[00:00:01.100] – Alan Petersen
Welcome to Meet the Thriller Author, the podcast where we dive deep into the crafts, stories, and minds behind today’s most riveting thriller novels. I’m your host, Alan Petersen, and this is episode number 209. I’m thrilled to have Noelle West Ihli as a guest for this episode. 2024 has brought us some incredible books, and Noelle is hands down one of my favorite thriller author discoveries of this year. Her novels are heart stopping, haunting, and full of nail-biting suspense, the kind that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Flipping page is late into the Night, whether it’s her unique approach to the survival readers or the complex fierce character she creates, there’s a lot to admire in her work. So today we’re going to talk to her. We’re going to explore what inspires her stories, how she creates such powerful suspense, and get a peek into her writing journey and creative process. But before we jump into our conversation with Noelle, here’s a quick reminder. My latest Psychological Thriller, Imposter Syndrome is out now. It’s on sale for 99 cents, so be sure to grab your copy at thrillingreads.com/imposter. If you’re a fan of twisted secrets, intense suspense, and mind-bending revelations, this one’s for you.

[00:01:07.420] – Alan Petersen
All right, let’s get into it. Here’s my conversation with Noelle West-Eilly. Hey, everybody. This is Alan with Meet the Thriller author. On the podcast today, I have Noelle West-Eilly, who writes some awesome psychological readers. Been reading her books the last couple of months, I’m really glad that she agreed to join me here on the podcast. How are you doing, Noelle?

[00:01:26.920] – Noelle West Ihli
I’m great. I’m so glad to be here, Alan. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.

[00:01:30.060] – Alan Petersen
Thank you. I was excited when you said yes. These readers that you write, were you a fan of the genre before you actually started writing them?

[00:01:38.390] – Noelle West Ihli
Absolutely. Thrillers are pretty much exclusively what I read. I scare myself nightly with whatever true crime documentary Netflix insists I will love. I’m a super fan of the genre.

[00:01:53.290] – Alan Petersen
I love those true crime documentaries as well, too. It’s funny, either I’m reading it or watching it. My wife’s like, Why don’t you try something different?

[00:02:02.920] – Noelle West Ihli
My husband says the same thing. We have some palate cleansers with whatever trashy reality TV show is hot at the moment, so we balance it out.

[00:02:11.570] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, we worked on it at the end. What was your journey then from being a reader of the genre, a fan, to thinking that you were going to try writing one? Did you always want to be a writer? How was that journey for you?

[00:02:24.020] – Noelle West Ihli
I always thought I would stay behind the scenes. I studied editing in college. I worked for very small publishing house afterwards. Got a lot of great first-hand experience with all the different aspects of the publishing and editing process. It took me way too long to feel like, I’m ghostwriting, I’m editing, I’m doing all of these things, and I’m never putting my own name on it. Maybe I should give this a whirl. It was a very delayed light bulb moment. But It happened, and it was something I had been training for my whole life and didn’t even realize it. I’ve always loved to read readers. I’ve always loved to edit and write. Very familiar with the publication process, so it all just finally clicked a few years ago.

[00:03:14.600] – Alan Petersen
What was your first book that you published?

[00:03:16.870] – Noelle West Ihli
It was The Thicket. That came out in 2021. A few years before that, I had gone down the rabbit hole of querying the traditional route, and I finally decided I would I go it on my own, and the rest is history, I guess. But yeah, back in 2021 is when I finally had published on that novel.

[00:03:38.410] – Alan Petersen
What were some of the books that you read before and authors that inspired you in the thriller genre?

[00:03:43.650] – Noelle West Ihli
I love Loved Harland Cobon and Mary Higgins-Clarke. They were two of the OGs that I read through all of their backlist. I love Lisa Jules, Jess Lowry. But yeah, I think it was Mary Higgins-Clarke, the All Around the Town. I don’t know if you’ve read that one by her, but I just remember clutching my covers and reading that one when I was probably 12 years old, and it just inspired me in the creepiest way, I guess. But fantastic book. Love Mary. She’s an OG.

[00:04:19.320] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I’m going to have to go check that one out. I’ve read a couple of your books, and they’re great, obviously. They’re doing so well. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you. I your books feature big survival elements of survivors. They’re usually out in the wilderness somewhere creepy. What drives you to writing in that certain area? Is that something that just always interested you?

[00:04:43.700] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, I mean, write what you know, right? I write from my own anxieties about things that scare me, which is a lot of things. I’m filling my head with these true crime stories and then going hiking. It gives me a lot of time to let these stories about some of the worst scenarios that I can come up with in my own mind. Then I’ve always leaned more thriller than horror, and nobody can win an argument about what that means exactly. But to me, that leans a little more on the survivor side of things rather than the catastrophic scene ends in blood and gore. I identify with the survivor mindset, I guess, a little more than the catastrophic gore. But yeah, I guess it’s because I can imagine myself in those situations, however scary they might be, or listening to true crime podcasts, or watching true crime, and seeing people who look like me a lot of times in those situations. Then that author brain takes over and adding a little bit of that creative license.

[00:05:51.630] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think that’s what’s so much fun about this genre, especially the psychological readers, because I read a lot of the procedural stuff, and then I got into the psychological readers a couple of years ago. I I think that’s what’s the fun part because you can see ourselves like, Oh, I could be like that. I can’t be like a FBI agent.

[00:06:06.970] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, absolutely. I think that is what it comes down to for me as well. It’s so immersive to be able to be like, Wow, that’s an everyday person just like me, and that maybe could really happen. What would I do in that situation if it were me?

[00:06:20.020] – Alan Petersen
I read that Ask for Andrea, and that was such a great take. It was so different, too, because you really focused a lot on the victims of a serial killer. I was just curious what inspired that story for you.

[00:06:34.710] – Noelle West Ihli
I got the idea when I was watching a really fantastic documentary about Ted Bundy’s victims. The only stuff I’d seen about Ted Bundy was mostly focused on Ted Bundy. I had this white bull when I was watching it. It was really harrowing and scary, but it was also really emotional. It felt like, Man, these These women were the superstars. Or not the superstars, but these women were the heart of this story, and he gets the headline every single time. I want to hear from them what happened instead of seeing his face constantly. I wanted to write a story that gave women like Ted Bundy’s victims or other victims who got their lives and their voices cut short a storyline and put them in the spotlight instead of the big bad read that we usually feature.

[00:07:32.450] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. I also noticed in your book, you have those strong female characters and their fighters and survivors. Is that something that when you’re writing these books, you’re thinking about that, or does that just come natural?

[00:07:43.310] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, absolutely. That’s what inspires me because that’s the flip side of the anxiety that drives me to write and put myself in the driver’s seat. That’s the stories, and those are the people that keep me being like, yes, evil isn’t always the thing that comes out on top, even though sometimes it is in real life. Those are the stories that really give me the chills when I listen to the actual stories about victims and survivors in true crime. That’s who I want to write about as well.

[00:08:14.140] – Alan Petersen
I always ask my guests, too, about the writing process. What’s the balance then for you? You have to correct. You’re writing a thriller. There are certain things you need to have in them, but you want to entertain, but you also want to develop some good characters. How do you balance all that?

[00:08:31.190] – Noelle West Ihli
Oh, gosh. That’s a great question. That’s a hard question. I think it just comes back to me to adding in layers as I write. You get out, or for me, I get out a draft as quick as I can. I block in the pieces I know need to be there with different twists and different character arcs and elements. Then I try to go back with it with fresh eyes and see who feels two-dimensional and who feels like, could I imagine talking to that person, or if they told me their story or told someone else their story, would it get me in the heartstrings, or would I be like, That sounds like something that a cheap newspaper article wrote about a very brief cursory overview of that person’s experience. Just trying to get in there and make that, as cliché as that sounds, make that character’s experience feel real and feel authentic to readers, many of whom might have had drama or had something bad happen to them. I think a lot of women have. Just trying to layer that in little by little as I go back and get to know the characters more with each past of the book.

[00:09:41.310] – Alan Petersen
It doesn’t sound like you have this big comprehensive outlines I do, but I think I do it weird.

[00:09:50.270] – Noelle West Ihli
I will start with a big comprehensive outline. I’ll spend a week writing this amazing detail, chapter by chapter, character arcs, and then I will put it away and ignore it. I just want all of that in the back of my head for me to take from as I’m writing. But I feel like if I focus on it too hard, then I get a little bit too boxed in. So I do it, and then I ignore it, and then I write it, and I count on my beta readers to tell me where I totally missed the boat.

[00:10:23.920] – Alan Petersen
I love to hear that because that’s similar to my process, too. I spend a lot of time on these huge outlines, but then I really don’t really follow But it’s in my head, so it helps me in the story.

[00:10:33.530] – Noelle West Ihli
I love knowing that. That’s really cool.

[00:10:36.080] – Alan Petersen
I’m not alone. Yeah, I’m not alone. I’ve interviewed a lot of people, and most people either they go by the seat of their pants or they follow their outline very strictly.

[00:10:45.230] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, absolutely. That’s amazing. I love knowing that.

[00:10:48.000] – Alan Petersen
I was like, Wow, that sounds familiar. Then I also like to ask about the tools of the trade. Do you use Word or Scriveter or something different?

[00:10:59.100] – Noelle West Ihli
I use I’ll stick exclusively Google Docs. Okay, nice. I can make as many docs as I want for different things and then hide them away, and I know that I’ll always be able to find them again. Then when I have my beta readers go through initial drafts, then I can make them each a copy, and I don’t have them on my computer. They’re just in the cloud, which is a little bit scary. The cloud is still… I’m a millennial. I didn’t grow up with the internet until I was in middle school. It’s scary But they’re accessible and it’s easy for me. So I go with Google Docs.

[00:11:35.390] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, we figured if Google goes down, then it’s like we have a bigger fish to fry anyway. Society is over anyways.

[00:11:41.250] – Noelle West Ihli
It’s fine.

[00:11:43.760] – Alan Petersen
When you’re writing, do you write every day? Do you have set hours? I’m just very Snoopy here.

[00:11:51.760] – Noelle West Ihli
I do. I find that for my personality, that helps me slowly but surely get this done. I write full-time. This is what I do for my day. So I have set hours at my desk and then get my butt in the chair and tell myself that it’s okay if they are bad words, I just have to write the words, and then I can come back and turn on that editor brain and smooth those over at some point, which I will. So I find that if I go too long without writing, if I give myself a break for a day, then my brain falls over on its back and flails its legs. It’s like, No, we have to catch up. We have to do too much now. I just write every day, and it helps me avoid those freakouts mentally.

[00:12:39.390] – Alan Petersen
Your background must have really been pretty cool, though, because if you’re doing ghost writing and stuff, you must have Deadlines for you are probably… They don’t freak you out as much, maybe.

[00:12:49.770] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, it helped. I always tell myself, Yeah, if you could keep a deadline for somebody else, you can keep a deadline for yourself to do yourself that solid.

[00:12:59.390] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. When you were doing the other stuff before, was it usually always in the thriller world, or would you like whatever job came along?

[00:13:08.070] – Noelle West Ihli
It was not. It was a small enough publishing house in Utah, and they cover most genres. It was very squeaky-clean across all of the genres, as you may imagine. But, oh, yeah, romance. There were a couple of thrillers. There wasn’t any horror. There was women’s fiction. I didn’t write a lot of thrillers or edit or ghost write, but everything else, I got my hands in just a little bit. But that helped in some ways to see the commonalities of what made a good lot. Every genre has its buttons and its tropes that readers love to see, but what makes a good story tends to cross genres quite a bit. So it was fun to see that up close.

[00:13:57.350] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because we all tend to hit the leaves the readers no matter what genre. And then everything in the background is probably the similar process and the marketing and all that’s probably very similar. Right. And so I wanted to ask you something, too, because when I was preparing for this interview, I was looking at your books and I noticed on Amazon, there’s this tag that says best of Book Talk hashtag. I’m like, Okay, what is that? Then I went down that rabbit hole. Did you know about that? Were you surprised?

[00:14:28.970] – Noelle West Ihli
Are you I was surprised. I was really excited to see that. I love my BookTockers. They are fantastic. It’s fascinating to see the book culture on Instagram versus TikTok versus Facebook. Book, but I don’t know why that one earned the best of Book Talk versus the others. But I’m very excited to see it.

[00:14:54.330] – Alan Petersen
Yeah.

[00:14:55.160] – Noelle West Ihli
I wish I had more insight for you on that.

[00:14:57.080] – Alan Petersen
I’m just curious. I’ve I’ve been seeing those recently. Now you’re the first person I’ve interviewed that has that hashtag or whatever from Amazon. So I was curious about that. Do you do TikTok videos yourself? I have an author account on TikTok, but it’s not the most active thing that I do.

[00:15:18.670] – Noelle West Ihli
I tend to be most active on Instagram, so I’m there, but I wouldn’t say I was active.

[00:15:26.830] – Alan Petersen
That’s fascinating, too, because I’ve interviewed I knew you’d be Frieda McFadden, and she got blew up on TikTok, too. I asked her the same question, and she’s like, I don’t even have an account. It’s all these great bookmakers out there that love these. Find you, they love you, and then they start making all their videos for you. That’s awesome.

[00:15:42.700] – Noelle West Ihli
It’s such a cool platform, and There’s so many talented people on there, and I just love them.

[00:15:50.630] – Alan Petersen
Okay, so I got sidetracked on that one. I’m curious, too. I always ask about the research process. How much time do you spend on researching? Is it all usually online? What’s your research process like?

[00:16:05.990] – Noelle West Ihli
It varies a little bit by book and how closely I want to weave my story with something that inspired the book. I generally will do a lot of research upfront, with the way I do my outlines. I’ll just tuck all of that information into my brain about whatever stories are really tugging my mind that I want to weave elements into the book. So I’ll read a bunch of biographies or autobiographies or watch different true crime episodes about what happened if I’m researching different crimes for a book. And then I’ll let the creative process take over, and I’ll tuck that aside because I don’t want to rely too much on that. With my latest book, it was a little bit different. I did make the choice to tie that book as closely as possible to the real events that happened. It’s none left to tell. It’s based on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. For that one, that happened very, very pre-Internet. There were a lot of hardcopy books that I have sitting on my shelf that just have miles of sticky notes and pages marked and dog-eared. I think one of the books is just covered in pink highlighter all the way through.

[00:17:27.730] – Noelle West Ihli
So that book took me a lot more rabbit holes because it was so important to me to stay as true as I could to the story while feeling in some of the gaps that I didn’t… And nobody knows what really happened. But usually I’ll just do a big bulk of research upfront and then tuck that aside with my outline and let the creative process take over.

[00:17:49.320] – Alan Petersen
Cool. I wasn’t familiar with that crime. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:17:54.290] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, it was- A real crime that’s based on?

[00:17:57.200] – Alan Petersen
Yeah.

[00:17:58.940] – Noelle West Ihli
The book is It’s a relatively little than known event that took place in Southern Utah, where a group of settlers and religious zealots attacked a wagon train headed to California, and they killed 120 people, mostly women and children. That crime was successfully covered up for quite a long time. Some other groups were scapegoated for that crime. It was a lot of different groups involved. It’s a multiple POV novel, so we’ve got the perspectives of the different people that were involved in it, including some of my ancestors, unfortunately, who are not on the right side of that crime. But yeah, that’s the cliff notes of it. It’s sometimes hard for me to describe that one without giving away too many spoilers. But yes, a huge massacre that most people don’t know about that is pretty horrific.

[00:19:02.470] – Alan Petersen
That’s more like a historical thriller type novel.

[00:19:07.400] – Noelle West Ihli
It is, which I like how Ask for Andrea has ghosts in it. I did never imagine myself writing something with ghosts. I don’t usually like to read books with ghosts, and I don’t usually love to read historical novels, but this one needed to be written, and it just insisted upon it the way that Ask for Andrea did. It is a historical, but I have loved seeing readers responses to it who also have said, I don’t usually read historical. This doesn’t read like a historical novel. No shade on historical fiction writers, but I’ve been pleased with the reaction from thriller readers.

[00:19:47.450] – Alan Petersen
I haven’t finished, but I started reading Ask Andrew. And I’m the same thing. I’m not a big on ghosts. Although one of my favorite books is Ghost Story by Peter Strauss.

[00:19:55.580] – Noelle West Ihli
There’s exceptions.

[00:19:57.350] – Alan Petersen
There’s exceptions. But Aspirendra is I’ve been enjoying it a lot, too. Is that your latest book right now, or is it Gray After Dark? Which one is your newest?

[00:20:06.510] – Noelle West Ihli
The newest is None Left to Tell, so it just barely came out in… Gosh, is it already the end of October? So that was just a couple of weeks ago. But before that, it was Gray After Dark. I know. Time is a construct.

[00:20:23.960] – Alan Petersen
Okay, so let’s go. I have to go check that out for sure. It’s fascinating, all The historical, your latest one reminds me that it sounds like the Killers of the Flower Moon type of a scenario. It’s incredible. All these things are coming out now from history.

[00:20:39.730] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve seen a couple of readers mention Killers of the Flower Moon when they’ve reviewed it. So that’s when you say that.

[00:20:47.160] – Alan Petersen
When I was reading Run Down Red, which I thought was so awesome and creepy and made me really paranoid. It reminded me of when I was a kid, I watched a movie. It was Steven Spielberg’s first movie, Duel. Have you ever seen that movie, Duel?

[00:21:01.940] – Noelle West Ihli
No, I haven’t. There’s so many of his that are still on my watch list. That’s shameful to admit, but I’m not seeing.

[00:21:08.670] – Alan Petersen
Before he was famous, it was like a TV movie with Dennis Weaver. It reminded me of that, the road situation going on that you have there?

[00:21:17.850] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m going to write that down and watch that. That one is based on something that happened to me and a friend from high school.

[00:21:26.910] – Alan Petersen
I was going to ask you. I get a sense of that. Freaky.

[00:21:32.270] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, our situation was not nearly that dire. Everything was pretty similar, though, right up until the point that they got run off the road. We didn’t get run off the road. We managed to get back down the canyon, and we went one way and the car went the other. But they sure were intent on getting us to stop, and the men in the car had their hoods pulled all the way up over their faces so that we In your situation? Yes.

[00:22:01.670] – Alan Petersen
All the time.

[00:22:02.760] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah. And we were driving in a Volvo. The Volvo was part of that. I just let the imagination run on what the worst thing might have happened in that situation. But yeah, there were some true details from that book that I was able to weave in.

[00:22:24.350] – Alan Petersen
That’s really scary, to say the least. What are you working on now? Getting any sneak peeks?

[00:22:35.840] – Noelle West Ihli
I’m going to give a little bit more info about the cover and the title coming up soon on social media, so keep an eye out on that. But for now, I’ll tell you, it’s based on a true story, and it’s one of my favorite things to do is to take a lesser known story pre-Internet. This one happened in the ’70s in California, and it’s one of the most audacious abduction stories that I had ever heard. And so I took that story and I modernized it because I kept thinking, Could this still happen in a modern setting? A lot of crimes It’s pre-cell phone, they rely on that lack of people being able to communicate. So my mind always gets going when I hear one of those stories, could this still happen today? And if so, how? So, yeah, that’s not very much detail, but true crime-based story from the 1970s that I fictionalized and put in a modern era.

[00:23:37.610] – Alan Petersen
Really excited about it. Yeah, that was great. I love how your mind thinks like, Oh, could this happen now? Then from there, it’s interesting to see that process. I do have listeners who are aspiring thriller writers, so I always ask, have you advised someone who wants to write these type of books?

[00:24:00.280] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah, absolutely. I would say the first thing is, it ties back to that first question that you asked, read everything you can in the genre. Find out what commonalities there are between your favorite stories, and then start searching for your idea, what you want to focus your book on and write. I know that sounds really oversimplified, but maybe it only works for personalities like me that just need a do this for or 500 words a day. But I remember that really took the intimidation out of writing for me is setting such a small goal that was like, Oh, yeah, I could write 300 or 500 words in a day, and that would take me maybe half an hour if I really sat there and just kept my fingers on the keyboard, and I could do that with kids in a different job, and I give myself permission to make those words not perfect. So I would say, Write and get the words on the page, and you will have a book in a year, if you do that, less than a year, that you’ll be able to actually work with and hone instead of an idea in your head.

[00:25:09.020] – Noelle West Ihli
I would say that’s probably my best advice for maybe type A people like me. Set a goal that’s really small and stick with it.

[00:25:18.310] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I love it. I think like many writers, I read the Stephen King’s on writing book, and he had 2,000 words, and I’m like, Oh, I’m going to do that. That was so depressing. I couldn’t I’m like, Wait a second. I’m not Stephen King. Yes.

[00:25:34.450] – Noelle West Ihli
For us, normy is maybe 300 to 500.

[00:25:38.510] – Alan Petersen
I’d never written anything. I’m like, Oh, 2,000 a day. I’ll do that. That was a disaster for me. Yes.

[00:25:44.740] – Noelle West Ihli
I I would fail at that for sure.

[00:25:48.000] – Alan Petersen
Where can the listeners find you? You said you’re pretty active on Instagram. Where can they find you?

[00:25:53.180] – Noelle West Ihli
Yeah. You can find me @noelwileyauthor on Instagram. You can find me TikTok, but I don’t post very much on there. They’re the same names, TikTok, Noelle W. Eilly author, and then Facebook, Noelle W. Eilly author. I’m the only Noelle W. Eilly, I think, in the world, which is a lot of pressure, but if you find one, it should be me.

[00:26:16.800] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it makes it easier for the branding, right?

[00:26:19.400] – Noelle West Ihli
It does.

[00:26:21.530] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. All right, Noelle. Well, thank you so much. Really enjoyed talking to you and really enjoying your book. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

[00:26:30.010] – Noelle West Ihli
It was wonderful to talk to you as well. Great to be here. Great to chat. Thank you so much.

[00:26:35.320] – Alan Petersen
All right. Thank you. That wraps up episode 209 of Meet the Thriller Author. A huge thank you to Noelle West Ihli for joining us today and sharing the inspiration behind her gripping readers. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend picking up her books. You won’t be disappointed. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to like, rate, and review Meet the Thriller Author on your preferred podcast platform. Your support helps us reach more thriller fans and keeps the podcast that’s going strong. Before you go, here’s a quick reminder. Both of my psychological readers, The Basement and Imposter Syndrome, are available on Amazon right now. You can grab each one for just 99 cents or read them for free with Kindle Unlimited. If you’re in the mood for some psychological suspense with plenty of twists and turns, be sure to check those out. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you next time for more thrilling conversations with authors you love.