Jason Rekulak on Turning a ‘Wedding’ Into a Nightmare
Welcome back to Written in Blood, an interview series featuring novelists and screenwriters in the horror genre.
Jason Rekulak wants to make one thing very clear about his new novel. “There’s nothing supernatural in this book, and it’s not really a horror book at all. But there are murders,” he says with a laugh. “Terrible things happen. There are dead bodies and things like that.”
The author of The Impossible Fortress and the bestseller Hidden Pictures is back on bookstore shelves with The Last One at the Wedding, a suspense thriller about a father attending the wedding of his estranged daughter at a luxurious and private estate. Of course, in true Rekulak fashion, nothing is quite what it seems on the surface.
Absent from the book is the supernatural element featured in Hidden Pictures. However, it does retain some of his previous novel’s thriller DNA. “People use the words psychological thriller all the time, and I think they overuse it, but actually this really is a book about psychology, and about parent-child relationships, and how parents can’t always see their kids clearly. When I started writing [The Last One at the Wedding] I didn’t feel beholden to recreate Hidden Pictures.”
I sat down with Rekulak to talk about his new novel, how his publishing background helped him as a writer, his drafting process, why a wedding is the perfect venue for a suspense thriller, genre recommendations, and more.
Wicked Horror: You’ve had a unique experience in that you’ve worked on both sides of publishing—behind the scenes with Quirk Books, and now as an author with your third published book. What was the transition period like from publisher to published? Did you work on your own writing at night after your day job?
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I started writing when I was a kid—drawing comic books at the back of the class—but around the time I was 20, I was like, Okay, I need to get serious about this. I’m going to do this. I’m going to write. And I started writing every day. I wrote all through my 20s and my 30s when I was working various jobs including that job at Quirk. As it happens, when I started working at Quirk, I also started ghostwriting a lot of Quirk titles because I either couldn’t find a writer to do them or I wanted to try them myself. I learned a lot from that job. I learned to think about books in a certain way—Who is this book for? How are we gonna package this book? And all those things I learned on the job, when I left that job, I could then apply to my own writing and be a little more calculating about it. When I publish a book, I do want people to read it [laughs]. I don’t want to just put it out there and maybe get a nice review. I want it to find an audience.
WH: You decided to set your next book at a wedding which I think is a unique location and setting for a novel because the idea of a wedding is already built-in with so many opportunities for drama and rivalries and frustrated emotions, so I was wondering if the idea for The Last One at the Wedding came to you as a seed of an idea first, or a character presented themselves, or it was a desire to write a destination-based novel?
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I always wanted to write a book about a wedding. I always thought it would be a fun location for a thriller. I actually used the structure of Deliverance by James Dickey, and it’s got this great five-act structure. There just something so perfect about it. If you look at the book physically, the horrible, most famous scene of Deliverance is like physically right in the middle of the novel. It’s exactly 50% of the way through, and everything in the book changes after that moment, and I just totally lifted that entire structure for this book. The first part is before the wedding, the bulk of the book is the three days at the wedding, and then there’s a sort of final after-they-all-get-home section.
I wanted the reader to feel like you’re going to this wedding, too—you’re part of this trip, you’re in the car with these people, and you’re gonna discover everything in real time with them. As they find out things, you’re gonna find out things, and we’re all gonna try to figure out what’s going on together. Those are my favorite kinds of books. With the Wedding book, I was trying to do something that was super linear and really immersive and locked into one character’s very specific point of view.
WH: I imagine having that structure you talked about kind of gave you something as a writer to write toward so you knew the big tentpole events or plot occurrences at these specific times.
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I mean, it did. That’s the nice thing about the wedding. It does bring a certain kind of form to the novel. There is going to be a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding, and there are all these other milestones that have to get ticked off. So that was almost like working with a poetic form. If you’re writing a sestina or a sonnet, there are certain rules you have to follow. So, it did kind of give me a little bit of a built-in structure, which was cool. I kind of like books that have form. I think the form in this one is pretty subtle, but there is like a real, clear structure to it.
WH: After the first draft, how many drafts would you say it takes before you’re ready for other eyes to read it?
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I mean, I don’t have drafts the way most people talk about drats. I rewrite constantly. I throw a lot of stuff away. I try to outline as much as I can before I start, but sometimes you just—sometimes you [have] more of a head start than other times. I can’t even tell you how many drafts of this book I wrote. For example, as the book gets going, as the book’s ramping up and they’re driving to the wedding, I know this dad is driving to this wedding to reunite with his daughter and meet his in-laws, so I’m like, Okay, I’m well into the story because I understand the relationship between the father and the daughter, but who’s coming to the wedding with him? Who is he bringing? And that’s actually a really big question because who are the supporting characters in this story? I tried out a couple different people in that car before I settled on the people I ended up with. I wrote a lot of pages and a lot of scenes that I just didn’t use. I write my drafts really—they’re pretty rough. I don’t get too precious about the language because that makes it easier to cut things that aren’t working. So when I’m drafting the story, I just keep it pretty basic and rough so it’s easy to cut and pare back the beats that don’t belong and I try to make all the writing great at the end. So for that reason, when my editor’s like, Can you show me anything? I’m like, Well, no, because if you saw it you’d think it was terrible. [laughs]
By the time I start sharing things, I feel like I’m 95% done. I’m never looking for validation. I’m never looking for someone to say, Oh this is really good. I’ve gotten to the point now where I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t need it anymore. I’ve become much more confident in my abilities. There was a time when I did want that, when I was less sure of myself and less experienced when, you know, I needed that encouragement to go on. But now, I don’t know, I don’t have a need for it.
WH: So you’ve finished [The Last One at the Wedding]. Do you have any post-novel celebratory rituals? I’ve spoken to a lot of writers and it always cracks me up what their rituals are because they’re so varied and different depending on who I’m talking to.
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I don’t. I feel like I should have a good ritual, though, like Paul Sheldon in Misery. People ask me this question all the time and I don’t think I have anything like that. I am always excited about [finishing a project] because I’m not gonna do anything for a month. That’s my thought. I’m just gonna take it easy. But the reality is I don’t know what else to do with myself. So after a week I start getting restless. You know, writing can be like a habit. If you make it into a habit, it’s a lot easier. If your brain just becomes accustomed to sitting at it every day—I’ve found it’s kind of a hard thing to turn off. I’ll definitely have a cocktail, though. I’ll have a Manhattan or an old fashioned or something like that. Absolutely.
WH: Have you read or watched anything in the horror or suspense space lately that you’d recommend?
Jason Rekulak: I just picked up a book called The Hitchcock Hotel. It’s a novel. I can’t tell what kind of book it is yet. I’m only like 50 pages into it. I think it might be turning into a whodunit. But this guy opens this Alfred Hitchcock-themed hotel and it’s filled with Hitchcock memorabilia, so he’s got the phone from Dial M for Murder and he’s got [a] taxidermy bird from Psycho…and if you’re a Hitchock fan like I am, it’s like Ready Player One for Hitchcock fans. It’s loaded with Easter eggs and references to all this stuff [from Hitchcock’s films].
WH: Have you seen the new Salem’s Lot on Max?
Jason Rekulak: I haven’t seen it yet. I’m curious about it, though. How is it?
WH: I thought it was fine. It looks great. The production values, the acting I thought was great. It’s just when you go in expecting the King story, you want the King story, and for whatever reason it doesn’t translate to the finished product.
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, I had heard some mixed things about it so I wasn’t rushing to see it. You know, I’m really excited to see the new Mike Flanagan one. It’s like a novella.
WH: Oh, The Life of Chuck.
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, that’s supposed to be really good. I grew up in the ’80s Stephen King heyday. I was getting Cujo in hardcover out of the library because it had just come in. I remember running home with Cujo, being so excited.
WH: How are things going on the [book] tour?
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, the tour’s great. The book hit the [New York Times bestseller] list last night, so the first time ever I’ve had a New York Times bestseller. You know, it’s been a weird thing because I didn’t really go on tour for Hidden Pictures. That book just sort of came out and sold slowly like a word-of-mouth thing. But it definitely found an audience because I know when I go to these events and there’s people there, they’re there because they liked Hidden Pictures. We actually sold more copies of Hidden Pictures last week than in any week in the last two-and-a-half years.
WH: That’s kind of mind-blowing.
Jason Rekulak: Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s more popular now than it’s ever been and it came out in May of 2022. I have seen grandmothers, mothers, and daughters read this book tougher and they can all connect with the setup and the situation.
The Last One at the Wedding is available in bookstores now.
[This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity]
