What We're Writing--Hank has a tease for you

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Okay, darling ones. Here we go.

I am SO thrilled with the reception for the trade paperback of THE MURDER LIST.  I've been on tour (you know me) and here it is in the Tucson Airport Hudson Books. How much do we love Hudson Books? 

But. What comes next? 

First: question for you. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be someone else? Like—totally start over. No one knew who you were, before. No baggage, no history, just a totally new you.

I started thinking about that. What if you moved to a new place? Started over? What part of your history would you jettison? What would you keep? How would you change? And what if it changing who you were—could get you what you want?

And I thought—I could write a book about that. About—identity theft. But what if you are stealing your own identity? And then making a new one?

So I wrote a little tease.

We all have our reasons for being who we are―but what if being someone else could get you what you want?

After a devastating betrayal, a young woman sets off on an obsessive path to justice, no matter what dark family secrets are revealed. What she doesn’t know―she isn’t the only one plotting her revenge.

An affluent daughter of privilege. A glamorous manipulative wannabe. A determined reporter, in too deep. A grieving widow who must choose her new reality. Who will be the first to lie? And when the stakes are life and death, do a few lies really matter?

And that became: THE FIRST TO LIE. Soon, there will be a final cover.  (But HOW great is this one? I am in love with it.) And soon there will be advance review copies. 

But you, my darling ones, can read the first page and a half right now. (This is from an early typeset version, and that’s why the design marks.)

Chapter 1

Nora

Lies have a complicated half-life. Nora—for now—tried to calculate the life span of her most recent one as she waited on the corner of Tremont and Union Park, the evening’s first snowflakes beginning to accumulate on her new—to her—black cashmere coat. Boston was new to her too, with its treacherous weather and confusing streets and wary response to newcomers. They’d warned her, laughing, not to ask for directions. You can’t get there from here, people told her. 

Now, after just three weeks as a sales rep, she knew it was true, all of it. But this was the right corner, and Douglas had said he’d lived here for years, so she could rely on him for directions. Geographical, at least. The other directions—those he’d take from her. That was the plan. She could, indeed, get there from here.

Douglas would arrive soon, and he’d be happy to brush the snowflakes from her shoulders, take her someplace private and scotch-infused. She closed her eyes with the rhythm of her process. With keeping her balance. Not crossing a line.

Behind her, a horn beeped. She turned, carefully casual. Nothing. She checked for surveillance cameras: none. A seemingly oblivious passerby pinged her inner alarm, but the guy with the backpack was too focused on his phone to be a threat—someone following her, or watching her. The interior lights came on in a maybe-Volvo parked half a block down the street.

Nora eased, slowly, into the lee of the streetlight, keeping to the shadows. But it was just a mom, or nanny, extricating a baby from a car seat in the back. Nothing about Nora.

“Nora? Ms. Quinn?”

She whirled as the voice came from behind her. So much for her detective skills.

“Douglas,” she said, softening her face into Nora’s face, relaxing her smile into Nora’s welcoming smile, opening her arms like Nora did. Establishing first names. But had she already failed? Certainly, Douglas would notice her artifice. How she’d first flinched at his voice.

He did.

“Did I scare you?” He came toward her, leaned to her, his breath puffing in the early evening chill. “I couldn’t wait to see you. Am I early?”

Yes, you scare me, Nora wanted to tell him. You’re a monster. “Of course not, Doctor,” she said, using his title on purpose, teasing, proving her admiration. She slid her hand through the bend of his elbow to avoid his clumsy attempt to kiss her. She was Nora, she’d be Nora, she had to stay Nora.

Reds and readers, THE FIRST TO LIE is a VERY different book for me. Can you tell? Why?

It comes out August 4.  When should I start talking about it? When the advance review copies arrive, when should I give one away here?

And if you could be someone else for a little while--would you?