Fiction writers make stuff up. That’s our job. But writing a novel takes a lot of time and energy, and over the course of all those months plugging away at the word count, as life is happening, as our writer brains process events and emotions around us, real-life inspiration seeps in. Sometimes without us even realizing it.
I love to go back over my novels and see where details or interests from my own life snuck in and how those details changed and warped as I wrote. In The Mother Next Door, there were definitely a lot of those moments.
I wrote this book during the COVID-19 pandemic, during a time when none of us were really going anywhere or doing anything. The world suddenly felt very small, and I think some of that feeling crept into the book. The book is centered around a suburban neighborhood—very secluded, very insular, almost claustrophobic. We were all home, and so I guess I needed to write about the idea of home.
Beyond that, there are many other things in TMND that are very “me.” Here are some “behind the plot” connections:
Halloween. The Mother Next Door is set during October, leading up to Halloween. Halloween is my birthday. It’s also hands-down, my most favorite time of the year. When I originally started writing this book, it was set in late spring, but the mood didn’t feel right. I needed football, scary stuff, leaves falling. So, I moved it to October, and everything clicked into place.
The perfect house. Have you ever had a crush on a house? When I was in my early 20s, I used to drive by this beautiful home on my way to work each morning, and I sort of fell in love with it. It had this gigantic floor-to-ceiling window in front that I always imagined putting a huge Christmas tree in. I would’ve loved to live there. I kind of took that idea to a bigger extreme in my book—one of the moms, Theresa, has always coveted the idea of living in a certain neighborhood. She feels like her life would be perfect if she could live there. It’s a desire that is so powerful that she makes some pretty terrible choices in order to have it.
An urban legend. In my book, the characters are obsessed with an urban legend about a ghost bride who haunts a nearby railroad bridge. I live in Northern Virginia, and one of our ghostly claims to fame is Bunnyman Bridge, a haunted railroad bridge. There are many different stories surrounding Bunnyman Bridge, but most of them involve a man dressed in a bunny costume wielding an axe and terrorizing any teenagers who dare to walk the bridge after dark. I took that story as inspiration when creating my own Ghost Girl legend.
A cul-de-sac. The families in The Mother Next Door live on a cul-de-sac called Ivy Woods, and the neighborhood is famous for its grand Halloween parties each year. The moms go all-out with house decorations, candy, even live bands—and the kids come in droves to gather their loot. In my real life, I live around the corner from a cul-de-sac that hosts a small potluck Halloween party each year. It’s not a huge blow-out party, though it is a lot of fun! And the moms on my real-life street aren’t harboring any terrible secrets of the past (at least, as far as I know….)
The Mother Next Door incorporates some of my most favorite things, and it was fun to sprinkle those passions into a domestic suspense novel. Hopefully readers will think so, too!
TARA LASKOWSKI is the author of One Night Gone, which won an Agatha Award, Macavity Award, and Anthony Award, and was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, Left Coast Crime Award, Strand Critics’ Award, and Library of Virginia Literary Award. She is also the author of two short story collections, Modern Manners for Your Inner Demons and Bystanders, has published stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Mid-American Review, among others, and is the former editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. Tara earned a BA in English from Susquehanna University and an MFA from George Mason University and currently lives in Virginia.
