Fueled by Guilt: Author Hannah Mary McKinnon Talks Inspiration
Inspiration for my novels is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s as obvious as someone kicking me in the shins (please don’t) but on occasion, it’s far more subtle.
Take my eleventh book, the thriller A Killer Motive. Unlike most of my other stories, I’m not exactly sure where the seed of inspiration came from. It wasn’t from a feel-good radio segment like with Sister Dear (which I quite happily twisted into something nefarious). Nor was it watching a Guy Ritchie movie and then writing a bad main character who the reader ended up rooting for aka Lucas in Never Coming Home. It wasn’t a sudden holy shootballs moment either, à la a rock band is worth more dead than alive after an accident as I noodled around Only One Survives.
A Killer Motive’s inspiration was a cunning little beast, because it surged from a place deep within me. Guilt. It’s a five-letter word most of us are familiar with. A word that not only has the power to make us feel absolutely rotten about ourselves within an instant, but it can also make people do things they otherwise absolutely wouldn’t.
In my latest story, Stella’s younger brother goes missing from a beach party she takes him to, despite him being grounded by their parents. What’s supposed to be an innocent night of fun ends in tragedy when Max vanishes, never to be seen again. Stella blames herself, and she’s not the only one.
Six agonizing years later, Stella’s a true crime podcaster who helps other families find the closure she’s still chasing. When she receives a clue about what happened to her brother, she goes to extraordinary lengths to unravel the mystery, including putting herself in mortal danger.
I’ve never had anyone go missing on my watch, nor have I faced a deranged killer, but I do know what it’s like to lose someone and feel at least partially responsible. Over thirty years ago, my best friend didn’t come work one morning, something that was entirely out of character. This was long before widespread usage of mobile phones, and apps such as Snapchat and Find My iPhone were inexistant. Twenty-four hours the news of a cult’s mass murder suicide broke. In utter disbelief, I learned my friend’s father was the cult leader, and I knew he’d traveled to visit his dad the weekend right before the unimaginable slaughter.
I can still feel the sense of panic when I realized my friend may have somehow got caught up in the tragedy, the feeling of helplessness from not knowing how or where to reach him, of being completely unable to believe any of it could possibly be true. Recalling the memories still makes my gut lurch. Tragically, my friend had been murdered by his father along with so many others, and I never saw him again. The turmoil I went through isn’t something I’d wish on anyone.
So, why the guilt? I didn’t know the cult existed. I’d never met his father. I had zero inkling anything bad was about to go down. However, my friend and I saw each other the night before he’d gone to see his father. I tried to persuade him to come to a party at my place the next evening instead. You don’t get along with your dad anyway, I’d said. What’s the big deal if you blow him off? My friend hesitated—I can still clearly see him wavering as we stood outside when he dropped me off after a rave—so I pushed a bit more. It’ll be fun, I’d promised. You’ll love it way more. Come on. After hesitating again he said he really had to see his father. My friend was a man of his word, after all. It was just one of the things I loved about him.
For over thirty years now I’ve wondered what if. What if I’d insisted he come to my party a third or fourth time? What if I’d called him the next morning and tried to talk him into it just once more? He might’ve been annoyed with my persistence, but would he have dropped his dad? Might he still be alive? Was I a single question away from him being saved?
I’ll never know the answers, and while those feelings of guilt have lessened with distance, age, and wisdom, they still fuel the behaviours of my fictional characters. In A Killer Motive, Stella will do anything to find Max and bring him home, whatever that outcome might look like. From the outset, I found an older sister trying to find her brother after he vanishes on her watch an intriguing concept, but the undercurrent of why Stella so desperately does what she does without a doubt stems from my decades old and horrific experience.
As I said at the beginning, inspiration for my novels can be a funny thing. It might be loud-mouthed and glaringly obvious, or it’ll creep up on me when I least expect it, shifting my attention in whatever direction it chooses. This time, instead of shoving it back into the depths of my brain I tackled the beast named guilt. I wrestled and tamed it before using it to fuel Stella and Max’s journeys. Thankfully, that’s not something I’ll ever have to feel remorseful about.
Discover the Book
While on a local radio show, her mention of her brothers case leads to a mysterious invitation to play a game with promises of answers about Max. Stella thinks it’s a sick joke…until Max’s best friend vanishes. And she’s given new instructions: tell nobody or people will die. Desperate and unable to trust anyone, Stella agrees. But beating a twisted, invisible enemy seems impossible when they make all the rules…
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Internationally bestselling author Hannah Mary McKinnon was born in the UK, grew up in Switzerland and moved to Canada in 2010. her eight suspense novels include THE REVENGE LIST, ONLY ONE SURVIVES, and A KILLER MOTIVE, and her work has been optioned for the screen. She also writes holiday romantic comedies as Holly Cassidy. Hannah Mary lives near Toronto, Canada with her husband and three sons. Connect on socials @hannahmarymckinnon, and visit www.hannahmarymckinnon.com for more.