(Holly) Stacy Willingham is a New York Times best selling thriller writer, known for her tightly wound mysteries and psychological depth.

A Charleston resident and former journalist, she crafts stories where nothing is what it seems and every clue matters.

Her latest novel, Forget Me Not, plunges readers into a tangle of family secrets, memory and suspense.

Another gripping page-turner from a master of modern thrillers.

A book in our reach is like a handshake to the connection we all need, because through them we gain friends, family and those characters we never even knew we needed in our lives until we start turning the pages.

Hi, I'm Holly Jackson, your host of Books by the River.

Thanks for joining us on this journey, where we sit beside the writers who tell these stories that sometimes feel like our own, or give us a glimpse of the experiences of someone we need to know.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Announcer) Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations.

The ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peter Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal, and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

(Holly) Here to talk to us today is Stacey Willingham, author of Forget Me Not.

Stacey, welcome!

(Stacy) Hi, thank you for having me!

(Holly) Thank you for joining us Tell us a little bit about Forget Me Not.

(Stacy) So Forget Me Not tells the story of a woman named Claire, who is an investigative journalist in New York City.

And when she was a child, her big sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her 18th birthday.

The case was fairly straightforward.

A man was arrested.

Justice was served, but Claire ends up kind of running from her past and moving to the city as quickly as she can.

And 20 plus years go by, and she's really avoided her hometown ever since, until she gets a call from her father asking her to come back home for the summer.

And pretty much as soon as she, you know, passes the state line and comes into South Carolina, all these memories keep flooding back and it's too much for her to handle.

She doesn't want to be in this childhood home that she ran away from.

So she accepts a seasonal job at a coastal muscadine vineyard called Galloway Farm.

And at first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for her, and somewhere where she can kind of be outside and work with her hands.

But quickly she finds a diary hidden on the property and she starts to read it.

The more she reads, the more obsessed she gets and the more she realizes the diary may contain details involving various unsolved crimes.

(Holly) Alright.

(Stacy) I'll leave it at that.

(Holly) Yeah.

No spoilers here.

Alright, so tell me about, how you chose to tell the story in two ways.

And, maybe if that was, like, at all a challenge as you're doing that writing process.

(Stacy) It was a challenge.

So I, uh, Forget Me Not is my fourth book.

And they've all thus far been written in first person.

I like to write in the first person point of view.

I like to really get inside the mind of my protagonist, but I've been interested in other formats.

I've been interested in seeing if I can write in third person, if I enjoy it.

And so this, Forget Me Not was kind of my attempt at figuring that out.

It was sort of a fun challenge for me.

So the majority of the book is written in the first person point of view as Claire, but she finds this diary that belongs to a woman named Marcia.

And as she reads the diary, the diary chapters are written in third person.

And my, my intention behind that was every time Claire opens the diary and kind of dips into the pages.

I wanted the reader to feel as if they were kind of living inside Claire's mind, as she's picturing all of these scenes that she's reading about, almost like this diary is like a movie projector inside of her mind, and the reader is sitting there and watching it unfold.

So, so yeah, it was a challenge.

It was the first time I've ever written anything like that before.

(Holly) Do you think you'll continue or...?

(Stacy) I think so, it was fun.

Yeah, it was really fun.

I still love just having this one main character that I live in their head.

I prefer first person still.

But the diary entry chapters in this book are some of my favorite in the whole book really, and I was surprised by that.

So it's always nice to know I can, I can do something different, and I enjoyed it.

And yeah, I'll probably do it again.

(Holly) Ok, alright, let's talk about setting and place and how that plays into, just how we act.

I mean, there was one place I wish I had written it down, but you just said it so clearly, like, about how we avoid these things that we basically do not want to remember.

(Stacy) Yeah.

(Holly) And I feel like that is like, so, more prevalent in the South.

(Stacy) Yeah.

(Holly) And even in certain pockets of the South, like let's just don't go there.

(Stacy) Right.

(Holly) So tell me about that and how it plays in.

(Stacy) Yeah, sure.

So all of my books thus far have been written in the South and, Forget Me Not is no exception.

It's a, it is a made up town, a made up little island, but it is based on a place close to where I live.

Wadmalaw Island is where it is inspired by.

And I'm interested, I've always been interested in stories where someone kind of comes home again, because I think that's human nature.

If something bad or traumatic happens in your past, it's easier to just, like, turn away from it and pretend it's not there and go about your life.

But until you really deal with the trauma of your past, it's always going to be this like, phantom finger kind of tapping on your shoulder.

And, that's how I used place in this story.

So Claire is from the small town in South Carolina.

Something horrible happens there, so she runs away.

She goes to New York, is living a completely different kind of life.

But her old life is still there, kind of tapping on her shoulder and her coming home to South Carolina and eventually finding herself on this island, inspired by Wadmalaw Island is sort of her version of realizing she has to deal with what happened back then.

(Holly) How do you think that readers can identify with that?

(Stacy) I mean, again, I think it's just a, it's a common feeling of, you know, it's easier to just pretend something's not happening or try to forget about it, push it out of mind than it is to do the hard work of staring it face-on.

You know, I also have a lot of characters in my books who, in a lot of books, often you kind of want to shake the characters and be like, "Why don't you just talk to each other and figure this out?"

But that's also human nature is there's, misunderstandings, miscommunications.

It's easier to just push a problem under the rug than it is to sit down face to face with a person and get it all out in the open.

So I try to create characters who are multifaceted, flawed, and also very human.

And so hopefully, in a thriller, you're asking the reader to suspend a bit of belief when there's all this chaos and violence at times going on around the characters in the story.

But I always hope that the readers can identify with and understand the motivations, kind of like the human pieces within each character and the emotions that they're dealing with.

(Holly) I think you really nailed it when you said, like, sometimes you want to just grab them and say, do this or whatever.

Tell me how that, I can understand that as a reader, but tell me how that process goes as a writer.

Whenever, like, when do you reach that point of like, "Okay, now we'll do it or whatever."

Like, are you feeling that too?

Are you also a reader as you're a writer, you know?

(Stacy) Yeah, I absolutely am.

I'm an avid reader, and it's hard.

It's hard when you're writing a book to, for me at least, to really look at it objectively, because in my head, I know exactly how the story is going to play out.

I know what all the characters need to do, and the easy way out would be to say, you know, why don't these characters just talk to each other?

Why doesn't that person just call the cops?

Why don't they do the logical thing?

(Holly) Get one with it, yeah.

(Stacy) But, on the one hand, then there would be no story, but on the other hand, you know, that happens in real life, too.

I mean, there's people who, you know, whether they, you know, commit a crime or something as simple as a family dispute or misunderstanding that could have been avoided and solved so much faster if people were more willing to just talk to each other, to just sit down and hash it out, to ask for help when they need it instead of trying to handle it themselves.

And so, there is a point in the story when the action does need to happen, but until that point, I try to come up with realistic reasons for why the main character is kind of just doing this on her own.

She can't just be stubbornly pushing ahead.

She needs to, maybe have the skills in the background.

So, for example, in Forget Me Not, Claire is an investigative journalist, so she does have the chops to kind of investigate this stuff on her own.

It's what she does for a living.

But there's always going to be a point in every story when the protagonist is in over their head.

And that's kind of when, you know, the domino tips and, and, everything kind of blows up.

<laughs> (Holly) Yes.

Alright, do you trust yourself entirely on those decisions of "when," or do you have like a little circle of readers who you kind of pull and say "Alright," you know, "What do you think?"

Or an editor or whatever that you lean on?

(Stacy) Yes, I do.

My my circle of readers is my editor and my agent and my family.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) My, to this day, my parents and my sister are the first people outside of my team to read my books.

They read them in their earlier stages, and they give me very honest feedback, which I love and need and appreciate.

But when it comes to, I'm actually very... private and protective of my work when I'm in the active drafting stages, I don't let anyone read it until I have at least a full draft finished.

And at that point, and really, it's not even a first draft, it's more of like a second or third draft by the time I've edited it myself, as much as I can.

And then at that point, it goes to my family and my agent, and they all read it simultaneously, and they will tell me things like, you know, "This character motivation doesn't really make sense when they do this in the last half of the book, it directly contradicts what you led me to believe about them in the first half of the book," or something like that.

They can point out, you know, discrepancies in a character that I'm maybe too close to see myself, and then I can go back and reedit the book again to take those things into consideration.

(Holly) Have you ever made major changes based on family input?

(Stacy) Oh, that's a good question.

Yeah, actually I have and and I wouldn't so far I haven't changed anything major in terms of, you know, is a character good or bad or what the twist is.

But, the best example I can think of right now is my sister is a lawyer, and so she will help me with the legal aspects sometimes.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) So, she'll read a book and she'll just say, you know, like, "That's not the way this works," or, "That would never fly!"

And then I'll go back and edit it to make things a little more realistic.

So I always take their consideration into account.

(Holly) Yeah.

Because readers, they'll catch that stuff.

(Stacy) They catch it.

Readers are smart.

Yeah.

(Holly) They're really paying attention to it.

(Stacy) Oh yeah, yeah.

(Holly) That's good.

Alright.

Let's talk about specific characters in here.

Who was your most fun to write?

Who was the most, challenging, you know, what were some kind of feelings that came out through that?

(Stacy) So, you know, I love writing - I love - the protagonist is always fun, because that's the character that I'm, I'm just living in their head, and I get to know them so intimately.

So I loved writing Claire, but I do, it's funny, I had a reader point out, not too long ago that all of my books thus far feature some sort of secondary character that plays a huge part in the book, but is not actually there.

Either they've, they're deceased or they're missing or they're estranged, and this character is an important part of the story, a vital part of the story.

But they only come through in memories.

And that character in Forget Me Not is Natalie, Claire's sister.

And, I really enjoyed writing her because it's a challenge to make a character come to life and feel real and well-rounded when they don't actually have screentime.

They're not actually on the page in the present.

And, and I really enjoyed that challenge.

I also thought Marcia was a fun character to write and kind of a challenging character to write because she is in the story in two different timelines, and she's a very different character in both those timelines.

So in the present, she's older, she's not in the best health, but in the past, she's kind of a very vital girl.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) And I enjoyed trying to make her feel, equally as real in both of those timelines.

(Holly) Yeah, you really keep yourself on your feet because you've created this monster of a challenge.

(Stacy) Yeah, it's a problem of my own making.

So.

(Holly) Alright, tell me why you go for dark stories.

What is it about that that interests you most?

(Stacy) You know, I have always been interested in stories like this.

I grew up watching shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone and Columbo with my parents.

I was an avid reader of Goosebumps and... (Holly) Yeah?

(Stacy) ...Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

And, I think there's a few things I really, I'm very interested in psychology.

I took a lot of abnormal psycology classes in college, and I like, you know, there's violence, physical violence, which my books are not very physically dark or violent, but there's also mental darkness and mental violence.

And that is what I'm interested in, why people do the things they do, why bad people do bad things, or even more interestingly, in my opinion, why good people do bad things.

Like what is it that happens in our minds and in our surroundings that lead us to snap or lead us to make a bad decision?

I've always been fascinated by that.

And, and I love twists.

I love writing twists.

As a reader, I like to try and figure them out, but as a writer, it's kind of the opposite.

I like seeing if I can take all these different pieces and put them together in a way that makes sense and hide it just enough.

But also make sure when you get to the twist, it's satisfying, it's believable, it's realistic.

So I think it's the combination of that is getting to kind of like dip into the human psyche, but then also the thriller genre allows me to really play with twists and kind of pull the rug out from under the reader.

And, it's a challenge every time.

(Holly) Yeah.

Do you ever feel you have to actually step away from your own writing because it's getting to you?

I mean, because these are some, some tough, you know, moments to take in.

And again, we're talking about something you've created yourself.

But it becomes real to you, right?

(Stacy) Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean the characters are very real to me.

It's funny, I, you know, on a, on a logical level, I know they're not real.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) They're all made up.

They're figments of my imagination.

But there's almost a weird sense of, not - mourning is a strong word, but when I'm done with the book and I realize I will never spend time with these characters again, it's a little sad, you know?

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) because I've been spending over a year with them every single day, and they've become very real to me.

But on the, on the flip side of that, people do often ask me, you know, "Do you ever scare yourself?"

Like, "Do you write something so scary that you get scared?"

And the answer to that is no, because I've spent so much time thinking about it and just, I know it's fake.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) But I do a lot of research on real crimes for all of my books.

And sometimes the research can get to me, and I have to step away from that because I'm reading a lot about, you know, real, real crimes, real victims, things like that.

And that can get a little heavy.

(Holly) So is this pretty much the genre you stick to as a reader as well?

(Stacy) I read mostly psychological thrillers, but I read widely in everything I like historical fiction.

I like a memoir.

You know, I'll read pretty much anything.

(Holly) Yeah.

Alright, we got to talk about what's next.

You're up to something else?

(Stacy) I am, yeah.

So I'm currently working on my fifth book.

I'm very excited about it.

I can't give away too, too much yet about, the synopsis, but it is another psychological thriller, and it's set in, Fairhope, Alabama, with some scenes in Mobile, Alabama.

There's kind of a heavy Mardi Gras element to it, because Mobile is the birthplace of Mardi Gras here in the US, and, yeah, and I love it.

And then I have a sixth book coming after that as well.

(Holly) Gosh.

Alright.

So you've been busy.

(Stacy) I've been busy.

(Holly) You must be one of those that really keeps this like rigid schedule of writing.

Are you?

(Stacy) Funny enough?

No.

I'm, really unorganized.

<laugh> (Holly) Really?

(Stracy) So I have always, I've tried that.

I've tried to write, you know, for a set time frame every day.

I've tried to set a word count for myself every day.

And that's just not really the way my brain works.

I go off of how it's feeling, and if it's flowing.

So there's some days I will sit down and start writing at 9 a.m., and I don't stop until 5 p.m.

and the day just completely flies by.

There are other days when I sit down and start writing and it takes me an hour to write a paragraph, and I realize I'm probably just going to delete this anyway.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) And so I do something else.

I, you know, I research, I read, I plot in my head, I go on a lot of walks and, and, talk into my phone as a voice note and, and try to... (Holly) This is the first I've heard of that.

(Stacy) Really?

I work things out that way.

(Holly) And you actually go back and listen to this, right?

(Stacy) I do and often times - (Holly) I find that I don't read my notes that I take.

<laughs> (Stacy) If you were to scroll through my, my Notes app on my phone right now, it's complete chaos, like a scary little dip into my brain.

But it's, yeah, I do.

I, I will walk my dog around our neighborhood.

And because I'm holding you know, his leash in one hand I really only have one other hand to hold my phone and I'll just talk through things.

Or sometimes I'll even narrate a chapter.

I'll speak the chapter the way I would write it, and then I just kind of copy and paste it into a Word doc and edit it up.

And, and that's how a chapter comes to life.

(Holly) I like that.

(Stacy) Yeah.

(Holly) Alright, so we talked about, that you started reading thrillers really as a child, you threw out Goosebumps.

That brought back a lot of memories.

(Stacy) Yeah.

(Holly) But how about when did the writing begin?

(Stacy) I have really wanted to be a writer my whole life.

I remember when I was seven years old, writing little short stories and screenplays with my big sister.

We would kind of do it together.

And, in high school, though, I had a, a high school English teacher who made a big impression on me.

And in my A.P.

English class, I remember that was the very first time we had, I learned I was reading books not just for enjoyment, but also for analysis.

I mean, looking at like, what are the themes the author's trying to get across, realizing that an author can use fiction as a means of self-expression, but also to try and get a point across, or to make the reader think or feel a certain way, put themselves in another person's situation that maybe they never would have thought of before.

And I found that really interesting.

I was also on my high school newspaper, and that made me think I wanted to be a journalist.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Stacy) So I went to, college to major in magazine journalism, and that was the goal for a while.

But it was, shortly after I graduated college, I started tinkering in fiction.

I just started writing a book in my free time and realized I loved it.

(Holly) And haven't stopped?

(Stacy) Haven't stopped.

Yeah.

(Holly) Alright, I love that.

Alright, back to Forget Me Not, I believe whenever we write we're trying to maybe have something that our readers take away from it.

Do you find that with this book, is there anything that you've taken away?

Are you different because of this book in a certain way?

(Stacy) Oh, that's a great question.

I think I take a little something away after all of my books.

I, when I, when I finished, when I published my first book, I was under the impression that surely every book gets easier and they don't.... (Holly) It's a lie.

(Stacy) ...in my experience.

(Stacy) Yeah, they don't get easier, and in a lot of ways, maybe they even get harder.

And Forget Me Not, I think this might be my favorite book I've ever written, but it was also by far the hardest book I've ever written.

It was the first time I didn't, the idea wasn't as clear to me as they normally are.

I, the ending changed a lot more than my previous books.

I went through lots and lots of revisions and so all that to say, this book tested me in a way that my previous ones had not, and I had a bit of a confidence crisis when I was writing it, kind of thinking like, "Gosh, maybe I can't do this," and I came out of it feeling like, okay, I struggled through this one a little bit, but look how it turned out.

I'm so proud of it and pleased with it.

And so even if a future book is giving me a really hard time, like I know I can do it, so.

(Holly) Yeah, it's evidence of that to keep on keeping on.

(Stacy) Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I there were moments when I really, truly thought about just kind of getting rid of this one and starting something else, and I'm just so glad I didn't.

(Holly) Yeah, that would be bad.

(Stacy) Yeah.

<laughs> (Holly) All that work in vain oh my gosh.

(Stacy) I threatened it, I was highlighting the Word Doc, threatening to hit delete.

And I didn't do it.

So yeah.

(Holly) Good, I'm glad.

It's a great book.

(Stacy) Yeah.

Thank you.

(Holly) Well that's it for now.

I thank you so much for joining us.

This has really been a great conversation.

(Stacy) Thank you for having me.

(Holly) And I love hearing so much about, like, you know, the different points of view and the challenges that you had and of course, the take away.

So I appreciate it so much.

(Stacy) Thank you.

(Holly)Thank you, everyone, for joining us here on Books by the River.

I'm your host, Holly Jackson.

Until the next book.

(Stacy) I'm bumping down a dirt lane 30 minutes later, pinpricks of light streaming through the trees, giving the day an ethereal shine.

After a few more miles of nothing but water on either side of the road, I reach a fork with a single wooden sign carved with the words, "Galloway Farm," pointing to the right.

I follow the sign, feeling the tires of my Corolla kicking up dust as I turn.

It wasn't a deliberate decision coming here.

I can't identify the exact moment I decided to punch the name into the GPS.

The instant my hands gripped the wheel, taking all the proper turns.

It was more of a knowing, a chest deep awareness, as soon as I glanced at that picture and took a long look at my sister's expression, a desperate desire to keep that girl close and curling in my stomach like the stretching tendrils of a wild vine.

I bounced down a few more miles of road now, the live oaks on either side, forming a twisted bridge with their branches, streamers of Spanish moss like a decorative archway beckoning me in.

It's a gorgeous sight, just like I remember, although it feels a little unkempt now, a little neglected.

Patches of overgrown grass peppered with weeds, algae floating across dollops of marshland, a boggy breadcrumb trail leading up to the creek itself.

Just like how my house had looked smaller when I first pulled up, how certain places of the past seemed to shrivel with time.

The nostalgic glow of Galloway has been slightly snuffed out after my years away, and I can't help but wonder if it always looked like this, if my memory had simply buffed out the sharp edges, or if it has more recently descended into a state of disrepair.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Announcer) Major funding for Books By The River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations.

The ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peter Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal, and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

♪ ♪