"It's always better to push yourself to new places. You can pull back when it's done."

Hayley Krischer on the perils of fame, going full MISERY, and her page-turning new novel, WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE?

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order Hayley’s quirky mystery, out now!

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Me: Huge congrats on WHERE ARE YOU, ECHO BLUE? (which I loved)!

Hayley: Thank you so much! And thank you for blurbing it!

How are you feeling post-publication?

I'm actually just getting out of a post-pub depression. Funny you should ask. Doing well now.

Ah yes, the post-pub depression. She's a friend of the show! haha

Comes up all the time in these interviews

Did you do anything to lovingly move her along?

Authors really should have a trigger warning each time we write a book. We forget.

Yeah, like Clippy popping up: It looks like you're sending in your final edits!

Actually, I got really sick just before the book came out and then after. So I had to rest. My body was screaming at me to rest. A lot of doctors a lot of medication. And now I'm just doing a tremendous amount of self care. Box breathing, meditation, walking, swimming. Today I'm going to Reiki so I'm really looking forward to that.

Exactly!

I love that! Every time I get sick I'm like, "Oh, OKAY, body, guess I'll finally slow down then..."

But I'm very glad you're on the up and up.

Thank you. How are you? I know you're just getting some edits in, right? your trigger warning should come up.

Yes! I just turned in my global revisions for Book 5. It was down to the WIRE. And now I'm trying to remind myself to take a second to breathe before rushing over to all the other stuff that backed up behind it.

So hard. I hope you can take a second to breathe.

Thank you! But for now, thank YOU for talking to me as you're recovering too. Can you share what ECHO BLUE's about?

Yes! It's about the most famous child star of the 90s who disappears on the eve of the millennium and the journalist, who happens to also be an obsessed fan, who searches for her. It's got a lot of themes about Hollywood in the 90s, how women were treated back then, parasocial relationships and father daughter relationships.

I know you've got a personal backstory related to the idea. Can you share the inspiration?