*A Twisted Love Story* tracks a roller-coaster relationship with murderous consequences

Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly.

Emily Cox: Hi, I'm Emily, an editor here at Audible. Today, I'm so excited to talk to one of the most inventive domestic-thriller authors writing today, Samantha Downing. Her debut novel, My Lovely Wife, was a breakout hit and she's since published several other amazing stories. Today, I'm so excited to talk to her about her newest release, A Twisted Love Story,narrated by Karissa Vacker. Welcome, Samantha.

Samantha Downing: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for that amazing introduction. That was great.

EC: Thank you for joining. I've just finished listening to it and it's great. I can't wait for our listeners to pick up this story. It sucked me in. I had a really long drive this weekend, and it kept me going. I dropped my kids off at camp and I was a road warrior with your audiobook in my ears. It was great.

I wanted to start off by talking about the role of destiny and how that plays in your work. There's some element of fate throughout your stories. In My Lovely Wife, I'll never forget that part where the husband reflects, “If it hadn't been for the paper cut…” and which was kind of gruesome in a quiet way, I thought. But in your newest novel, this feels especially apparent, the characters all seem very preoccupied with the turning points that put them on the path toward the inevitable. What draws you to this kind of fatalistic narrative? Is that a thread in your life?

SD: I think it's not so much about destiny, it's about choices, and the choices we make to get us to a certain point. And you can always, wherever you are right now, you can track back all the choices that got you there. There are usually many of them before you end up in the place that you're at. I think that, to me, is just fascinating. In a general level, in life, and in books, that there are moments in which we have to make a decision. And we make the best decision we can, or the best decision for ourselves and our family. And we don't know where it's going to lead. We think we might know. We know where we hope it will lead, but it doesn't always turn out the way that we hope. So, I think that is just an interesting part of life in general.

EC: Right. And almost like the Sliding Doors phenomenon, right? All those choices may not even feel massive at the time. They just have a knock-on effect.

SD: Exactly. And sometimes it is an outside event that happens, like in Sliding Doors, the late train versus which train you take and what have you. Sometimes it's out of our control what happens. It could be a late flight or it could be traffic that gets us somewhere later than we think. Timing is everything and that is true on small things and big things in our life. Literally, timing is everything.

EC: Yeah. That's so interesting. I think I reflect on that a lot, actually. I can trace back a decision I made about what school to go to as to why I now work at Audible. Things like that. I'm like, “Ooh, where would my life be if I had made a different choice?” Do you find yourself ruminating on those things in your own life?

SD: I do, yes. I lived in New Orleans for many years. And it is very likely if I had not made the decision to move to New Orleans and live there, I would not be a published writer today.

EC: Oh, wow.

SD: I'm from a suburb in California. I probably would've ended up doing, I don't know, maybe some sort of corporate job. I don't know what I would've ended up doing. But it was someone I met in New Orleans who ended up sending my book to someone who sent it to someone else, which is why My Lovely Wife got published in the first place. So, I don't know if I ever would've become a writer if I had lived in California my whole life.

EC: That's amazing. I love that. And so, yeah, I think the transitional moments in your stories tend to lead to bad things. But those moments, those choices in life, can lead to good things too.

SD: Yes. Definitely.

EC: So, this is something really central, obviously, the idea in this book about what makes a relationship toxic. I mean, I think we've all been fed this idea that toxic relationships are actually romantic. We actually just had a publisher present an upcoming book called The Darcy Myth, which is about: Have we all been taught that difficult men are really the romantic heroes we should be chasing in our lives? What do you think we find so compelling about these kinds of relationships?

"In this book, my goal was to make the relationship a character itself. Wes and Ivy are individuals, but together they become something else."

SD: Well, first of all, I need to stipulate, this is a “twisted” relationship. It is up to everybody else to decide whether or not it is toxic. I did not want the word toxic anywhere near the cover or the description or anything, because it's up to other people to decide what they think the relationship is. Back in the olden days, before the word toxic was in our vocabulary, this kind of relationship was just called a rollercoaster relationship. That's what we called it, up and down, up and down, up and down. And it was a little less judgmental to call it that. It was just “Oh, that's that couple that breaks up and gets back together all the time,” you know? Now we have a label for it. I don't think I really understand what the word toxic means, because the way I understand it, either your relationship is toxic or it's healthy. And there is nothing else.

EC: Yeah. It's binary.

SD: So, if someone does something toxic in your relationship, if someone acts in a toxic way, okay, now your relationship is toxic and that's it. You better break up with them because now you're toxic. So, I assume everybody not in a toxic relationship is in a 100 percent healthy relationship. Or they are in a toxic relationship. So, the label seems very black-and-white, and I don't see relationships in that way. So, to me, people can think what they want about Wes and Ivy. If you think they're toxic, okay. If you think they're abusive, okay. If you think they're just crazy, okay. Personally, I think they're meant for each other. I think they complement each other perfectly and that this is the relationship they choose to have and this is the relationship they want to have. Whatever you think of it, this is what they want.

EC: Right. I think when I said toxic, I was echoing what some of the other characters will say about them. But I think I'm with you. I'm team Wes and Ivy. Like, they really, they've known from the beginning, and I love that about them. That all-consuming—

SD: Right. They know what it is. They absolutely know what it is. They're not delusional about what they're doing.

EC: Yeah. So, this story, it actually kind of gave me major Cathy and Heathcliff vibes. But it also kind of reminded me of True Romance. I don't know if you ever saw that movie with Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette?

SD: Absolutely.

EC: Were there outside influences that you drew inspiration from when crafting these characters?

SD: Nothing specific like a movie. But definitely just that up-and-down type of a thing. And I think we've all known couples that are like that, that are very dramatic and they are addicted to the drama. There's one very specific one on TV right now in the show Euphoria, Nate and Maddy, and they do the most dramatic things. So, I think it's something we all either know of or have been in our lives at some point. Something people can relate to at some level.

EC: I think you're right. I think we all know couples like that in real life, not just on TV. I'm not asking you to out anyone, but do you have any friends who would resonate with this?

SD: Not at the current time, that I know of. But you never know with people. That's, I think, one of the fascinating things about relationships. Because you don't know, and you may just know people in a social way. And you don't really know what's going on between them. You see their pictures and videos on social media, but that is never the whole story. So, maybe I do know someone like that and I just don't know that that's what they're like [laughs].

EC: Yeah. So true. I mean, especially with social media. We have even less idea what's really going on with people these days. So, one thing that struck me as kind of unique about this story, something I really loved about it that felt different than a lot of other thrillers I've listened to recently—maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree—but I got this sense of Ivy and Wes, they weren't 100 percent the main characters. Like, there were so many other rich, robust characters around them who had their own equal-level drama going on. And it feels a bit like they both know they're attractive, but they both verbalize at some point that they're kind of average a little bit. I know Wes calls himself the classic nice guy wingman. They have an element of side character to them. So, I just wanted to know if this was intentional? Or did you find that everything around them just blew up into such a large story?

SD: The way I looked at it is we all think relationships are between two people, but they are not. There are always other influences in relationships, whether they are friends or family or people that insert themselves into the relationship, people that give advice to your relationship. There's a lot of elements that come into play in a relationship. There are a lot of influences, and it's never just two people. In this book, my goal was to make the relationship a character itself. Wes and Ivy are individuals, but together they become something else. And their relationship itself is like a tornado and it blows through and it draws other people up into its whirlwind, and other people jump into their whirlwind. And they just keep going. Like a tornado, they just keep moving.

And I really wanted to capture these other influences in a relationship and how people's advice is coming from their own point of view. And it may or may not be in your best interest, but it's something that's coming from their own experiences. When they give you advice or when they give you their opinion or when they tell you that you should or should not be with someone, it's not objective. It's never objective because they have their own life experiences. So, all of that sort of comes into play when you're dealing with a relationship. And they also, Wes and Ivy, think that they're very insulated, the way all couples do. And all couples think their world revolves around each other to the exclusion of everybody else, but it's simply not true.

EC: I mean, tornado is the perfect visual for this. And obviously, I hadn't even thought about that, but the title says it. I wanted to talk to you about plotting. Because as you say, there's a lot of inputs in their relationship. This is a super complicated story. The history of the couple who's been on-and-off for 10 years, it unfolds through multiple flashbacks. There's this slow drip reveal of information. You do this in your other works too. But this one felt extra complicated. How do you approach mapping this all out in your novels? Do you plan it all out? Or does the story reveal itself as you write it?

SD: Right. I don't plan out anything.

EC: Really?

SD: I don't plot anything. No, not at all.

EC: That's amazing.

SD: I write the story, I discover the story the same way a reader would. I write chapter by chapter. And each chapter reveals a little bit more, and by the end of that chapter, I think of where it should go next and I write the next chapter. So, I'm a very short-term thinker. I'm not a chess player. I cannot think 50 moves ahead. There's no planning at all. All I knew was that I was going to write about a couple with this hugely dramatic relationship and it was going to be a thriller about a relationship. And I went from there.

EC: I am shocked because it actually feels like an amazing game of chess. It is so well-crafted.

SD: Thank you. It doesn't always work. I have a lot of stops and starts. With this book, it happened to. But there are also books I write that I completely throw out because it completely didn't work. So, being not a plotter means I have a lot of wasted words.

EC: Right. It's you're either a plotter or a pantser. Have you heard that, the term “pantser”?

SD: Yeah. I'm a pantser, meaning you write by the seat of your pants.

EC: Yeah. It's incredible, because I really imagined a police board, like Karen's police board, the string and the photos and all, the web. But wow.

SD: No. I actually find that, at this point, because I've been writing for so long—I wrote for a long time before I was published—I guess I have a system and I'm afraid to mess with it.

EC: Fair.

SD: When I start to get into organizational mode and use the programs that help you, like Scrivener, or do the boards and the post-its and all of that kind of thing, I get more into the organization than I do into the writing. I start focusing on the organization, making sure the organization is perfect. So, I really stay away from all of that kind of thing. I feel like it's going to mess me up.

"I discover the story the same way a reader would. I write chapter by chapter. And each chapter reveals a little bit more, and by the end of that chapter, I think of where it should go next and I write the next chapter."

EC: Does that sap the joy from it? It's more enjoyable just to sit down and tell the story?

SD: Absolutely. That, to me, is the best part, writing the first draft. It can be very frustrating, but that's where the creativity comes into play. I have tried to plot once. And I plotted a book and I wrote it. It was terrible. I turned out just telegraphing every twist. You could see it coming because I knew it was coming, so I was writing to it. Whereas doing it in the pantser way, I have better ideas. I have better ideas that come to me chapter by chapter than I do if I try to plot it all in advance. Like I said, not a chess player.

EC: Well, maybe that makes the twist feel more authentic too, because you're as surprised as the listener.

SD: Hopefully [laughs].

EC: So, speaking of craft, you've written for audio before. We all loved your Audible Original, Sleeping Dogs Lie. Did that experience impact or change the way you approach storytelling at all?

SD: That was a lot of fun actually. It's funny because the length of that is the most that I think of when I'm writing a book. I sort of write in increments. And when I think of a twist, when a twist does come to me, I sort of write in blocks actually. And the length of that audio was the length of one of those blocks. The length of it worked out perfectly for the way I write. And it was a lot of fun. Sleeping Dogs Lie was about a dog walker, and my brother owns a dog-walking and sitting business. And he was the one who said, "You should write about a dog walker, because we know everything. I'm a dog sitter, I stay in people's houses, I sleep there, I stay with their dogs." And so I did. And that's the one I wrote.

EC: Yeah. You get full access, right? If you're taking care of someone's pets. It was great. I thought that the multi-cast was really interesting. Because it wasn't multiple voices all hitting at once. It was very organized and like in sections. And that changing of perspective was really nice in that way. The audio really added to it in that way.

SD: Thank you. That is one thing I tried to be aware of when I'm writing. I never want to confuse a reader. Because I hate being confused when I'm reading, and thinking, “What was that character? Wait, which perspective am I reading again?” And I try to, all the way down to how I pick the names, I want the names to be distinctive, so that when you see the name, it triggers something in your brain.

EC: Right. Well, I loved that you named someone Karen in A Twisted Love Story. And she even, she's aware. She's self-aware enough to know that her name doesn't always mean great things for everyone these days.

SD: I definitely wanted someone who used that meme to her advantage, because I feel like that's the next step with the name Karen.

EC: You've gotta embrace it.

SD: If you have the name Karen, yeah.

EC: So, did you have any input into the casting for A Twisted Love Story? What kind of voice were you looking for?

SD: Well, Karissa Vacker has narrated my books before. So, I was so excited to have her do it. She is amazing, the way that she can change her voice. I've heard her narrate other books as well. She can sound like a completely different person, depending on what the character is or what the book is. They suggested Karissa to me, and I said, "Absolutely, of course."

EC: Yeah. She is fantastic. And David Pittu has been your other main narrator. And he's also got that same kind of, he can do—

SD: Oh, he's fantastic, yes. I've been very lucky with the narrators, that they're just so, so experienced and know exactly how to do it right.

EC: I read in another interview that you used to work as a secretary. Administrative assistants play a big role in this novel. Did you draw on your own experience when building these characters?

SD: Yeah, I've been an assistant, and they know everything. They absolutely know everything. They are so much more powerful than people give them credit for. A good executive assistant is usually an adviser as well, or at least someone whose opinion is taken seriously. And if you're boss or your bosses, whoever you work for, value what you think, you can make or break whether somebody gets access to them or not, as an assistant. As well as knowing everything about everybody's personal life.

EC: Right.

SD: So, whether you reveal it or not, if you work in an office, and you're not remote—the way people are now, I think it's a little harder now, and assistants have different roles than they used to—but in an office environment, you know everything about everybody. And Bianca knows more than most [laughs].

EC: Yeah. She seems very intentional, even before she stumbles upon the key piece of information, which we won't talk about. She seems extra curious and snoopy.

SD: Yes, definitely. So, you never underestimate the assistant.

EC: Yeah. Or the dog walker.

SD: Or the dog walker. Yes.

EC: So, if you were to write in a different genre, what would it be? Have you dabbled in other genres? I mean, I feel like this could be billed actually as romantic suspense. As a romance fan, I really love that aspect of it.

SD: I wrote many books before I was published. I have written some in horror, in the horror genre, which I think is interesting. Dabbled in some supernatural or apocalyptic type of things. It's kind of more about what story comes to me. I'm always open to any genre in writing. Right now, I'm so focused on thrillers that I don't really have the time to explore around. But not really romance, straight romance. It definitely would have to have a suspense or a thriller element. I don't read a lot of just straight romance books. It's not really even something I'm well-versed in. So, I don't think I would try it. Or a slower very character-driven literary suspense or mystery, a locked-room mystery. I think we mostly call those thrillers these days, but there's a lot of locked-room mysteries out there. That's had a resurgence lately, of the sort of claustrophobic little group of people that is somewhere remote and a mystery happens.

EC: And I think horror is having a real trending moment now too. So that's interesting that you've written horror in the past.

SD: Yeah, I agree, horror is definitely having a pretty big resurgence. You know, genres go up and down. And the sort of current domestic thriller—we call these domestic thrillers, thrillers where mostly the main characters are not law enforcement, so it's not necessarily a cop chasing a serial killer, like the Silence of the Lambs type of thing—where it's people involved in a marriage. And, of course, it all exploded when Gone Girl came out. And it started this whole new genre of marriage thrillers and domestic-setting thrillers about neighbors with secrets, and people with betrayals, and they're more relationship-based thrillers. It's been going on since 2012, [when] Gone Girl came out. So, over 10 years. But people love them because people love to read about relationships gone wrong, for whatever reason.

EC: That's 100 percent true. I mean, knowing that this is such a hugely popular genre, how do you keep it fresh? How do you differentiate your stories from what you're reading out in the market? Is that a conscious decision?

SD: It's a significant challenge to come up with something new or just a new twist on an old story. It's really difficult, sure. Definitely there's ideas I've come up with where my agent or my editor will say, "Well, it's been done before." It is hard to come up with a new thing people haven't seen before. I mean, everybody has read a marriage thriller. But how do you come up with a new twist on the marriage thriller when so many have been written, or relationship thriller? It’s not easy. And sometimes it's just a matter of going through idea after idea after idea until you land on one.

EC: I think your stories, all the ones I've read, have been incredibly fresh. So, you're doing something right. It's amazing.

SD: Thank you.

EC: Can I ask you what you're working on now or next?

SD: I'm working on another thriller and that's all I can say at the moment.

EC: Sure. Okay.

SD: I don't have any details. But it is another thriller. And hopefully it will be as fresh as the others.

EC: Well, we can't wait. I think that does it for us. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. This was a wonderful conversation. And I love hearing about your process. It's amazing.

SD: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Great questions. And I had some unexpected ones in there. I never know what people are going to ask [laughs].

EC: Oh, good. I love that. And listeners, you can find Samantha Downing's A Twisted Love Story on Audible now.