Dealing with Deja Vu

Evocative descriptions and strong senses of time and place complement the intricate, intelligent plot, which shocks and chills while thoughtfully examining trauma's toll on people and their relationships.

                     -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I’m so confused. Have you ever had a book mix with reality so much that you can’t untangle which is which? Yeah. That just happened to me.  But in the case of Annie Ward and her  spectacular new Beautiful Bad, it doesn’t matter.  

Here’s what happened. I got her book, instantly sophisticated and riveting, and became immersed in it--in the exotic locales, and the intense psychological drama, and the fear and the politics and the danger –well, all of it. I could just picture it. The setting, the characters, the food, the attitude and the atmosphere. Beautiful Bad is unlike anything I've ever read, and it is terrific. (And soon to be a super-big major motion picture.)

Then Annie sent me the photos of her real life to go with her blog, and I will admit to you I thought—huh? This is EXACTLY how I pictured it all.  How did she get photographs of fictional people? And I realized that her book had taken me so vividly to a time and place that I thought I had actually been there.

Well, as Annie suggests today, maybe I had.

A PLACE THAT FEELS LIKE HOME

                     By Annie Ward

          I spend a lot of time feeling nostalgic for the past. There’s a reason for that. I used to live in some fabulous cities like Los Angeles, New York and Sofia, Bulgaria, the Eastern European capital where my new psychological thriller BEAUTIFUL BAD is partially set.

         And now I live in Kansas. It’s actually very nice, but it’s not--shall we say—all that exciting. So, when I had an opportunity last November to travel with my husband and two boys to a big gathering of old friends and family in Sofia, I jumped right on it. “This is going to be fabulous, kids! You’re going to experience another culture. The food is amazing. You’ll be able to hear your mom speaking another language!”

         As it turns out, if you’re hoping to impress nine and ten year-old boys, there are better ways to do it than giving a taxi driver directions in Bulgarian.

     

    I moved to Sofia when I was twenty-six because of a relationship.  That love story fizzled out quickly but I ended up staying five years because I found interesting work as a travel journalist and screenwriter. Also, it was cheap, fun and intriguing.

As I prepped for the “big return to Bulgaria” I daydreamed about my old friends and adventures and worked myself up into a tizzy of excitement and great expectations.  

I knew better than to think going back to Sofia twenty years later with my kids was going to be all-night parties at discos, running to catch trains to obscure mountain villages and intense discussions about culture, politics and religion. I did, however, think that my kids would be awe-struck by the vast difference between our sleepy green suburb at home and the gray, stark, palatial enormity of an ancient Eastern European capital. 

When I first moved to Sofia, I remember having a visceral reaction to (just to name a few things) the Communist statues, the Russian and Turkish influences on architecture and the vibrant, succulent taste of the fresh produce from the farmers’ markets. It was as if I’d never tasted a real tomato before in my life.

“Boys,” I demanded while out and about the day after our arrival, “Isn’t that church beautiful? Have you ever tasted such delicious lamb? Isn’t the language interesting to hear?” 

Struggling with jet lag and trying not to yawn, they dutifully confirmed that yes the food was good, yes the building was beautiful and yes the language was certainly weird.

Why were they not falling head over heels in love with this mysterious country, exactly as I had? And then I realized. They were not me; a twenty-six-year-old, heartbroken struggling writer who had found a cosmopolitan city where it was possible to rent a decent apartment for two hundred dollars a month. They weren’t fascinated by the aftermath of Communism and rising ethnic tension in the Balkans as I had been and they had not “discovered” this new world on their own. Bulgaria was my love affair, not theirs.

They were young boys on vacation with mom and dad, far away from their Play Station and friends. They had their whole lives before them. They would make their own discoveries, fall in love with their own exotic lands and find a place as uniquely suited to them as Bulgaria had been for me. I hope and trust that will happen.

My husband is from Liverpool, England. Like the British soldier Ian, who is the center of the dark love triangle in BEAUTIFUL BAD, my husband traveled to many of the captivating locations mentioned in the book such as Cyprus, Rwanda, Greece, Macedonia and Croatia during his military years. However, it was not until he visited my hometown in Kansas that he felt like he could say, “this is where I feel at home.”  He loved the nature, the quiet and the seclusion of my parents’ farm. The next year we moved to Kansas to start a family.

Kansas is where I was born and where I live now, but I will never feel so completely “me” as I did eating, drinking and dancing in a rustic tavern on the mountainside with an elevated view of the chaotic sprawl of Sofia.

Have you ever found a place—a town, city, country or maybe even just a cabin somewhere—where you felt unusually happy and at home? Did you stay and for how long? Did you write about it? Do you miss it? And the strangest question of all… did you ever wonder if there was a reason why you loved a certain place and why it brought on a feeling of deja-vu and comfort… almost as if you may have mysteriously been there before?

HANK: And maybe we have, right? Because we’ve been there in books. Is they’re a place you’ve visited that seemed mysteriously familiar? Or—hey. Let’s talk about déjà vu, too. I know there’s a scientific explanation for it. But has it happened to you? Where, or when?
(And just wondering--have you ever been to Bulgaria?)

And listen to this, Reds and readers: Annie is giving away BEAUTIFUL BAD to two lucky commenters!

BEAUTIFUL BAD

Maddie and Ian's romance began with a chance encounter at a party overseas; he was serving in the British army and she was a travel writer visiting her best friend, Jo. Now almost two decades later, married with a beautiful son, Charlie, they are living a quiet suburban life in Middle America. But when a camping accident leaves Maddie badly scarred, she begins attending writing therapy, where she gradually reveals her fears about Ian's PTSD; her concerns for the safety of their young son, Charlie; and the couple's tangled and tumultuous past with Jo.

From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, sixteen years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 911 call summons the police to the scene of a shocking crime.

ANNIE WARD

Annie received a BA in English Lit with an emphasis in Creative Writing from UCLA and an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. While studying at AFI, she sold her first short screenplay to MTV/ BFCS Productions. Starring Adam Scott, STRANGE HABIT became a Grand Jury Award Winner at the Aspen Film Festival and a Sundance Festival Official Selection.

After film school, Annie moved to Eastern Europe to work for Fodor Travel Guides, covering regions of Spain and Bulgaria. She remained in Bulgaria for five years spanning a civilian uprising and government overthrow. The novel THE MAKING OF JUNE, which Annie wrote with the Bulgarian revolution and Balkan crisis as its backdrop was sold to Penguin Putnam and published to critical acclaim in 2002.

During Annie’s five years in the Balkans she received a Fulbright Scholarship, taught at the University of Sofia, and script doctored eight screenplays for Nu-Image, an Israeli/American film company that produced a number of projects in Bulgaria for the SyFy Channel. She was later the recipient of an Escape to Create artist residency.

BEAUTIFUL BAD is her debut psychological thriller.

She lives in Kansas with her family.