1–What is the title of your latest release?
2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Decades of doubt, fear, and suspicion won’t let a woman overcome her past when she returns to the hometown where her teenage sister was killed. A killer finally confessed, but the truth isn’t done with her yet.
3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I needed to isolate my character (this is always good, mean fun) but I also needed her near Silicon Valley for the plot. In the past few years, I’ve taken a few trips to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and I love the drive to Lake Tahoe, so I created a fictional highway and plopped the story right in the middle of the forest.
4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. Elise might intimidate me a bit, but I love her scrappy, damaged heart.
5–What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Bold, independent, and vulnerable.
6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I read a few research books about conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy is at the heart of this story. I learned that certain conspiracies always bubble up during times of change in this country. Frustrating and fascinating!
7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I write straight through from beginning to end, so I get down about 5 pages a day, then re-read those the next day before I start writing. My first drafts are very clean, but things get messy when I tear them apart during revisions!
8–What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Dessert is my one true love, but my favorite indulgence is a fancy, complicated cocktail. If you have a cocktail menu with a burnt orange slice and dried ginger and muddled anything topped with egg-white foam, I will pay the outrageous price to try at least two of the offerings.
9–Describe your writing space/office!
After writing at the kitchen table for nearly twenty years, we finally turned the guest room into an office. I have an amazing view of my mountain town, a desk I love, and a cozy place to read! Every wall is decorated with prints of my book covers. It’s a celebration.
10–Who is an author you admire?
I’m in awe of Madeline Miller, because she writes amazing historical/mythology books that remind me of the best narrative non-fiction. I was so blown away when I read Circe. I can’t begin to imagine how many hours/years/decades of research it took to immerse herself so fully in the story she could tell it to us as if she were an eyewitness.
11–Is there a book that changed your life?
That is a tough question, because my life was full of books from the start! We didn’t have a lot of money or stability, but my mom is a reader, so we had used books and library books and borrowed books. Reading anything and everything opened up my world and made all things possible in my growing mind.
12–Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I’d been published in romance for many years and had no thoughts of leaving, but one of my editors, Tara Parsons, left Harlequin and kept asking me to write something for her. I said no. I was scared! She finally talked me into coming up with an idea. Then an outline. Then a revised outline. Finally, Evelyn, After was born and I never looked back!
13–What’s your favorite genre to read?
I try not to read suspense when I’m on deadline with my own work, so I read mostly horror and narrative non-fiction during those months.
14–What’s your favorite movie?
The original The Color Purple has been my favorite movie for a long time, but we’ll see if that changes when I watch the musical!
15–What is your favorite season?
Autumn is a deep joy in my bones. I love the crisp air and turning leaves and gorgeous scents.
16–How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Going out to eat! All I really want is a tasty meal and fancy cocktails and a classic piece of cake. Or two.
17–What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
We recently watched American Nightmare, a true-crime documentary about a kidnapping reported as a hoax, and it was BONKERS. I still can’t believe this bizarre travesty is a true story. Watch it so we can talk it out.
18–What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Anything delicious, to be honest, which means my favorite cuisine is a fancy buffet. Mother’s Day brunch is my time to shine.
19–What do you do when you have free time?
I hike and listen to podcasts. I also love a hot bath and will stay in there for 2 hours reading. Other than that, we take a lot of long road trips and try to use local highways instead of interstates when possible.
20–What can readers expect from you next?
I’m just finishing up my next book which has a working title of Bald-Faced Liar. This one will be out in 2025 and is the story of a woman who hides from her trauma by making up tales about herself to others. Her careful life is slowly dismantled when someone begins relentlessly exposing her past.
FOLLOW HER DOWN by Victoria Helen Stone
Decades of doubt, fear, and suspicion won’t let a woman overcome her trauma in a riveting novel of suspense by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of Jane Doe and The Hook.
The murder of Elise Rockwood’s sister shattered her family. Their mother’s anxiety kept her housebound. Elise’s paranoid brother, Kyle, saw conspiracies everywhere. Elise numbed her grief in an aimless lifestyle that left her emotionally broken. All of them victims. A local boy eventually confessed, but the damage was already done.
Years later, Elise is reinventing herself. She’s bought a mountain lodge to be close to home again and to find stability. Not even an email from her ex tempts her into revisiting the past. But Kyle won’t let it go. He still believes there’s more to their sister’s murder—and the confession—than meets the eye. When Elise’s ex is found dead in the same forest where her sister went missing decades before, Elise is finally willing to listen.
The traumas of the past are reemerging. So is the truth. Elise’s greatest fear now is who will survive it.
Thriller Psychological [Lake Union Publishing, On Sale: June 4, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781662521683 / ]
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About Victoria Helen Stone
Victoria Helen Stone, author of the runaway best seller Jane Doe, writes critically acclaimed novels of dark intrigue and emotional suspense. Aside from At The Quiet Edge, The Last One Home, Problem Child, Half Past, and the chart-topping False Step and Evelyn, After, she also published twenty-nine books as USA Today bestselling author Victoria Dahl and won the prestigious American Library Association Reading List award for best genre fiction. Her novels have been published in English, Russian, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Lithuanian, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese, Indonesian, Czech, Hebrew, Estonian, Polish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Thai.
Victoria writes in her home office high in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, far from her origins in the flattest plains of Minnesota, Texas, and Oklahoma. She enjoys gorgeous summer trail hikes in the mountains almost as much as she enjoys staying inside by the fire during winter. Victoria is passionate about dessert, true crime, and her terror of mosquitoes, which have targeted her in a diabolical conspiracy to hunt her down no matter the season.
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