Author Carter Wilson discusses his 11th psychological thriller, When They Find Me.

Well, today in the Fox Local Book Club, the latest psychological thriller from USA Today bestselling author Carter Wilson, When They Find Me is set in a remote snowbound Colorado town where ordinary people face extraordinary moral choices. It weaves together a desperate mother hiding from her past and a revenge seeking family on a deadly collision course. Carter, welcome to the Fox Local Book Club. So happy to be here. Thanks for having me on. Well, the premise of When They Find Me is really intense. It brings together these two desperate women under terrifying circumstances. So what was the inspiration for this? Well, you know, I don't outline, so I never really know where a story's going to go. And I just simply had a thought one day about home invasions, because they're interesting to me. And I thought, what if home invaders got the wrong address? And then I started thinking about, well, who lives at that address? And what are they hiding from? And what if they're more dangerous than the invaders themselves? Oh, wow. First of all, I'm just fascinated that you're a pantser. Really, you have no idea what the end of your novel is going to be when you start. I don't even know what the middle is going to be. I just know this high concept, and I just start with chapter one, and I keep saying, okay, what happens next? What happens next? And what would I do? Well, that's what probably drives your story so well. This one focuses on ordinary people pushed into these situations where survival and morality intersect. So how do these main characters kind of embody that theme? Yeah, I mean, it is all about moral ambiguity. I'm very fascinated by those shades of gray within the moral compass of a character. So I, because I think we're all like that. You know, there's nothing more uninteresting to me than a villain who you're supposed to hate and a hero who you're supposed to love. So I wanted to take these two women and have them think about, you know, their own choices in the past and what they would do and see like. How that tests their own concept of what morality is. So the setting in Colorado, this remote mountain town, kind of like a character, too, feels like a living, breathing antagonist. You live in Colorado, right? And how does that experience or how does that affect, I guess, at least the setting in this book? Yeah, for sure. Setting is super important. And like you said, it absolutely should be a character. And, you know, living in Colorado, I've been through these towns, you know, you're driving in the mountains, maybe to go into a larger town like Aspen or Vail. And then these tiny little towns, you think like, what? Why does this town exist, and who lives here? And, of course, the thriller writer's brain always goes to, like, what are these people hiding from? Thank you. And so I just created the town of Expanse, but it's very much based on a smattering of towns that I definitely have driven through. All right, we've got to go back, Carter, because I don't know if you know, I'm a writer, too, and I'm a plotter. I do know. I have to put those red herrings in. And I'm just, how do you get these cool twists that you get if it's just... You're not plotting. I mean, I think that's the thing. When I start a book, I never say to myself, there has to be a twist. Because I think then you end up maybe shoehorning one in. And in this book, it's probably the biggest twist I've ever written of all of my 11 books. And about 50% in, I was struggling with one of the characters. I was struggling with you know this character's place in the book. And through that struggle, all of a sudden I had this thought of like, oh, this is why I'm struggling. And it turned out to be this massive twist. And it felt earned and it felt inevitable. And so I knew I had to include it. So you just kind of hope that as a pantser, your subconscious is working in the background. Hey, my producer during the commercial break said this guy must do a podcast or something because he looks really professional. I know you have a real microphone. So tell us about your podcast. Yeah, it's called Making It Up, and it's just, I just have conversations with writers. They're totally unscripted, deep dive into the life of writing, the life of being a full-time author. I've done about 250 episodes, and at the end of every single episode, we actually make up a short story together based on a random sentence we pick from a random book on my bookshelves. Oh my gosh, that's so fun. Okay, we have about 30 seconds left, but we can't leave without you telling me who that cutie pie behind you is on the chair. So that is four-year-old Scully. Aw. She's always by my side. We just went to the park. Now she's going to crash out for a few hours. Wow. So she hangs out during your podcast too? Oh, all the time. If you watch it, my podcast is also video. So you'll see her in most of them. Oh, all right. Carter Wilson, thank you so much for joining us on the Fox Local Book Club. Thanks so much. And When They Find Me officially releases on November 10th. But you should pre-order your copy right now online. And we'll be back right after this.