More Than a Mystery: A Guest Post by Chris Whitaker
The latest from former B&N Book Club author Chris Whitaker (We Begin at the End) is set in 1970s Missouri — where the world feels unpredictable and dark. Read on for an exclusive essay from Our Monthly Pick author Chris on writing All the Colors of the Dark.
Paperback $19.00
All the Colors of the Dark (Read with Jenna Pick)
All the Colors of the Dark (Read with Jenna Pick)
In Stock Online
Paperback $19.00
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD • From the author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that “hits like a sledgehammer . . . an absolutely must-read novel” (Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl).
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OVER ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD • From the author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that “hits like a sledgehammer . . . an absolutely must-read novel” (Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl).
It was winter 2001 when a truck arrived outside my house. It had been driven all the way from the Netherlands, where it had been loaded with pieces of wood, glass, screws and fixings. And a single sheet of paper instructing me how to build the cabin office that would sit in the back garden of my house. With the world in lockdown, and my house renovation project stalling due to a shortage of materials (my house had no roof, my newborn daughter was not impressed when rain fell on her crib) I desperately needed a place to write. And so over a frozen English December I got to work. And once it was ready I had somewhere I could close off the outside world and escape into the story I had been working on for a year already.
I had a simple outline – Two abducted teenagers fall in love in the pitch-black basement they’re being held in, having never seen each other. The boy escapes and can’t find his way back to the girl – but once I began writing, I knew it would be so much more than the mystery at its heart.
I spent the first year writing nothing but dialogue between the two central characters, Patch and Saint. I wanted to get to know them in the same way I would someone in real life, through conversation. I knew the story, like all of my others, would take place in the US, but I wasn’t sure where. I was working at my local library, and it was there that I discovered Dogwood Canyon in a book of photography. It was stunning. I began to research Missouri, and it fit the location I had been seeking, both geographically and demographically. I knew the story would begin in the 1970’s, a time before I was born, in a place I had never visited before. And so I spent years in the library, trawling through photographs, maps, history books and old newspapers. I used a website where you can choose a region and listen to locals read transcripts, and I was able to pick up on speech patterns. I worked across three screens and mapped each scene with detail stretching from the types of flowers growing to the front pages of local newspapers. I spent months researching everything from mining to pirates, ballet to beekeeping. Often these scenes would be cut to a single paragraph. I went slightly mad during the process, channelling Patch’s obsessive nature, lying awake fretting over single lines if they didn’t feel quite right. I missed my deadline by two years, watched my daughter take her first steps as the story came together, and wrote the final line days before we went to print.
What started out as a simple mystery had evolved into a sprawling epic spanning twenty-seven years, with themes ranging from coming-of-age to family, friendship to first love, and, most importantly, the strength and courage it takes to overcome childhood trauma.
And now, as I prepare for the paperback publication and look back over the most amazing year of my life, though I miss the characters every day, I know that I couldn’t have given more to their story.
