Savannah Book Festival opens with bestselling psychological thriller writer Ruth Ware

For the 17th year, bibliophiles will descend upon Savannah during the long Presidents Day weekend for the annual Savannah Book Festival.

In Telfair Square on Free Saturday, Feb. 17, you may catch someone sniffing the spine of Tim O'Brien's much-anticipated novel "America Fantastica," or queuing up at the crack of dawn outside the Historic Savannah Theatre to sit front row at the 30th anniversary talk by John Berendt, author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" ― or as tried-and-true Savannahians call it, "The Book." Other authors presenting that day include Alice McDermott, Alex Prud'homme and Peter Cozzens. A full schedule is available at savannahbookfestival.org/festival-saturday/schedule.

Renowned thriller writer Ruth Ware will kick off the four-day Savannah Book Festival as the opening headliner Feb. 15. In anticipation of her appearance, Ware joined us from her home in England to discuss visiting Savannah, writing mysteries, banning books and stepping into her readers’ shoes.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Is this your first time in Savannah?It will be, and I can’t wait. I hear it’s amazingly beautiful, and I’ve been longing to come for ages.

What are you looking forward to most?The food! I love trying new cuisines, and I’ve never tried biscuits and gravy, for example, so I’m really looking forward to trying all that, wandering Savannah’s streets, soaking up the literary vibes and feeling the history.

What can people expect from you as the festival’s opening headliner?I don’t want to give any spoilers, but I’m going to talk about how I became a writer, my journey, and some of the challenges I experienced along the way.

What were you like as a child?I had my head in a book right from when I was taught to read, to the extent that my mom had to ban books at the dinner table, which was obviously a tragedy. We were allowed to have them at breakfast, so that was the best meal of the day.

As a kid, did you think you were going to be a writer when you grew up?I think I always sort of hoped I’d find my way into writing, but I’m not sure I ever really believed it would happen. You know, if was sort of like hoping you might win the lottery one day without ever really building your future on it or working towards it as a career goal.

So, how did it happen for you?Really, it was when I had kids of my own.  I was on maternity leave with my second child, scribbling stuff in the evenings and putting it under the bed and I suddenly realized that with two small kids and a demanding job, I was not going to have the chance to write when I went back to work. And I thought, I have to write something that I can get published, something that would pay in order for writing to earn its place in my life. That was what got me over the hump to start submitting to agents and that was my first book that got published.

How do you balance the hint vs. the reveal in your works? It seems like such a challenge.It is tricky. I think that is one thing I love about writing crime. You have to spend a lot of time trying to experience the book as readers would, trying to figure out what they know, what they might know, what they might suspect. Having that constant to and fro between the writer you are and the reader you are trying to be at the same time is just an interesting way of writing a novel. There’s no science to it. I wish there were.

When you write the first line of a book, do you already know what the last line will be?I don’t in a text sense, but I almost always know the ending. The way I plot, I start by having this jumping off point, this “What if …” that kicks it all off and then I almost always know who did it, why and how. I work that out beforehand because such a big part of crime books generally, but my books specifically is about playing fair with the reader and giving them sufficient clues to solve the mystery. You can only do that if you know the solution yourself. You can’t sprinkle those breadcrumbs unless you have bread.

What is trickier and often a bigger challenge for me is knowing how my main character is going to solve the mystery. There have been a couple of plots I’ve tied up so tightly that I suddenly realize there’s no way for the mystery to be solved.

Are you always thinking about your next book?It can go either way. I’ve had books on the back burner for years that I’d like to write, but they haven’t quite come together. And then other ideas have literally come to me as I end one book and start the next. An idea just pops into my head. Some of my most successful books have been that way. “The Turn of the Key” was one.

Tell us a little bit about your reading life.I love reading crime books, but what I hadn’t really anticipated when I started writing in the genre is that it would turn reading crime books into a completely different experience that’s much more like work than pleasure. I read contemporary crime with a professional eye: “Would I have done that? Would I have made that decision? How would I have changed this?” In some ways, that makes it more fun, because you read it on a much more analytical level and maybe spot things that other readers don’t. But in some ways, it can spoil it a bit because you’re constantly looking at the framework and the mechanics behind it.Did you read mysteries as a child, too?I read everything; I was just unbelievably voracious. I read Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Enid Blyton, but also lots of school stories and classics. My mom was much more of a Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë kind of reader, so she had all the classics, whereas my dad was very Isaac Asimov, J.R.R. Tolkien, very kind of fantasy, old-school sci-fi. I just went straight onto their shelves from mine. I read lots of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers as a teen, so crime has always been a big part of my reading life, and I think classic crime in particular imprinted on me what a crime story should look like, in terms of the shape of it, the clues that you give to the reader, the way the puzzle sort of snaps into place at the end.

Is there any book you haven’t read that you really wish you could go back and read?One book that I have never read but I’m saving for my retirement, because I feel strongly you need to preserve some things for the long winter evenings, is “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I could appreciate Dickens’ books. And now I really love them. But I never read “Bleak House.” Obviously as his most crime-y novel, it is the one people keep saying I should read. And I intend to, but not yet. I’m looking forward to it.

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not writing?I really enjoy cooking, not just for me but also for other people. I love traveling just for leisure. One of the amazing things about my job is that I get to go to all these incredible places, but I often don’t get much time to enjoy them. One of the things I’m really looking forward to about Savannah is that I am there for a few days, which means I can actually look around.

If You Go >>

What: Ruth Ware, Opening Headliner at Savannah Book Festival

When: 6:30 p.m., Feb. 15

Where: Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St.

Tickets: $30, tickets.scadboxoffice.com

Info: savannahbookfestival.org

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Crime novelist Ruth Ware kicks off 17th annual Savannah Book Festival