, including two, overlapping series. How do you keep track of all your characters, especially the ones who are in a lot of the books, but aren't perhaps the main characters?
Karin:
I have, for now, a really good memory, but also, I can go on Google too. I've been known to make mistakes; I think Will was 34 in one book, and in the next book, he was 33.
I do try to keep track of it in my head, and I have things written down. It is important though, because people will remember those details, and if you get them wrong, they'll certainly write you a letter or an email.
Heather:
Do you get a lot of letters from readers?
Karin:
I do! I do, I get a surprising amount of snail mail from people. But you know, email and all that. It takes me a while, but I do everything I can to answer it.
Heather:
That's amazing! Given how much you must get, to try and answer them all is incredible.
Karin:
The longest I've taken is probably a year, but I do read all of them at least.
Heather:
Will Trent famously has dyslexia, and I love that it's not something you shy away from; it's there in every book. What prompted you to make that decision to give him dyslexia specifically?
Karin:
There were a couple of reasons. One is, when I was writing Grant County, the person Sara was married to in that was very literate: he was a history major in college, he loved reading. I stopped writing about him, and I didn't want to pick up with a new series and have the [new] character basically that character, but living in Atlanta.
And also, I don't know if you've noticed, in a lot of books, you'll have someone who isn't a very avid reader who tends to be the bad guy. Sort of like in Hollywood, the person smoking the cigarettes is usually the bad person, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that challenge.
It's something that's in my family. And also, I think it gives Will an understanding of the people he's investigating because they're trying to hide something, and unfortunately, this is something he's ashamed of, and he's trying to hide it as well.
Heather:
I love character details like that, but I often find that authors put in a character detail like that, and then almost forget about it. They kind of go, he's an insomniac, and then four books later, they go, Yeah, okay, he didn't sleep last night, because he’s an insomniac, that kind of thing. But I love how Will is consistently dyslexic, and you don't shy away from talking about that either.
Karin:
Thank you. I mean, it's a big part of his life, and I have readers who have dyslexia. And you know, I think it's important to just have it out there and have him own it.
Heather:
Your standalone book, Cop Town is a personal favourite of mine – and if you ever wanted to write a sequel, I would absolutely read it, but that's not my question. With your standalones, I wondered whether they were stories that wouldn't leave you alone, but that also wouldn't fit into the series you were writing.
Karin:
Sometimes. Or sometimes I'm looking around and reading a lot of things and I'm thinking about a story that won't fit in well in Sara's world.
False Witness was a good example of that, because I wanted to talk about drug addiction. I wanted the character to be a real person and sympathetic and funny, and she loved animals, and she's got her sister and her family, but she has this horrible addiction, and it's a defining part of her personality, but it's not her entire personality. I wanted to write about that, and it just wouldn't have fit in Will and Sara’s world.
Or Cop Town, for instance. After I wrote Criminal – which is a Will Trent and about a man in the 1970s – I just had so much story left. I had talked to so many female police officers and that was one case where I told myself, okay, you've got all this research, you can do it in the next book. I really wanted to do it, and so that's why I wrote Cop Town. Just to explore those issues more, because I felt like setting it in 1970s gave me the opportunity to talk about some stuff that was happening in the present day. And sort of a warning of, hey, we're taking some really small steps backward that are going to lead to giant steps, and that's exactly what happened.
Heather:
I have some quick-fire questions for you, that some readers have asked me to ask you. What is your favourite cake?
Karin: Red Velvet Cake
Heather:
Oh, good choice. I love it! Is there a particular place you go to, that has the best red velvet cake?
Karin:
There's a little town called Decatur, Georgia, and there's a bakery there owned by two women and they make every single – it's cupcakes actually – every single one with love, and an extra stick of butter it feels. I swear to God, I can't remember the name, but I it's one of my favourite places.
Heather:
Is there anywhere that you would like to travel to that you haven't managed to make it to yet?
Karin:
I would like to go on safari in Tanzania. That's on my list.
I've seen a lot of places, fortunately, through travelling with my books, like New Zealand and Australia and Singapore and Dublin. Tanzania’s one place I've never visited I'd love to see.
Heather:
What was your favourite book as a child?
Karin:
There was a boy detective named Encyclopaedia Brown, and he had a sidekick who was a girl. She was allowed in because she was pretty tough, and, of course, he solved all the mysteries, but occasionally she would be able to pipe up with a clue. I loved reading that: the Encyclopaedia Brown Series.
Heather:
Are you reading anything right now? Or are you too busy with the travelling and the book launch?
Karin:
Oh, no, no, I'm always reading. A Fever in America is a non-fiction novel about the Klan in the 1920s; the re-emergence of the modern Klan in the heartland of America.
Heather:
Wow! I bet that’s intriguing.
Karin:
Yeah. And also, it's could have been written today.
Heather:
I can imagine!
I'm a member of a book club on Facebook called the UK Crime Book Club, and apparently, they always ask their author members, have you ever acted out a scene to help with the writing process?
Karin:
I haven't acted out a scene. But I've done similar stuff. For example, if I have someone who has a certain amount of money in their wallet, I want to make sure that the wallet would still fold.
I'm not one of these writers who’s going to get inside of a trunk to see how I would feel and escape from it, because I probably would die of claustrophobia.
But I do like to go to places and look around, particularly because I'm writing about a city that actually exists, and I'll get nasty notes from people saying, you can't turn left on Main Street, you know. I will go to the actual places.
And that's the fun part of writing about real places, you can turn around and go, Oh, wow, look at this wonderful piece of graffiti, or, this is the feel and the taste of this neighbourhood. And I think that part of it's very important.
Heather:
I do the same, actually. I'm writing about Winchester in the UK at the moment, and I'm lucky that I only live about an hour away. I can pop up there whenever I want. Just to have a look around and make sure I've got the right turning on the right street, and I can see the building properly and the architecture.
Karin:
Yeah, and you just can't get that from Google Maps. You have to actually stand in the street and see what you can see.
Heather:
So finally, what is your best piece of writing advice for budding crime writers?
Karin:
It seems really glib to say, but to write. Because you can do a lot of research, you can talk to people, you can read forensics textbooks, and you can talk to police officers, but at the end of the day, you’ve just got to put your butt in the chair and start writing. And that's a really, really difficult thing to do.
The second thing I would say, is to read, not just crime novels, but read as much as you can. Because your brain is kind of like a muscle and you're training that muscle and you're saying, What do I like about this story? Even if it's something crappy, ask yourself why it's crappy and learn from it so that you don't make the same mistakes in your own work.
SHOTS would like to thank Karin for taking time out of her hectic schedule to talk to Heather.
AFTER THAT NIGHT
Hardcover - 22 June 2023 HarperCollins UK
Read our Review Here
