So, I didn’t need to do any research, because it was all still in my memory. I chose that time period for a reason because I was a senior in high school and I remember everything about that time. At the end of the day, you’re like, “So how can I make a living off of this?” And most people can’t.īut the film aspect I knew was going to be a very integral part of her character, and I really wanted to bask in the nostalgia of 1991. It was fun and it just did not prepare you for the real world whatsoever. It was a great gig: Our classes were we’d watch a movie, then we’d talk about it, then we’d write a paper. Like Charlie, the main character in the book, I was a film studies major in college.

Why Charlie’s fascination with movies? Do you share that passion, or did you have to study up?

Most of my books have dual timelines and flashbacks, and I just thought it would be neat to just get into a car and drive really fast. I really wanted to strip it down to bare bones I just wanted to make a very streamlined thriller, which I had never done before. Just having this cat and mouse mind game going on as they’re just driving down a dark highway. I really liked the idea of isolation, and this was before Covid-19, so this idea of just basically having two characters in a car and one of them suspects the other of doing horrible things, and the other one suspects that she suspects him of doing horrible things. So, I just had this idea of writing something almost in real-time, that the events of the book take place almost for as long as it takes you to read the book.

You sit and then you start again, you’re like, ‘I don’t know anything.'” Ritter became the more gender-neutral Sager at his agent’s behest with the release of his first book under that name, Final Girls, in an effort to rebrand.ĭespite all that, Sager has managed to write five books under his current nom de plume, all of them bestsellers that delve into diverse corners of mystery and horror - from 2017’s Final Girls, which brought the horror movie trope of a last girl standing into the real world to 2019’s Lock Every Door, a modern take on Satanic cult books and movies like Rosemary’s Baby to 2020’s Home Before Dark, a thorny haunted house tale. “Then I eventually figure it out again, but it’s like this constant recurring amnesia. “There’s always this moment where I sit there and look at my blank page and think, ‘I don’t know how to do this,'” says Sager, who spent the first half of his career writing under his given name, Todd Ritter. Riley Sager has been writing thrillers for over a decade now, but each time he starts penning another, he’s gripped by the same terrible thought.

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