Here, Michaelides talks to EW about his newest novel (on shelves now).
ALEX MICHAELIDES:It’s funny, I would say I had a somewhat checkered career as a screenwriter.
I made three films, and each was worse than the last one.
Alex Michaelides is the author of ‘The Maidens’.Credit: Wolf Marloh; Celadon Books
But to be honest about the success, it was entirely unexpected and kind of tough.
How and when did the idea forThe Maidenscome to you?
The very first thing that came to me was the location.
The rest of it was very dreamlike.
That became the first chapter, and everything else grew from there.
I was forced to concentrate.
Do you think that time in isolation changed the final product of the novel?
I think it deepened and enriched it.
I was able to channel all of that into the character.
I thought a lot about the secretive nature of groups as I was writing - especially within Cambridge.
There are groups within groups.
I studied group therapy myself, that’s what I specialize in.
That takes a lot of planning and setting up to pull off.
I had to walk through the novel and try and solve it.
I took my little notebook and went from place to place on campus just like she does.
Writing is a bit like therapy; I had stuff to work out.
But I felt completely freed up after finishingThe Maidens.
I felt like I could really let it all go.
Does your material, especially the murder-mystery elements, ever scare you?
But I try not to turn it off, I think it’s good to stay in it.
It takes over, it very much becomes your whole life.
It’s very solitary.
One thing I feel I learned fromThe Silent Patientis that it did manage to grab readers across genres.
I got a lot of feedback from people who said they never read thrillers but they liked the book.
you might’t c’mon everybody, so I’m excited to see what people think.
