Hallie Ephron's YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR launches today!

JENNN MCKINLAY: Hallie, I loved You'll Never Know, Dear!!! The suspense was top-notch, an absolute page turner, but what resonated with me beyond the excellent edge of the seat must know what happens next writing was the complexity of the mother-daughter relationships you drew so well throughout the book.

How did your own life influence the creation of these characters and their relationships?

HALLIE EPHRON: My mother was a complete enigma to me. I hope to my daughters I'm an open book. And yet... I wanted to explore how family "history" often papers over secrets, and kinship is earned, not inherited.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I second the triple exclamation marks!  Readers can tell a Hallie book instantly--they're suspenseful, textured, and a little bit (or more) creepy--in the sense of "what's really going on here?" And we can't wait to find out. Still, this book is somewhat of a departure for you. New suspense territory. Do you feel that way?  If so, why'd you tackle it?

HALLIE: I suppose it IS new in a lot of ways. Setting it in the South felt like stepping off a cliff, but my doll makers who sit out on their porch and sip sweet tea belonged in the South. Library Journal's review called it "A satisfyingly creepy read for fans of Southern Gothic fiction."  Yay!

Another leap: it's about dolls. Learning about dolls and doll making was a fun challenge. And then of course, making it pay off in the plot.

INGRID THOFT: Hallie, this book was so creepy and atmospheric and had such a strong sense of place.  It left me wondering, how did you choose the setting? 

Did you discover the setting first, and then put the story there or was it the other way around?  Did you go to South Carolina to do research?  The dialogue also captured the place with turns of phrase and a cadence that was perfect.  How did you pull that off, being a Bostonian of many years?

HALLIE: Oh, Ingrid! Thank you so much. I really worked at that. Once I realized the story belonged in the South, I picked Beaufort (BUE-fert), South Carolina. I’d been there twice. I wrote half the book, coasting on memory. Then I booked a plane ticket and a room for four nights at an inn (pictured) in the center of the historic district where I imagined my characters lived. I used that house as the neighbor's house in the book.

Beaufort was just as gorgeous as I remembered. Live oaks dripping with Spanish moss line the main streets. It has a spectacular

river-front park and esplanade. Shrimping boats like the one Officer Dan jumped off in Forrest Gump (filmed in Beaufort) chug up and down the river. (That picture is me and shrimper Steve Kerchner, practically a relative.) Anyone walking in the marsh’s thick gooey mud risks having their boots sucked right off their feet. The tide rises and falls 9 feet, so if you get stuck in that mud, you're a goner.

It's the perfect setting for a suspense novel--just the right balance of unique local color and menace.

On the dialogue, I confess I found a series of YouTube videos: Sh%t Southern Women Say. Four Southern babes and they're completely divine. Over the top. I took notes and dialed it back. Thank you, Ladies! I'm a FAN!



DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, I loved this book. I think it's your best yet, and that's saying a lot! So, tell us about the dolls. I don't even like dolls and I was fascinated. I had no idea doll collecting was such a big and complicated thing. And the portrait dolls! Is there really such a thing? How interesting and slightly creepy. Was it the dolls that gave you the idea for the plot, or did mother-daughter-missing sister idea come first? Either way, it's a brilliant combination.

HALLIE: The story was inspired by a chance conversation with an old friend, Mary Alice Gallagher. She told me about having just returned from helping her elderly mother downsize and move out of their family’s North Carolina home. Her mother was a doll maker, and the house had been full of dolls and molds and glazes and paints for making porcelain portrait dolls (there really is such a thing).

Under every bed, Mary Alice found boxes and boxes of doll parts. Legs. Arms. Torsos. Wigs. Eyeballs. And eyeball-less heads.

When I got home, I couldn’t shake that image. From the start, I knew that the story would be about a little girl who disappeared with a unique porcelain portrait doll made for her by her mother. I knew the book would open forty years later when the doll comes back.

It took me a long time to figure out what happened to the little girl, but from day-one I knew that doll parts would provide the key to unlocking the mystery.

LUCY BURDETTE: I've said this before and I'll say it again--one of your very best, Hallie! You've already had lots of great questions asked about this book, so I'm wondering...how do you move from these characters and this complete story to a new book?

It's not like a series, where the writer can say, oh yes, here's where I'm headed next time: This character can become embroiled in an investigation for this reason, and in Hayley's life, this will be going on... How do you make the shift to an entirely new book?? Do you feel finished with these people by the time the plot is wrapped up?

HALLIE: I hate starting over because it's so much easier for me to edit than to write first draft. But i don't feel remotely tempted to pick up my characters where I left off. I'm finished with Lis and Vanessa and Miss Sorrel and they're finished with me.

RHYS BOWEN: Hallie did you grow up loving this edge-of-seat suspense? Which writers influenced you?

HALLIE: I did love Alfred Hitchcock movies. He had a talent for imbuing the everyday with menace. He didn't have dolls in his movies, but here's an odd fact: He gave his star from The Birds Tippi Hedren's 6-year-old daughter (actress Melanie Griffith) the gift of a painfully accurate wax doll figure of her mother in a miniature coffin. That's beyond creepy.

Not nearly as creepy: here's a doll my friend Mary Alice Gallagher's mother made for Mary Alice's daughter, Cate. It's going on book tour with me! So please, come to one of my events and I'll take a picture of us three and post it on Facebook. My events.