Kelly Simmons is a former journalist and advertising creative director specializing in marketing to women. Her debut novel Standing Still is just out from Atria.
From a Q & A about the book:
Q. Standing Still has some dark underpinnings—kidnapping,extortion, domestic abuse, mental illness. Do you have any personal experiences that inspired the plot?
A. My original inspiration was the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. The horror of it lingered in my subconscious even after Elizabeth was found, and I couldn’t help wondering about all the ways it might have happened differently. So that was all floating around in the obsessed part of my brain. And in the foreground, was my desire to write a story about a fearful woman in a frightening situation, because like my main character, Claire (and an estimated 6 million other adults in the U.S.) I’ve suffered from panic disorder most of my life, as have members of my family. Growing up in the “The House of Fear”gave me lots of fodder to develop Claire’s psyche. (And I think, honestly, part of me wanted to pretend to be brave the way she did.) People with panic disorder have had only Tony Soprano as a media role model---I figured it could change that!
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the rest of the Q & A.
Visit
Kelly Simmon's website and
her blog.
The Page 69 Test: Standing Still.
--Marshal Zeringue
