Blog Tour: Good Neighbours by Sarah Langan

Today is my turn on the blog tour for Good Neighbours by Sarah Langan! Thank you to Titan Books for the opportunity and for a digital review copy. You can get a physical copy of the book at Book Depository or your local bookstore!

Here’s the synopsis and a guest post by the author herself, Sarah Langan, where she shares her Top Five Responses to Zoom and Podcasts invites during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic!

Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Pages: 304
Author: Sarah Langan
Publisher: Titan Books

Synopsis

Welcome to Maple Street, a picture-perfect slice of suburban Long Island, its residents bound by their children, their work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world.

But when the Wilde family moves in, they trigger their neighbours’ worst fears. Arlo and Gertie and their weird kids don’t fit with the ways Maple Street sees itself.

As tensions mount, a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and neighbourhood Queen Bee Rhea’s daughter Shelly falls inside. The search for Shelly brings a shocking accusation against the Wildes. Suddenly, it is one mom’s word against the others in a court of public opinion that can end only in blood.

Guest Post by Sarah Langan

When I first started publishing, my work got categorized as horror. I would go to conventions, looking for other women getting published by the big houses, hoping to make some friends. There weren’t many. I became good friends with three of them (Rhodi Hawk, Sarah Pinborough, and Alexandra Sokoloff), but we lived far from each other, and rarely were all in the same place at the same time. Back then, I was never able to attend a convention where I was not stalked, cornered, or harassed. It was often subtle, and I could ignore it. But looking back, the guys didn’t have to deal with it at all. They were lifted up.

When I had kids, for complex and mundane reasons, my career slowed down far more than I ever wanted or would have anticipated. It took me a decade to sell to my novel, Good Neighbors, and I was rebranded as a thriller writer. I’m extremely happy about Good Neighbors—it’s a leap in quality. It could easily be called horror, but the label turns off the very readers who are mostly likely to love it, so thriller makes more sense.

Anyway, as I’ve started back on the circuit, I’m seeing something I didn’t notice before. There’s not a ton of successful women in horror, but there’s even less successful women horror writers with school-aged children. They’re like unicorns.

I’ve been invited to a couple of online events, where the subject is writing during COVID. I tend to just go along with what other people are saying, but secretly, these are the Top Five Things I’m Thinking:

Thanks for asking, and thanks for inviting me to this panel! What a delight! Let me chime in and agree with the rest of the panelists here, to say that I’m so sad about what’s happened, but for me, it’s allowed me to focus. I’m working constantly; writing my best material. I mean, there’s so much bad stuff going on, that it’s hard to digest. It’s tempting to turn off your empathy. But my job is to reach people, to make them feel for others, and that empathy acts as a fulcrum for change. We are the world, right? We are the children? So, I feel bad saying it, but I’m doing great! It’s super easy to get into a writing groove and go deep, now that I have the support of my elementary school-aged kids, who are always home, and have been for more than 400 days!

Are you high? I honestly feel, when I’m asked this question, that I’m being punked. Particularly when everyone else on the panel says: business as usual! Please refer to this chart (Economist, May, 2021)

I feel utterly failed by the system. I took a career hit when I had kids, and I knew it would happen. The agreement, as I understood it, was that I’d figure out the first few years, and then the system would help me once my kids were school-aged. I want happy kids; the system wants productive members of society who keep the economy going. It’s a win-win for everyone. And then COVID happened, and the bargain fell through, and the system said: screw you, moms.

I did not expect that in a quarantine, the entire educational system would break down. I did not expect my kids would zoom to school every day, fomenting in them a dependance on electronic devices that they never had before. Making them ripe consumers for Microsoft and Apple and You-Tube and all that crap that makes life worse. Meanwhile, the scions of techie geniuses get sent to Waldorf Schools in Palo Alto, because studies clearly show that screens are bad for children. They also have nannies, whom I’m sure tutored them through Covid, or else they established safe bubbles on private islands. In some way, I like to think I paid for these nannies and private island getaways, by being forced to buy products through my public school taxes, for an online education I didn’t want. I did not expect my kids to get depressed, and I did not expect public policy to make it worse.

You aren’t punking me, are you? You’re really that clueless. We’re hidden, we moms. It reminds me of that short story: I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Thanks for asking! That’s not a loaded question at all! My advice to you writers out there, in particular the moms, is to find a way, no matter how hard it is, to write a little bit every day. And if you can’t go deep, because you’re distracted, then don’t. Do what you can. Remember that you hold up so much, and maybe nobody sees you, or you don’t feel like they see you, but I see you. I’m thinking of you, and if you want to scream, go right ahead.

*The caveats:

1) I get help from my husband in ways most women do not. But I still feel this way, whether it’s warranted or not, and it’s still important to talk about, on behalf the primary caregivers who are too buried to talk about it. Please, look again at that chart.

2) My kids’ teachers went above and beyond and I support them.

3) These are first world problems. Lots of people died and suffered and went hungry. That said, first world problems are still problems.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the blog tour!