Another Author Event

This past Monday night at Kepler's I got to see Janelle Brown, author of Watch Me Disappear, in conversation with local author, Jan Ellison, whose debut novel is A Small Indiscretion.  I was very happy to meet both of them.  In fact, I purchased Jan's book and am reading it now.

But I digress.  You all know what I thought of WMD because I just reviewed it on the 5th.  I liked it a lot.  So I was definitely interested to hear what Janelle had to say about it.  Here are a few insights:

1.  Janelle lives in Southern California but is a Bay Area native.  Her 1st and 3rd books (WMD) take place in the Bay Area.  Her 2nd book is set in SoCal.
2.  Janelle actually had a close friend (she thought) who was the inspiration for the character Billie.
3.  She wrote parts of the book from a male perspective.  It's the 1st time she's done that.  Michelle Richmond, who(m?) I saw on August 1 (also at Kepler's) wrote from a male viewpoint for the 1st time too.  Both said it was tough.  Just as I vouched for Michelle, I am now also vouching for Janelle. She definitely got it right.
4.  Watch Me Disappear has been optioned for a movie.  We all know that this does not necessarily lead to an actual movie.  But at least the option is a start.  And, BTW, it would be a great movie.
5.   Janelle did not start out to write a suspense thriller.  It just kind of happened organically.  But it shouldn't come as a great surprise considering some of her favorite authors write suspense thrillers. Gillian Flynn and Tana French are just 2 of them.

Besides Jan's book, I also picked up 1 of Janelle's other 2 books, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.  It's currently sitting in my teetering TBR pile.  But at least it's there!  I WILL get to it.