Q&A With Cate Holahan 

Cate Holahan is a USA Today Bestselling Author of thriller and suspense! Megan Beatie from Megan Beatie Communications was kind enough to arrange this interview with Cate and send me a copy of Cate’s upcoming release The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold which will be available on November 1^st. Cate’s other novels include Her Three Lives, The Widowers Wife, The Lies She Told, as well as Young Rich Widows & its sequel Desperate Deadly Widows which she has co-authored with Kimberly Belle, Layne Fargo, & Vanessa Lille! On top of being an author, Cate is also a screenwriter! 

Q: Welcome to Book Notions Cate! Would you please give a brief description of each of your novels beginning with The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold? 

A: Fortunately, I have loglines for all seven of my solo books and the Young Rich Widows series, which now has three books out. 

The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold: When Alice Ingold, the 19-year-old daughter of a billionaire tech visionary, is abducted, her heiress mother would spend their last dime to save her. But the kidnappers don’t want cash. They want to lead the Alice’s parents and the press on a treasure hunt that will expose her father’s secret agenda for his superintelligent software. And it’s not only Alice’s future that rests on solving the clues, but the world’s.

Dark Turns: When a star dance student at an elite performing arts school is murdered, her young teacher struggles to uncover what happened, finding herself in the cross hairs of ruthlessly competitive young women determined to keep the sordid truth secret. A debut which received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal. 

The Widower’s Wife: In this USA Today Bestselling novel, named one of Kirkus’s Best Books of 2016, a beautiful, Brazilian American housewife goes missing off a cruise ship forcing a numbers-savant insurance investigator to prove whether her disappearance is murder, an accident, or an insurance scheme gone wrong — lest he dole out millions to a killer. 

Lies She Told: In this Book of the Month Club pick, named to Kirkus’s Best Books of 2017, a struggling female writer’s latest work in progress reveals clues about a murder in her very real life, making her question what’s fiction and what’s fact. If she doesn’t figure it out before her book deadline, her novel’s last chapter may also be the end for her. 

One Little Secret: Everyone has a secret. For some, it’s worth dying to protect. For others, it’s worth killing. When a murder in New York’s Hamptons implicates the area’s small, historically Black beach community, the local police force’s sole female officer — and single African American detective — must uncover the twisty secrets of everyone in the dead woman’s vacation house to find the killer before an innocent person takes the fall – in more ways than one. 

Her Three Lives: In this Good Morning America pick psychological thriller an interracial, intergenerational couple must determine who the real enemy is after a brutal home invasion inflames racial stereotypes and distrust, threatening both their relationship and their lives. 

The Darkness of Others: When her best friend goes missing after being accused of murdering her husband during Covid lockdown, a psychologist sets off to find out what really happened, risking her own life and personal relationships. 

Young Rich Widows: When the four partners of a prominent law firm are killed in a mysterious plane crash, their widows – who have every reason to hate one another – must come together to uncover the truth and find the location of the mob’s missing millions. A number one bestselling Audible thriller set in the neon-drenched 1980s, now out in paperback.

Desperate Deadly Widows: The second installment of the #1 bestselling Audible series tests the widows forged-from-disaster alliance as the one of them is accused of murdering the mayor of Providence and must work with the others to clear her name, lest they all lose everything they’ve built since their shared tragedy. 

Wicked Wanted Widows: When one of the widows is kidnapped during a bank robbery, the other three do everything they can to save their friend, finding themselves entangled in a longstanding beef between rival criminal organizations, on the wrong side of the law, and possibly on the wrong side of right as the thieves’ motivations come to light. 

Q: Do your ideas for your novels come to you unexpectedly or do you think ahead of time about what stories you want to tell?

A: I write from a place of anxiety. Things in the world worry me and my way of processing that is to tackle it through characters confronting those issues. In Dark Turns, I was pregnant and concerned about the kind of person I would bring into the world and what they would have to face in an increasingly competitive landscape. For The Widower’s Wife, I worried about the aftermath of the financial crisis and what would happen if we lost everything. How far would someone go to hold onto the life and lifestyle they’d built? Lies She Told isn’t based on me, but it is about a writer grappling with the same question you asked: where do my ideas come from and how much of my work is fueled by my subconscious picking apart my own fears and traumas? 

This is particularly true in my latest book, The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold. My daughters are teenagers now, gearing up to pick educational disciplines and trying to decide how they can best contribute to society while financially supporting themselves. I’m concerned about the impact of super intelligent software on their future employment and whether I’m guiding them correctly for what lies ahead. I also fear the misinformation that can be spread thanks to convincing AI-created news, images, and videos. And, of course, any parents’ worst fear is that their child will be kidnapped. So, though I don’ t have the money of the mom character in my book, I can relate to her anguish over not being able to protect her child and her fierce desire to get her back.

Q: What do you enjoy the most about writing suspense?  

A: I love planning the reveals to create maximum tension. It forces me to think of the reader and what they would believe given the details I’d included up to a point and then work to slowly change their perspective until they can, hopefully, figure out where I’m going just as I’m about to disclose it. It’s designing a puzzle with words. 

Q: You co-authored Young Rich Widows & its sequel Desperate Deadly Widows with Kimberly Belle, Layne Fargo, & Vanessa Lile! What was co-authoring both books with Kimberly, Layne & Vanessa? What is your advice on co-authoring novels with someone or multiple people whether it’s with family, friends or a spouse?

A: Writing with other talented people is the best! You get to bounce ideas off each other and listen to different takes on character arcs and plot. I might think that the reader in my head is sufficiently confused by something and someone else believes the reader will get it too early, and then we talk about that. I really do believe that, provided you’re in a collaboration where everyone respects each other’s talent and artistry, you get amazing results!

Q: Has screenwriting helped with writing your books or the other way around? What is your advice for anyone wanting to do both?

A: When I studied dramatic writing at Tisch for my MFA, I was instructed to always focus on what the characters want out of every scene. What are the unique desires driving the dialogue? Does a character want to avoid conflict at all costs? Is he or she trying to cover something up? Convince someone of something? And is that something true in their mind or false? 

Screenwriting really encourages you to always be thinking of what each character wants out of an interaction and how they would go about getting their desired outcome given their unique perspective, personality, and history of dealing with conflicts. It also encourages you to always make characters want different things in order to keep scenes dynamic. I definitely bring that understanding from screenwriting to my novels. 

Q: Since you are a screenwriter, have you written screenplays for any of your books and does Hollywood have the rights to them? 

A: I have adapted some of my work and written original screenplays that were inspired by some of my novels. When I wrote Deadly Estate, which aired in 2023 on Tubi, that leaned on some ideas and themes around wealth and privilege that stemmed from Her Three Lives. Of course, there are completely different settings, characters, and a unique plot in that movie. I also wrote Midnight Hustle, a movie that takes place in a strip club which drew a bit on some of what I learned about dance from Dark Turns. Currently, a screenplay that I wrote for Lies She Told is being shopped by Happy Accidents, Holly Hines and Eric Jarboe’s company. Holly is perhaps best known as the force behind the number one series Ginny and Georgia. Young Rich Widows was optioned by Amazon Studios, and there will be some exciting announcements coming out about that soon. I’ve written a pilot and show bible for One Little Secret that is making the rounds. At one point, I pitched that package to Starz with Lionsgate and 3Arts involved. I’ve also written a screenplay for Last Looks, my book that will come out next year from Thomas & Mercer, which I’m pitching next month and is being shopped by my agents at WME. 

Q: I saw on your Amazon bio that you have another Suspense novel titled Last Looks coming out in 2026. Can you reveal some details about it? Are you also co-authoring with Kimberly, Layne & Vanessa or are you too busy right now? 

A: Kim, Vanessa and I are writing the fourth installment of the Young Rich Widows series early next year. Krystle is getting married and it’s going to be a big, fat mess of a Sicilian wedding. We’re so excited! 

Last Looks’s logline is. Single White Female meets Personal Shopper in this film about a young NYC stylist who travels to work in Paris with her fiancé only to find that her older, rich client wants more than her style. She wants the woman’s Instagram perfect life.

Q: I saw in a past life that you were a journalist & tv producer who wrote for BusinessWeek Magazine, New Jersey’s The Record Newspaper, The Boston Globe, MSN Money and CNBC. What was that experience like? Would you ever go back to journalism and TV production? 

A: I’ve always loved writing, and journalism was a great way to get paid regularly for that. The best part of my former career was interviewing people whom I’d never have had access to otherwise. I’ve spoken with Jeff Bezos for MSN Money, Elon Musk for a leadership series on CNBC, Meg Whitman at BusinessWeek, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson etc. Getting to meet these game changers and ask questions about their leadership style, their visions for the future, what they would say to critics of their varied decisions was thrilling, as much as it was difficult. It’s hard to ask somewhat combative questions with people who are very media-trained and intimidating, especially to me in my twenties. I did my best. I certainly learned a lot when working as a journalist. Every day was an opportunity to delve deeply into an issue and talk to the major stakeholders and leaders in the space in order to give readers a better sense of what was going on and the possible consequences of particular actions. I think the mission of journalists to present the facts and unveil how leaders’ choices might impact them is important and honorable. Would I go back? Maybe after my kids are fully grown. The breaking news schedule didn’t allow me flexibility, to be the kind of mom that I wanted to be. I also was very passionate about telling my own stories where I could convey truth in a different way. 

Q: Congratulations on Her Three Lives, becoming a Good Morning America book club selection! Did it feel so surreal having one of your books become a Good Morning America, Book club pic? What was it like meeting the news hosts of Good Morning America? 

A: Unfortunately, when that happened, I didn’t get to meet the GMA hosts. There was major breaking news, and I was bumped. As a former TV producer, I know it happens. I did get to see the book cover on the show and read about it on GMA’s site, so that was cool. I’d been on GMA before in college, singing with my a cappella group, The Princeton Tigerlilies. I’d hoped to come back. With luck, I’ll be able to get into the studio for a future book.