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[00:00:51.540] – Alan Petersen
Hey, everybody. This is Alan with Meet the Thriller author. On the podcast today, I’m excited to be joined by Nicole Trope. She’s a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author, whose latest novel, My Daughter’s Secret, is an emotional and suspensful story about a mother uncovering shocking truths after the sudden death of her daughter. Nicole lives in Sydney, Australia. She’s written numerous bestselling readers that have captivated readers all around the world. So very excited to talk to you today. Welcome to the podcast, Nicole.

[00:01:22.380] – Nicole Trope
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:24.220] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, sure. Thank you. We’ll start from the beginning. You studied law, you’ve had different jobs, you were teaching, eventually finding yourself into writing. I’m curious about that. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you ended up writing Thrillers?

[00:01:38.300] – Nicole Trope
Yeah, I studied law. I started law, and I was not good at that, which is funny because my daughter’s actually a lawyer, but I think it takes a certain person. But once I dropped out of law, I studied English literature. I did a master’s degree in English literature, and the next best step was to become a teacher. So I became a high school English and drama teacher. But I think the plan was always, interestingly enough, to write. I didn’t actually realize that I’d had that plan. I was always writing, obviously, poems and short stories. But somebody, a friend of mine went away, and he came back after a few years overseas, and this was before you could communicate all the time. And he phoned me, he said, What are you doing? I said, I’m doing this, and I’m doing this, and I’m going to write. He said, Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what you’ve always said, that that was what you were going to do. So The plan was always there. I taught high school for about four years until I felt pregnant with my first child, and then it was time for me to stay home.

[00:02:40.940] – Nicole Trope
And that’s when I started really seriously writing. So yeah. And here we are. It sounds quick and simple, but it wasn’t. It took a long, long, long time to get published.

[00:02:53.840] – Alan Petersen
Even when those people have an overnight success, it’s really never overnight, is it?

[00:02:58.090] – Nicole Trope
It’s never overnight. There’s no such Not for writers, I don’t think.

[00:03:01.840] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, exactly. And so the first book you wrote, was that The Boy Under the Table? Is that your first novel?

[00:03:09.580] – Nicole Trope
Yeah. That was the first one. It was the first one that got published. There’s plenty of them sitting in the bottom of a drawer that will never see the light of day. But yes.

[00:03:19.060] – Alan Petersen
Yes. We have all of those. I think a lot of writers have those somewhere. I’m curious, too, because I remember I actually read My Daughters’s Secret a couple of years ago. It was published with Bocature, and now it’s coming out as a trade paperback through Grand Central. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What does it feel like now? Because your story is going to reach a whole new format, bigger distribution channel. How does that all feel?

[00:03:45.120] – Nicole Trope
It’s quite amazing. I think when Hachette acquired Booketure, I think that everything changed because they were a digital publisher, and now, of course, the reach is worldwide and everywhere. I think that’s made a huge difference to the Bookertsche writers. It’s wonderful to have Grand Central support. I have to admit that it was always a dream of mine to be published by Grand Central. To have this going into stores, and this is not the first one, there’s been a few others. It’s actually wonderful just to see it. It’s wonderful to see the book popping up in book clubs and getting messages from people all over the States. That’s the best part of it. It’s the reward, shall we say.

[00:04:26.040] – Alan Petersen
Let’s talk a little bit about My Dawner’s Secret here. I’ve always been curious about this. What sparked What’s the idea for it?

[00:04:31.280] – Nicole Trope
The story is about the death of a child. She’s older, she’s away at university. The scene that begins it is two young girls coming home from a Halloween party, and they walk past a house that has no other decoration except a dummy hanging from a beam. They’re a little bit drunk, and they’re laughing, and they know this house, and they think, Oh, it’s so weird. Why is there only one decoration? Then they go up onto the balcony and see it’s not a decoration. That was the scene that actually began the book in my mind. I had a very clear idea of these two young girls, one with cat ears, walking down and laughing and giggling, and They’re so innocent in their just enjoyment. Then this terrible thing, they see this terrible thing. The minute that that scene appeared, I knew who the mother was, and I knew that as a mother, if your When a child makes this terrible choice, the first thing you do is blame yourself, and then you want to know how it happened, why it happened. That is what the book is, Claire’s Journey, the Mother, to find out how exactly her daughter has made this choice, why she’s made this choice.

[00:05:49.600] – Nicole Trope
What she uncovers is quite, obviously, this is a psychological thriller, is horrifying and shocking. That’s basically what the story is Big part of this plot is the letters that she discovers.

[00:06:02.560] – Alan Petersen
Did that come to you as you were writing it, or was that part of the beginning as well?

[00:06:07.800] – Nicole Trope
I don’t know if it actually was part of the beginning, but there’s a song that begins Dear Darling. It’s a song. For some reason, that lyrics kept repeating in my head, and that’s where the letters started. I thought, yes. It was there, and I didn’t understand how to connect the two. But then I wrote the first letter and I thought, Oh, okay, that’s where that comes from.

[00:06:33.730] – Alan Petersen
I was curious to know, of course, without giving any spoilers, what could readers expect from your books if they’re not familiar with your writing?

[00:06:40.340] – Nicole Trope
Well, I think what they can expect is I write about families in crisis. I take a family on pretty much the worst day of their life and explore how that happened, why that happened, and how they go on from there. So what I feel like is that we all have dreadful moments. We all have bad days these bad years. And I feel like it’s almost my way of dealing with how uncontrollable the world is. So I take a story and I pick it apart to figure out what’s going on. You see those headlines in newspapers, awful headlines, and you never know why something has happened. And that’s what I do. I pick apart the why so that I can understand it, so that my readers can understand it. And what it does, it’ll take you, hopefully, which a lot readers tell me, it takes you out of your own life. It gives you a look into somebody else’s life. There’s a lot of drama, a lot of suspense, and a twist or two.

[00:07:41.640] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, so important for these domestic psychological readers. They’ve been so popular the last few years. I’m wondering, do you? Because you’ve been writing them for a while, but it seems like the last three or four years, they just really have taken off. Why do you think us readers love that genre, those type of books so much?

[00:07:58.700] – Nicole Trope
I think It’s always interesting to read about somebody having a worse time than you are. It’s just that’s human nature. It allows us to feel grateful for our own lives, which I think we all need to do more often, me included. When you read When you’re thinking about another family going through a terrible time, it allows you to think, Okay, it happens to everybody. I’m doing okay. It gives you a moment out of your own life. I think that psychological readers, by their nature, are incredibly fast to read and very immersive. That’s why I think readers really like them. The rise of digital publishing has meant that a lot more of them are very accessible to readers.

[00:08:44.790] – Alan Petersen
Are you a fan of the genre before you started writing your own readers? Is that what you decided to write in those type of books?

[00:08:51.090] – Nicole Trope
Interestingly enough, I read across the wide band, so I’ll read pretty much everything. I don’t know that I ever thought I’d write psychological readers. I knew I’d write about family in crisis, but I never… The twists always, sometimes they’ll surprise me. With My Daughters’s Secret, I have to say that the ending, I had another ending in mind until I wrote that ending. Then I thought, Oh, that’s what… And I was a little bit worried because I thought, Can I actually write this? Can I write something like this? But it just was the ending that needed to be there. So I’ll read everything from detective fiction to romance to everything. I think what I start with is somebody is characters, and the characters are the people who tell the stories. I’m not quite sure how I ended up writing these novels, but they really do speak to me.

[00:09:50.660] – Alan Petersen
What’s your writing process like then? It sounds like, do you outline these or are you a discovery writer?

[00:09:58.320] – Nicole Trope
I’m definitely a discovery When I talk to my editor, she always says, Well, we’ve got the next two books coming up. What are your ideas? And I send her an idea in a vague synopsis, and she goes, What about this? What about this? And it usually happens that I will, at some point after the novel is written, go back to the synopsis and think, Well, that had nothing to do with what I’ve just written. I don’t even understand where that came from. So I definitely am a discovery writer. And I think the minute I start planning, I lose all… It just disappears. All passion for it disappears. Appears. I just let it happen.

[00:10:32.680] – Alan Petersen
I’m curious, too, because there is expectations, too, for the reader, and you do it so well. Is that something that you’re thinking about as you’re writing it? You’re trying to build up the tension, things like that. Do you think about that?

[00:10:45.620] – Nicole Trope
I don’t think I imagine the twists before they appear. I have noticed that there will be themes running through the novel that I won’t actually pick up on myself until I read it after the first draft, and I’ll go, Okay, so that’s a reoccurring theme, and you’ve done it through all these characters. But in terms of the twists, sometimes I will… I know that chapter ending should have a certain an ending, so I’ll try for that. But really, the first draft is always just about, as everybody says, telling myself the story, and the twists appear on their own.

[00:11:23.410] – Alan Petersen
You’re in Australia, and for my own books, I was surprised. Fans from Australia reach out to me and me, and it seems that they really do like this genre, too. What’s the market there for readers? Now that you’re so international, what similarities do we have? Like a reader fan from the United States compared to Australia, for example?

[00:11:47.080] – Nicole Trope
I think Australians, so this might be a bit controversial. I think Australians have a tendency to… I’ve got a fan base here, but they have a tendency to like overseas writers in terms of genres like thriller and detective fiction before they’ll like Australian writers. So you almost have to, it feels like you almost have to establish yourself overseas before the Australians go, Oh, okay. So I had a small fan base from my previous publisher, but definitely having an overseas publisher and having overseas success has made a big difference. And there’s a lot of… I think there’s a rawness Just that they appreciate to Australian writing as well that I didn’t know Americans would appreciate, but they really, really do. I was quite surprised. Americans are so interested in my work, and They are my biggest markets. I think they all like character development to a certain extent. There’s this possibly, Australians will enjoy long-form chapters more Americans will, just because I have no idea why, and that’s probably a generational thing at this point. But yeah, they all seem to enjoy the family character-driven novel.

[00:13:10.960] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I’ve noticed that the change in several years, too. I think maybe now with social media and the scrolling on TikTok, people like things shorter. It keeps getting shorter and shorter, it seems like.

[00:13:20.740] – Nicole Trope
Absolutely. I think that’s true of all of us. I’ve noticed my own concentration span. I need to be invested almost immediately or I’m not invested.

[00:13:34.060] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. When you’re looking at a book, you’re thinking about reading and it’s like, Oh, really? Over 400 pages? For Tor, it was like, no big deal.

[00:13:43.740] – Nicole Trope
We’ve definitely changed.

[00:13:45.240] – Alan Petersen
Yes, we have, and all over the world. With regard to your writing process, do you write every day? Do you try to set like, I’m going to write at the same time in the same place? I’m just curious about your routine, your writing routine When you’re writing your books?

[00:14:02.480] – Nicole Trope
I have an office space where I write and dog who writes with me. He doesn’t contribute much. My mind’s lying over there. He’s very quiet, which is good. He’s a standard poodle. I would say that when I’m drafting, I try to meet a 2,000 to 3,000 word count every day. I’ve got one, like I work, there’s a couple of days where I have nothing else on and therefore can write all day long. But what I find is that my ambition is that when I sit down at the computer, the chapter is already outlined in my head. So what I’m doing is every task, all my domestic tasks, everything else I’m doing, I’m working in my head so that when I sit down, I don’t sit down and just go, now what? Because I find that that’s upsetting to me, and then I get frustrated Complicated.

[00:15:00.600] – Alan Petersen
What program do you use to write your books? Do you use Word or Scrivner or something? Just Word.

[00:15:04.640] – Nicole Trope
Just Word, yeah. No, I know people use Scrivner, but I looked into that once. It looked very complicated.

[00:15:10.900] – Alan Petersen
Yes. Well, I’ve interviewed over 200 thriller authors, and I think 90% is Word. That’s still the-Oh, really?

[00:15:18.980] – Nicole Trope
Okay.

[00:15:20.640] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s just amazing. Now there’s even more stuff out there now.

[00:15:26.280] – Nicole Trope
No, I know. Now you can get AI to write a whole book for you.

[00:15:29.400] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, Yes, well, hopefully we don’t have to worry about that too much because I don’t think it’s… What is it? To hit a button and it’ll automatically do it for us. I hope it doesn’t get to that.

[00:15:38.300] – Nicole Trope
I know. I think it’s a big worry for authors. I know that there’s a lot of major apps where all our work is uploaded. Then there’s just nothing we can do about it.

[00:15:49.500] – Alan Petersen
I think there’s some good tools for the research and stuff like that. But that ship has sailed, I think. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

[00:16:00.820] – Nicole Trope
Yeah, it really is. It’s going to be a very different world.

[00:16:05.080] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it will be. Yeah, that’s for sure. I was also curious now. You said you read all types of books. Do you still find time to read now? Now that you’re busy writing these books, do you still find time to read for them? Oh, yeah.

[00:16:18.000] – Nicole Trope
Reading is my greatest pleasure, and it will never not be. I mean, every night, I read every night. I’m reading a Kristen Hannah book at the moment. My My favorite author is Terry Pratchett, would you believe? And Faye Wheldon. I think I’ve gone through stages. When I was in my teens, I read endless fantasy, and I haven’t quite ever gotten back to fantasy, but I do. I love books. I love reading. I love the worlds that are created by other authors. Because when I write, images of a scene come to me. When I read, That’s how I read the movies in my head.

[00:17:03.650] – Alan Petersen
As I noticed when I was looking at your Amazon page for the interview, so you have another book that’s coming up as a pre-order. You have My Daughters’s Secret that’s coming out. Can you tell us about that? About what are you working on right now? What’s coming up next for you?

[00:17:20.880] – Nicole Trope
The book that’s coming out on the 17th of October is called What Have You Done? It’s a story about Juliet as opposed to Julia. It feels like it’s the same name, but it’s many books later. She has had a stay in a psychiatric hospital, and she comes home. In the psychiatric hospital, she accessed some dreadful awful memories, and as the reader, you have to try and work out what is true and what is not. So that’s quite an intense and very dark book, as is My Daughter’s Secret. I think Some of my novels are a lot darker than others, and the themes are quite dark. So yeah, that’s coming out. I just had a novel called The Therapist, where that came out a couple of months ago about a therapist who takes on a new client who is not quite as she seems. So there’s a lot of stuff going on, which is nice. It’s always nice because it feels like I work and work and work, and there’s only a few publications a year. But it’s nice to have stuff coming out, especially now with my daughter’s Secret going into stores, and I really look forward to seeing readers’ response to that.

[00:18:34.720] – Nicole Trope
Even though it’s been out for a while, it’s nice to revisit this novel because it was the first novel I published with Bookerture, and therefore, it’s lovely to see a bigger readership respond to it.

[00:18:46.960] – Alan Petersen
It’s like a full circle. I didn’t realize that was your first Bookerture book.

[00:18:50.220] – Nicole Trope
Yes, it was.

[00:18:52.460] – Alan Petersen
I was curious. Just thought about this now. How does that work? Did you have to go back at all and reread it or We do do an edit.

[00:19:04.080] – Nicole Trope
We do an edit specifically for the American market. Just the changing of some words, which is never really a big deal. But I mean, Booketure do a lot of edits before any novel comes out, so it’s usually pretty ready to go. Grand Central, they make the decision, but they read a book and make the decision that they like the work. It’s just that American market edit, which is great. I mean, that’s easy enough to do.

[00:19:30.000] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. Bookertje puts out some really good books. They have very good authors on the roster.

[00:19:36.320] – Nicole Trope
They do, yeah. They do. They work very hard and they’re very discerning. I don’t think I imagined… Because I came from a previous publisher, and I never had this level of editing and interest and concentration from an editor.

[00:19:53.780] – Alan Petersen
What are you working on now? You’re working on a book now that’s going to come out next year? Is that how the process works?

[00:19:59.180] – Nicole Trope
That’s That’s exactly how the process works. I’m working on a book that I’m sure it’s called a Perfectly Nice Family. It’s about a woman who has, I think in America, you call them an in-law suite, or in Australia, we call them a granny flat. She has that on her property and she wants to make some extra money. Why not rent it out to a perfectly nice family?

[00:20:24.560] – Alan Petersen
Say no more. Or not. I’m already intrigued in that one. I’m looking forward to keep my eye on that one.

[00:20:32.320] – Nicole Trope
Yeah.

[00:20:33.920] – Alan Petersen
Nicole, before I let you go, because I do have aspiring writers that listen to this podcast, so I always ask by guests. I feel like a broken record sometimes, but people love to hear about this. Any advice for someone who wants to write readers that is aspiring to write a thriller?

[00:20:50.140] – Nicole Trope
I would say, first of all, don’t worry about your first draft. It’s going to suck. I know there are people who edit as they go along, and I do that sometimes. I just can’t stand spelling mistakes because that red line really bothers me. But otherwise, I just keep going. The best advice I can give any writer is once you have a workable first draft, you’ve got it into shape and you think this is good, is take time off. Stop thinking about it. Take a week off because when you come back, everything looks and feels different. And that’s the best thing that I ever do for my work, is to take that time off because I find if you get to the end and go, right, I’m going to start editing again right now, you miss things, and you miss the sense of the book, you miss everything, because it’s two in your head already. So take time off before you begin your second draft, your second edit.

[00:21:43.340] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s good advice. Where can the listeners find you? Are you on social media? Where are you at?

[00:21:50.550] – Nicole Trope
I am on social media. I’m on egg, although there’s not a lot of engagement with writers there these days. I’m on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook is a lot of readers send me messages over Facebook and Instagram. I try to respond to all of those messages. I think that’s very important that readers know that because if somebody is kind enough to say, I loved your book, you should be kind enough to say thank you.

[00:22:16.990] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, so My Dawner’s Secret comes out September 30th. By the time this podcast is published, it’ll be there.

[00:22:25.740] – Nicole Trope
People go check it out. It will be there. I’m sure it’s probably hitting stores right now.

[00:22:29.540] – Alan Petersen
Yes, Yes, exactly. It’s magic. All right, Nicole, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We really enjoyed talking with you.

[00:22:36.520] – Nicole Trope
Thank you so much for having me. It was really nice to be here.

[00:22:41.000] – Announcer
Thanks for listening to Meet the Thriller author, hosted by Alan Peterson. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other Thriller fans discover the show. You can find all past episodes, show notes, and author interviews at thrillerauthors. Com, including conversations with icons like Dean Kuntz, Freda McFadden, and Lee Child. And if you’re looking for your next gripping read, check out Alan’s own Psychological Thrillers and Crime Fiction Novels at thrillingreads. Com.. Until next time, stay safe, keep reading, and keep the thrills coming.