Michelle Berry gives a glimpse inside the creative process behind her next M.S. Berry thriller, Behind the Door!
Behind the Door is filled with secrets. What is it about a secret that makes such a great starting point for a thriller?
M.S. Berry: Secrets are one of the best ways to pause self gratification. If you drop a clue or a hint at the very beginning of a novel the reader has no alternative but to search the whole novel for the answer. So starting a novel with a secret—a locked door—hooks your reader right away. It’s the perfect way to begin a book or a movie or, really, any kind of story. A secret always makes me want to write too, because even as the writer I need to be excited to find out what happens at the end.
One of the settings in Behind the Door is a quirky bookstore. How has your time as a bookseller influenced this setting? Did you enjoy revisiting that environment?
M.S. Berry: I had a lot of fun writing the bookstore scenes in Behind the Door. I owned my own bookstore, Hunter Street Books, for 5 years and often feel like I have several books waiting to be written about it. Bookstores as a topic are fascinating. Many people dream of owning a bookstore, but the reality is often quite different than what you’d imagine. Retail in general is a hard business. There are delights, of course, but there are also the days you spend continually mopping the snow sludge and stopping that child from ripping that book and dealing with an angry customer who assumed you’d have the one book he wants in stock and catching the flu from another customer. In Behind the Door Anna works in a strange old bookstore and deals with things like no cash register, change or ability to take credit cards. She has no useable bathroom and there is no order to the shelving of the books. She spends the days not being able to find where any book is located and even what books are actually in the store. She is lonely and bored. I will, of course, also someday write a book about how amazing it can be to work at a bookstore.
The old bookseller joke “I don’t know the title, but it’s ‘blue’” —did that play (a little bit) into the cover colour choice for Behind the Door?
M.S. Berry: I like this question. There were many times people would come into my store and say, “it has a rabbit on the cover” or “it’s a sky blue colour” and I’d have to try to be a detective and find the book they were looking for. And now that you ask this question it gives me hope that someday someone will go into a store and say, “I’m looking for a recent thriller with a red cover,” or “there’s this book about a locked door with a blue cover” and the bookstore worker will pass them my book. I love the concept of all my books having lovely, sharp, solid colours on their covers. I hope green is next.
Turnstone Press Ltd.
