Peter Swanson is the debut author of The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, a fantastically sexy noir thriller. Reminiscent of the 1980’s film, Body Heat, Wiley Cash says, "This novel burns faster and hotter than a lit fuse, and you’ll be feeling its heat long after the explosive ending.”
Peter celebrates his book birthday today, and he's popped in to share some of his history with libraries:
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I was lucky. I was one of those kids who was taken to the library at least once a week. And I was doubly lucky because the library I was taken to, The Gleason Public Library in Carlisle, Massachusetts, was one of the great ones. It was on the small side, being the library of a small town, but that meant that all the librarians knew me by sight, and knew the type of books I liked to read. But what I loved most about the library was the building itself. It was gothic revival, built in the 1890s, made of brick with deeply slanted shingle roofs. It was cozy and creepy at the same time—just the way I like it.
My book choices, even when I was very young, were a little bit cozy and a little bit creepy at the same time, as well. My favorite picture book as a kid was Mercer Mayer’s One Monster After Another, even though, or maybe because, it gave me some pretty vivid nightmares. I loved anything with monsters, ghouls, ghosts, secret passageways, and dark and stormy nights. When I got a little older, and started reading chapter books, I loved John Bellairs, especially his first book, The House With a Clock in its Walls, which, now that I’ve written that title out, might have had something to do with me naming my first novel The Girl With a Clock for a Heart.
John Bellairs’ books were perfect for me. They dealt in supernatural creepiness, and yet, they were firmly grounded in a world of eccentric but good-natured characters. Again, it’s that coziness thing. My second favorite Bellairs’ book, The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, takes place mainly in a library in Hoosac, Minnesota, where the librarian, Miss Eells, and the young protagonist, Anthony Monday, search for a treasure hidden in the library. This book confirmed what I’d long believed—that libraries were special places full of mysterious secrets.
As I got older, the books I chose to read changed, although not the subject matter. I fell in love with Stephen King, naturally, but also with mystery novels and thrillers. To this day, when I enter a library I haven’t been to before, I always go first to the mystery section. I love looking at all the spines of books I have and haven’t read, especially when they have those little skull stickers that some libraries affix to them to identify them as mystery and suspense.
And now that I’ve become a thriller writer myself, I’m hoping that someone somewhere on a cold winter night curls up on their favorite reading chair, and enjoys my tale of murder, obsession, and identity. See, I’m still equating cozy and creepy, because I think they go together, and I’ve been thinking that ever since those early trips to the library.
And one more thing. If you’re a librarian, and you’re reading this, and you receive The Girl With a Clock for a Heart, please put one of those little skull stickers on its spine. That would make me very happy.
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Thank you, Peter. Please snag a copy of his book, it's completely gripping!
– Annie