Interview with Kit Frick

Thank you so much to Kit for agreeing to do this interview with me! I really appreciate it 🙂

How did you come up with I Killed Zoe Spanos?

When the idea for I Killed Zoe Spanos was bouncing around in my head, I’d recently re-read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca for the fourth (fifth?) time and couldn’t help wondering: What if Rebecca de Winter had gone missing today, in the age of Serial and The Vanished and Bear Brook and all the other excellent true crime podcasts that have sprung up over the last several years? The idea for the novel came from a marriage between two obsessions of mine: Rebecca and true crime podcasts.

Why did you decide to use the Hamptons as the setting?

For the unacquainted, the Hamptons is a (mostly) affluent beach region comprised of multiple villages and hamlets on Long Island, east of New York City. I landed on the Hamptons setting because it seemed like the perfect American equivalent of the tony English seaside town, a suburb of London, where Maxim resides in his Manderley estate in Rebecca.

How did you come up with Very Bad People?

I began with the idea of a teen girl revisiting her mother’s mysterious death—a drowning incident that she and her sisters survived—several years later, and her hunch that there was a lot more to what happened than meets the eye.

I knew my main character, Calliope, would want to escape her small hometown where she’d been living in a fishbowl after the tragedy, but where would she go? From there, the idea of the boarding school setting, Tipton Academy, and the secret society, Haunt and Rail, began to take shape.

How did you decide on the name Haunt and Rail?

Because Tipton Academy is located in New York’s Hudson Valley, the name of the Haunt and Rail Society comes from two pieces of Hudson Valley history: “Haunt” from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and “Rail” from the Mohawk and Hudson line, the first railroad to run through New York State. There’s also a secondary meaning, tied to the secret society’s mission, but you’ll have to read the book to uncover it!

Why did you use ‘fairy tale names’ for the Bolan sisters? 

The three Bolan sisters are named Calliope, Lorelei, and Serafina. Their mother, Kathleen, was very into fairy tales, mythology, and folklore. There’s also a deeper meaning to one of the girl’s names, revealed later in the book, but I won’t say which one because spoilers!

How do you build up your characters and plot?

The process varies with every book, but I often start with a few facts I know for sure about my characters, then their voices and personalities and backstories really take shape as I start to draft.

In terms of plot, I’m big into brainstorming and outlining before I begin. For I Killed Zoe Spanos, which toggles between two narrators and unfolds in two timelines plus a podcast woven through, I had a fairly detailed chapter-by-chapter plot outline before I started to draft. For Very Bad People, which takes place in only one timeline and stays with just one narrator, Calliope, I had a looser outline of major plot points I knew I’d hit, but I left things a little more open on a chapter level since I had fewer pieces to juggle.

When did you realize that you wanted to write YA?

Not until my early thirties! When I was a teenager in the nineties, young adult hadn’t really emerged as a publishing category yet. So I didn’t discover YA as a reader until adulthood, but once I got into it as a reader, I was hooked.

When did you realize that you wanted to be an author?

That happened much earlier. I’d been an avid reader and writer since childhood, and I really got into writing in college when I had the opportunity to take writing workshops, meet other student writers and faculty who wrote professionally, and get feedback on my writing.

Are any characters based on people you know in real life?

Not in specific ways; I’m pretty careful to not paint characters too closely to IRL folks, but that being said, many of my characters are part fiction and part combinations of several people from real life. For example, a best friend character might incorporate quirks or features of several real-life friends, but then I’ll put an entirely fictional spin on it.

What’s your experience with writer’s block?

Brainstorming and outlining really helps me prevent writer’s block from happening because I always have at least some sense of what I’m writing next. Of course outlining doesn’t work for every writer, but it definitely helps me from getting stuck.

As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar

Probably a black cat. I’m a cat lover, and since I write mysterious stories, I think a black cat would suit me well as a mascot. 🙂

How do you decide on titles for your books?

It depends! Very Bad People came from a line in the book, and it speaks to both a specific person/circumstance in the story and to the larger moral questions the book raises. I Killed Zoe Spanos was written under the working title Windermere, the name of the spooky estate next door to the house where Anna, the protagonist, is a nanny for the summer. After some brainstorming with my editor, we landed on I Killed Zoe Spanos, which is taken from the confession that happens in the novel’s opening chapter, and tells readers very clearly that the book they’re picking up will be a murder mystery.

What inspires you to keep writing?

At this point in my career, I can’t imagine doing anything else. I love writing, and I love publishing books, which aren’t the same thing, but for me it’s the perfect career. Reader responses are amazing fuel when I’m feeling less inspired, and so is the joy of dreaming up a new story.

Is there anything you’d like to say to your readers and any aspiring writers?

I have some favorite advice for new writers, that I’d love to leave you with! Read widely in your age category and genre. Get to know the playing field. Seek out trusted readers for your work and listen to their feedback. Know that you don’t have to take every piece of feedback. Revise. Revise more. Remember that publishing is not a meritocracy. There’s a lot of luck and timing involved in getting a book published, and while both of those factors are beyond your control, understanding that they play a key role can help put your experience and others’ in perspective. And finally, don’t call yourself “aspiring.” Just do it.

…

Kit Frick is a MacDowell fellow and ITW Thriller Award finalist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. The author of the poetry collection A Small Rising Up in the Lungs and the young adult thrillers Before We Were Sorry (originally published as See All the Stars), All Eyes on Us, I Killed Zoe Spanos, and Very Bad People, Kit loves a good mystery but has only ever killed her characters. Honest.

Visit Kit online at KitFrick.com and on Twitter and Instagram @KitFrick.