Author of the week: Chevy Stevens

last updated 8 January 2015

Chevy Stevens has created a promising literary career out of her worst nightmare as a real estate agent, said Damian Inwood in the Vancouver Province. Sitting alone at an open house four years ago, the 32-year-old began imagining what might happen to her if the next potential client turned out to be a monster. What if he abducted her and held her hostage? What would he do to her, and who would she be when the ordeal ended? “I’m fascinated by the idea of what happens if you’ve been gone for a while and come back—trying to rebuild after something so traumatic,” she says. Such dark daydreaming wouldn’t be the only gift of her since-abandoned first career.

Stevens approached Still Missing—which critics are calling one of the great thrillers of the summer—with a bottom-line mind-set, said John Barber in the Toronto Globe and Mail. “As much as writing is an emotional experience, it is a business, as well,” she says. Once she had a story concept, she threw herself into writers’ workshops. Then, once she had a first draft, she hired a freelance editor who’d written a self-editing manual she admired. She sought out critical readers and rewrote for each of them. Gambling with her future, she even took two years off from house-peddling to get the story right—and it paid off. Established thriller writer Lisa Gardner just labeled Still Missing “psychological suspense at its very best.” Besides, says Stevens, “my accountant likes it, so it’s okay.”