In this episode of Plot Twist Radio, Erin sits down with April Henry, New York Times bestselling author of over 30 gripping mysteries and thrillers, to dive into the dark—and fascinating—world behind her stories.
From a childhood letter to Roald Dahl that helped launch her career, to her latest novel In the Blood, April shares how she crafts fast-paced, suspenseful stories that keep readers hooked until the very last page.
We explore:
- The terrifying “what if” behind In the Blood—discovering your father is a serial killer
- How genetic genealogy and real-life cases inspire fiction
- The key differences between YA thrillers and adult suspense
- Her signature techniques for building tension and cliffhangers
- Why persistence—not talent—is the real secret to success in writing
If you love true crime, psychological thrillers, mystery novels, or behind-the-scenes writing insights, this episode is for you.
Where to find April: https://www.aprilhenry.com/
🎙️ Follow Plot Twist Radio for more conversations with authors, creators, and storytellers who know how to deliver the ultimate plot twist.
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Welcome to Plot Twist Radio, the show where creativity,
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storytelling, and the unpredictable path of the
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creative life all collide. I'm your host, Aaron Egnatz.
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Today on Plot Twist Radio, I'm sitting down with a master of
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suspense, April Henry, a New York Times bestselling author
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known for her fast-paced, edge of your seat thrillers that keep
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readers guessing until the very last page.
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With over 30 books to her name, April has written everything
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from gripping adult mysteries to wildly popular young adult
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thrillers, And her latest novel, In the Blood, might just be her
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most chilling yet. Imagine discovering your
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biological father is a serial killer.
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Yeah, we go there. In this episode, we talk about
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why she's a self-proclaimed plotter and how she builds
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tension so effectively that just one more chapter becomes
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impossible to resist. If you've loved thrillers, true
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crime, or the psychology behind what makes a story
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unforgettable, this one's for you.
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April, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having.
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Me. Can you tell the audience a
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little bit about yourself? I'm April Henry, I live in
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Portland, and my book In the Blood will come out May 12th.
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I got my start in writing when I was in elementary school and I
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sent Roald Dahl, the guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate
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Factory. I sent him a short story and he
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not only sent me back a postcard telling me how much he liked it,
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he actually showed it to his editor and she had a children's
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magazine and she asked if she could publish it.
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So he helped me get my start in writing.
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Now that is an interesting story.
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I mean, he's one of the best. So you've written both adult
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mysteries and a large number of young adult thrillers originally
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drew you to the mystery and suspense genre.
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I had written three books that hadn't gotten picked up and my
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4th book, my agent said I'm going to position this as a
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mystery. I'm going to try and sell it as
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a mystery. And I was like, you can try and
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sell it as a cookbook. I don't care.
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I just want to sale. Luckily she had given me a heads
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up that if I, if it did sell, it would probably be a two book
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deal because that's what happened.
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And it gave me like it sold in two days to the first publisher
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who saw it. So I luckily spent those two
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days thinking about what wouldn't my next book be about
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about. And then they made me this to
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book offer. And it turns out mysteries and
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thrillers is a huge playground. I mean, you can do romance,
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horror can be narrated by a cat, humor.
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It can be a wide range of things.
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You can have Paranormals, it turns out.
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It was a good fit for me. I like the high stakes, but I
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also like there's flexibility. Do different things with it.
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Yes, for sure. It's one of my favorite genres
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to read. I don't really write in it, but
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I love to read it, you know? I love the fast-paced and keep
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you on the edge of your seat. That is my thing.
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So your books are, like I said, incredibly fast-paced and
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gripping. When you start a new story, do
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you begin with a specific tour mystery in mind, or does the
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idea usually start with a character?
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For me, it's usually the plot comes first.
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I heard the lady who wrote God of the Woods, Liz Moore, said
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that people start with one of the three.
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PS plot person or place. She starts with place, I start
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with plot. So for In the Blood, I was like,
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I've done some genetic genealogy and found a few mysteries.
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It was back enough that it didn't really affect me to know
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that my mom's cousin had an affair or something.
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So. But I was like, what if there
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was a girl who was adopted and she gets very curious about who
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her adoptive parents are. She has an early birthday, she
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gets an ancestry kit and tests and has a real hard time finding
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out, figuring out her parents and puts her DNA on Jed Match to
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see if she can find someone else.
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And that police are very excited because she matches a serial
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killer they've been trying to find called the Portland
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Phantom. So then I had to decide what was
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her family like? I had to figure out how how she
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would go about doing it. I reached out to a lot of
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experts in genetic genealogy and just genetics in general.
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It turns out everything I learned a million years ago is
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not true anymore, or we understand it a little better.
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I just did a ton of research, but for me, it started with that
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plot. What would happen if you found
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out your father was a serial killer and thinking about nature
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versus nurture. Are you your father's child?
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I mean, how much does he, how much say does he have and who
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you are if you weren't raised? Interesting.
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So you've written, like I said, young adult and adult.
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Young adult suspense is very compelling, but how is it
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compared to adult thrillers? You know What is the compare and
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contrast there? I would say that and especially
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in today's world, not necessarily I wouldn't
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necessarily support it, but and there's a lot of parents who are
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looking to object to a book. And so you have to think about
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you're going to have are going to have swears you're going to
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have sex or how actually odd thing, no one protests about
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violence. But I always think what's
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appropriate for my age level, even gay characters might get
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you kicked out of a certain state or something where they're
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like, oh, we can't have our children reading about a gay
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character. So that stuff is not things you
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have to think about writing for adults.
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And then you also need to remember your teens have to
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solve the problem. It can't be the adult, so it
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can't be a parent or a teacher. It has to be them.
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So that's why a lot of times in teen literature you will see
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parents who are divorced, drunk, drug addicted, just really busy
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so they can't notice what their teen is doing.
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Because if they did notice, they'd probably step in and try
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and change what the teen is doing.
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So unique. A somewhat absentee parent in YA
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books if you want the characters to get up to something they
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shouldn't be doing. Yes, yes, my daughter just
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pulled me into Stranger Things. I had not watched it until
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recently and I started watching it and I was thinking how are
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these kids like out and about and these parents don't even
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realize. Well, I didn't wait.
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I was set in the 80s. And so there I wasn't.
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I was more a child of the 70s. You could, you know, you're just
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gone all this time you didn't have a cell phone half the time
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your parents didn't know where you were.
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And there was, you know, there was a lot of bad things that
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could have happened, but you were maybe more oblivious to
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him. There wasn't a 24 hour news
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cycle where like if a girl gets kidnapped in Arkansas and I'm in
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Oregon, it's still going to be maybe on my local news because
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they have video of it happening and it's going to make a feel
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like it happened here. That is a good point.
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Yeah. I I was born in the 80s, but I
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grew up in the 90s. So I I still remember that, you
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know, the kind of footloose and fancy free.
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But as a parent of today, I think I'm pretty like strict.
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Where's that goes? And it probably has a lot to do
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with what we all see, you know, social media.
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So how do you build tension in your writings in a way that
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keeps readers turning the page? Well, I always think about
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sometimes it's just mechanical things.
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Like if you're reading a book at night and then and you page
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ahead thinking you're going to go to bed at the end of the
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chapter and there's fifty more pages, you're just going to go
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to bed right then. But if you have shorter chalkers
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and it ends in three pages and it ends on some kind of a
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cliffhanger, then you are going to keep on reading.
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And it's gratifying for you as a reader too, because it feels
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like, man, this book is reading so fast.
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So having those short chapters, the cliffhangers, if you have
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multiple points of view, you can cut back and forth.
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So like, chapter 1 might end with character A, you know,
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getting a phone call and freaking out, but you don't know
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what it's about. And then chapter B or chapter 2
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is that B character opening the door and or there's a gunshot
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and then you cut away at that moment.
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And you by cutting between the points of view, it gives the
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reader always something they're worrying about, wondering about
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wanting to see resolved. And of course you don't resolve
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things for them now that easily. Right, yes.
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So do you consider yourself more of a plotter or a pantser like
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me? I just fly by the seat of my
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pants and we just see where it ends up.
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But a lot of people I talked to are more plotters and outliners.
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I'm a plotzer, so it's like a pantser and a plotter, I
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thought, but you know, your best ideas are not going to come up
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all in those, you know, month or so that you're plotting.
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So you're going to have better ideas.
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And sometimes I have found that like I plotted out a character
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was going to crawl up into an acoustical tile ceiling.
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I always try and research things.
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So I researched how much weight in acoustical tile ceiling can
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hold. They only can hold like 50 lbs,
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but I made a really thin and they said if you put some kind
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something across two of them, she could be up there.
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I did all this stuff and I got her on top of a table and
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someone was going to boost her up.
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And then I realized the character would just wouldn't do
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it. So sometimes your plotting is
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still going to fall apart when it comes to doing the writing.
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But I do try and plot. I feel like it makes me a faster
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writer now if I'm you're writing a thriller as opposed to a
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mystery where you're trying to solve whodunnit or something
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like that. If it's a thriller, you have a
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girl who wakes up in the trunk of a car and she doesn't know
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her own name and she's in handcuffs.
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You don't necessarily need to plot, you can just have her keep
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trying to escape and it's not working.
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So I've done in both ways. For sure, though, mysteries
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require careful planning, so the clues feel fair, but the twist
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still surprises readers. How do you balance giving
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readers hints without revealing too much too early?
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Well, I feel like you you need to have at least three good
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clues. And I also think I think a lot
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of things work with threes. You need 3 viable suspects and
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three good clues for when the murder is revealed.
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But you kind of hide him. Like if somebody's you're going
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through the victim's purse and there's, I don't know, a
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matchbook from a hotel or they probably don't have those
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anymore. Or there's a receipt for
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lingerie or and there's a candy. Maybe it's the candy is actually
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the big point. But so it's there, but no
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attention is paid to it. In the book, the character, he's
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trying to figure out things out. The detective doesn't pay
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attention to it, but it's still there.
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You should still be able to go back and see the clues.
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I just finished reading Mary Ku because it's not her and that
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book had a very small cast, yet she made every single person be
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a potential suspect and I really like the solution.
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A lot of times I'm picky, I don't like the solution, but I
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was like, no, that works, that's believable.
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It's very satisfying to read 1 where I don't pick it apart in
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my head. So your novel When We Go
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Missing, and it sounds incredibly intriguing, but what
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was the spark that inspired that story?
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It was just thinking about like what if there was a surprise
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when I first started doing genetic genealogy just for my
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own family, someone warned me, they said what if there was a,
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they call it NPE, a non paternity event.
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And I was like, well, we all look like our parents, both me
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and my brother and sister. So if there was some a non
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paternity event, it would be a generation back.
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And at that point, it's just interesting and I, I wanted to
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play around with, you know, a character who is really
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wondering what does this mean about me if she finds out
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something terrible. I read and there's quite a few
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daughters of serial killers who've written memoirs.
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So I read that BTK Killer's daughter has a memoir.
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There's a more local killer named the Happy Face Killer
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because he would sign his notes with happy faces.
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He, his daughter wrote a memoir. So I was just, I wanted to
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explore that. And then there was a local
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killer here a long time ago. Diane Downs said that she had
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been assaulted by a guy who shot her and her children, and one or
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two of her children died. But it turned out she had just
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done it herself. And then she got pregnant and
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the baby was taken away after she had the baby in prison.
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And her daughter figured out as a teen that that was her mother.
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And it spent sent her into a tailspin.
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It was like, who am I if my mother is so evil that she can
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kill her own children? So I wanted to play with how
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would the emotions be and how would you feel about yourself
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and how would you come to terms with this fact?
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Interesting. That's a lot of research, but
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you know, that's one of the most interesting topics.
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My husband always gives me like these weird looks, but I'm
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always watching the ID channel because it's so fascinating.
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It's so fascinating to kind of get into that mindset and
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explore what is wrong with these people.
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When you are doing this, when you're writing, does it ever
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feel really heavy? You know the these dark plots.
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Most of the time not. There's one fact someone told me
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one time when I was doing research about a real case.
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I really wish he had not told me, but luckily I've mostly
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forgotten it and there was one photo I saw in a homicide
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textbook of a woman and that one for some reason super creeped me
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out. But most of the time I can look
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at like you can find almost anything online, including like
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autopsy photos. When I had a book one time where
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I wondered if a different shaped knife would make a different
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wound and they had taken all these pictures maybe just
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because they were only of the wound.
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But I was at a coffee shop angling my computer away from
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everybody and drinking a lot of latte and not, not really, you
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know, upset by it. I probably make a decent doctor
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because I don't get super freaked out by blood or anything
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like that. Yes, it sounds like you would.
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So your new book that's coming out in the blood, can you give
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us a little teaser about it without, you know, giving
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anything away? Well, you kind of know from the
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beginning that the bad guy is working at her father is working
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as a security officer. So there are some that there are
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some chapters from his point of view and then her point of view,
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and then a rookie cop who finds the latest victim.
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And I decided to do something that I don't know if any real
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killer has ever done, but I decided that the serial killer
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would leave an item from the previous victim on the next
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victim. So it's kind of like his calling
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card. So it might be a photo, it might
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be an earring. Originally it was a little
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necklace with the initial D on it that was found on the neck of
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a woman named Candace. So I tried to think about what
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what he would be like and how he would go about concealing.
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And it's true that there are there are cops of people.
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He's works adjacent, he's in a security officer for college.
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But there are cops who are bad guys.
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And they're probably some of the best bad guys because they know
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about how evidence is collected. So this guy gets clothes from
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Goodwill and wears them and even gets shoes that are different
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from his and just is very careful not to leave any
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evidence behind. There was a guy who was had
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raped a lot of women, I think in Ohio, and it turned out he was a
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cop. He would and he was not leaving
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evidence behind. So sometimes cops make the best
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criminals. I could see that, yes, and I'm
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trying to think back. I heard about one recently and
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he was a cop and he got away with it for the longest time and
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it happened to be, I think it was his daughter.
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Going back to what you were talking about earlier, that
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turned to Mint. And state Killer was a cop.
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Maybe that's the one. He was doing it and they that
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one was a weird one. Where it was genetic genealogy
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that caught him and and there had been so much speculation
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about who he was and that guy was never on anyone's radar that
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he was the killer. That's got to be the one I was
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thinking of because I knew it was a famous one, but I was just
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drawing a blank. I don't know, my brains not
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working today. So you're a New York Times
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bestselling author. You've won major awards.
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When you look back at the beginning of your writing
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career, what advice would you give your younger self?
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I would say, I mean, I guess I kind of did it the right way
00:15:58
that I was always hopeful, but it wasn't.
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I didn't get an agent. My first book got like 107
00:16:05
rejection letters. My second book got 53 and I
00:16:09
could have given up then, but the 54th person who saw it
00:16:12
wanted to be my agent. She sent that book out to
00:16:15
editors who got nice rejection letters but no sale.
00:16:18
The third book didn't even get nice rejection letters.
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And like I said, that 4th book sold in two days.
00:16:23
So it would be just not to give up.
00:16:25
The people who continue to write, who work on their
00:16:28
writing, who think about what they're reading and why it works
00:16:31
or why it doesn't work, those are the ones who get published.
00:16:33
It just being really stubborn and trying to believe in
00:16:36
yourself and it could be hard. I got 1 rejection letter back
00:16:39
when they used to be on paper, I'd sent it to this really
00:16:42
famous agent and I was really excited and most, most of the
00:16:45
time they would send you back a rejection on in their own
00:16:49
letterhead. But he just took my letter and
00:16:52
he crossed it out with a big black sharpie and he wrote no in
00:16:56
like 6 inch hive letters. And I could have like been
00:16:59
crushed and just stopped, but I kept going.
00:17:03
And so that I it's not much of A secret to be stubborn and to
00:17:07
persevere, but I, I think it is the secret to almost anything.
00:17:11
Keep at something, you'll get better.
00:17:13
I'm, I mean, I'm like, and I'm a blue belt in jiu jitsu and I had
00:17:17
not strong. I'm not, I've got bad knees and
00:17:20
a bad hip. And, but it's kind of an
00:17:22
accomplishment to be a blue belt And it's only because I just
00:17:24
kept showing up and working at it.
00:17:26
That's the only reason I got better.
00:17:29
I would have got that Letterman. I mean, it was depressing.
00:17:33
I could. Imagine.
00:17:34
I mean it could crush you. I hate that process.
00:17:37
That's the worst process I've come across when it comes to
00:17:40
writing. More so than the editing
00:17:42
feedback or anything, just the query in it.
00:17:45
Well, now a lot of times people will say no.
00:17:48
If you don't hear from them, it's a no.
00:17:49
But then you keep thinking, well, did they get it?
00:17:52
Did they even read it? You know, maybe if they haven't
00:17:54
said no, that means they're thinking about it.
00:17:56
And I feel like at least back then you would, you would get,
00:17:59
you would get a letter, you would get something back.
00:18:02
I mean you had to provide the self addressed stamped envelope,
00:18:06
but you at least got something back.
00:18:07
Right, yes. So looking ahead, are there any
00:18:11
new projects after your newest release?
00:18:14
Yes, I have a third book. Girl Stolen was my best selling
00:18:17
book. It's sold like half a million
00:18:19
copies. There's a second book to it and
00:18:21
I turned in a third book around Christmas and I think it's going
00:18:24
to be called Dig Another Grave. So it's about a blind girl who
00:18:27
goes for a hike and and they run across somebody burying a body.
00:18:32
So then they're on the run and she's blind.
00:18:36
Wow, that sounds really intriguing.
00:18:38
Where can the listeners find you?
00:18:40
Aprilhenry.com. I also am on every single stupid
00:18:45
social media site. I'm on Instagram, TikTok, twice.
00:18:50
I have one for writers and then just one about me and my books.
00:18:54
I'm on Facebook. I'm on Blue Sky, I'm on Threads
00:18:59
pretty much on everything except for Tumblr or whatever so and
00:19:02
it's either April Henry or April Henry books when some other
00:19:06
April Henry got it before me. I will make sure that all of
00:19:08
your links are in the show notes, and I just want to thank
00:19:11
you for spending your time with me today.
00:19:14
It's been really interesting and I love when I get to talk to
00:19:17
such an accomplished author. It's amazing.
00:19:19
Hopefully take away from it the idea of persevering because that
00:19:23
has worked for me in pretty much every situation.
00:19:27
You know, if Enterprise says they don't ever give back their
00:19:29
fees, well, they don't know me. Or if the doctor says there's
00:19:32
not an appointment available, oh, I'm going to make that
00:19:34
happen. And it's just because I just
00:19:36
don't take no for an answer and I just keep plowing ahead.
00:19:41
That's how you do it. That's how I need to do it, but
00:19:44
thank you again. All right.
00:19:46
Thank you very much. That was my conversation with
00:19:48
April Henry, and honestly, if there's one thing to take away
00:19:51
from this episode, it's this. Don't give up.
00:19:53
From over 100 rejections to becoming a best selling author,
00:19:57
April's story is proof that persistence isn't just part of
00:20:00
the journey, it is the journey. Be sure to check out her latest
00:20:03
novel, In the Blood, and keep an eye out for what's coming next.
00:20:06
Because of today's conversation is any indication she's far from
00:20:09
done. You can find all of her links in
00:20:11
the show notes. And as always, if you enjoyed
00:20:13
this episode. So don't forget to follow rate
00:20:15
and share Plot Twist Radio with a fellow book lover.
00:20:18
Until next time, stay curious and expect the unexpected.