rules for vanishing by kate alice marshall

Expect unreliable narrators, lots of twists, and lots of supernatural spookiness. The tale is told in a combination of prose “testimony,” video transcripts, interviews, and other materials. With her former best friends, she sets off down a disappearing road, and quickly discovers that there are worse things than ghosts waiting for her. Rules for Vanishing is the story of Sara, a girl who is searching for her sister, who vanished a year ago while investigating the legend of Lucy Gallows-the ghost story that has haunted their town for decades. Please describe the content of your latest book and what can readers expect from the read. We are living through an extraordinary time, with social, environmental, and political upheaval all around us. Characters that strike the balance between feeling real and feeling powerful allow us to imagine ourselves facing the difficult challenges in our own lives. We all like to recognize ourselves in fiction–not just the flawed people we are, but the powerful and heroic people we want to be. Maybe I can talk them into reuniting so we can wander down a ghost road together… Why do you feel books with powerful and relatable characters are so popular and have such a voice right now? And Sara’s difficulty in holding onto her friendships is something I relate to a lot, as I’ve lost some of the most important and intense friendships in my life.

Jeremy’s skepticism and his warnings about the terrible things that shall surely happen are definitely relatable. There are bits and pieces of me in all of my characters, I think. What character do you most relate to and why? And more directly, the story grew out of a short story I wrote over a decade ago-the story of Lucy Gallows and the Ghost Road, which became the urban legend that the characters of Rules for Vanishingare investigating when they are drawn into the supernatural. “Creepypasta,” internet ghost stories, and horror podcasts provided a lot of inspiration by crafting the kinds of stories that get under my skin and playing with the form and rules of the genre. Night Film by Marisha Pessl made me want to write a book that incorporated mixed media into the prose. Kate: Like most of my books, Rules for Vanishing is the result of many disconnected bits of inspiration accreting over time. Aurora: What was your inspiration behind your most recent novel?

Rules for vanishing by kate alice marshall