Q&A WITH SONYA BATEMAN
Brief intro about yourself
Hi, my name is Sonya, and I’m an author. It’s taken me a long time to call myself that! I’ve always been a reader and a writer. Books have been my preferred form of entertainment/escape since I was a kid who preferred climbing trees or sneaking out on roofs to read in peace over riding bikes or playing tag. I even wrote my first completed, original work at a summer program when I was six — a two-stanza poem about butterflies, and I still remember every word of it.
I wrote my first actual novel the summer when my son was two (he’s twenty-eight now, so according to the math, that was . . . a long time ago). I remember having a sort of epiphany, realizing all those books I loved were created by real people, and some of those people got to make books all the time, because it was their job. How magical!
I was thrilled when Joffe Books showed interest in my work, loving the idea of an independent publisher who specializes in my genre, and it has been wonderful so far. I feel like I’m reaching the goals I set out to achieve all those years ago when I was scribbling away in notebooks in my back yard.
Hi, my name is Sonya, and I’m (finally!) an author.
What kind of thrillers do you love?
It’s probably obvious that psychological thrillers are my favorite. I love books with complex characters that keep me guessing, where multiple plot threads are happening that build on each other — so when one thing gets resolved in an unexpected way, it only adds more questions to the main mystery. Those are the kinds of books I try to write as well. The more surprises that tie into each other in the end, the better.
What are you currently reading?
Right now, I’m reading The Lies You Wrote by Brianna Labuskes on my Kindle and have the sequel, The Truth You Told, keyed up next. Loving it so far.
Describe your novel in three words
One wild ride.
What's the most interesting thing you had to research for this novel?
It was both fascinating and disturbing to learn more about sleep paralysis, which my main character suffers from. I’d seen it depicted and dramatized in movies (the best example I can recall is in Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, an absolutely exceptional limited-run series if you haven’t seen it) but my research led me to explore real-life accounts of the condition. It was shocking to find that real sleep paralysis is just as scary as it is in films — and that there is no cure!
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