If I had to narrow down the single emotion that inspired my debut, I’d have to say it’s fear. And I wonder if this is common among female thriller writers, especially mothers.
Woman on the Edge
Woman on the Edge opens on a Chicago subway platform. Widow and social worker, Morgan Kincaid, just wants to go home after work and curl up on her couch, like she does every night since her husband, Ryan, took his own life. Her life is in shambles, but she’s trying so hard to make the best of it and move forward.
As she’s waiting for the train, like all the other tired commuters, a disheveled, haggard woman holding a newborn, approaches her and whispers, “Take my baby.” She then says Morgan’s name, places the baby in her arms, and jumps in front of the train hurtling into the station. It’s a moment of pure shock for Morgan, and the end of another woman’s life.
The first line of the book was the very first thought I had about it. Like most writers, I observe and listen to everything and everyone around me, out of fascination in psychology and wanting to know what people are really thinking about at any given moment in time.
It was a cold winter morning, and I was waiting for the subway on a Toronto platform, watching the commuters, wondering what everyone’s story was. I wasn’t specifically looking for a plot, because usually my best ideas come to me when I’m not trying so hard to find them. Then I saw a woman holding a baby. She looked worn out and frazzled, as most new mothers do. As I did many years ago. I was curious what she was thinking about and how she was doing in this new life that we’re thrust into the minute our baby is put in our arms for the first time. I was afraid for her, because she was so close to the edge. There are no barriers, and one false move—a light push, a trip, and she could fall onto the tracks. Even then I hugged the wall on the platform, and now I basically press myself against it until the train comes. Paranoid, perhaps, but again, I think many thriller authors are because we write the darkest of human thoughts and actions.
I felt the wind of the oncoming train as it careened through the tunnel, and I imagined this mother asking me to take her baby. I felt the exhilarating, heart-pounding excitement of a new story, and my thoughts got darker. As the train pulled into the station, I scribbled the idea on an empty gum pack. By the time I’d boarded with all the other commuters, and happily, also the mother, who was nestling her baby against her, the premise for Woman on the Edge was born.
Woman on the Edge by Samantha M Bailey (Headline, £8.99)