Today is publication day for the latest from Andromeda Romano-Lax, a supremely talented writer and lovely human to boot, the latter of which I know because I am lucky enough to have been placed into a writing group with her, thanks to Bianca Mirais, aka the patron saint of The Shit1.
THE DEEPEST LAKE, a smart thriller that has a lot to say about mothers, daughters, spendy writing retreats and charasmatic leaders who sniff out the vulnerable and have their way with them, is Romano-Lax’s first published thriller, but not her first book: her earlier works, including Plum Rains and Annie and the Wolves, are more literary, so THE DEEPEST LAKE marks a sharp departure as far as where it’ll be shelved, though from the start, it’s clear we’re in the deft hands of a pro.
THE DEEPEST LAKE is told from two points of view, and in two timelines: There’s Jules, a twentysomething who interrupts her Central American travels when she lands a gig working for a famed—notorious?—memoirist/grown-up mean girl, Eva, who hosts exclusive writing retreats for women at her Guatemalan estate on the shore of Lake Atitlan; and then there’s Rose, Jules’ mother, who infiltrates one of the writing groups after Jules goes missing. More than missing—she’s declared deceased, claimed by the lake, but Rose can’t accept it, and won’t give up until she finds some answers—or at least some closure. It’s a fast-paced and entertaining ride, but as we watch the two women separately wrangle with the quicksand of Eva’s predatory attentions and the mysteries of the other, we realize Romano-Lax has steered us into deeper waters.
I made Andromeda take some time out from book promo land to answer some Qs about pub date nerves, the poly-genre lifestyle, and what’s next for her. Our interview is below.
This is your--correct me if I have this wrong!!--sixth book! One thing that really stands out about this one is that it marks a pretty significant cross-genre leap. Can you talk about what made you want to try your hand at a thriller specifically? What was different in writing—and publishing—a thriller?
Yes, I made the leap! And I’m so glad I did! I was sitting on a rocky beach in 2019, reading a Lisa Jewell novel, when it hit me that I wanted to write a psychological suspense novel and also move to the island where I was sitting at that moment. In 2020 we bought our current house on an island of four thousand people in rural British Columbia. Moving proved to be easier than jumping genres, at least at first. By mid-2020, I got a new agent, and after many revisions and delays, I sold THE DEEPEST LAKE. But that quick summary does not get across all of the edits and waiting periods, between 2020 and 2023. It felt like an eternal process and I easily wrote a half-million words—several very different drafts with different tones and completely different endings2. Finally, it got boiled down to the present novel. I didn’t resist the feedback and multiple drafts because it felt like an opportunity to learn as much as possible.
I wanted to have fun. I wanted to embrace plot and emotion. I wanted to become a better storyteller. The funny thing about genre (versus more strictly literary) books is they look easier to write, but they can be harder to write and to sell to a publisher. It’s a highly competitive market. I revised THE DEEPEST LAKE far more than any other book I’ve written. You’re dealing with more expectations when it comes to mysteries or thrillers. With literary fiction, there is lots of freedom. In some ways you can hide behind “beautiful language” or rely on readers’ patience or tolerance for muted emotions and ambiguity. But suspense readers aren’t patient. They want to turn the pages; they want to feel; they want to be surprised; they have very definite ideas about endings. You can’t please them all, but it’s interesting to write for readers who know what they want and who have read deeply in the genre.
The book takes place at a memoir-writing retreat in Guatemala, led by a controversial woman who has some... issues with honesty and boundaries (among others)! It's a juicy sendup of a certain type of writing retreat that many of us have probably had brushes with -- what made you think, oooh, a memoir-writing retreat is the perfect place to set a thriller?
This book had multiple origin stories. In terms of the questions at the heart of it—about losing control of our stories and about the damage some charismatic leaders or teachers can do, especially to vulnerable or traumatized women—that has concerned me for years. I never thought of trying to work that into a suspense novel, however. Then I visited Guatemala, Lake Atitlán specifically, and recognized that a writing retreat in this somewhat isolated, magical (and sometimes dangerous) place could provide the kind of intense, claustrophobic atmosphere that I wanted for my first suspense novel.
Another large issue the book grapples with is the complexity of the mother-daughter bond. Rose and Jules are close--in their way, but they are also strangers to each other in many ways. The dual timelines and POVs let the reader into this dissonance in a subtle way -- but can you talk a little bit about the way you see their relationship and what, if anything, you wanted to say about mother-daughter relationships more generally?
In early drafts, Rose and Jules had a more uniformly close and conflict-free relationship. I was—and am—very close to my daughter, about Jules’s age. But let’s be honest. Even close relationships have room for misunderstandings and secrecy. On each new draft, I introduced more of those questions and anxieties: How well do we know our adolescent or young adult children? How well do we know ourselves? Estrangement and loss are deeper fears for me than physical danger. That’s what draws me to psychological suspense.
Any hints about what you're working on now?
DEEPEST LAKE is about a mother trying to uncover the truth about the death of her daughter. My next suspense novel, WHAT BOYS LEARN, is about a mother grappling with the possibility that her sixteen-year-old son may be implicated in crimes involving two classmates. In this way, they’re both “worst case scenarios” for a mom; in one, a child is a victim, in the other, a child is the potential aggressor. It’s been interesting to write these back-to-back, to think about the messages we send young women versus young men, and the things we know and don’t want to know about our daughters and sons.
How’s it been in the days leading up to Pub Day?
I’m trying to tell people about my book—Pssst, there’s a giveaway at Goodreads!—without seeming too shouty. But seriously, this book launch is different from my last one in 2021 (Annie and the Wolves) because we have the opportunity for more IRL events. I recently attended a conference called Left Coast Crime in Seattle and I am very excited to attend a big readers’ festival in Columbus, Ohio in July. Online, I’ll be doing fewer events than I did in 2021. I’m facing the fact that our world is changing faster and faster, and every year and every book will be different. Platforms change, new technologies arise, politics vie for readers’ attention. It’s astonishing how nimble we authors are expected to be. My own strategy at the moment is to take on things that nourish me, like my suspense fiction newsletter and author newsletter, which I enjoy, and podcasting in the near future, because I have some audio companion projects that fit and it will be fun to learn new tricks!
Interested? You should be! Grab your copy of THE DEEPEST LAKE here.
Check out Andromeda’s author newsletter here, and her suspense-writing substack here.
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing is a hugely popular podcast that came to being sometime around early COVID, when we were all losing our proverbial shit. (Or I was, anyway. Walks with TSNOTYAW in my earbuds saved me.) When the podcast was in its early days, host Mirais offered a critique group match-up, and I struck gold with mine!
Dear Reader: I got to read so many of these words for critique! How fun is that?