Q&A

What’s your favorite book?

I hate this question—why did I ask it of myself? Seriously, it’s a hard question because it’s impossible to pick one favorite. I have cravings when it comes to reading. Sometimes I want something light and incredibly fun, such as The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling. Other times I want to do a deep dive into a character’s mysterious past, done so well in books like Sarah Dessen’s The Rest of the Story and Sarah Everett’s Some Other Now. I’m a sucker for romantic subplots well-woven into a larger fantastical adventure: Kell and Delilah in V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy; Darrow and Mustang in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising saga. I like stories that meld genres, the way Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books are romance and adventure and historical fiction and sci-fi all wrapped into one. And nobody does the detective story better than Tana French, especially in The Likeness and The Secret Place.

I read a lot of comics, too. My favorite superhero is Kitty Pryde. My favorite completed comic series is Locke & Key by Joe Hill. It’s amazing. The issues are fun and scary and creative and cool and so, so well-written and well-illustrated.

What’s your writing life like?

At the moment, I have three dedicated writing days per week (days in which my son attends daycare, because for me, it’s impossible to concentrate on storytelling with a toddler bopping about). I might find time to write on a weekend afternoon, but these are my guaranteed writing hours. On these days, I typically spend the first couple hours doing freelance book design work, which keeps my visually creative side appeased, keeps my skills current, and brings in some side income. Around 10:30 or so, I delve into one of my current WIPs. I usually like to have something that’s in a revision stage, and something that’s in a drafting stage. I’ll often be revising for weeks at a time, then send my revised draft to someone (my writing group, my agent, maybe even a publisher, depending on where the manuscript is in the revision stage) and turn back to the WIP that’s in the drafting stage. Here, I’m writing brand new scenes, crafting plot twists, inventing characters. The fun stuff. Sometimes I find having distance from a story helps me see it more clearly, so having two manuscripts to bounce between is helpful in achieving that distance while also staying productive.

Of course, on any given day, whether I’m revising or drafting, I might have other stuff to do. Outline a scene or a section of a story (I rarely do full story outlines when I’m drafting, but I will often do them when revising). Make an Instagram post. Research something I’m writing about. Read my own manuscript, to remind myself what happened in it or see how changes I made to it flow. Answer questions from my publisher, or look over copyedits, or talk through a thorny story problem with my agent. Do laundry. Have a cup of tea. Read some good fiction that someone else wrote. All essential activities for being a writer.

What board games do you take entire evenings to play?

Several. My husband and I like complicated strategy-based games, both competitive and cooperative, and it’s somewhat of an art form finding games like this that can be enjoyably played with only two people. We play a lot of Terraforming Mars, Arkham Horror, and Duel.

Why tea?

Because I like it better than coffee! Fun fact: I don’t like coffee. At. All.

Where did you go to school?

I studied English & Psychology at Duke University. Then I got my MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. I decided to stick around Boston after I graduated Emerson, eventually migrating further north of the city until I ended up in Salem with my family.

What’s E.A. stand for?

E is for Emily, my first name. The A stands for Angela, my middle name and also the name of my great-grandmother.

Much of your novel, After You Vanished, is set at a lake called Bottomrock. Is Bottomrock a real place?

Yes! Sort of. The setting of Bottomrock is very much inspired by Topstone Park in Redding, CT, where I worked for many, many summers as a lifeguard and eventually, as Park Director. Though my characters and my story are fictional, some of the lifeguard hi-jinks in the book are inspired from things that really happened to me at Topstone Park. Things like…

Catching snapping turtles? Really? Isn’t that dangerous?

Oh, I’m sure it’s dangerous! I do not endorse it as an activity. It’s always best to leave wildlife alone. But when I was younger, I got in a canoe with a coworker who had caught a rather large snapping turtle in a pool net, so we could row it across the lake and theoretically keep it away from the swimming area. It did not work. The snapping turtle just swam back. And it continued to pop up now and again around the docks, scaring the small children (who it never, to my knowledge, approached or harmed).

Why is your home “probably not” haunted?

It’s an early 20th century house with creaky floorboards, odd slants, and quirky closets, in a city with a storied history of the occult. Drawers have been known to open by themselves and the lights in the kitchen might sometimes flicker like those on the Nostromo. But those things can be explained by physics and old wiring. Most likely.

What are you working on now?

I have a few irons in the fire, and I’m not entirely sure which will come out first. The first is a YA contemporary romantic drama about 17-year-old Lexi Anderson, who’s been living a nomadic life off the grid with her father. When he doesn’t come home for her birthday, she finally decides to look into her family’s past, and she digs up a lot more than she bargained for.

The other, being written in partnership with my husband, is a novel about Dawn Speaker, a teenage ghost who finds herself in the unlikely position of needing to perform an exorcism—of the ghost who shares her haunting-space but not her friendly-haunting style. To do so, Dawn will team up with the son of a ghost hunter, T.B., who happens to be the only living person who can see ghosts. And also totally cute.