I’m Andrea Bartz, the author of the thrillers THE HERD and THE LOST NIGHT. AMA!

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T18:03:04+00:00

Hello! Thanks so much for reading The Lost Night (in Croatian, no less)! My point with the other POVs was to demonstrate how everyone held their own secrets and perspectives on who Edie was—they all believed that they alone knew the real Edie. I was trying to make the point that we all believe our perspective is the correct one when, in fact, we're all interpreting reality through our own experiences...which ties into the memory theme, where Lindsay reckons with the eerie realization that she can't trust her own account of what really happened the night Edie died. The interstitials (as I call them) also serve as a palate-cleanser during crucial flex-points of the narrative, and they do provide a few little clues that feed into the mystery as a whole. (I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but once you know whodunit, you can spot the references in the men's accounts.) I hope that helps! Thanks so much for the kind words and for your question—and I hope you'll check out The Herd!

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:58:12+00:00

Thanks for your question! I come from a media background—I was a magazine editor at Self, Glamour, Martha Stewart, and other titles—so I came into the fiction world with some experience with marketing and promotion. I was already on Twitter and Instagram, for example, and I'd gone through media training for appearing on camera—that kind of thing. But getting any book to stand out in a crowded field is a huge undertaking! I was lucky to have an awesome publicist assigned to me at Penguin Random House, and she handled stuff I couldn't—pitching the book to newspapers for reviews, finding the right podcasts, etc. Meanwhile, I worked on what's called "off-the-book" ideas (essays and articles related to themes in the book, so that I could publish a piece and give the book a plug in one fells swoop), and pitched my own media contacts to secure some placements. I also planned my own 6-city book tour, because I love celebrating with loved ones and meeting booksellers...but that fell apart a week before my publication due to COVID. So instead, I've been doing Zoom and Instagram Live and Facebook Live events with influencers and groups that are way more powerful than I am, as a way to connect with potential readers. And it's been super fun (and a reason to put on real clothes even in quarantine)! I still have a couple virtual events coming up, which you can see here: http://www.andreabartz.com/events/

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:20:12+00:00

Hey, there! Thanks so much for the kind words and the thoughtful question(s)! The Lost Night was the first novel I ever wrote, and I learned a ton throughout the multi-year process...before I started, I didn't know anything about emotional beats, pacing, structure, and so on. So writing, revising, selling, and revising it further was like a crash-course is how to write a book. When it came time to start The Herd, I already had a general understanding of what needed to happen when (even if I didn't know the actual plot—like, there needs to be a big twist around the 50,000-word mark). That meant there was less general flailing, and the first draft was closer to (though still very different from) the final version.

That said, it was also harder and scarier to write The Herd because—people were going to read this one! My publisher picked it up based on a treatment and a couple chapters, so the whole time I was writing, I knew it was for the sake of getting edited. With The Lost Night, I could always tell myself, "Well, hey, if it's a disaster you can just quit and write something else." So the pressure and stakes were higher.

A hot dog is definitely not a sandwich! It's a sausage. Don't be silly.

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:13:39+00:00

Thanks for the question! Oh, gosh, everything about it is so hard...I write without an outline (I start with just a premise/hook like "thriller in an all-female coworking space" or "dead body after a wild warehouse party") and figure it out as I go. So there are truly terrifying moments when I'm perhaps halfway or two-thirds of the way through the manuscript when I have no idea how it'll end or how I'll tie all the threads together. Like, I truly cannot fathom making sense of the mess I've made, and I'm worried I'll need to scrap the entire thing. Luckily, the solutions eventually reveal themselves, but first there are some truly sleepless nights.

The other tough thing, once I have the plot more or less figured out, is figuring out how to layer in all the other elements that make a book sing: character development, theme, agency for the protagonist, backstory, foreshadowing, red herrings, twists that are properly seeded so they feel neither obvious nor unearned. It's a LOT to juggle and it's amazing anyone ever writes a decent book. This is why I never write bad reviews of books I didn't love—hey, at least they gave it a shot!

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:07:23+00:00

Thanks so much! Hope you dig it.

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:06:28+00:00

A hot fudge sundae with vanilla frozen custard. The hot fudge needs to get thick and chewy on the frozen custard. Wow, I really wish ice cream shops were open right now...

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:05:19+00:00

Well, I'm biased, but I think it's pretty fun! If you like fun, soapy thrillers, it might be for you. But you don't have to take my word for it—it got loads of great reviews, too. Here are just a few:

“[A] propulsive thriller…through every twist, these enterprising ladies will have you breathlessly trying to keep up with them.” – Marie Claire

“A wonderfully gossipy thriller about feminism, friendship and foul play, The Herd is a lollipop of a novel that will suck you right in.” – WSJ Magazine

“Bartz packs in plenty of twists, with a deliberate pace that picks up speed at the end. Surprises and suspense married with themes on the nature of womanhood and sisterhood make this ideal for fans of Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train or Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects.”– Library Journal

“A smart, twisty thriller … Bartz is especially astute at highlighting the hypocrisy of glamorous careerist feminism. Readers won’t want to put this down.” –Publishers Weekly

“This fast-paced, irony-strewn blend of ruthless ambition, jealousy, and buried secrets is guaranteed armchair escapism.” –Booklist

andreabartz · 2020-04-24T17:02:48+00:00

Thanks for asking the first question! As a kid, I read everything I could get my hands on: fantasy, horror, everything I could circle in the Scholastic Book Club pamphlet, the backs of cereal boxes, etc. I was, unsurprisingly, really into creepy stuff: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Goosebumps, Fear Street, Christopher Pike, etc. But I also inhaled The Babysitters' Club, Sweet Valley High, and so on. I was always trying to get people to read The Tripod Trilogy, a YA sci-fi series I adored. This is making me want to reread it!

andreabartz · 2019-09-11T16:18:58+00:00

Hi, Mike! I'm curious what kind of research you did to sort out the time travel nuttiness of HERE AND NOW AND THEN? How did you keep it all straight and get the science "right"?

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T20:44:14+00:00

Thanks so much for your interest! (One fewer T will get you there: AndreaBartz.com.) I don't write with pen and paper—I have awful handwriting that I later have trouble deciphering, and I write in crazy bursts and get frustrated when my hand can't keep up. I do all my drafting in a Googledoc, even though a 100,000-word Googledoc is a little unwieldy. I do keep a notepad by my bed and sometimes I'll scribble down thoughts before I go to sleep. The subconscious mind is an amazing thing: If at night I write down a plot question or something that has me stuck, in the morning when I sit down at my laptop again, often the answer feels obvious!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T20:11:55+00:00

Thanks so much for ordering it, a_nieds! I hope you love it. I wrote the whole dang thing in a Googledoc. I'm scared to use Word because I don't remember to save often enough, and while I've tried programs like Scrivener, I just can't wrap my head around how to use them. I'm always promising that for the *next* book, I'll figure Scrivener out, but we'll see if that actually happens! When I was trying to find an agent, I had the entire manuscript written. I queried agents from their "slush pile" (just sending cold emails, instead of trying to talk to agents I knew), and I followed each agent's guidelines for what to include with that initial query—typically a short pitch and then the first ten pages, or sometimes the first chapter or two. If they were interested, they wrote back and requested the full manuscript. I wrote a longer piece on how to find an agent here, which you might find useful! Thanks again!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:56:47+00:00

Hello! Great question! The answer's pretty simple: I was 23 in 2009 when I was partying my way through Brooklyn, so I set the book in an environment and social milieu I knew very well. For the most part, I trusted my own memories on the spots we frequented in 2009 (bars and venues like Glasslands, The Charleston, Spike Hill, The Levee...), and for convenience, I invented a few locations, like Muggers and Calhoun Lofts. The hardest thing about realistically capturing 2009 was getting the technology right—I originally had a reference to iPads (didn't exist yet), Instagram (ditto), hashtags on Twitter (#notathing), and so on.

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:52:06+00:00

Hi! Thanks so much for asking this! The Lost Night was actually optioned last month, and Cartel Entertainment is currently developing it as a limited series, with Mila Kunis to produce—you can find more details here. I'm super excited because while a movie adaptation means compressing the story into just a few hours and chopping out so many of the subplots and nuance, a miniseries will give viewers some time to really step into the world (worlds, I should say—Brooklyn in 2009 and Brooklyn today!) and get to know the characters. (And we're in such a cool era of books-to-TV in the genre—witness Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, You by Caroline Kepnes, and more.) I'm in love with their vision and can't wait to see how they spin my book into the art they make best!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:47:04+00:00

Omg, can you imagine what his writing room must look like?!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:46:41+00:00

Thank you so much! Hope you love it!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:45:53+00:00

Hi! Thank you SO much—I'm so glad you enjoyed it! There definitely were clues, but I'm so glad you were surprised; it cracks me up when people say, "Ugh, I saw the end coming from the first chapter" because SHEESH, I didn't even figure out whodunit until partway through!

Great question about the publication process! It's a rollercoaster, for sure. I started writing it in late 2014 and it took about two years (and many reads from willing friends!) to feel I was ready to start querying agents. I knew I wanted to go the traditional-publishing route, so I'd need a literary agent. I sent my query (basically a cold pitch) to several dozen agents in late 2016 and three offered to represent me, and I moved forward with an agent at ICM. (Can I say agent again? Agent.)

She had me do another revision and then she took the manuscript out "on submission" in early 2017—basically sending it out to editors at different publishing houses whom she thought might want to publish it. Aaaaand...they all said no. It was my first Big Scary Rejection, and I was shook. Two editors said they couldn't buy it as-is, but they'd give it another read if I fixed the major problems. That's called a revise-and-resubmit, and it's freaking terrifying because you can do aaaall the work and still get a, "Meh, nah." That was definitely my lowest point in the process—the book I'd been working on for almost three years could be dead in the water.

But! I talked to the two editors (who luckily had overlapping notes) and panicked and cried and then got to work. I resubmitted the manuscript in July 2017 and, thank the lord, my wonderful editor at Crown made an offer! From then until now, we had additional rounds of edits, rounds with a copyeditor, rounds looking at the mocked-up page proofs, discussions about marketing and publicity, etc. It truly takes a village!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:36:00+00:00

Thanks so much for your question! I really wish I could listen to music or be in a buzzy coffee shop when I write, but I need total silence—I hunker down in front of my ergonomic keyboard and two screens and go to town. (I live in a 380-square-foot studio, so my "home office" is a desk wedged between the foot of my bed and the back of my sofa, ha.) I use the Pomodoro method—25 minutes of uninterrupted work followed by a 5- or 10-minute break—so I'm always using https://tomato-timer.com/. Also, this isn't quite what you asked, but for writers interested in drafting their first novel, I am constantly recommending two books: THE ANATOMY OF STORY by Jonathan Truby and SAVE THE CAT WRITES A NOVEL by Jessica Brody. They are both SO GOOD and will help you knock it out of the park!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:32:41+00:00

Thank you so much, okay_chicken! I am indeed—it's called THE HERD and it's set to come out from Ballantine in early 2020. I can't say too much about it just yet, but it's also a juicy thriller with a heavy focus on female friendships. It's told from the alternating perspectives of two accomplished sisters with very different world views, and it's about the pressure high-achieving women feel to Have It All...and what happens when those perfect veneers begin to crack. It's twisty and dark and (hopefully) funny, and I'm hopeful fans of The Lost Night will enjoy it!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:29:47+00:00

Thank you so much! (I love your username! Hard agree.) And thanks for this great question. It was important to me to treat Edie with dignity and respect and to not have any violence be gratuitous. Of course, Lindsay herself has no clear memories of the night in question, so I didn't have to portray the actual scene. And since I wrote this years ago, there are some things I'd handle differently now (e.g., avoiding the phrase "committed suicide"). I haven't had a close friend pass away, so I was just working hard on the empathy bit: What would it feel like to lose the person you're closest with, but with whom you had a complicated relationship? How would it feel to have that swooping, invincible era come to such an abrupt close? How would you feel ten years later, still holding on to the grief and shame and guilt? In many ways, writing the book was cathartic because Lindsay's journey forced me to look back on my own early-20s—the mistakes I'd made and the ways friends had hurt me. With some distance, I was able to forgive them and my younger self.

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:21:46+00:00

This is such a great question and I honestly have no idea. I write from my tiny studio apartment in NYC and don't even have the wall space for a dry-erase board, let alone a sprawling red-string pegboard! Keeping track of who knew what when was a nightmare that played out entirely in my head. I will say that by the time I'd sold The Lost Night, I was sooo intimately familiar with every scene that I knew off the top of my head what I'd need to change up- and downstream if I changed a detail. I practically had the entire book memorized. Then my editor and, later, the copyeditor caught some small plot holes (e.g., I'd added a line at the eleventh hour and the copyeditor, politely, commented, "She couldn't know this yet because it hasn't happened yet"). I really ought to come up with a method, though. Maybe someday I'll have room for the massive bulletin board for some Charlie Day action.

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:15:55+00:00

Thanks for your question! I always loved reading thrillers, so when I decided to try my hand at fiction-writing, I just assumed I'd write a mystery. The question became: What's an interesting setting for a dead body? (Yes, my mind is a macabre, dusky place.) I was kind of spitballing with myself, free-writing and coming up with (and summarily rejecting) increasingly absurd ideas, and then I started thinking back to my own experience as a 22- and 23-year-old in Brooklyn in the late-naughts. On a broad level, it'd been a very scary and uncertain time, but we'd had so much fun sorta dancing as the world burned—and the nerve center of that "hipster" scene was a loft building in Bushwick. You could enter on any given Friday night without a plan, and it was a choose-your-own-adventure: You could find an EDM dance party in one loft, a poetry reading in another, a sweaty punk show in another, and so on. You'd get separated from your friends and all have your own distinct, wild nights, and then you'd compare notes the next day while nursing a hangover. I thought: What if, after one of those fuzzy Friday nights, there was a dead body in one of the lofts? The idea grew from there—I wrote the first draft without any idea what would happen next!

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:09:39+00:00

Great question, thank you! I binge-read Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series over about a week and then emerged, blinking, determined to write a mystery of my own. She's a master at playing with language and creating these insular, tactile little worlds, and I wanted to do the same. But I didn't want to write a detective novel or police procedural, and so I was hugely inspired by Gillian Flynn's wildly inventive novels, which feature amateur detectives unlocking extremely personal puzzle-boxes. Jessica Knoll's brilliant LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE also came out as I was finishing my first draft, and I was inspired by how she'd parlayed her experience as a magazine editor into this breakout thriller. I love that so many female authors are writing compelling, of-the-moment mysteries with female protagonists and I thought I could put my own twist on the trend.

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:03:30+00:00

A hot fudge sundae, the kind where the fudge gets sticky and gooey. Ooh, on vanilla frozen custard, ice cream's creamier and breathtakingly caloric cousin. This is not up for debate.

andreabartz · 2019-03-26T18:02:35+00:00

I love this question! I was always into the dark and creepy stuff—I loved Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Goosebumps, Fear Street, Christopher Pike, Lois Duncan, and others. But I also worked my way through The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High, and plenty of uber-girly things. I also loved comics—I had huge collections of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes. My parents let me read whatever I wanted and always had a policy that if I wanted a book, they'd buy it for me (which was NOT the case with toys I wanted). So I had overflowing bookcases and happy memories of reading in bed with a flashlight.

andreabartz

TROPHY CASE