My dark thrillers are often described as eerie and atmospheric. Setting is no mere passenger to my plot. Often, placeโas well as the protagonistโs voiceโinspires much of the story arc before Iโve even started writing.
A summer spent swimming in the lakes of Minnesota helped craft the town of Savage in my recent release, The Creeping. And a few months on an island in the Salish Sea of the Pacific Northwest became the seed for The Telling, released earlier this summer. That island is now my part-time home.
This emphasis on atmosphere within my writing has bled into my writing habits. I donโt write in coffee shops or behind the wheel of a parked car. I say, a bit tongue in cheek, that I paid my dues when I was youngerโdrafting my debut book on the Notes app of my phone while commuting on the bus in San Francisco, just after graduate school.
I have two offices, and nature bleeds into both, as it threads through the twists and turns of my plots.
When Iโm drafting new books, I write from my office on Bainbridge Island, WA. Thereโs a placidness to the water of the Puget Sound. Iโm steps from the shore, where I like to walk at dusk for what I think of as banking. I note the textures of the shells and sand, how they change with the tides. I pick rocks for their shape and color. I try to name not just the scents on the air but what layers produced them. I note the music of my lone steps carrying across the gray beach; how the sound of being alone shifts between peace and panic, my ears always straining to confirm no one is following.
I write dark thrillers, and I dwell in what chills my blood and what fills me with the urge to run. Iโve found I can only do that with a bit of perceived dangerโsurrounded by the dark shadows of the forest or the lonely path cutting between dunes.
I store it all up for when I travel back to California, where my partner works and where Iโll finish and edit my manuscripts. In California, forest and meadow haunt the windows of my office. Dogwoods and birch crowd the garden outside. A dark path winds through the trees toward a creek I rarely visit. Wild strawberries used to grow there, but theyโve all been dug upโread The Creeping and youโll instantly understand why.
Iโve filled my office with found objects that make me feel curious, with a little mystery clinging to their edges. Mary Maguire is a favorite living artist of mine, and her watchful eye peeks out from the windowsill at my desk. Iโm a frequent traveler and Iโve always loved collecting evil eyes, broomsticks, and talismans of unknown origins. A hand-carved eagleโs head, a hand-forged bell, and a rock from a red beach in Tasmania are some of my favorites. Filling my writing space with objects that make me think and imagine has always felt like filling it with windows or doors. Iโm not the sort of thriller or horror author who has a skull on her desk. I prefer the quiet, slow dread you can wind out of a seemingly benign object, rather than being hit over the head with instant fear. In my experience, the slow burn lasts longer.
If I reach a hitch in my process, there are a hundred objects around me, books lining the shelves, and a hundred variations of green through my windows to help move me along. The most vital part of the office and my process is the stack of journals I keep on my desk beside my laptop. Iโm a notetaker and will often sit on the terrace outside my officeโjust another location for banking my observations โ with a journal. Those journals hold books and books yet to be written. They hold crimes with perpetrators, inciting incidents, and clues without context. I keep one for protagonist voices I canโt stop hearing, one for research, one for the history of public gardens and cemeteries, and one for villains.
Alexandra Sirowy is the author of several thrillers for young and old readers. When she’s not writing from her island home in the Pacific Northwest, you can find her in her second life as an activist for women’s rights, an investor in women-founded companies, traveling the world with her daughters and husband, and collecting folklore and art.
