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A Summer Dispatch from Upstate New York

Yesterday I did something I’ve been waiting a year to do: I swam in the lake.

Not a lake. The lake — the one in upstate New York I was living beside when I wrote THE GIRL IN THE LAKE, the one that gave the book its central set-piece and, if I’m honest, most of its mood. I’m back up here now, and yesterday afternoon, I drove my truck to a tucked-away parking lot on the side of the road, shimmied past a set of metal gates, and made my way down a narrow alley carved between the trees and the switchgrass.

There it was: Queechy Lake, which in my novel became Lake Sauquamet.

The water had the same, mossy smell that I remembered. The cold hadn’t changed. Neither had the feeling of being held by something much bigger and older than I am.

It felt like the right way to mark the end of launch season — and the right time to write you a note.

First: Thank you

To everyone who bought the book, preordered it, reviewed it, requested it at your library, pressed it on a friend: thank you. My subscriber list is small, which means I’m not saying that in the abstract. I mean you, personally. A book launch is mostly an act of faith performed by other people, and I felt every bit of it. THE GIRL IN THE LAKE is out in the world and doing well (hooray!), and you are a significant part of the reason.

What July looks like

Now for the newsletter part. Everyone always asks me whether I am “working on anything new” and the answer is…how much time do you have? Here’s my summer hit list, in all its overcommitted glory:

Two TV pilots in revision. I can’t say much about either yet, but both are in that stage where the notes are in and the scripts get taken apart and rebuilt — my favorite and least favorite part of screenwriting, often within the same hour.

Revisions on the cozy mystery series. For those who don’t know, I sold my first cozy mystery last year under the pen name Olivia Lawrence. The first book is called ONE MURDER AT A TIME, and it is about an eclectic group of people in recovery who bond together to solve a mystery. It, too, is also set in upstate New York, although the world is about as far from THE GIRL IN THE LAKE series as you can get, tonally. But the creative whiplash actually helps me stay engaged in both projects…and makes sure I don’t get them confused.

Two top-secret works in progress. Okay, I am EXCITED about this. Here’s the experiment: I’m going to write 15,000–20,000 words of two books — enough to know what each book actually is — and then hand both openings to my agent and let her tell me where to put my attention. It’s a bake-off. I have a suspicion about which one will win, but I’ve been wrong about this before, which is exactly why I’m doing it this way.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. But there’s something about being back in this landscape — the one where I wrote the book you all just helped launch — that makes the work feel less like a pile and more like a season.

More soon — including, if the bake-off goes well, a hint about what those secret projects are.

With gratitude, from the shore,

Lauren