HOUSE OF CROWS by Lisa Unger - Spotlight and Q & A

Today, Amazon Original Stories releases HOUSE OF CROWS  a four-part thriller collection: ALL MY DARKEST IMPULSES, FOG DESCENDING, CIRCLE THE DRAIN and LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE from master of suspense, New York Times bestselling author, Lisa Unger. Unger, whose CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45 was just announced as a 2021 Thriller Award finalist for Best Hardcover Novel, has penned a deliciously creepy episodic story series that demands to be binged from start to finish.

Decades ago, four friends came face-to-face with dark events that they couldn’t explain as children and can’t bear to remember as haunted adults. The secrets they’ve tried to repress have lingered, shaping who they’ve become. Now, they’ll return to the shadowy house where it all began in hopes of finally putting these memories to rest.

All Four-parts of HOUSE of CROWS can be read or listened to as a haunting standalone.

HOUSE of CROWS is free for Amazon Prime Members.

LISA graciously took time to answer some of our questions.

1. Sounds exciting! Tell us about your new four part project, HOUSE OF CROWS. 

Loosely inspired by Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, HOUSE OF CROWS is about four adult friends who all share a common dark, unexplained event in their past. They’ve moved on and away from the town where they grew up. But in many ways the experience has formed each of them. Each has chosen a career that has allowed him or her to explore in various ways things that can’t be explained. Now a psychiatrist, a ghost hunter, a spiritual counselor, and a writer respectively, Claire, Ian, Mason, and Matthew are being called back to pay debts and address some unfinished business. What they find when they arrive at Merle House will depend very much on what they bring. 

2. Describe your readers. They are very loyal. 

That is very true. That’s the first word I’d use to describe them! Though all of my books are thrillers or psychological suspense linked by common themes – family secrets, identity, choices, the elements that make us who we are -- each book or story is a little different than what came before it. Still, some folks have been faithfully reading for more than 20 years. That’s a powerful and moving thing for which I’m eternally grateful. A writer is nothing without her readers; it’s a relationship. And my readers are smart, eager to explore character, love peeling back layers, enjoy multiple timelines, lots of twists and turns, and they are not looking for easy answers or pat endings. 

3. Why do you think readers are so attracted to the suspense/thriller genre? 

I think thriller readers and writers turn to the genre for the same reason: to metabolize the chaos they perceive in the world. Lee Child said that he believes the first stories ever told were thrillers. And I agree with that. They were stories about how the hero survived, or how the group hunt ended in bagging the beast. They were stories we told each other about how we triumphed over darkness, stories that made us feel braver and stronger in the telling and in the listening. A novel has a clear beginning, middle, and end. At its conclusion – especially in thriller/suspense/crime fiction – a type of justice will be served, even if it’s not the type of justice we expect. Not so in the real world where crime often goes unpunished and some wrongs are never righted. 

4. Are you more driven by plot or characters? 

All plot flows from character. Without the voices I’m following in my head, there is no story. So character always comes first. I write without an outline. I have a loose idea or an essence, some strong vibe as to where I’m headed, but mainly it’s a powerful character voice or voices in my head. It’s through character that I discover plot. I don’t know who’s going to show up day-to-day, or what my characters are going to do. And I certainly never know how things are going to end. I write for the same reason that I read: I want to know what’s going to happen to the people living in my head. 

5. Where do you get your story ideas?

Writers are first and foremost observers. And if you’re paying attention, the initial seed for a story can come from anywhere and everywhere. It might be a song, a line of poetry, a news story, an overheard conversation, a day dream. In one case, a piece of junk mail was the seed for an entire novel, BEAUTIFUL LIES. That first idea will generally lead me to swath of research. And the best way I can describe the process is if that idea and subsequent obsession with a certain topic, connects with something bigger going on inside me, I’ll start hearing those voices. Every novel and story has evolved this way. 

6. Anything you'd like to add? 

My next novel LAST GIRL GHOSTED  

is about a young advice columnist who follows the dark digital trail of the dangerous man who ghosted her into her own complicated past. It will publish October 5, 2021. And I am currently at work on my next book which will publish in 2022.

Lisa Unger is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author. With books published in twenty-eight languages and millions of copies sold worldwide, she is widely regarded as a master of suspense. Her latest release is CONFESSIONS ON THE 7:45.

Unger’s critically acclaimed books have been named on “Best Book” lists from the Today show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, People, Amazon, Goodreads, and many others. She has been nominated for, or won, numerous awards including the Hammett Prize, Macavity, Thriller Award, and Goodreads Choice. In 2019, she received two Edgar Award nominations, an honor held by only a few authors, including Agatha Christie. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Travel+Leisure. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her family.

www.lisaunger.com

HOW of CROWS is available free for Amazon Prime Members.