Joshilyn Jackson

Author Interview - Joshilyn Jackson

Author of Missing Sister

From the New York Times bestselling author of Never Have I Ever comes a chilling story of sisters and revenge.

Revenge...It's all relative.

Born three minutes apart, Penny and Nix Albright grew up doing everything together, close as only twins can be. But when Nix dies in a tragic accident soon after college, she leaves behind a cryptic voicemail that has Penny guilt-ridden and desperate for justice.

Five Years Later

Penny has found new purpose as a rookie cop. She’s working to fulfill Nix’s dream of making the world a safer place, but following that dream becomes a nightmare when she’s called to her first murder scene. When she sees the victim, she knows him instantly. It’s Danny Bowery—one of three men she’s long blamed for Nix’s death—splayed in a pool of blood outside a posh Atlanta shopping center, almost as if she’d wished it so.

Stunned, Penny steps away to catch her breath and discovers a blonde in blood-drenched clothes gripping a box cutter. Before Penny can arrest her, the woman reveals that Bowery’s murder is part of a larger story that is far from over. A story about sisters. And with that, the killer disappears.

Now, Penny will stop at nothing to pursue this dangerous woman and learn why she’s avenging Nix’s death. The deeper she dives into the mystery, the less clear it becomes who is hunting whom in this captivating page-turner of hidden motives and deadly consequences.

Author Interview - Joshilyn Jackson

Author I draw inspiration from:

Sylvia Morena-Garcia is a favorite of mine. She slips in and out of genres like she’s changing pants, and all the pants look great on her. She has written noir, mystery-suspense, speculative, gothic horror, and novels that slide between genres. I admire that so much. I also love that she doesn’t care if her main female characters are “likeable.” She writes women who are better than nice. They are smart, flawed, intense, and interesting. They can be vain. They can be crafty. I love her women because they are never pious and rarely interested in being pleasant. Go tell one of her main characters to smile. I dare you.

Karin Slaughter is a freaking pioneer. She is fearless and so sly and crafty, and I care about her characters so much. Reading her gives me permission to go dark. I was Raised Right, to be polite and sweet and make everyone comfortable. I want to shy away. I want to blink. Slaughter is uninterested in that, and her books are so much better for it! I try to emulate her and follow my stories down into the dark if that is truthfully where they are going.

I currently write character driven domestic suspense novels, and the books that have influenced me the most were penned by folks like Lisa Unger, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Gin Phillips, Jennifer Hillier, Mary Kubica, Laura Lippman, Wanda M. Morris, and Liane Moriarty who also put character first. In their books, motive is more important than method, and navigating the human heart truthfully matters more than the plot twists – which doesn’t mean they don’t have great plot twists. They do. But because I care about their people, the twists land harder!

Author Interview - Joshilyn Jackson | Author I Draw Inspiration From

Favorite place to read a book:

I love to read on the train. I love trains in general. We don’t have trains in the south like New York has trains. That’s been one of the nicest parts about moving to the upstate area. New York has terrible things, too: Snow. Ice. Winter. Snow. To name a few. Did I mention snow?

We can hop Amtrak and be in NYC in a couple of hours. My husband and I love Amtrak into the city on a Saturday morning, reading the whole way, have a nice lunch, see a Broadway matinee, then finish our books on the train home.

Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with:

This makes me so anxious. I want to be stuck with Jack Reacher, and I want him to shoot out the doors and get us out, like, immediately.

Author Interview - Joshilyn Jackson | Book Character I’d Like to be Stuck in an Elevator With

The moment I knew I wanted to become an author:

I have no memory of this. Always. My mom has books I wrote at three. She published them for me using the Stapler and Crayola method.

Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook:

Hardbacks are for keeper shelf books. I want them signed or not at all!

Paperbacks are the literal best. All the sensory pleasures of paper + portable.

Audio is wholly reader and genre dependent, for me. It's my favorite way to “read” thrillers and mysteries, if I like the voice. I need a big fast engine of a plot or I get sleepy.

The last book I read:

I am a super eclectic reader. On paper, the last book I read was You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg. I loved it and would highly recommend it to book clubs because there is a lot to talk about. It’s a multi-voiced ensemble piece set in and around a dying mall.

I am almost through God of the Woods on audio. Holy cats! Gothic undertones, a missing girl, and the reader has a cracky, low voice and impeccable timing. It’s worth the libro-fm credit, believe me.

Author Interview - Joshilyn Jackson | The Last Book I Read

Pen & paper or computer:

Computer! I revise more than I draft, so much so that I wouldn’t have completed a novel yet back in the pen and paper days. Well, not unless I had a gaggle of convenient sisters like Melville to recopy pages with my notes and changes. Over and over.

Book character I think I’d be best friends with:

Sunny from SHINE SHINE SHINE by Lydia Netzer. Post-wig-loss, though. Pre-wig I would have found her intimidating and dull at the same time. Bald Sunny is never boring, is she?

Author Interview - Joshilyn Jackson | Book Character I’d be Best Friends With

If I weren’t an author, I’d be a:

A scuba dive instructor. :)

Favorite decade in fashion history:

I am not a clothes person. I have a uniform—jeans, black T, black cardigan—and if I have to be presentable I swap the jeans for a colorful skirt or the T for a colorful floral T, leaving the other two pieces the same.

That said, I love movies set in the Regency period. Yes to the clothes. I love when Hollywood goes all unhinged and throws accuracy out the window, too. Regency ala Bridgerton? Sure. Put more lace on. Get the wig bigger. I will be here in my cardigan eating popcorn and never lacing a single corset!

Place I’d most like to travel:

Galapagos. For the scuba diving!

My signature drink:

I am a former bartender, so it changes as I try new things. My current fave is a floral gin-based take on the Last Word, a classic prohibition tipple. I named it the Lady Meadowyn, and it appears in MISSING SISTER. Careful readers can likely learn to make it.

Favorite artist:

I love fauvism. Especially the kind with people or animals (as opposed to landscapes or objects). Give me Henri Matisse’s goats and flying violinists. Give me satiated ladies in abandoned poses ala Emilie Charmy. Slap the paint on thick and keep the colors vibrant. The movement was brief and beautiful and thus named because it means wild beasts in French.

Number one on my bucket list:

I want to see Pompeii. Not just for the dirty murals. (But I really want to see the dirty murals.)

Find more from the author:

• https://www.facebook.com/JoshilynJackson

• https://www.instagram.com/joshilyn_jackson/

About Joshilyn Jackson:

Joshilyn Jackson

Joshilyn Jackson is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of eleven other novels, including Gods in Alabama and Never Have I Ever. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Jackson is also a former actor and an award-winning audiobook narrator. A recent expat from the American South, she and her family have settled in upstate New York.