Would you like to win a copy of my sixth novel, Admission? Go to my Facebook page. Here’s some background on this story.
January, 2006
Where the idea came from:
About five years after I graduated college, I wanted to write a story about some of my experiences at Trinity Christian College. I started to write a thriller based on college, but I realized that I was still too close to the material. I waited a little later and pitched this idea to Moody. It’s ultimately inspired by the incident at the core of the story, where the main character is brutally beaten up at his apartment off campus. This happened to me exactly as I depicted it in the novel.
One Line Synopsis:
A man discovers the truth ten years after a college prank turns into something far worse during his tumultuous last semester.
Journey to publication:
I talk a lot about doors opening and closing when it comes to being a novelist. This was happening to me in relation to the type of stories I was writing. The doors to my love stories seemed to be closing, while the doors were opening to writing suspenseful stories like Admission. In late 2004, I signed my first agented contract with a literary agent I’m still working with. It was a three-book contract with Moody Publishers. (The working titles for all three books: Ten Years Gone, Exit, and “Untitled Supernatural Thriller”.)
The Response:
I got a very positive response to Admission. One great starred review came from Booklist, with a quote saying “This is Thrasher’s best novel to date, with a nifty, airtight plot; a love story; and a serious theme about how some of us reform, and some of us don’t.”
My Thoughts:
I like Admission. It’s still not a true crime thriller or anything like that. But it’s got a good mystery at the heart of it, and it’s also a deeply personal work of mine. I was trying to make sense of my college experience ten years after the fact. I love the back and forth between the years. Like all of my writing, it was an experiment that I was glad to do.
Interesting Fact:
This was the first book I worked on with L.B. Norton, who has gone on to work with me on six novels including my current teen supernatural series.