MILWAUKEE — Ruth Ware, an international number one best-selling author who has penned thrillers such as “The Woman in Cabin 10” and “The It Girl,” remembered her mother asking her what she wanted to be when she grew up when she was a little girl.
“If you go back to when I really started thinking about wanting to be an author, I was really very little. I was five or six when I learned that being an author was an actual job that real people did,” she said.
Her mother said she hoped she’d achieve that goal but cautioned her daughter to have a back-up plan. After all, she may come to find that a lot of other people want to be authors, too. While well-intentioned, Ware admitted that was a tough lesson for such a little tyke.
But a back-up plan seemed like a good idea. Nevertheless, Ware said she never strayed too far from her dream.
“For a long time I kind of had being an author in the back of my mind as a dream career but one that wasn’t very practical … I always kept quite close to the book industry,” she said. She worked in a book shop, and later in the publishing industry.
While working in publishing gave her an inside look at what editors wanted from writers, it also gave her something else: Imposter syndrome. Constantly reading incredible works and working with authors she admired made her wonder if her dream could become reality.
However, Ware knew that any book she would work on on her computer at home — full of unfinished chapters and spelling errors — was kind of an “ugly duckling” in comparison to what a polished, edited finished product would be. That must be the case for all books, she said.
She continued to write, but would always “put the book under the bed,” and they never made it farther than that.
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Ware carried on in her publishing career while writing at home for fun. When she was on maternity leave with her second child, she came to a realization: If she wanted to write, she had to write full time.
“Once I went back to work, it was going to be unbelievably full-on. I had this really demanding job. I had a toddler. I had a small baby. I just knew from experience from going back to work with my first child, it was going to hit me like a ton of bricks,” she said.
She had an idea for a story, but if she wanted to write it, it had to pay some bills.
She bought a laptop and would write while her children napped. For the first time, she wrote something with a deadline, with an end goal of having it picked up. It was a book that she didn’t want to “leave under the bed.”
It did, but it took her another few years before that dream would become a reality. In 2015, “In A Dark, Dark Wood,” was published.
Nine years later, she’s releasing her 10th title, “One Perfect Couple.” The new title was released on May 21, and just three days later Ware will be in Milwaukee’s Boswell Books to discuss her latest read, her own life and give personalized autographs to fans who purchase tickets in advance. Tickets include a copy of “One Perfect Couple.”
Sometimes, Ware said she can pin down the exact moment inspiration struck her for a story. “One Perfect Couple” is one of those books.
During an author talk with fellow thriller writer Gillian McAllister for Reese’s Book Club, the duo was talking about reality TV. A group of strangers in a high-pressure situation sounded like the perfect scene for a murder.
“Oh, it sounds like a Ruth Ware novel,” McAllister joked.
Ware said at the time she jokingly agreed, but as time passed, she thought, ‘It does sound like one of my books.’ Plus, she said, it would be a fun book to write.
Ironically, Ware said she doesn’t watch much reality television. She watched the original “Big Brother” series in the UK in college. She said she was hooked instantly.
But reality television was different back then. She said a contestant was asked to leave the show because they were pitting others against each other and gossiping. Now, that’s the norm.
Ware wasn’t as interested in the modern version of reality TV. Nowadays, reality programming mimics a “fame factory.” Ware missed the days of ordinary people trying to navigate out of the box situations.
And then, “The Traitors” came out in the UK. The cast of characters was all regular people. There were no existing reality stars or people who were looking to jumpstart an entertainment career.
“I loved the fact that it was back to just regular, normal people,” Ware said.
The premise of the show is there is one group of “faithfuls” and they are trying to figure out who among them is in the smaller “traitor” group. If the “faithful” prevail, they split the money at the end, but if a “traitor” makes it to the end, they will take all of the money.
“The thing I loved most is that it really laid bare how incredibly bad people are at spotting fakes and deceivers. We all like to think that we’ve got a really good radar for liars and insincere people, but actually I think if there’s one thing that the show showed, is that when it comes down to it, that is not true. Again and again you saw the loveliest people being evicted because they weren’t playing the game.”
Ware started to think more about reality television tropes — from “The Traitors” to “Love Island” to “Survivor” — while they differ, some things remain the same. She thought about group dynamics as well as the unspoken rules of reality TV.
“How will this play out in an arena with much much higher stakes? You see people being very ruthless. You see them being very vicious and unguarded and deliberately making allies and enemies and ganging up,” she said. “That’s just for being the winner of what, maybe $100,000? That would be quite a big prize for a reality TV show. And if you’re in a sort of life or death situation, how would that play out? I suddenly realized, ‘This is a book I really want to write.’”
The made up reality show that sets the premise for “One Perfect Couple” blends “Love Island” and “Survivor,” with a bit of “The Traitors” sprinkled in, too. Ware said, for her, friction leads to conflict which is one of the drivers of her thrillers. So a reality TV island was a perfect setting.
“I think my books are about my own fears and phobias on some level. The idea of being stuck somewhere that looks perfect but you can’t get away from, is my sort of hell,” she said.
Some of the other characters the main character, Lyla, meets are not working for the good of the group. But she must work out who they are for herself, Ware said.
With Lyla as the book’s leading lady, “One Perfect Couple” takes after a familar theme in Ware’s writings: A woman as the main character.
That’s not always common in a mystery book.
She would sometimes find herself “ticked off” reading a book where the main character was a man, and she thought it would be better if it was a woman. So she started to write those stories for herself.
Ware said she finds women’s stories, in general, to be more interesting. She’s writing books she would want to read.
“It would just never occur to me to have a female main character, and then kill her off, and then have all of the guys in the story do the interesting [things].
“Lyla, my main character, is a really interesting person … She’s very analytical. She takes a very evidence-based look at everything. So that was really fun to think about how all of those traits would apply to a sort of detective novel … She uses those skills very analytically to try to figure out what’s going on on the island the way a detective might in another story,” Ware said.
Readers who want to play detective and try to figure out what’s happening on the island, can order “One Perfect Couple,” here.
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