needs to be there for a reason. At the moment, I’m writing a lot of true crime inspired fiction, trying to condense hundreds of pages of research into a few thousand words. It’s very difficult to decide where to place my focus, what to reveal and what to leave unsaid.
Shelf Unbound: You’re working on a collection of short stories titled The Love of a Bad Man, which could have been a subtitle for The Wood of Suicides. What draws you to this subject?
126 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R
2015
DEBUT: APRIL/MAY 2014
Woollett: I first read Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal about 10 years ago, and was fascinated by the relationship between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter. Later, Wuthering Heights became a favorite. I liked how cruel Heathcliff was, but also how Catherine saw herself in him and identified with his cruelty. I’m not so much interested in stories of good girls falling for bad guys as girls who already have something bad in them and find themselves in these relationships. These girls are far more compelling to me, since they’re not just blank, virginal slates. They’re human, with the potential to act inhumanely.