What We're Writing: Hank Takes A Risk

HANK PHILLLIPI RYAN: So. I took a risk on THE HOUSE GUEST. Yes, a risk.

I decided, drumroll, that I would try something I have not ever done.

I would try, I challenged myself, to write this story from one point of view, in past tense, in chronological order, with no flashbacks or befores or fancy structure.

Just: tell Alyssa’s story the way Alyssa is living it. We know what she knows and we know it when she knows it. We know what she sees, and hears, exactly when she does. We know what she decides, for better or for worse.

Easy peasy, huh?

No way, Reds and readers! It was the most difficult book I have ever written.

No “earlier” or “before” to create a history. No other points of view to offer information or brand new settings or insight or dramatic irony.

We go where she goes, see what she sees.

AHHHHHH!

So difficult.

Here’s a bit of it. There are no spoilers, and nothing that will alter your reading of the whole book. And by February, you'll have forgotten this, anyway.

In this chapter, Alyssa is coming home from having a solitary drink in a hotel bar. And She’s met a woman called Bree. A woman who is running from something. Here's just a part of it.

Chapter 3

Alyssa fished her house keys out of her jacket pocket as she climbed the three brick steps to her red-lacquered front door. The forsythia flanking Alyssa’s flagstone front walk had gone from bare branches to flowering yellow almost overnight, and blooming crocuses made a ribbon of white along each edge, some blossoming brighter in the sudden glow of the motion-activated security lighting. The front steps, cleanly swept caramel-colored brick, were as pristine as when she had left them. 

One forsythia flower, the one she had carefully positioned on the center of the second step, was still there, as perfectly formed as when she had placed it. No one had stepped on it.

Sometimes, when the lights came on, she imagined that Bill had actually flipped the switch, welcoming her home. She imagined his eyes lighting up, too, when he saw her. Sometimes the loving memories of Bill emerged unbidden, the good Bill, and they threatened to engulf her. She would tamp them down, stomp them, destroy them. She could not allow that.

Those days were gone.

She thought about the woman in the bar. Bree. Whatever else Alyssa had to complain about, it was nothing compared to what Bree Lorrance had described. Hounding bill collectors, a harassing boss, and an abusive boyfriend who used the phone as a weapon.

Her key turned in the front door, and she clicked it open, the lights now on and the alarm clamoring. She tapped in the code. She’d changed it, in case Bill tried to sneak in. It had been his idea, the separation, so now he had to live with it.

He'd signed a legal agreement promising he’d only come to the house if he called in advance. Promises. As if Bill knew the meaning of that word. As if he cared about a piece of paper. As if he cared about an alarm. It was still, technically, his house.

She felt the silence. There were some times of day ––and night, especially night––when the house seemed to have a life of its own. Sixty-five hundred square feet, Bill had proudly told her. And anyone else who would listen. Which was everyone of course, he was Bill Macallen. They even laughed when he said size matters, as if that stupid joke was funny to anyone but a 14-year-old.

Those little things, things she had forgiven him when they were happy, seemed teeth-grittingly annoying now, pompous and even embarrassing. She’d never corrected him, though. She’d seen what happened when someone crossed her husband, a thing that once impressed her and now repulsed her. That was power. Only impressive when it was on your side.

Sixty-five hundred square feet. The living room, the movie room, the extra party room, and what Bill called the reception room, where long tables covered in white damask often served as bars or dinner buffets or arrays of fountains gushing dark chocolate with chefs creating dessert crepes to order, stuffed with fresh raspberry or lemon curd or brandied peaches.

Bill’s office-study, all dark rainbows of immaculately shelved books, with mahogany paneled walls and elaborate furniture. Bill thought it showed strength. Alyssa thought it showed arrogance.

Her glorious kitchen, restaurant-worthy and shiny with stainless steel, then the screened-in porch and redwood deck and, upstairs, an array of bedrooms and bathrooms. The pool in the back, randomly shaped like a shimmering turquoise island. Gardens, a changing cabana, and the guest house in the back. All that, and now it was just her, alone, in this expanse of terrifying excess.

She set her bag on the slim hall table, an act of defiance. Bill never liked her to put it there. Said it ruined the ambience of the entryway.

It was always Bill’s house, though he told her he’d bought it for her. For them. But, she thought now, more accurately, it was for Bill and his possessions. As it had turned out, she was one of them.

The ambience of the entryway. Bill words. So many things in the house were described by Bill words, Including herself.

She’d been Alice until the night they’d met—but he’d whispered she was “more like an Alyssa,” and persisted, even teasingly, intimately, introducing her as Alyssa, and soon she’d felt like Alyssa, too; glamorous, beloved, to the manner born Alyssa. And eventually she’d embraced her Bill words: her names, first and last. No longer Alice Westland. But Bill’s possession, Alyssa Macallen.

She’d loved it, once, as she’d loved him. Until the division. Or again more accurately, the subtraction. Her mother had warned her, in the days before she died. “Be careful,” Mama said as she’d clutched her daughter’s arm. Alyssa could hear it now, an evil queen’s menacing admonition. “If he leaves you, you’ll have nothing again.”

HANK: The House Guest comes out February 7, 2023. With blurbs from Lisa Scottoline and Tamron Hall and Lisa Unger and Wanda Morris–and more!--on the cover.

I am dying of nervousness.

Reds and readers, what do you think about this just-plow-ahead structure?