Q&A With Jenna Blum 

This past weekend I sped through Jenna Blum’s who done it mystery debut, Murder Your Darlings which came out on January 13^th and is available wherever you get your books! Jenna’s other books are historical fiction novels Those Who Save Us, The Storm Chasers, & The Lost Family. Jenna also has memoir titled Woodrow On The Bench. 

Q: Welcome to Book Notions Jenna! Would you please give a brief description of each of your books starting with your new release Murder Your Darlings? 

A: Thank you for having me! And sure. 

Murder Your Darlings is my fifth book and first thriller. It’s about a mid-career female author, Sam Vetiver, whose sales and inspiration are both lackluster, and she’s also a year out of a divorce, so as she comes off tour for her fourth book, she surprises herself by thinking: I’d give this all up if only I had somebody to share my life with. Lo and behold, she receives a DM from stratospherically successful, supersexy, Uber-charming novelist William Corwyn, inviting her to dinner when he’s on his own new book tour. Sam and William start a romance fueled by their mutual literary understanding and insane chemistry…and when bodies start to pile up around them, Sam, who comes from a trauma background and doesn’t trust her own instincts, has to ask: Is William everything he seems? Or are the deaths caused by one of his numerous female stalkers, including a very determined bookseller stalker named The Rabbit….

Woodrow on the Bench is my memoir about my beloved black Lab Woodrow and the last seven months of his life, when we sat on the bench across the street from my Boston apartment and a whole community of friends and strangers grew up around us—a testament to the power of a senior dog to bring people together.

The Lost Family is about a Holocaust survivor, Peter Rashkin, who builds a successful new life and family in America only to find that he, and they, are haunted by the family he lost during the war. 

The Stormchasers is about a pair of boy-girl twins; the brother, Charles, is bipolar and his sister Karena is not, and Charles chases storms when he’s manic, while Karena chases him and tries to prevent him from doing more damage to himself and others, including her. 

Those Who Save Us is about a German woman who becomes the mistress of an SS officer to save herself and her little daughter when she’s caught in the Resistance in Weimar, Germany during WWII and the daughter’s quest 50 years later to find out what the mom did to save them both, since the mom will never talk about it.

I am also the author of audio course “The Writer at Work: The Art of Writing Fiction” and original WWII podcast “The Key Of Love.”

Whew!

Q: It’s been years since I read Those Who Save Us but I remember enjoying it! How long does it take you to research history for your historical fiction novels before you sit down and write them? Do you ever fall into a research rabbit hole?  

A: It takes me ten years to research my historical novels—not kidding! For Those Who Save Us I read everything I could find about the Holocaust—there was almost nothing from the point of view of German women, a major oversight for historians and people seeking to understand how the Holocaust happened—and I learned German, listened to German music, watched German movies, baked everything that appears in the novel (which is set half in a bakery!), interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and, for a brief period of insanity, while I was writing Anna, the protagonist, I dressed like a German woman circa 1943, in a dirndl skirt and braids and clogs. I am a method researcher! So yes, perhaps a small rabbit hole, haha.

It’s imperative that I know the circumstances my characters live in so I can recreate the full-body and -mind and -soul experience for my readers. It’s an immersion process, like literary VR.

Q: Where did the idea for Murder Your Darlings come from? Did you find the transition of writing historical fiction to the mystery genre a difficult transition or an easy one? Why or why not? 

A: I’ve always wanted to write about writers, and many of my favorite novels are about writers, from Harriet the Spy to Stephen King’s Misery, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, and Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife. But I thought somehow it would be cheating, cannibalizing my own life. I was working on an historical novel when the idea for Darlings started creeping in, and at that time I read Jean Hanff Korelitz’s thriller The Plot, which is so smart about the publishing industry, and I thought, Hey! I called Jean—got her number from a mutual friend, like a creeper—and asked, “Did you get pushback when you switched genres?” She said: “I write what I write and other people market it. You should write what you want.’ So I started working on Darlings, and I loved it. Writing in a genre gives you a plot scaffolding—readers expect bodies, jumpscares, and twists—and that gave me marks to hit, like an actor on a stage. It was MUCH easier than inventing a plot out of thin air, which is what my other novels demanded. Plus I had to do almost NO research for Darlings; I just sat down and unpacked my weird and wonderful writer life, which I’ve been living since I was four. I hope readers love it! 

Q: Without spoiling too much, which scenes did you enjoy creating for Murder Your Darlings? I like how I did not see the twist coming! What I thought I knew wasn’t what I knew and that’s what makes it a good mystery!

A: Thank you! That is EXACTLY what I was aiming for, the twist you know is coming but can’t see around the corner. My job here is done!  

I loved writing ALL the scenes—I think I especially loved writing from The Rabbit’s POV and William’s POV, since they are so different from mine and both of those characters are off the wall. The Rabbit was like sticking my hands into a socket, and William, who’s a classic narcissist, gives the book its dark electricity. I love the scene when he’s toying with Sam from a kayak after they’ve had a fight, and when he stalks her when she’s visiting her ex-husband, and when he goes to their publishing house to try and discredit her. Oh, and when he’s wooing a woman with 19 cats. He’s so “deliciously vile,” as one reader told me, that he cracks me up. I loved ALL the Rabbits. And I love Sam’s writing workshop, Chapter 14, “A Cocktail of Novelists,” as well as the whole ending, which was like a luge downhill. 

Q: What are some themes, lessons & reminders, if any, you hope readers walk away with once they finish reading Murder Your Darlings or any of your other books? For Murder Your Darlings I was reminded of something but without spoiling too much, that things and people aren’t always what they seem… 

A: At its dark and tender heart, Darlings is about the perfectly awful and toxic dance between codependency (Sam) and narcissism (William), and the question the book raises, as Sam asks herself all along, is: Why does a person with many gifts in her life stay in a relationship that, as you say, may or may not be what it seems? And why double down when it turns out to be sketchy and scary? Sam is basically a model for somebody who wants to step outside of her own pattern and how hard it is to do this—the book asks, CAN you do this? And at what cost?
Like all my books, Darlings is about surviving trauma and what you learn in the aftermath. 

Q: Is your next novel another mystery or is it another historical fiction? If it’s not too early, can you reveal any details? 

A: I have three thriller ideas rolling around in my head like marbles, and that’s all I can say for now! I like the dark side. I’ll be staying here. 

Q: Does Hollywood have the rights to any of your books yet? Who would be your dream cast to portray Sam, William & The Rabbit if/when Murder Your Darlings becomes a series or movie? I wouldn’t mind seeing Neve Campbell or Keira Knightly play Sam. I could see Guy Pearce playing William.
A: Yes! Murder Your Darlings was optioned before it was written, by Rohm Feifer Entertainment, who learned of the project from its Head of Books, literary event host and interviewer Robin Kall Homonoff. Darlings has been adapted to a script that RFE is pitching right now to all studios, so please join me in crossing your fingers! 

Love your casting suggestions! Mine would be: Jon Hamm for William; Reese Witherspoon for Sam (she could also direct!); Megan Stalter (from Hacks) for The Rabbit.

Q: You have a World War II podcast titled The Key Of Love! How did this podcast come about? What is your advice for anyone beginning a podcast? If you like, please post a link to the podcast here! The readers of the blog and I love podcasts! 

A: My dear friend Jane Green, who is also an uber-bestselling novelist, solicited the project, and it was so much fun! It’s about a young chambermaid named Libby who’s working in the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston during WWII, where she falls in love with composer Francis Key, who’s at the hotel to create a new anthem to inspire morale in the troops…and Libby has to choose between Francis and Clancy, her fiancé who’s fighting in Europe.

Emerald Audio produced the podcast with all different actors reading the parts and full sound effects, so it’s a real mind movie. You can find it on any major streaming platform. It’s a delight!

Also please check out my podcast/ company A Mighty Blaze, which has put authors on air since March 2020, when Covid canceled book tours, so they could introduce their new books. We’ve interviewed everyone from John Irving to Jesmyn Ward to Cheryl Strayed to David Duchovny—yes, he writes books! We’re also on every streaming platform, and you can watch the on-camera versions at A Mighty Blaze on YouTube.

Q: Congratulations on being the Top 30 Women Writers for Oprah.com ! What’s it like knowing that Oprah believes you are in the top 30? What is Oprah like?
A: It’s a dream come true! I didn’t meet Oprah, I must confess. Oprah readers bestowed this honor upon me. It’s so often readers who lift writers and their books up…and I believe that’s the way it should be.