We were very excited to recently chat with accomplished author Joanne McLaughlin. Joanne is the author of several novels. Her newest novel, Chasing Ashes, hit bookshelves in 2023, and we had a great conversation about her career and this novel.
Chasing Ashes can be purchased directly from AMAZON
You can also read our review of Chasing Ashes HERE
Thriller Magazine: Chasing Ashes tackles deeply emotional and suspenseful themes. What inspired you to start writing in the mystery genre, and how has your approach to storytelling evolved over the years?
Mystery was my first genre love. I moved from Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Donna Parker books for young girls to Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell and Sara Paretsky, among others. So when I first contemplated writing a novel, it was going to be a mystery, of course. I loved the idea of setting the pieces of a plot out there for readers to assemble.
Writing, like life, doesn’t always follow a straight line, however. Chasing Ashes is a perfect example, because three main characters had their origin in my first attempt at a novel, written when I was in my late 20s. The story was terrible and my agent had no takers for it, but something about the characters stuck with me. I resurrected them about a dozen years later, recombined relationships and plot lines, but still wasn’t happy with the story and stuck the manuscript in a box for another fifteen years.
What emerged after decades ultimately became Chasing Ashes. During all those years, I had become more comfortable with the characters, more convinced that I knew who they were. Once we were well acquainted, a new plot took form around them. What also occurred in the meantime? I attended many fiction-writing workshops with Philadelphia’s celebrated Rittenhouse Writers’ Group. And I wrote three darkly romantic novels (Never Before Noon, Never Until Now, and Never More Human) that alternated point of view in each chapter as I built the story of a dysfunctional vampire family. As each of those novels was published, I became more confident that I had found a storytelling technique that worked for me.
Thriller Magazine: Your work weaves together complex characters and intricate plots. Can you share what your writing process looks like, particularly when balancing multiple timelines and perspectives?
I’m not someone who outlines. I’m a writer who has an idea that leads to another idea that leads to another idea and then, with luck, I eventually have enough of a plot foundation that I can build a novel.
With Chasing Ashes, I knew I wanted to tell the story primarily from the perspective of Laura Cunningham, since the 2016 launch of her true-crime book about the fatal 1992 Challenge Fire kicks off the action. Because the disappearance of her friend Kate McDonald after the fire has colored Laura’s entire adult life, including her career and her relationships with the fathers of her two sons, it was important to me that the reader live inside Laura’s head during as much of Chasing Ashes as possible.
But the very fact that she has two sons, a 15-year-old from her first marriage and an 8-year-old from her second, meant that Laura would not be free to just rush around trying to follow any new leads that materialized as a result of her book. So, I decided that quite a few chapters would be told from the perspective of Nick Fabrizzio, Laura’s first husband, who had been the primary police investigator of the Challenge Fire in 1992 and who also knew Laura’s vanished friend well. Publication of Laura’s book drags Nick back into the investigation, whether he likes it or not.
To avoid head-hopping between Laura’s and Nick’s points of view, I used a variation on the technique employed in my vampire trilogy, writing Laura’s chapters in first person and Nick’s in a close third person. My editors and I decided to label each chapter by point of view, date and location, to keep things clearer for the reader. We broke several longer chapters into shorter ones, again to help the reader.
Thriller Magazine: Kate McDonald is such a powerful and tragic figure. What inspired her character, and how did you approach writing her journey, especially her use of assistive technology to communicate?
That really bad first novel I wrote in my 20s was terrible largely because it was written too journalistically (I was a journalist, so duh) and because I dug myself into a plot hole I never fully escaped. Kate was the protagonist of that book, an impulsive young woman driven to right a wrong who then gets swept up by events she can’t control. When I sat down years later to craft the story that became Chasing Ashes, I wanted Kate to still be that woman. But I wanted her to be confronted not only by daunting circumstances, but also by daunting choices.
A relative of mine who was suffering from a relentless health condition got me thinking about the curves life can throw us. I liked the idea of Kate throwing back a few curveballs of her own and realizing the ways in which she still has some agency.
Anyone researching assistive technology is blessed with volumes of available material to consider. Once I decided what my plot required, I wanted to present plausible communication scenarios and keep things as simple as I could—for myself and the reader. Coming into the subject cold and taking away what my layperson’s brain could absorb, I found that a lot of what I read dealt with the quantity of communication any given assistive technology enabled, rather than the quality of it—what I came to think of as measurements of typed characters per minute rather than conveyed thoughts and the toll that expressing them might take on an individual. Obviously, my perspective was vastly different from that of the amazing scientists doing the very hard work to achieve what assistive technology has achieved.
So I imagined a continuum of assistive communication, with Stephen Hawking, the brilliant physicist who died while I was working on Chasing Ashes, at one extreme and someone with no access to technology at the other.
I wanted Kate to move toward the Hawking end of that continuum as the plot of Chasing Ashes progressed. That’s why the curveballs she throws early on are largely nonverbal.
Thriller Magazine: The novel explores heavy themes like trauma, guilt, and resilience. What was the most challenging part of writing these elements, and how did you ensure they were handled sensitively?
As a writer, I am drawn to the idea that even the simplest action or decision can have enormous unforeseen consequences, as well as to the notion that inaction or indecision can have the same impact. That “What if?” question hangs out there for Laura and Nick to pick apart from all angles, from the initial Challenge Fire investigation to the new leads they pursue. For the consequences to be real, the relationships in Chasing Ashes had to be realistic. The characters had to be human, with everyday concerns—child rearing, marital problems, job issues—filling up the spaces in their heads and hearts as they coped with the heavy stuff. I gave them lots to juggle, because that’s how life is.
I like to think I handled trauma and guilt and resilience sensitively because I drew on personal experience and the experiences of those close to me. Characters in Chasing Ashes embody the traits of many people; they are composites of strengths and weaknesses, struggles and triumphs. Ensuring sensitivity is an ideal I aspired to, but only my readers can say whether I achieved it.
Thriller Magazine: Chasing Ashes features vivid, emotionally charged settings—from the snowy highways of Connecticut to the eerie ruins of The Challenge. How do you approach crafting such atmospheric scenes, and do you have a favorite setting in the novel?
I’m no artist, but I am a fairly visual person. Maybe because I watched a lot of old movies as a child, I tend to envision scenes taking place in settings that look a specific way.
When I knew the Challenge would be a residential counseling center located in a converted commercial barn, I searched the internet for such buildings until I found the architecture I had in mind. In decades as a journalist, first as a reporter and then as an editor, I drove in all sorts of miserable weather on back roads and main streets and highways, so that was literary muscle memory. Where it’s possible for me to recreate something I know as a setting, I do that. It may not be real, but it’s realistic.
My favorite setting in the novel is Christine’s Diner and the garage behind it and the grounds and road surrounding it.
Thriller Magazine: The mystery unfolds over decades, requiring flashbacks and multiple timelines. What were the biggest challenges in structuring the story, and how did you ensure clarity and engagement for the reader?
To make the events of 1992 come to life in a story taking place in 2016, I had to figure out a way to weave the past into the present. Laura describes Bloodstrains, her book about the Challenge Fire and its aftermath, as consisting of journals, official reports and documents, and unofficial conjecture. So I decided to “recreate” some of those materials, as well as some scenes depicting 1992 conversations and experiences involving Laura and Kate, or Nick and Kate, or Nick and Laura. I dropped those “recreations” into the real-time 2016 narrative wherever they best explained some aspect of the story, rather than going for a strict chronology. Thus, the flashbacks bounce back and forth in time, as well.
The flashbacks also are there to help establish the missing Kate McDonald as a character—letting the reader know what kind of young woman she was, what was important to her, and who was important to her. It’s difficult to justify Laura’s quest if the reader doesn’t understand her friendship with Kate from childhood through college.
Mostly, I sketched out the flashback scenes first, then rewrote them once I had momentum on the “real-time” story. I moved them around a few times before I was satisfied with where they appeared.
Thriller Magazine: Your villain is a chilling antagonist. What was your process for creating a villain whose presence looms so large, even in scenes where he is physically absent?
I knew that I wanted what he did to be so despicable that why becomes almost beside the point. It’s only as Laura’s book brings certain new information to light that we have any sense of his initial motives.
I imagined my villain as less a Hannibal Lecter than an evil MacGyver, someone who works with what falls into his lap and seizes opportunities rather than plans his every move. A single decision or action would come to have enormous consequences, with the unexpected leading to an advantage he exploits for years. The open-ended question is what else he might have done. Who else might he have harmed?