One of our most anticipated mystery thrillers, One Last Breath, is officially here! To celebrate, we’re interviewing the author, Ginny Myers Sain! You may know her from her other fantastic paranormal mystery thrillers including Dark and Shallow Lies and Secrets So Deep! Her newest book delves into the world of unsolved murders and its a must-add to your TBR list!
Summary: Mount Orange, Florida, is famous for two things.
The specter of Bailey and Celeste’s murders cast a permanent darkness over sunny Mount Orange. Tru has always lived in that shadow. Sometimes, it seems like she knows the long-dead Bailey, feels the dead girl in her bones. Now she’s supposed to head to FSU in the fall with her boyfriend, but those unsolved murders – and the death of her own sister – invade her every thought. It’s only in the shadowy deep, 100 feet below the surface of Hidden Glen Springs, that she can breathe.
When a strange girl named Rio rolls into town, hell-bent on figuring out who killed Bailey and Celeste, Tru can’t resist entangling herself in the thrill of solving the decades old mystery any more than she can resist her familiar, aching attraction to Rio.
As the summer heat ignites, so does the spark between Tru and Rio…along with their other-worldly connection to Bailey and Celeste. But when someone begins stalking them, the girls become convinced the killer is back in town. And if they keep digging into the past, Tru and Rio know this time, it could be their blood that makes the springs run red.
Content Warnings: murder, child death
Welcome to The Honey POP! We’re so excited to talk to you today. To get things started, we’d love to get to know you a little better. Could you share three fun facts about yourself?
– I have a degree in theatre and I’ve spent most of my life teaching acting and directing plays and musicals.
– I have always been obsessed with alligators. I think it’s because they’re just about the closest things we have to dinosaurs. They’re basically unchanged after millions of years.
– I’m a huge Avril Lavigne fan. My best friend and I just got tickets to see her in concert together for the THIRD time. We even went to Canada a few years ago just to see her.
One Last Breath
Congratulations on the upcoming publication of your latest book, One Last Breath! Would you say that your writing process has changed over the years? If so, in what ways?
Honestly, my process hasn’t changed much. I’ve just learned to do what I do a little faster and to streamline it all a little. I still start out by writing a very basic, loose outline that I may or may not stick to. I still discover a lot about the characters and their story as I’m writing. But now that I’m usually writing on a deadline, I do try to plan out most of the main points in advance so I don’t spend a lot of time re-writing and fixing plot points that don’t work.
Being that you live in Florida and write about a small Florida town in your new book, how much research did you do before creating your setting?
I actually was living in Oklahoma when I came up with the idea for ONE LAST BREATH and wrote the book. We were already well into our second round of edits on it before I moved to Florida. I had spent a lot of time in central Florida over the years, though, and I had visited the springs many, many times in person.
My son and I had done a lot of camping and exploring in that part of the state, so most of the setting was mostly created from my own memories with the help of photos and videos I’d taken over the years. I did a little bit of research to find out names of plants and trees, but most of it was from memory and experience.
Out of all the characters you’ve written, which would you say is most like you?
Like most writers, there is at least a tiny piece of myself in a lot of the characters I write. My main characters, particularly, have a lot of me in them. I think Grey from DARK AND SHALLOW LIES, Avril from SECRETS SO DEEP, and Tru from ONE LAST BREATH all have so many pieces of myself and my experiences woven into them. Rio is maybe the most like me, though. She’s a skeptic who’s used to kind of getting by and keeping things easy, but then she meets someone who totally upends everything she thought she believed in and everything she thought she wanted.
If One Last Breath were a movie, who would you cast as Tru and Rio?
In my head, Sadie Sink who plays Max on STRANGER THINGS, is Tru. There’s just something about her look and her voice and her attitude that I love. She’s very pragmatic and matter-of-fact. So that’s kind of who I pictured in my head as I was writing. I don’t really have anyone in particular in mind for Rio, but it would definitely have to be someone mysterious and charming.
Her Writing
What kind of books did you enjoy when you were younger? Do you aim to write the same types of stories?
I absolutely always loved mysteries and horror. I gravitated toward anything dark and creepy. When I was really little, I read mysteries like the Nancy Drew stories. As I got older, I loved anything by Lois Duncan, particularly DOWN A DARK HALL and STRANGER WITH MY FACE. I also really loved gothic novels as a teenager. Anything dark and brooding. REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier was probably my favorite, and I think that’s why my books so far have all had a healthy helping of gothic or southern gothic elements.
One Last Breath features the cold case murders of two best friends. Are you a true crime fan? Are there any books, TV shows, podcasts, or YouTube channels you’d recommend?
I am a true crime fan, mostly podcasts and docu-series. I don’t really like the ones with a lot of chatting. I’m like, just tell me about the case! CASEFILE is probably my favorite as far as podcasts go because there’s not a lot of commentary or conversation. I knew I wanted that true crime element to be important in ONE LAST BREATH.
I grew up in Oklahoma, not far from the location of the infamous Girl Scout Murders. As a kid, I was both terrified and fascinated by what happened at Camp Scott in the 1970s. Those murders loomed large over my childhood, and my friends and I spent a lot of time whispering about and speculating about what happened to those girls who weren’t much older than us.
Because of that, when I started writing ONE LAST BREATH, I knew I wanted to explore the idea of what it means to grow up in the shadow of a horrible tragedy, particularly a gruesome, unsolved murder. Then, as a high school student who would be starting college soon, I had also been deeply affected by the murders Danny Rolling committed in Gainesville, Florida in the early 90s. Eventually the Girl Scout murders at Camp Scott and Rolling’s crimes melded in my mind to become the story of the murders at Hidden Glen and the crimes of the Glades Reaper.
We also want to talk about the romance in your new novel. Which romance trope is your favorite one to read and write?
It’s funny, because I don’t really know a lot about romance tropes! I’m not a big romance reader, so I just kind of go into each relationship in my books trying to tell that particular story. There’s something I love about each of the main romances I’ve created. I love Grey and Hart’s slow burn, that old longing for each other, the way it’s simmered just under the surface for so many years, and how sometimes it boils over and they have to reach for each other. The ache of that.
But I also love the exciting tingle of something new and unexpected that Grey feels with Zale. With Avril and Cole, I love the depth of that soul connection. Like they were fated to be together for eternity. That’s so swoon-worthy and those characters are just magic together. Readers really, really love their chemistry. There’s also a very sweet romance between two secondary characters in that book, Lex and Jude. There’s something so tender and delicate about their exploration of love.
Then, with Tru, I love the absolute safety and trust she has with East. How they know each other so well and the feeling he gives her of just being wrapped up in security. But, then I also really love that absolutely white-hot, earth-shattering intensity she feels the first time she looks at Rio. So, I guess I love it all!
Each of your thrillers includes paranormal aspects which we found to be so unique and an exciting twist on the classic thriller. What inspires you to include supernatural elements in your stories?
It’s just always something I’ve been fascinated in. I’m a skeptic. I don’t really believe in much, as far as the supernatural goes. But I’m someone who really WANTS to believe. Like, I wish all of it were true…ghosts, monsters, psychics, aliens…the whole spectrum. I would love to live in that world, so I guess I create it. I don’t really love fantasy. My favorite stories have always been stories that are very much anchored in the real world, with just a thread of the magical or other-worldly running through them. So those are the kinds of stories I want to write.
We absolutely love reading shocking plot twists in thrillers, especially yours! Do you have any advice to give new writers looking to improve their mystery writing skills?
My main advice is to think of your plot backwards. Know your ending – who did what (and how and why). Then work backwards to figure out when certain clues or pieces of the puzzle will be revealed. My other main advice is that plot twists are great, but they have to be earned! You want your reader to be blown away, but once they recover, you want them to say, “Of course! How did I not see that coming?” You don’t want them to say, “Well that shocked me, I guess, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
Along the same line, what is some of the best advice you’ve gotten as an author?
I think the best advice was to write the kind of stories you want to read. You’re going to be spending a lot of time in that world with those characters. You better enjoy it!
You’re about to go on tour for One Last Breath! What are some cities you’re looking forward to visiting? Are there any cities that are still on your bucket list?
I’m mostly excited to be hitting a lot of really cool places in Florida. This is such a Florida story, and it’s so exciting to be launching it into the world in the state where the story takes place. I’m looking forward to my Gainesville events, because the fictional town of Mount Orange is not far from Gainesville, so I’ll be as close as I can really get to the actual location I created. Plus I’ll be partnering with the Florida Springs Council for some of the events to bring awareness to the Florida Springs, so that’s very cool.
I’ll be at the Word of South Festival in Tallahassee in April, so that’s really exciting because it’s a music and literature festival with lots of cool people attending. I’m just excited about all of it! I love traveling and talking to people and I love meeting readers, so book tours are so much fun! I’m also looking forward to stops in Oklahoma and Arkansas, two states where I spent huge and important chunks of my life. And…hint, hint…,my next book is actually set in the Arkansas Ozarks! I guess if there’s a bucket list city I haven’t hit yet, it’s NYC. I’d love to do a book signing in the city. I’ve spent a lot of time there, and I have a whole lot of really good friends who live there, so it would be fun to celebrate with them in a city that I love. Maybe for the next book!
Grab your copy of One Last Breath here!
We had so much fun chatting with Ginny Myers Sain about her new novel, One Last Breath! Do you have it on your TBR? What do you think of it so far? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
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