Gillian Flynn, author of bestsellers like Gone Girl and Sharp Objects also publishes propulsive page-turners with her new imprint Gillian Flynn Books
The imprint seeks to uplift fresh, unique voices that have something new to add to the market
Two of those new books are Glass Girls by Danie Shokoohi and The Killing Fields of East New York by Stacy Horn
Gillian Flynn doesn’t know if her smash hit Gone Girl would have gotten published in today’s market.
“Gone Girl is a weird book, when you think about it,” the author and founder of the Zando imprint Gillian Flynn Books tells PEOPLE. “It’s a whoddunit, and you find out who done it in the middle, [with] two main characters who aren’t very likable.”
But we liked it — we really liked it. To date, Gone Girl has sold more than 20 million copies after debuting at No. 2 on The New York Times bestseller list in 2012 and later became a hit 2014 movie, for which Flynn also wrote the screenplay. She also served as a co-writer when her 2006 book Sharp Objects was adapted into a 2018 HBO series starring Amy Adams and is currently working on an HBO limited series based on her book Dark Places, which also became a 2015 film starring Charlize Theron.
But in between writing her own twisty thrillers and turning them into movies and TV series as gripping as her books, Flynn is doing her best to uplift the kinds of page-turners she wants to read.
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Gillian Flynn (left) and Zando publisher Molly Stern
“I was thrilled about the idea of helping unique voices get to the market,” she says of her reaction when Zando publisher Molly Stern approached her about running an imprint. “The way publishing is, it’s very much what sold last, or [giving book deals to] people who have platforms. That’s diabolical, because you have to get published to get a platform and it’s a horrible, terrible Catch-22.”
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Flynn’s imprint looks for “different, quirky mindsets and different types of characters that you don’t always read about,” including the kinds of stories that people can’t stop reading or talking about with their friends. In her words, the stories that “make people actually sit up and and go, ‘Holy smokes! What the hell was that? I need more!'”
This season, those include Glass Girls by Danie Shokoohi, which features a woman with witchy abilities who’s escaped from an abusive family that comes back to haunt her and The Killing Fields of East New York by Stacy Horn, a propulsive nonfiction that uncovers how white collar crime decimated a New York City neighborhood.
They’re the kind of books that “you immediately want to talk to your friend about,” Flynn explains. “Like, oh, this is so much fun.”
Flynn, who grew up obsessed with Brothers Grimm fairytales (“the ones where children are eaten or locked into trunks to die”) and Agatha Christie mystery novels, has always been fascinated by darkness. “I think you’re either one of those people who wants to look under the rock, or doesn’t want to look under the rock,” she explains. “I’ve always wanted to look under the rock.”
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Gillian Flynn chats with true crime podcaster and author Ashley Flowers (center) and author Dani Shokoohi (right)
But more than that, she also believes strongly in the power of mysteries and thrillers to get people talking about larger issues. That’s what happened with Sharp Objects, which was originally supposed to be a very different kind of book.
I originally wasn’t trying to write a mystery,” she recalls. “I wanted to write a novel about female violence.” But then she stayed up all night reading Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, and realized the mystery element is what the book needed to get into readers’ heads and stay there.
“I get to talk about all these things, but I do it in this like sugarcoating of a mystery so it goes down easy,” Flynn explains. “I was able to change the whole thing, and have been doing that ever since.”
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Gillian Flynn interviews mystery authors (from left) Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman and Erin E. Adams
“I want people to read my books, I will be honest,” she adds. “I don’t want to be the respectable book that sits on people’s bedside tables that they never read. I want people to read my books and be able to use them as a vocabulary to talk about other things.”
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And so far, mission accomplished. Both readers and viewers of shows like Sharp Objects have told Flynn her work has “given them a vocabulary” to talk about self-harm and other difficult real-life issues.
“I think the genre is still looked down on,” she adds. “But the best psychological thrillers and the best writers are talking about more interesting things than a lot of literary writers right now … some serious, interesting, dark stuff, but it’s so much fun, too, and that’s a hard, balancing act.”
As Flynn continues her own balancing act — working on her next novel, her new series and acquiring books for Gillian Flynn Books — she’s excited for the stories she’s going to put in your heads next, whether from her own pen or those she brings to a bookstore near you.
“People look down on page-turners, and I’m so honored and happy and gleeful that I’m a page-turner,” she says. “Because what are people reading? It’s genre.”
Read the original article on People
