Best selling author comes to WPL

By Isabell Macrina
Hometown Weekly Reporter

Westwood Public Library welcomed New York Times best seller Peter Swanson, author of “The Kind Worth Killing” and “Eight Perfect Murders” to talk about his new book and the one he broke the mold for, “Kill Your Darlings” and the process that goes into his writing.

Swanson was a poet before he decided to try long form writing, and he found his niche in the mystery and psychological suspense novels. He admitted he always liked mystery and crime novels since he was a kid, anything dark really. His first books he wrote didn’t get published, so he wrote his novella “The Girl with a Clock for a Heart” and it caught the attention of an agent, who has been working with him since. They reworked it into a full length novel and the rest is history,

Now, 12 books later, he decided to try a new way of writing. All his books come from a “what if” spark, he admitted, and this one was “what if the affair couple that kills the other partner, ends up together?” It is about a marriage that falls apart because they are two different people. One has compartmentalized the past, and the other is falling apart. But what makes this story unique is that it is told in reverse.

Mystery novels often have dual timelines, or a back and forth where we see what happened before the murder as it is being solved, but Swanson had the idea to write one fully backwards. The story begins with a murder attempt, wife Wendy tries to get rid of her husband Thom, and the story takes us back through their marriage and all the important moments, resolving with the dark secret that brought them together in the first place.

Swanson admits that he does not do a lot of research before he writes his first draft. He just gets it all out on paper and goes back to fix it later. He advises this for any new writers, the first draft will be bad, you can always fix it later. He thinks of his writing in an Alfred Hitchcock style; entertainment with murder, not trying to discuss major social issues. He ends the talk with the advice “write it bad and try again” along with the tease that Julia Roberts is behind a potential adaptation of this novel, if that is the push you need to check out this book.

“Kill Your Darlings” is a truly one of a kind read, following a couple you know did something bad together and all the moments that changed them from who they were at the beginning. If you like murder mystery and a bit of suspense, check out the book from your local library and give it a shot!