Q&A with Carrie Talick, Author of The Alibi Club
Carrie Talick is the author of The Alibi Club, which is available now.
Carrie Talick writes novels where friendship is the real deal, love is complicated, and bad decisions are highly entertaining. Author of The Alibi Club and Beware the Mermaids, she mixes hilarity with heart, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of honesty. She is also an award-winning copywriter who wrote the script for the 2019 Hyundai Super Bowl spot “Elevator,” which starred Jason Bateman as a friendly docent to Hell. Michigan-born, LA-based, she spends her time writing, listening to vinyl with her husband, and catering to the whims of her rescue pets.
In the Alibi Club, a group blind date turns to calamity when bombs knock out the power in a small beach town and someone at the table might be behind it—perfect for fans of Letizia Lorini and Ally Carter.
Let’s get to know Carrie as she talks favorite novels, inspiration behind her book, combining romance with a mystery and more!
What are some of your favorite novels?
I am an eclectic reader, an unpredictable personality trait I blame on my mother. When I expressed an interest in reading more adult books beyond what they gave us in school at the tender age of twelve, she handed me A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton, Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen, and The Godfather by Mario Puzo. I plowed through all of them but loved the mob book most of all. She was also a big fan of Erma Bombeck, and we constantly had Far Side books laying around the house.
Now, I jump from genre to genre, like little literary lily pads, my brain scratching that story itch with all different kinds of reads. I do have an affinity for authors who make me laugh or deeply move me while keeping me glued to the page. Some of my enduring favorites are:
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Insane City by Dave Barry
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen
Heartburn by Nora Ephron
Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman
When did you know you wanted to become an author?
My mom was the writer in my world. She wrote essays about the people in her life, the saintly, the anti-heroes, the messy and the meek. She wrote from the heart, and her essays were always lyrical and achingly human, funny and warm, skewering and satirical. She would take my friends and me camping and write about all of us, scribbling down observations in real time about our tender innocence, our fragile confidence, and our blooming intelligence. Every night we would read what she wrote by the campfire, my friends clamoring for more, “Where’s the book, Nancy? We want to read the latest!”
She encouraged me to write, wanted me to, but I never thought I could crack the code on how to do it as well as she did. It remains one of my biggest regrets, not learning from her when I had the chance. She died when I was twenty-one. After my grief subsided enough for me to walk back into life, I began to hear her voice in me, and I realized she had handed down her gift. I began to listen. I took a dozen classes on fiction, screenwriting, and voice. I tried and failed. I learned. I grew. Developed my own voice.
I discovered that writing gave me a strength I didn’t know I had, and an ambition to see where I could take it. It was like learning to fly, fledgling at first, then stretching my wings and expanding my boundaries. I wrote my first novel, Beware the Mermaids (from Alcove Press) about a woman who reinvents herself with the help of her best friends, margaritas and a sailboat race down to Mexico. It was an homage to my mom, it had her spirit in it, and my voice. It was a way to give her the ending she deserved. So, the answer in short, is around thirty-six years old. Better late than never.
What inspired you to write The Alibi Club?
Lord knows, I love a good idea. The muses are tricksters though and love to dangle idea catnip at you when you are least equipped to deal with it. They love to float a great idea your way while you’re in stuck in traffic or navigating grocery store aisles, or spit bits of dialogue at you while you’re doing dishes and can’t write it down. But stop and write it down. For if you do not heed them and act on their bit of magic, ideas can be lost forever. Muses sometimes have impeccable timing, however. I was at a copywriting gig working on a dating website that put together group blind dinner dates. At the same time, the Boston Marathon bombing had taken place and a manhunt was on.
I think Adam Sandler tweeted that “Boston is the only major city, that if you f*ck with them, they will shut down the whole city…stop everything…and find you.” And the idea struck me; what if someone was on trapped on a group blind date and the whole city was shut down in pursuit of a criminal? Better yet, what if that criminal was at the table? I had the idea for a long time. Finally, when I was able to draw the right characters to bring to dinner, The Alibi Club was born.
Tell us about combining a romance with a mystery in your novel?
I kept looking for novels that combined these elements. I love a good mystery that stumbles into a crackling love story. Sprinkle in a little comedy and that’s gold. That’s the sweet spot. To me, mysteries and romances have the same psychological rhythms. There is a set-up, clues that lead us along, information gaps, and a need for resolution. Both exploit our curiosity, our need to solve and the promise of justice or at least love at the end. The dopamine hits just keep coming. Writing flawed characters with questionable pasts who fail and misbehave but fall in love while in a tense situation? Most fun I’ve had as a writer so far.
What was your favorite chapter or part to write?
When it came to writing The Alibi Club, I had two favorite parts which I was chomping at the bit to write and then felt beholden to get right.
The first favorite part was reuniting all my disparate singles to try to crack the case on what had happened that night with the benefit of hindsight, their collective knowledge and the internet. The revelations were so fun.
The second favorite part was the reveal. It was incredibly satisfying.
If I were to add a runner-up alternate, I loved writing Jamie’s mother, Elaine Cromwell Frisco. She was deliciously sociopathic.
What are you currently reading and what’s on your TBR (to be read) list?
I read three books at time (see first question) because I never know what reading mood I’ll be in. Right now, my three are: Crux by Gabriel Tallent. I’m enthralled even though it’s going to break my heart. In Tamma, he has created a truly original tender-hearted, under-loved, rock-climbing warrior and I adore her. The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman, the fifth in the Thursday Murder Club series, where hilarity, heart and ruthless criminals abound. The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne, a first-person fictional narrative about a daughter in search of her sinister father who has escaped prison set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Quiet, dark and harrowing.
To be read: Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett and The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett.
About the Author
