Authors Interviewing Characters: D.M. Pulley

Stone Mad by D.M. Pulley

On the coldest of nights, you can hear a girl crying . . .

Life fell apart for Mannie Wallace when her daughter’s best friend was abducted from right under Mannie’s nose. Six years later, Mannie is working as an engineer-turned-insurance investigator and barely holding the pieces of her family together. When an eccentric developer hires her to survey an infamously haunted Gilded Age mansion, Stone Mad Castle, it could be just the thing she needs to get her career and life back on track.

But once inside the abandoned structure, her dream job becomes a nightmare when a dead body turns up in the basement and she starts seeing ghosts. Probing deeper into the house, Mannie begins to suspect that Stone Mad’s sinister past may be connected to the little girl she lost. Her daughter, now fourteen and obsessed with true crime, is convinced girls have been mysteriously disappearing near the haunted castle at an alarming rate for more than a century.

Twist follows twist through the hidden passageways that honeycomb the castle as Mannie risks everything to unravel the mansion’s secrets and uncover the fate of her daughter’s missing friend. In the end, Mannie must solve the mystery of Stone Mad once and for all…or become the next chapter in its haunted story.

D.M. Pully Interviews Mannie

Three Years Ago… 

I meet Mannie Wallace in the elevator lobby of a psychiatric hospital. Never mind why I’m there or why I’m following her. She reminds me of someone I used to know, but right now she looks more like a war refugee than a forensic engineer. Thin and bone tired, she presses the down button three times and looks over her shoulder. Behind her, a hospital administrator, a therapist, and a doctor shuffle out of a conference room, chatting quietly amongst themselves about whatever it is mental health experts chat about. The woman in the white coat gives her a nod, which Mannie returns with the smallest of hand gestures before turning back to the elevators.

D.M. You getting out today?

Mannie: [She blows out a held breath and nods. She glances at my hospital wristband and my pink slippers. Maybe she recognizes me from group. Maybe not.] 

D.M.: Lucky girl. So they say you’re all better?

Mannie: Close enough. I’m out, right? I feel like I just had a colonoscopy in the middle of Public Square, but here I am. [The elevator doors open, and we both step inside.]

D.M.: You don’t sound too happy. 

Mannie: No. I am. Truly. I did not want to spend one more minute in this goddamn place with the thought police [she motions to the mental health team], but . . . 

D.M. But what?

Mannie: I’m utterly humiliated. How are you? 

D.M. [shrugs]

Mannie: [Looks at me as though debating whether she wants to even talk to me, but apparently she wants to talk to someone.] I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’ve just spent the last three months of my life having to prove that I’m not crazy. That I’m not going to harm myself or others. That I’m not going to stalk and attack any more suspected kidnappers. That I’m “ready to let Nicol’s disappearance go and move on with my life.” 

D.M. That’s your friend’s daughter, right? The little girl you lost in the park? Can you really let something like that go? 

Mannie: Yes. No? I fucking hope so? Even if I can’t, I can’t stay in here. I have to get back home to my life, my kids, my job . . . Ha! That’s right. What job? I lost my job when I punched my ex-husband in front of my boss. But that’s what you get for marrying that guy at work. You know the one who seems so smart and sophisticated and worldly. Well, guess what? He isn’t. He’s just your average cheating asshole.

D.M. Sounds like he deserved the punch.

Mannie: [laughs] It was a stupid thing to do. I completely lost my head and now everyone thinks I’m an unhinged psychopath [waves hands around the mental hospital elevator as proof]. But what the hell. Life goes on, right? 

D.M. It must be kinda hard to face what comes next.

Mannie: Hard? Sure. I guess. I have to find a new job and a place to live and clean up this awful mess I made. But I’m not the one that got kidnapped. I’m not the one trapped in a trunk or a clammy basement somewhere, lost and alone . . . terrified [Silence hangs over us as the elevator plummets down to ground level].

D.M. You okay?

Mannie: [clears throat] Yeah. I’m fine. I have to learn to live with this. There’s nothing I can do about it now. I had my chance, and I blew it. She’s gone. I lost her in that park, and I can’t take it back no matter how many nights I sit there on that bench calling her name or how many fliers I put up or how many dark websites I troll. 

D.M. You did everything you could. 

Mannie: That’s what they say, isn’t it? And I’m supposed to accept that. They made me promise to accept it. To move on and to be “okay.” As if I have a choice. We don’t get to decide whether or not we’re “okay.” We’re stuck here either way. Right? 

D.M. Right. You miss your kids? 

Mannie: Yeah. I miss them so much it hurts. Tiny and Sally are my entire life . . . I can’t believe I did this to them. [The elevator doors finally open, and we step out into the sunlit lobby. The glass entrance to the street is right there, but she doesn’t move. It’s like she’s afraid to leave.]

D.M. I’m sure they’re excited to see you. 

Mannie: [Nods like she isn’t so sure.] They’re good kids. They deserve better, you know? Sally can’t stop blaming herself for what happened to her friend. Survivor’s guilt and all that, and now she’s obsessed with books about true crime and murder. And poor Tiny. He was just a baby, but it’s like his mother got abducted by aliens that day. [There’s a long pause. Tears seem to well and dry in her eyes without falling.] Ah, well. There’s nothing to undo it now. They’ll be okay.

D.M. Yeah. Kids are amazing. [I mean to stop talking at this point, but I can’t help myself.] Are you really going to stop looking for that girl? 

Mannie: [Gazes into the street outside, her face an empty room without windows.] I don’t really have a choice, do I? If I don’t stop, I’ll go crazy . . . or die. 

D.M. Whatever happened to that guy you assaulted? The pedophile guy? Did they arrest him? 

Mannie: Yeah, I heard they did. He had a bunch of bad things on his computer. Child pornography and . . . [she can’t say the rest]. 

D.M. So you were right?

Mannie: No. Not exactly. There was no trace of Nicol in the end. He wasn’t the one that took her. 

D.M. How do you know for sure? 

Mannie: [Shut eyes] I have friends on the police force. Or at least I used to. I’m not sure Jason’s even talking to me right now. 

D.M. You mean that detective you’re in love with? 

Mannie: No. I’m not in l—

D.M. Is that him? [I cut her off and point to the hospital doors.]

A ruggedly handsome man rushes towards us with arms open wide and sweeps Mannie into a crushing hug, lifting her small frame off the ground, and it’s like I don’t exist. The hospital doesn’t exist. The two of them exchange hushed words, and then he practically carries her through the doors to a truck waiting at the curb without so much as a goodbye. 

My eyes follow them out the door where there’s another car idling outside the hospital entrance. A man is standing at the security desk having a complicated and loud discussion with the receptionist. Something about visiting hours and his wife. No one notices a woman wearing pink slippers climb behind the wheel and drive off. 

I tail the sexy detective’s truck from the hospital all the way to the big houses of Cleveland Heights because some part of me needs to make sure that Mannie makes it home safe. I watch Mannie and Jason disappear inside an old crumbling Victorian full of forgotten secrets, and I say a little prayer that she stays out of trouble. 

But that’s not what happens next. 

BUY STONE MAD HERE

—

D. M. Pulley lives in northeast Ohio with her husband, her two children, and a dog named Hobo. Before becoming a bestselling author, she worked as a professional engineer, rehabbing historic structures and conducting forensic investigations of building failures. Pulley’s structural survey of a vacant building in Cleveland inspired her debut novel, The Dead Key, winner of the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Since then, her thrillers inspired by true crime in old Rust Belt cities have sold over 800,000 copies worldwide.

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing