Kathleen Glasgow is the bestselling YA author of Girl in Pieces, How to Make Friends with the Dark, and You’d Be Home Now. She lives and writes in Tucson. Liz Lawson is the author of the 2020 YA novel The Lucky Ones. She lives outside of Washington, D.C. Glasgow and Lawson have teamed up on a new teen thriller, The Agathas, about a suspicious disappearance in a wealthy coastal town and the two girls—one who had briefly vanished without explanation—who are on the case. We asked the authors to interview each other about their collaboration, which appropriately started in secret, paying homage to the Queen of Mystery, Agatha Christie, and the possibility for future mysteries for their characters.
Kathleen Glasgow: Greetings, Liz! We wrote this entire book across the country from one another. Do you want to talk about that process and what it was like waking me up via text every morning?
Liz Lawson: Hello, Kathleen! It was lovely writing this book with you. It really got me through the first part of the Covid lockdown; creating Alice and Iris and the world of Castle Cove was a great reprieve from the Real World in March/April 2020.
Glasgow: The world of Castle Cove! Alice Ogilvie and Iris Adams! It was such great fun creating characters that are opposites, yet both very goal-oriented, and tucking them inside a sleepy coastal town with very steep cliffs, bad boyfriends, and a ton of twisty secrets. Your character, Alice Ogilvie, was the first one to really develop and I loved that you used Agatha Christie’s real-life disappearance as an inspiration for this character. Tell us more about that!
Lawson: I’ve been a Christie fan for years—I grew up reading her mysteries, and Christie’s 11-day disappearance has fascinated me forever. After she learned that her first husband was having an affair, Christie left home and checked into a hotel (under his mistress’s name, no less) and a nationwide manhunt ensued. To this day, people still aren’t sure of her motives, because she never explained—was her disappearance on purpose, or was she simply so distraught that she had temporary amnesia? Using that as a jumping-off point for a teenage character who takes a page from Christie’s book, disappearing from her house for five days after her boyfriend breaks up with her, and then reappearing and refusing to give any rational reason for what she’d done, laid the groundwork for the rest of the book.
Glasgow: Yes! A big part of what we wanted to write about was the way the world treats teenage girls. Alice is treated as a pariah on her return and when her former best friend, Brooke Donovan, disappears, the police are very quick to label it a copycat situation and to label teen girls as overly emotional. Throughout the book, Alice and Iris are constantly being condescended to—by detectives, teachers, Coach Donovan. They have to fight for every scrap of evidence, for every new lead, using whatever means they have. I love our messy fighter girls who never give up, even when their own life circumstances seem insurmountable (Iris is a domestic abuse victim; Alice’s home life suffers because of parental neglect.)
Lawson: Absolutely. We wanted to not only write a book that would be fun for readers, but one with fully realized characters, and that means they needed to grapple with real-world problems, while at the same time trying to solve the central mystery of the novel. Speaking of our two girls: we each took one POV—you Iris, and me Alice—when we set out to co-write this book. How did you find the process of co-writing?
Glasgow: After The Agathas was announced, it was amazing to me that so many other writers messaged congratulations and also asked, “How did your editor team you two up?” And the funny thing is... our editor did not. We actually wrote this book in secret and didn’t tell our editor or agents until we’d finished a significant portion. And that, to me, was the beauty of co-writing this book: we had no expectation, we had no pressure (because no one knew what we were doing), and we could just attend to the needs of the story and our characters. I like to joke that co-writing is awesome because I’m only responsible for 50% of the book, but it’s also just a very touching and immersive experience to share an entire story with another writer. You aren’t isolated; the story belongs to two people at the same time and you always have someone to talk through the difficult parts with; you have someone who is in exactly the same space you are in at exactly the same time. That said, co-writing requires flexibility, donuts, a lot of texting, and possibly some tears.
Lawson: Going back to our Agatha Christie inspo... it was a blast weaving in quotes from her novels as well as showing how two girls might use the investigative techniques from them to solve the murder of one of their classmates.
Glasgow: I think that was a brilliant stroke on your part, having Alice be a Christie enthusiast, and allowing Iris (who mostly sticks to true crime) be a slow convert to the Christie-verse. That way, readers who might not be familiar with Christie can learn from Alice just as Iris does.
Lawson: Writing this book with you was truly a special experience, and I really hope we have the opportunity to do it again in the (not-so-distant) future!
Glasgow: Absolutely! I mean... Castle Cove had endless opportunities for exploration. And, well, we left some threads dangling at the end. I mean, Mona Moody? Remy Jackson? So many mysteries to solve in this sleepy town. Fingers crossed!
The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson. Delacorte, $18.99 May 3 ISBN 978-0-593-43111-5
