It’s Not the Witches. It’s Us By Kimberly Belle

A couple Halloweens ago, Vanessa Lillie, Cate Holahan and I stood in a graveyard in Salem, Massachusetts, debating how exactly four young, rich widows in heels and pencil skirts could break into an ancient crypt without getting caught. This was after we’d bumped into Sasquatch strolling down the street with a plastic pumpkin bucket and done a walking witch tour followed by the pirate museum. This is not even close to how we researched book one.

When we started writing the Young Rich Widows series during COVID, our research consisted of Google Docs, weekly Zooms, and whatever the internet could tell us about mobbed-up 1980s Providence. It worked—the audiobook hit #1 on Audible before Sourcebooks brought it to print—but none of us would’ve chosen to build that world from our desks.

By book two, the world had opened up, and we built real trips into the process instead of leaning on a map. For Wicked Wanted Widows, we took our characters where we ourselves went: Salem for the witch history, Boston for the mob money and a museum heist plotline pulled from real, unsolved art thefts. An ancient graveyard where women falsely accused of witchcraft were laid to rest is spookier than any of us would have typed into a description. A pirate museum has ideas none of us could have invented from a website. The book is filled with setpieces that only exist because we went and looked, not because we searched online for them.

But the bigger change between book one and three isn’t where we traveled. It’s how little we have to negotiate once we get there. In book one, we tiptoed around each other’s chapters, hesitant to change a sentence that wasn’t ours. By book three, every chapter belongs to all three of us. Nobody thinks twice if I rewrite one of Vanessa’s paragraphs or Cate tightens one of mine. We’ve learned that the best idea wins, regardless of whose keyboard it comes from.

Vanessa put it simply when I asked her what’s different this time around: “For book one we were still figuring out the logistics of writing a story together. By book three, we stop worrying about who wrote what. We just hand the scene to whoever’s going to do it the most justice.”

Cate feels the shift, too. “There’s a rhythm to it now. Nobody’s keeping score over whose idea it was or whose chapter it started in. We’re all just trying to make the story better, and that’s a much more fun way to write a book.”

Some things haven’t moved an inch. The regular Zooms are still sacred. Each of us still guards over our own characters fiercely, no apologies. And someone, usually Vanessa, still opens a call with “I have a vision,” and the rest of us brace for plot craziness none of us saw coming.

The widows have gotten bolder with every book. So have we. We trust each other more, laugh harder, and chase bigger ideas than we ever would have attempted five years ago. If readers can feel that momentum in Wicked Wanted Widows, then all those miles—and all those spooky cemetery walks—were worth it.

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Kimberly Belle is the USA Today and internationally bestselling author of suspense novels including The Paris Widow, The Marriage Lie, a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for Best Mystery & Thriller, and the co-authored #1 Audible Original, Young Rich Widows. Her books have been published in dozens of languages and optioned for film and television.

Wicked Wanted Widows: A Novel (The Widows Book 3)

The Widows are back in this thrilling third installment of the Young Rich Widows series! This time, a Providence bank robbery-turned-kidnapping creates chaos, as rescuing one of their own finds them on the wrong side of the law, risking everything they’ve built since their spouses’ murders: their friendship, their freedom, and even their lives.

To save Meredith, the widows find themselves breaking out of jails and into graveyards, chasing the ghosts of indentured servants, and racing through the pirate tunnels under Providence.

As if jailbreaks weren’t enough, old loves have also come to haunt many of the widows. For Krystle, bringing her friend home risks exposing more of Sal’s criminal past and destroying any chance of a post-prison happily-ever-after. For Justine, it means throwing herself into the crosshairs of both the law and her mother-in-law, threatening custody of her son and the career she needs to give them a fresh start. For Camille, bringing her bestie home tests her responsibilities to her new, found family and the firm she inherited.

Pressuring the widows’ loyalty even more are Meredith’s own conflicted feelings about newcomer Grace. Meredith begins to question what she’s really running from— or returning to. Sure, it’s 1988, and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is blaring on the radio. But maybe bad girls have the real blast.

The widows’ genuine bond has gotten them out of sticky situations time and time again. In this treacherous world of liars and thieves, however, their ties to each other will have to withstand the pull of what they want for themselves. And sisterhood might not be enough to save them.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing