Jacqueline Bublitz: Pay Attention to the Story That Won’t Leave You Alone

Jacqueline Bublitz is a writer, feminist, and arachnophobe who lives between Melbourne, Australia, and her hometown on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. Find out more at JacquelineBublitz.com, and follow her on Instagram.

In this interview, Jacqueline discusses writing victim-centered stories and her new mystery novel, Leave the Girls Behind, her advie for other writers, and more.

Name: Jacqueline Bublitz
Literary agent: Cara Lee Simpson, Susanna Lea Associates
Book title: Leave the Girls Behind
Publisher: Emily Bestler Books (U.S.)
Release date: October 29, 2024
Genre/category: Mystery/Suspense
Previous titles: Before You Knew My Name
Elevator pitch: Ruth-Ann Baker is a former citizen detective who has sworn off true crime, until she inadvertently uncovers evidence that proves Ethan Oswald, the man who killed her childhood best friend nineteen years ago, had other victims. Evidence that soon sends Ruthie looking for a potential accomplice—a female partner in Oswald’s crimes, who might still be playing her deadly supporting role today.

Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]

There is a line in my first novel, Before You Knew My Name, that just wouldn’t leave me alone: “It’s never just one life these men destroy.” As a newly minted crime writer, I’m committed to telling victim-centered stories that shift the focus away from the perpetrator, and I wanted my sophomore novel to widen the lens around who we even consider a victim. Writing Leave the Girls Behind allowed me to do a deep dive into victimology, and to flex my own citizen detective muscles at the same time—because everything (well, almost everything) Ruthie did to track down her primary suspects, I made sure a real-life amateur sleuth could do, too. That was definitely a fun, method part of the creative process as the book progressed.

I knew most of the characters right from the start, and the hardest part was deciding which parts of their interconnected stories to tell. The first few drafts were like a workshop, really. Listening to everything these women had to tell me about their lives, before determining whose truth was going to get told. Those early drafts came out in a matter of weeks, and then the real work began. Wrangling all the timelines and back stories and current dramas, and, importantly, having Ruthie take the lead, once I realized she was always at the center. All up, it took two and a half years to get from the lunch where I pitched the concept to my publisher, to where we are now, just weeks away from launch.

I was a complete novice when my debut was picked up, and I was also in a kind of bubble; it was 2020, we were in lockdown here in New Zealand, and I was often at a literal distance from the process. This second time around, I’ve been afforded a much closer look at the industry, which means I have a better understanding of how things work … but I still get surprised by this new world of mine. Especially around timing. There are weeks, months even, when it feels like nothing is happening, and for an anxious (also: impatient) person like me, the lulls can be hard to get used to, even if I objectively know that’s when all the behind-the-scenes magic is happening. The biggest learning for me, then, has been around letting my team know if I’m feeling any author wobbles, or need more information, the way I would with any job. Luckily, I work with truly awesome people, and they make the process far less opaque than it might be, otherwise.

Without getting into spoiler territory, I did not expect Ruthie’s girls to show up the way they did. I knew she was going to have a theory about her friend’s murderer having other victims, but I did not know the depth of the role the girls would end up playing until they sort of marched themselves onto the page. From there, I had fun playing with the ambiguity of where they came from. Were they actual ghosts? Did they live exclusively in Ruthie’s head? What exactly would the difference be? And now I get to leave it up to readers to decide for themselves, which means they get a whole new life breathed into them. I love that!

I want Leave the Girls Behind to feel like that one unsolved, true crime case you just can’t get out of your head. The mystery you feel personally invested in, so that any new clue or lead, no matter the stretch of it, is worth following, because it might be the break everyone’s missed. Also, Ruthie is no reliable narrator, but she’s mostly jumping at shadows for a reason, because at its heart, Leave the Girls Behind is a story about trauma. How it shapes our view of the world, including our place in it. I really hope readers empathize with Ruthie and her obsessions, whilst still being entertained by some of the more … interesting leaps she takes.

I also hope that people love Ruthie’s supporters as much as I do. Owen, Joe and Gideon, and her beloved Ressler. And especially Bill and Patty Lovely (just putting it out there that Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody would be PERFECT to play the Lovelys one day).

This is for those writers who can’t yet see their way to a finished book (which was me until my late-30s): Pay attention to the story that won’t leave you alone. Write it one way, and if it doesn’t work, try telling a different version, and then another. Keep chipping away at the layers of your idea until you get to the core of what you really want to say. Writing is this weird process, where you’re both building something new and stripping it back to its essence at the same time, and it helps to get comfortable with that contradiction. This means not expecting your first draft—or second or fifth—to look anything like a published novel, whether in style, word count, or expression. You’ll type out “The End” many times before it really is, so my advice is to simply stick with the story that’s sticking to you, then take your time finding out the best way to tell it.