Two murders, one year apart leaves 18-year old Addie Blackwood out of suspects for who is responsible for ending her prodigy sister’s life. GIRLS WHO BURN launches today and is a summertime scorcher full of young love and teen anger. I had a chance to chat with MK Pagano about her new novel and the debut novelist experience.

Q: Where did you first get the idea for GIRLS WHO BURN? What made you want to write this story?

MK: Usually what comes to me first is the setting. I knew I wanted to write a book that took place in the woods. I also knew that there was going to be a girl who blamed herself for the murder of someone close to her, but she wasn’t the one who killed her. The plot usually comes to me after those things. I’m like, okay, I have these characters. I have this setting, I have these other elements I want to include. Now what is the story?
This is the first real thriller I’ve written. I had another book that was on submission, but editors kept turning it down saying, this is too quiet for a thriller. And I said, I didn’t think I wrote a thriller. But it did have a missing girl element. So, then I though lemme see what happens if I actually try and write one.

Q: This is a romantic thriller, and Addie and Seth have an arc that’s a bit more complex than enemies to lovers because of just how much personal history they have and the uniqueness that they only see each other in summer.

MK: I started saying frenemies lovers because I think that makes more sense. I love a contentious relationship between love interest. I just find that more interesting than people who are nice to each other, even though in real life, that’s not how I have experienced most relationships.
Adding that in the class difference made it even more of a contentious relationship between them. They each spend time thinking that the other is ashamed of their relationship because they’re not good at communicating because they’re teenagers.
I like that they have such a history too. They’ve known each other for so long. They were these little kids who bickered for years. I love the dynamic of childhood friends grown up. I think there’s something so interesting about interacting with these people who’ve literally known you since you were in diapers or almost, and how that relationship changes over time if you stay in each other’s lives or come back into each other’s lives.
This novel was very much inspired by my own childhood. I had a very close knit group of neighborhood kids that we all hung out together, and I still talk to a few of them.

Q: You mentioned Seth and Addie’s wealth gap. What did you want to make sure you included about class and money?

MK: The wealth gap is something that pops up in all of the books I write because it is something that has had a big influence on me. I’m from a beach town in New Jersey. It has these huge mansions, these very wealthy families. And they only come to town for the summer. The rest of the time they’re at their other house. As a working class kid, I was the one working in restaurants or at the Starbucks or when these kids would come in. They’d have these brand new cars and they’d be throwing their money around. And a lot of them were really arrogant and it was frustrating because none of them ever had to work. They weren’t always very polite.
We were living next to each other, but in completely different worlds. Something that’s seeped into my stories, is the unfairness of people who grew up with everything and people who grew up with some stuff and people who grew up with nothing. It’s not even a conscious choice.
In this novel, I liked the idea that they are in kind of a run down town. There aren’t really new rich people moving in. There are just these rich people that go back because their grandma is there and the woods is kind of reclaiming parts of it.

Q: Great segue for us to talk about setting. You have made summer in the woods an ominous, scary place to be.

MK: Summer is a really interesting space, especially for characters who are still in school because it’s this very liminal space between one year and another. And I took it a step further the summer between high school and college. So that’s another very liminal space where you’ve left your old life behind, but you haven’t started your new life yet. I feel like the woods can kind of be that space too, especially the small woods between towns. It’s like this kind of no man’s land.

Q: Tell me about the choice to write YA. Was this always a story for teens?

MK: Yeah, so I’ve been writing since I was 25, a long time ago. And in my first story my main character was 17-year-old. And I’ve just kind of stayed there. There’s something really interesting about that very transitional phase in your life. There’s just more happening. That’s where first loves happen. That’s where you’re figuring out who you are. I like having characters that must face challenges while they are also not sure who they are. You can mess up at any age, but with teenage angst, the pressure is all right at the surface all the time. Everything feels like the end of the world.
I remember exactly how it felt to be 17, 18, 19. YA let’s you really focus in on what the characters are feeling and their emotions and how often they can mess up.

Q: Were there things that you had to research or had to incorporate to make this story relevant for a modern teen reader?

MK: In a couple of my writing groups, there are some younger writers who answered questions. For example, one of my now cut scenes had a dance and I had no idea what song today’s teens are dancing to, but the group told me to use Ed Sheeran. It’s a tricky age because I’m not a teen and I don’t have teens yet.
I had some teenage beta readers too. They pointed out small things, but most important to me was to tap into more a universal emotion.

Q: What’s your advice to other writers?

MK: My biggest tip is revise. Work with critique partners, beta readers, editors, and keep revising. The first time you write, the blocking is going to be all off trying to, you work on the blocking and the emotion and the dialogue. And I think I had messed it up at some point. I had somebody standing in the wrong place and they’re like, how did they get over there? But I think just you write it all out first and then you take some time away from it, and then you kind of fix it to the best of your ability. And then you have someone else look at it, and they will usually always spot something that you missed. Going over it with a fine tooth comb again and again, until you have it, so it makes sense and it’s compelling That just takes multiple drafts. No real shortcut.

Q: This is your debut novel. Anything about the publishing or promotional process that surprised you?

MK: I joined a debut group Slack for everyone whose first novels coming out this year. And it’s weird some things are very universal. Our worries are all so similar, but the way that certain publishers work are very different. Someone will be like, my publisher told me or my editor told me this. Is anyone else finding it? And other people say, my editor told me the exact opposite of that. So it seems like there’s no universal way of doing things in publishing. Since we’re all kind new, we don’t know.
Fortunately I’m in a couple other writer discords with more experienced writers who can actually tell me, is this normal? There’s no universal standard for how things should be done or what exactly to do. It almost feels like we’re all just making it up as we go along, which is fun, but also kind of scary sometimes.
Book promotion can be a full-time job. I’m on TikTok – but I don’t have time for daily posts and video content. I posted enough to get myself a thousand followers, which means I can put links to my book and my profile. You can’t do that if you have less than a thousand followers.
I think you need to be very flexible. Focus on the things you can control. For example, I can’t be obsessed with how many reviews I’m getting. I have to just work on the next book. And I love the writing process, so anytime anything in publishing starts to get me down, I’m just going to go back to my Scrivner doc or Word doc and working on the next story.

MK Pagano is a thriller writer based in NJ. GIRLS WHO BURN (Penguin Teen, US; Hachette, UK & AUS) is her debut novel. Learn more at mkpagano.com