One of my favorite things to read are the little introductory guest essays that open a prominent work, usually written by another prominent writer, the kind you find in those treasured Modern Library books, or preceding short stories in celebrated anthologies (like the essays in this anthology, one of my favorites). One of my bucket list goals is to be asked to write one of those essays someday; the other goal, obviously, is to write a book or short story warranting that kind of introduction.

It’s a different kind of writing, short and powerful and, often, writing about writing brings out someone’s best. You’re writing about what influenced you, what excites you more than almost anything else, about love.

So I was so excited when I was asked to write the tribute essay for this year’s Bouchercon Guest of Honor, Jennifer Hillier. Jenny is one of my closest friends, both in and outside of writing, and watching her growth as a writer - in a happy coincidence, both in her skill and commercial success - has been truly wonderful. She’s a friend I’ve learned from in a thousand ways, a rock to return to, someone whose company is happily inexhaustible.

Bouchercon was this past weekend and, sadly, Jenny’s kidney exploded or something (we’re really close friends but what am I, a doctor?) the moment she arrived in Calgary and she spent the entire conference in a hospital and her hotel. She missed out on her own Guest of Honor appearance because her kidney flaked! She’s all better now, but doesn’t that suck?

Anyway, the tribute I wrote for her is below, and was printed in the Bouchercon conference program.

There is something all great writers share, regardless of what they write: poetry, non-fiction, crime fiction, romance, historical, whatever. They have an otherworldly urgency to say something unique and valuable and deeply personal, and whatever that thing is becomes as important to readers as it is to those writers. This is what leads fans, after reading and savoring one book, to dive into entire backlists and anticipate new releases. To claim someone as their favorite writer.

Jennifer Hillier became one of my favorite writers immediately after I finished her first book, and a few years before I published my own. Creep was recommended by a friend who knew I both admired and wanted to write crime fiction, and hooked me with this pitch, “You have to read Jennifer Hillier. Her books are so f*cked up!” That was true enough, but it wasn’t everything. There was a sense as I was reading Creep, and following the spiraling story of Professor Sheila Tao and the aftermath of her affair with graduate student Ethan Wolfe, of the fierce reality of her characters, the care that had gone into creating them…and, with that, the crushing, emotional consequences of their choices. Sure, as my friend had warned me, Creep was f*cked up, but that was because of the raw power of the writing. Here was that rare thing: a writer with something urgent to say, and determined to say it as honestly as she could.

I didn’t take a break between books. After closing the final page of Creep, I immediately opened the first in Freak, the follow-up. This was that wonderful feeling every reader knows, when finding a new writer is like emerging into undiscovered land and excited to travel its terrain. I remember my sadness when that second book ended, that this story and its characters had come to a close in those painful, final pages.

Around that time, I’d received a contract for my own debut, and shyly sent Hillier an email requesting a blurb. She graciously responded, but turned me down (dammit). She was pregnant – as was my wife – and in the middle of edits, and unfortunately didn’t have the time for a blurb. But she’d read what she could and liked what she’d read. We kept exchanging emails, and that grew to texts and phone calls. I didn’t get the blurb, but I got something far more valuable.

Writers have always been my heroes; I see them in a rarified light. And so, as easy and natural as our relationship was, calling Jennifer Hillier a friend felt unreal until we met in person, at the 2015 Bouchercon in North Carolina. We hung out all weekend, talking about our new children and books, and Bouchercon was where I realized what I love about Hillier as a writer is also what I love about her as a person. She’s fiercely observant, but achingly caring and devoted. She has a way, both in her writing and friendships, of pulling people to her side, of giving herself over.

At that point in her career, Hillier had experienced more success than most writers, and her novels after Freak – The Butcher and Wonderland – had played with her favorite themes and shone as individual achievements…but greatness is fantastically, terribly restless. I knew she was working on a new thriller and had the sense that this book was something bigger than she’d ever written, the kind destined to be “a breakout,” which often means it will go one of two ways. The bruising process will either push a writer’s career to a new level, or destroy their confidence, to the point from which that confidence may never recover.

“This psychological thriller,” Library Journal wrote in a glowing review of Jar of Hearts, her breakout novel and first with Minotaur Books, “is unlike any other.” Hillier had done it. Jar of Hearts was nominated for the Anthony and Macavity awards and took home ITW’s Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. The story was an embrace of Hillier’s writerly obsession, complicated women and the dangerous secrets they carry, but deepened that passion. The story of Georgina (Geo) Shaw and her mysterious connection to the murder of her friend Angela Wong was full of naked emotion and believable, shuddering twists that fulfilled the implicit promise every writer makes to their readers – the stories they love will continue, and somehow get even better.

After Jar of Hearts¸ it seemed like something inside Hillier had been unlocked; she’d found solid ground and started running. Little Secrets, which followed Jar of Hearts and might be my favorite of her books, was a USA Today Bestseller and appeared on every single “most anticipated” and “best of the year” list in existence. And it’s one of the most personal, daring novels I’ve ever read. At the time, both our children were six and Hillier’s story, about a mother experiencing the grief of her kidnapped child, nearly broke me as a reader; I can’t imagine the courage necessary to write it, particularly with the way Hillier writes. She has such empathy for her characters that you feel they must truly represent a necessary part of her, that during the writing she breathes their air, they uncertainly blink back at her in the mirror. In the story of Marin Machado’s anguished discovery that her husband is having an affair with the woman who may have kidnapped their child, Hillier had found a seat on the edge of the abyss, peered down, and pulled out her notebook.

Things We Do in the Dark was a Book of the Month Club pick and landed Hillier in the LibraryReads celebrated Hall of Fame, alongside luminaries like Kate Atkinson, Louise Penny, Colson Whitehead, and others. The 2023 thriller tells the story of Paris Peralta and starts with both a baffling scene – Paris, blood-covered and confused, holding a razor while her husband lies dead in a bathtub behind her – and an iconic opening line: “There’s a time and a place for erect nipples, but the back of a Seattle police car definitely isn’t it.” It’s a sentence that defines Hillier’s books, sly and sexy and dangerous and feminine and often funny, and the kind of writing that’s led readers, once they read one of her books, to post pictures of them eagerly returning from the bookstore with all of her others.

“At the end of the day,” Jennifer Hillier once said in an interview, “my favorite stories are still women’s stories — how we grow, how we change, what we want, why we want it, who we love, what we’re capable of. As I evolve as a person — and also as a mom, a wife, a friend, a sister, and a daughter — so, too, will my novels.” I’ve been lucky enough to closely observe that evolution as a friend of Jenny’s. I’ve seen, firsthand, what’s possible as a writer when someone is utterly fearless, when they’re determined to write authentically and emotionally about beauty and doubt and violence and grace.

When someone keenly understands how fear and devotion inform each other – in life, in craft – and isn’t afraid to share the result: that powerful, vulnerable love.

EA

After Down and Out Books closed, I pretty much figured that was the end of a bunch of anthologies in which I’ve been published. But thanks to the tireless efforts of editor and writer Josh Pachter, some of those books have found homes with other publishers. Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, was republished by Open Road Media, and is currently available for preorder! My short story, “Still Crazy After All These Years,” appeared in that anthology and was nominated for an Anthony Award. That was pretty sweet to me, because that story was also the final one of my characters Vic and Callie, murderous siblings who first appeared in The Night of the Flood and then The Swamp Killers.

You can check out and preorder Paranoia Blues HERE.

It's giveaway time! The winner of a copy of Jennifer Hillier’s latest (and NYT’s bestselling!) novel, Heart of Glass, is:

[email protected]

Congrats, and I'll send you an email soon!

A sad note to share. A few weeks ago, the writer Mark Pryor unexpectedly passed away.

I didn’t know Mark as well as others did, or as well as I wanted, but I did know him. He wrote for me when I was Managing Editor of The Thrill Begins for the International Thriller Writers, and we made a point of getting together whenever we were at the same writers’ conference. Mark was funny and honest and smart and a wonderful writer - his Hugo Marsten books were beloved, and his new Henri Lefort series was growing in popularity. As I said, others knew him better than I did, and the outpouring of grief and loss is a testament to how much he meant to the writing and reading community.

His good friend Scott Montgomery wrote a tribute to him here, which I recommend reading.

Stay safe out there, vote on Tuesday, and love each other.