How a childhood imaginary friend inspired the thriller You Look Beautiful Tonight

How a childhood imaginary friend inspired the thriller

You Look Beautiful Tonight
by L.R. Jones

You Look Beautiful Tonight is a story rooted in insecurity and vulnerability as well as a sense of being overlooked and invisible. Things that we have all felt at some point in our lives. It’s also about obsession and addiction and just how intensely these things can control our lives. Mia Andersen is a librarian in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, a city that is all about high energy, parties, people, and music. But Mia feels no one notices her, and her best friend is her polar opposite: rich, beautiful, confident, and always a source of male attention. For Mia, her romance is between the pages of her favorite novels as are her adventures. Mia even goes to the same coffee shop every day, and no one remembers her or her order. Then one day, while she’s picking up her order at the counter, someone leaves a note on her table.

You look beautiful.

From there, the notes continue and Mia begins to dress nicer, step a little lighter, and feel genuine excitement in her life. So much so that when this person manages to call her, she doesn’t even fret over how he got her number. She begins talking to him, spilling everything about her life, and it feels good to have someone who listens. But as Mia becomes upset at work, her admirer decides she needs to take control of her life. And if she won’t…he will.

This is when the story goes dark and her admirer takes justice into his own hands, and readers must ask, how far will you go for someone who becomes your obsession?

In the end, nothing is what it seems, and everywhere you look for trouble is the wrong place until the shocking ending.

My inspiration for this story started with the setting. I was actually in Nashville writing another story set in the city, when strolling in downtown I spied the amazing multi-story library. Right about that time, a party bus blasted past me, and I had to laugh. If you have never seen a party bus, “blasting” is literal. The music is loud, and people are dancing and shouting, as the vehicle slowly crawls passed you. Those buses are all about having a good time. So imagine being a librarian who would never dare do such a thing, watch the fun pass her by every weekend. Often a shy quiet person lacking confidence just needs someone to help build their confidence and drag them kicking and screaming from their shell, or in Mia’s case, her corner of the library.

I think one of the most interesting things about Mia is that she found sanctuary in the imaginary lives of other people, which can happen with television or games or any number of things. Ultimately those things can become excuses to hide and never take risks for fear of embarrassment, or a bad outcome that hurts you. If you dare take those risks, what happens if your worst nightmare becomes reality and things go terribly wrong? Even deadly wrong?

But what did Mia really need sanctuary from? In connecting with her character that became a root question for me. Believe it or not, that took me back to my childhood, invisible friends. Yes. Invisible friends. I had a rainbow of colorful animals including a pal that was a blue cow, but I also had a dinosaur who was mean and I thought wanted to hurt me. It sounds funny now, but in reality, it was about me being shy and insecure. The dinosaur was my fear of what would happen if I dared to step away from my safe place, next to my blue cow.

In life, so many of us are struggling with shyness, insecurity, and insecurities that often come from childhood experiences, or it could be a medical issue, a personal appearance, or limitation that creates anxiety. Sometimes we just self-impose such high expectations on ourselves that we can’t believe anyone will see us as anything but a failure. I felt it was so very important for readers to relate to Mia in her vulnerability. Even people who seem uber confident are often secretly insecure and the right person, or rather the wrong person, could control them much more than they would want to admit.

But part of Mia’s growth in this book, is ironically, the same lesson her admirer wanted her to learn: how to take care of herself. And in the end, it becomes a battle of Mia against her secret admirer, and if she doesn’t find her strength, her inner confidence, she won’t win

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

R. Jones is a pseudonym for New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones, whose dark, edgy fiction includes the highly acclaimed novels The Poet, A Perfect Lie, and the Lilah Love series. Prior to publishing, Lisa owned a multistate staffing agency recognized by the Austin Business Journal. Lisa was listed as #7 in Entrepreneur magazine’s list of growing women-owned businesses. She lives in Colorado with her husband, a cat who always has something to say, and a golden retriever who’s afraid of her own bark. For more information, visit www.lisareneejones.com.

YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL TONIGHT

A secret admirer’s devotion turns deadly in a twisting novel of psychological suspense.

Mia Anderson is an invisible woman. An unremarkable thirty-two-year-old Tennessee librarian, she’s accustomed to disappearing in a crowd, unseen and unheard. Then she receives an anonymous note: You look beautiful today.

It doesn’t stop there. The attentive stranger—a secret admirer named Adam—has plans for Mia. With each new text comes a suggestion for her hair, clothes, or attitude, and for the first time in memory, Mia feels noticed. Slowly, she develops a confidence in herself she’s never had. But Adam has a surprise coming…and Mia finally sees him for who he is and what he’s prepared to do for her. Even kill.

Fearing she could be implicated in the murder, Mia’s forced to turn to the stranger in the shadows watching her every move. Adam’s game of cat and mouse begins with Mia as the prey. In order to survive, she must also become the predator.

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Category: On Writing