The
Kill Club
Wendy
Heard
On Sale Date: December 17, 2019
9780778309031, 0778309037
Trade Paperback
$15.99 USD, $19.99 CAD
Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological
368 pages
Summary:
A
haunting thriller about a woman who attempts to save her brother's life by
making a dangerous pact with a network of vigilantes who've been hunting down
the predators of Los Angeles.
Jazz can’t let her younger brother die.
Their foster mother Carol has always been
fanatical, but with Jazz grown up and out of the house, Carol takes a dangerous
turn that threatens thirteen-year-old Joaquin’s life. Over and over, child
services fails to intervene, and Joaquin is running out of time.
Then Jazz gets a blocked call from someone
offering a solution. There are others like her, people the law has failed.
They’ve formed an underground network of “helpers,” each agreeing to murder the
abuser of another. They're taking back their power and leaving a trail of bodies
throughout Los Angeles—dubbed the Blackbird Killings. If Jazz joins them,
they’ll take care of Carol for good.
All she has to do is kill a stranger.
Jazz soon learns there's more to fear than
getting caught carrying out her assignment. The leader of the club has a zero-tolerance policy for mistakes.
And the punishment for disobeying orders is
death.
Review:
Review to come!
Author
Bio: Wendy Heard, the author of Hunting Annabelle, was born in San Francisco and has lived most of
her life in Los Angeles. When not writing, she can be found hiking the Griffith
Park trails, taking the Metro and then questioning this decision, and haunting
local bookstores.
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Q&A with Wendy Heard
•
Do you plan your books in advance or let them develop as you write?
I plan them for a long time before I
start writing them, and I’m constantly revising my outline, but the plot and
characters do develop quite a bit along the way.
•
What does the act of writing mean to you?
It means everything to me! I have been
writing for a really long time, since childhood. Words and stories have always
been the way I’ve made sense of things. I’m constantly making up narratives for
people and events around me.
•
Have you ever had a character take over a story, and if so, who was it and why?
Jazz held THE KILL CLUB hostage for
months because I couldn’t get her to talk to me! She just kept crossing her
arms across her chest and glaring at me. She did NOT want a book written about
her, and I really needed her inner monologue for that first-person POV!
Eventually, I started mentally arguing with her, and then in fighting with her
and hearing her side, I started to get ALL of her IM. It was an interesting
experience, trying to engage with a character in different ways until they
cracked open.
•
Which one of The Kill Club characters
was the hardest to write and why?
Sofia. Her story is so much like so many
others I’ve known. It’s quietly and invisibly tragic, her pain at the loss of
her child so sharp.
•
Which character in any of your books (The
Kill Club or otherwise) is dearest to you and why?
Jazz! By far, Jazz is my favorite
character. In my mind, she’s kind of the spirit of Los Angeles. She’s been
through so much, and her sense of humor and lack of entitlement gets her
through it all. She just continuously makes the best of every hand she’s dealt,
moves forward, and doesn’t engage in self-pity.
•
Do you have stories on the back burner that are just waiting to be written?
Let me get out my banjo. YES. I have so
many. I have a YA that’s waiting to be written after I finish this current work
in progress, which I’ve stopped and started a bunch of times, really honing the
concept to get it just where I want it. But I’m constantly coming up with book
ideas and having to tell them “not right now, darlings!”
•
What has been the hardest thing about publishing? What has been the most fun?
Publishing is not for the faint of heart.
For me, the beast is always self-doubt, and in a business that is full of
rejection, that can really eat at you. It’s so easy to get out of balance and
give our creative projects the power to define us. It’s important for anyone
selling their art to remember to nurture a healthy life away from it, because
art is a fickle master. It will come and go over your lifetime, and it won’t
always be kind. You have to accept the rules of the game, but you don’t have to
let the game play you.
•
What advice would you give budding authors about publishing?
You’ll hear this a thousand times, and
you won’t believe it, but: the most important thing is writing a good book, and
more than that, the right book. If you let the market and external forces tell
you what to create, you’ll resent and blame them when it doesn’t go well. That
said, keep an eye on the market, find a way to love something you think can
sell, and then put your personal spin on it. No one can tell your story but
you. Prerequisite skills for publishing: The ability to revise without having a
tantrum; an interest in book marketing and publicity; professional written
communication; the ability to hold your freakout moments and vent them far away
from a public or professional setting; an addiction to caffeine. And for God’s
sake, if you’ve been working on something for years and it hasn’t sold and
you’ve revised it forty times, write a new book.
•
What was the last thing you read?
All
Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban. It’s a 2020 book
and has a fascinating timeline craft thing that you’re going to love.
•
Your top five authors?
This is not fair because I have at least
seven thousand favorite authors! How about this--here are some crime fiction
authors doing some innovative things in the genre. Kellye Garrett, who’s doing
sharp-witted, LA-based mysteries and winning a ton of awards. John Vercher, who
talks about social issues while keeping it gritty and plotty. Rachel Howzell
Hall, an LA native who does these rad investigative mysteries. Tori Eldridge
has a recent and very feminist take on the action thriller with her recent The Ninja Daughter, which I highly
recommend. Gabino Iglesias’ award-winning Coyote
Songs is this incredible genre mashup, part folklore, part horror, all
commentary, and I can’t recommend it enough. One more one more. Carmen
Machado’s recent In the Dream House.
It’s memoir told in all different genres, it’s chilling, engrossing, dense, and
fascinating. Did you read Her Body and
Other Parties? Just wow.
•
Book you've bought just for the cover?
Wilder
Girls. Because holy crap.
•
What did you want to be as a child? Was it an author?
I was torn between the visual arts and
writing, and I always vacillated between them. I have a degree in art, and I
wrote a book, then did my painting degree, then wrote some nonfiction, then got
my art teaching credential. I was trying things on for size. I do wish I still
had time for painting. I never intended to abandon it completely in favor of
writing books, but there are only so many hours in the day. I hope to come back
to it in a future existence in which I have some spare time. In the meantime, I
try to write about artists and art as a means of hanging onto it.
•
What does a day in the life of Wendy Heard look like?
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Just
kidding. I wake up at five, do publishing stuff, go to work at my day job, get
my kid, come home, arm-wrestle her into doing homework, go to the gym, etc. On
the weekends I wake up at five (yes I’m serious), write for a few hours, maybe
record or edit an episode of the Unlikeable Female Characters Podcast, and
then, you know, parenting and life stuff. Whenever my daughter is on a playdate
or doing something away from me, I’m writing.
•
What do you use to inspire you when you get Writer’s Block?
I dive into the DMs and torture some
writing friends, make them brainstorm with me until I feel better and I have a
plan. Or I just step away for awhile. I actually have come to trust writer’s
block. If I can’t move forward, I need to stop and consider. There’s something
wrong, and my brain is trying to get me to stop and gather up the threads.
We’re so obsessed with productivity and daily word count, but I actually find I
finish books faster when I don’t force myself to write things I know are wrong
and waste weeks undoing things.
•
What book would you take with you to a desert island?
I have a massive volume that contains all
the Sherlock Holmes stories in one. I’d take one of those collection type of
books. See, it’s technically ONE book.
•
Favorite quote?
“If you work hard enough, you don’t need
luck.” Hell yeah.
•
Coffee or tea?
COFFEE.
•
Best TV or Movie adaptation of a book?
The
Neverending Story.
•
Tell us about what you’re working on now.
I’m doing a final round of revisions on my
2021 YA thriller, She’s Too Pretty to
Burn. It’s loosely based off Dorian Gray and is about a teen photographer
who takes a life-altering picture of her introverted girlfriend, sending them
into a spiral of fame and danger in an underground San Diego art scene. It has
a character who’s basically a fine art Banksy and lots of art crimes.
