Q&A with Kylie Schachte

From my Q&A with Kylie Schachte, author of You're Next:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I love You’re Next as a title, because it gets straight to the heart of the book with such a simple, economical phrase. This book is a heart-pounding, edge of your seat kind of thriller, where you truly don’t know if any of the characters you love will survive to see a happy ending. The title is a reference to a specific plot point, but it’s also a theme of the book as a whole. Anyone could be killed. Anyone could get hurt--even you, the reader, as the story crushes your heart into a bloody pulp.

I think having a big, in-your-face title was really important, because the first chapter is pretty mellow compared to the rest of the book. Flora Calhoun, the main character, experienced devastating trauma in her past, but at the start of the story she’s found an uneasy stasis or status quo. If you opened to that chapter without seeing the title, you might think this was a more conventional high school story. But in Chapter 2, that tentative peace gets shattered, and the rest of the book is a dark & vicious ride. My hope is that the title...[read on]

Visit Kylie Schachte's website.

My Book, The Movie: You're Next.

The Page 69 Test: You're Next.

Q&A with Kylie Schachte.

--Marshal Zeringue