Disappearance at Devil's Rock: A Novel Hardcover – June 21, 2016

Paul Tremblay talks with Michael Koryta

Michael Koryta is the author of Rise The Dark (on sale 8/16/16).

MK: I absolutely loved Disappearance At Devil's Rock, and central to that was how beautifully shocking the final act was, featuring a revelation that was both stunning and logical. Did you work toward that ending from the start, or begin with the opening scenario and no known destination?

PT: Thank you, Michael. I started with a vague notion of a teenager mysteriously disappearing from a local state park and didn't know where it would go from there. I knew that I wanted to take a realistic approach to the teen's disappearance and introduce a sense of maybe-supernatural uncertainty, dread, and melancholy that would hopefully accumulate as the novel progressed. I then spent a month outlining, guessing, and eventually figuring out what may or may not have happened to Tommy Sanderson.

MK: The emotional ache of absence is present here in so many layers. Did that drain you at times, to go so deeply and honestly into the hearts of these characters?

PT: It was a bit emotionally tiring to be honest and by the end of it I was ready to write a happy, breezy comedy. Shh, don't tell my editor!

To help detach somewhat, I made sure that Tommy Sanderson was a totally different person in my head than any of my loved ones. I also focused not on what I would do in response to the scenarios in the novel, but on what these characters would do or say. That said, it was impossible to not put myself in Elizabeth Sanderson's shoes at times.

MK: Writing from a child's point of view is a tightrope act—and you nailed it. How did you go about achieving such authenticity with those voices?

PT: Besides being a parent of two children who are close to the ages of the kids involved in the novel, I've been a high school math teacher and basketball coach ever since graduate school. I'm generally awash in teen-speak. I pay close attention to what they say and how they say it, the slang and sayings that cycle in and out of style. For the writer-me, teaching is an everyday lesson in teen voices and a window to their emotional lives, and even how and what they might be thinking/hiding even when they're not saying much.

Also, I still feel like a big kid most of the time. I've always lived according to the seasonal cycles of the school calendar: the joy of summer and depression of September. Being permanently fixed in that kid schedule has warped my brain and I wouldn't have it any other way.

MK: The supernatural is presented here as possibility, an uncertainty, a debate, and individual readers will land in different places with it. I love that, but I wondered if you felt pulled at times to take it more directly toward that or to lean farther back from it? It's a fantastic, haunting result.

PT: I love how you describe the supernatural as possibility. Maybe the supernatural is the stuff in the cracks of things, existing in the in-between places. I try to approach the supernatural element skeptically or realistically, meaning that if a supernatural event were to intrude in our real lives, I don't think it would be obvious or instantly recognizable, and it certainly wouldn't be easy to explain, and we'd be hesitant to believe it happened. That doesn't mean it isn’t there though, yeah? With both A Head Full Of Ghosts (my last novel) and Disappearance At Devil's Rock, I wanted to make the most overtly horrific parts of the books the real parts, the "this-could-really-happen" parts, and have what lingers or haunts the reader afterward to be those ambiguities and possibilities.