Guest Post: A Suspense Writer’s Lessons from Quarantine

I’m thrilled to welcome author Danielle Girard to Colloquium for the first time! I only recently added Danielle’s books to my personal library. It’s very exciting not only to discover a new author, but to also enjoy their writing for the first time. I recently had that experience when I devoured White Out in a single day. Afterward, I found myself wondering why I had not previously been aware of Danielle’s books. No matter. I am now a fan, and will be reading her previous books, as well as subsequent volumes in her Badlands Thriller series. Far Gone is scheduled to be released in 2021.

White Out is the first installment. It features Kylie Milliard, the only detective on the police force in the little town of Hagen, North Dakota. She dreams of landing a job as a detective with the larger Fargo, North Dakota police force.

The story opens with a harrowing motor vehicle crash on an icy road outside Hagen. Lily Baker survives the accident, but when she regains consciousness she has no idea who she is or why she was a passenger in the car on that highway. But she recalls scattered Bible verses and an image of a man lying in a pool of blood.

On the same night, a young woman is murdered and her body tossed in a dumpster behind a bar in Hagen. Kylie doesn’t immediately recognize the victim, but soon discovers that she and Lily share a dark past. Lily and Kylie both want answers.

As the only detective and a woman working with a mostly male group of police officers, Kylie has to play by the book. Lily needs to stay safe. But the more Lily learns about her identity, the more she fears the truth.

Danielle, the award-winning author of fourteen novels, shares how she has coped with life during a pandemic.

A Suspense Writer’s Lessons from Quarantine

by
Danielle Girard

In many ways, my quarantine life has been very much like my regular life. I work alone, in the basement of my home. When I’m under deadline (as I am now), I’m often here seven days a week, lost in my own head, leaving only for food and fresh air. The outward differences in quarantine life are also abundant. First, my house is fuller than normal as my college age child is home and my high school age one no longer going to school. My husband, too, is home. That is a lot of people in the house . . . a lot of people who don’t really understand the idea of a writer’s flow or how that delicate concentration can be broken as easily as a spider’s web.

On a deeper level, the existence of COVID-19 has saturated our world with a new level of anxiety. Rather than only writing about fear, I’m also feeling it in a tremendous and continuous way. Stories I’ve always gravitated to for their fast-paced, high stakes rush have occasionally been too much these days. I have read more young adult fiction than before, carefully avoiding dystopia which seems all too real at the moment.

In the end, though, the shift in my reading was like a pendulum, our situation pushing me away from my center. And slowly, I am returning to the books I’ve always loved, the ones about normal people in extraordinary situations. I may even love these more than ever because this is what we’re each experiencing now as never before.

We are teaching our own children math and science while working full-time, managing the stresses of how long this will last, what normal will look like afterward, while we continue day by day. At their core, my books have always centered on a character’s personal journey, in a thriller setting. The isolation of “social distancing” has only reinforced for me that what I want to write about — what I want to read about — is normal people in extraordinary circumstances.

Meet Danielle

Danielle grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and says she has “imagined monsters in the corner for as long as I can remember.” Her imagination has made her a USA Today and Amazon number one bestselling author.

Prior to launching her Badlands Thriller series with White Out, Danielle penned thirteen novels. Four of them, Exhume, Excise, Expose, and Expire, feature Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman, the medical examiner for the San Francisco Police Department who works with homicide detective Hal Harris. Dr. Schwatzman discovers the tales the dead can’t tell about their final moments. Her job gives her purpose and keeps her safe from her abusive former husband.

Dead Center, One Clean Shot, and Dark Passage make up The Rookie Club series about female rookie San Francisco police officers at a time when the department was predominantly male. As the women promote, they remain close and support each other.

Danielle has also published four stand-alone novels: Savage Art, Ruthless Game, Chasing Darkness, and Cold Silence.

Danielle and family her split their time between San Francisco and the northern Rockies of Montana.

Connect with Danielle on her website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, BookBub, or Goodreads.

Thank you, Danielle!

Click here to read my review of White Out!