Q & A with Alicia Thompson

LOVE IN THE TIME OF SERIAL KILLERS is one of my most anticipated 2022 releases (it came out this week!) and I’m super excited to do a little q & a with Alicia.

Here’s a little about her book:

Turns out that reading nothing but true crime isn’t exactly conducive to modern dating—and one woman is going to have to learn how to give love a chance when she’s used to suspecting the worst.
 
PhD candidate Phoebe Walsh has always been obsessed with true crime. She’s even analyzing the genre in her dissertation—if she can manage to finish writing it. It’s hard to find the time while she spends the summer in Florida, cleaning out her childhood home, dealing with her obnoxiously good-natured younger brother, and grappling with the complicated feelings of mourning a father she hadn’t had a relationship with for years.
 
It doesn’t help that she’s low-key convinced that her new neighbor, Sam Dennings, is a serial killer (he may dress business casual by day, but at night he’s clearly up to something). It’s not long before Phoebe realizes that Sam might be something much scarier—a genuinely nice guy who can pierce her armor to reach her vulnerable heart.

1. How did you come up with the idea for Love in the Time of Serial Killers?

The title came to me first. It was the first summer of the pandemic in 2020, and I think I’d seen articles all about “love in the time of coronavirus” and how hard it was to connect with someone new when you had to do it by Zoom and worry about literally getting physically close to someone. I’d had a vague idea for a while about a romance where the woman was obsessed with true crime and it caused a lot of trust issues, and so something about those articles, my own interest in true crime, listening to Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher on repeat, and just thinking through the characters more made it all come together. 

2. Tell us a little bit about Phoebe and Sam.

Phoebe is a PhD candidate studying true crime for her dissertation. Because of that, she spends a LOT of time consuming true crime content and thinking through it, and it kinda warps her world view of how trustworthy people are. At the same time, she hides behind that when it’s easier than just admitting that she has trust issues for other reasons. She’s very prickly on the outside but very vulnerable on the inside!

Sam is her new neighbor when she goes back to her late father’s house for the summer. He’s just a genuinely nice dude! He’s the kind of guy who mowed her dad’s lawn for him because he could see it was a struggle for him to do it himself. All of that, of course, makes Phoebe instantly DEEPLY suspicious, because no one is that nice without sinister intentions. Right? 

3. Are you as obsessed with true crime as Phoebe? 

I would say my obsession comes and goes in phases! I have times where it’s all I want to read, watch or listen to, and then times where I just don’t feel like I’m in the headspace for it. But I definitely have consumed a lot of true crime content in my life, and it was fun to put all these references throughout the book. And for anyone who feels drawn to the investigative side of true crime but isn’t sure they can handle the grisly murder-y bits, I would always say that there’s so much good white collar crime stuff out there, too, that’s a little easier to handle. Think Bad Blood about Theranos, stuff about Bernie Madoff, The Feather Thief, that kind of thing. 

4. Was there a scene that was your favorite to write? 

There were a lot of scenes I had a lot of fun with! There’s one where Phoebe brings Sam a pie that sticks out in my mind because there were moments of humor, sexual tension, and real connection in the conversation that were a blast to bring together in that one scene.

5. What are some of your favorite tropes? 

My favorite tropes are grumpy x sunshine, fake dating, second chance, only one bed, rivals-to-lovers, workplace romance, and probably a bunch others I’m forgetting. Even when I say I’m not a huge fan of a particular trope, too, there’s always at least one book that makes a complete liar out of me. 

6. Are you a plotter or a pantser? 

I’m kind of a mix of both plotter and pantser. I tend to think about my characters a lot, and the story starts to form in my head. When I feel like I know the beginning of the story at least, I start writing — often without a formal outline, but those early scenes are so clear in my head that I don’t feel like I need one. Then I usually hit a wall at some point (around 20k or so) where I’m like, oh yeah . . . I guess more needs to happen now. Or wait, if I want to have this subplot, I should probably get going on that, huh? And then I’ll start to outline a little bit, at least the next few scenes, so I can figure out where the story is going. 

7. Can you tell us a little about your writing process?

I write a lot at night — I have a day job and two kids, so I usually don’t get going until around 9pm or so. I love doing sprints with other writers, but unfortunately this habit means I don’t always connect with them because they’re living that morning writer dream. (I wish I could be a morning writer! It sounds lovely! I just can’t force myself to wake up a single second before I absolutely have to.) I listen to music while I write, sometimes the same song over and over to get into a certain vibe, sometimes a playlist I created for the book, sometimes just whatever’s available to me. I started keeping a notebook for every project, where I give myself a sticker for every thousand words, write a quote I really like from the last thousand words I just wrote, and then write notes on the scene or what needs to come next. I tend to be fairly cyclical/seasonal in my writing, where I’m deep in a project and writing every day and churning it out for a few months and then I take a step back and barely write at all for a little bit. 

8. Why do you love romance? 

To me, there’s just nothing better than reading about the connection between two people. The vulnerability, the angst, the tension, the way you slowly learn someone else, the way they fundamentally change who you are as a person. Reading romance feels like getting to have the experience of falling in love again and again and again, but in this safe space where you know everything will turn out okay. I just love it so much! 

Thanks so much to Alicia for answering my questions!

Make sure to get LOVE IN THE TIME OF SERIAL KILLERS, check out Alicia’s website and newsletter, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @aliciabooks!