Featured Interview With Kristen Twardowski
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’ve stumbled around working for libraries, studying the relationship between gender, archaeology, and imperialism in Germany, and playing with wolf puppies. Now I’ve finally found a professional home with a small publisher where I do marketing and data analysis. Though I never imagined I would end up working with numbers and metadata, the job is a dream and allows me to spend time on my other love, writing.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Like many writers, I can’t remember a time before books. I blame my mother for that. She was a teacher and showered me with language from the time I was very small. I started trying to write my own fiction when I was 10 or 11, and my sister and I even began a round robin novel around that time. I was awful at writing back then, but most young authors go through a stage of experimenting with words, so I try not to be too hard on my past self.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Fantasy is my great passion. It’s the genre that I was raised on and the one that I always return to. Great fantasy books make every day a little better. In particular, I adore works by Diana Wynne Jones, Melanie Rawn, Peter S. Beagle, Jan Siegel, and a dozen others. Oddly, my first novel, “When We Go Missing”, doesn’t deal with fantasy at all – it is a psychological thriller – but the feel of fantasy, the arc of its stories, the texture of its language, bleeds into my writing.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My debut novel, “When We Go Missing” is a fast-paced psychological thriller.
It follows the story of Alex Gardinier, a woman who was once a successful physical therapist and happy wife. Now, however, she is trapped in a crumbling hospital. Several years ago Alex’s ex-husband, Nathan, was convicted of murdering five girls, and he has been rotting in prison ever since. Except the doctors say that Nathan isn’t in prison. In fact, they don’t believe that he is a criminal at all. According to them, Nathan is a devoted husband who visits her every week. But Alex can’t recall ever seeing him at the hospital, and they last time they met he was holding her hostage on a boat.
Maybe the doctors are right – maybe these memories of his crimes are her own personal delusions – but if they are wrong, then Nathan somehow escaped from prison. If they are wrong, he has trapped Alex in a psychiatric ward.
If they are wrong, he is hunting her sister.
Writing this book allowed me to really engage with the ways that people, especially women, do go missing in America and the way that society deals with those disappearances. It was a fascinating and horrifying realm to discover.
This book was also something of an experiment for me. I began this “Novel Experiment” as I called it on my blog in July of 2016 with the ridiculous goal of publishing it in December of 2016. I finished the rough draft in September and then spent October and November editing it. Though I don’t suggest anyone else use my schedule – I would have liked to spend more time on revisions for example – having a quick deadline meant that I had to get the book written and published. That was a great decision for me because if given free reign, I will edit a work to death and never complete it. I am extraordinarily excited that I was able to get past my perfectionist tendencies and complete the novel. (And I’m even more excited that I have the chance to share it with the world.)
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles
Kristen Twardowski Facebook Page