Meet Angie Gallion

1. At the time of this interview, it’s the holiday season. Does your family have any special traditions for this time of year?

We don’t have family nearby, so holidays have typically included us travelling to our hometown to celebrate.  That makes for multiple family stops and a lot of chaos. While we love seeing the families, it doesn’t give us much opportunity to celebrate.  This year we took an early Christmas trip to New York City, where we went to a Broadway show, visited the shops, and enjoyed the best deli food ever. It was a great trip. It felt the beginning of a new holiday tradition.

2. You’ve previously worked in money-laundering investigation. That sounds so interesting! What did that involve?

I still work in money-laundering investigations. It’s very interesting. 911 opened our eyes to how following the trail of the money can shed light on nefarious deeds. My current project is part of the Know Your Customer division, and I’m basically making sure that the detail provided at account open are consistent with the activity in the account. We look for a lot more than money laundering, like terrorist financing, human trafficking, and elder abuse.

3. Hush, Delilah is quite a dark story. How do you get yourself in the mindset of working on something so intense? And do you have any tricks for putting it out of your mind so that you don’t stay focused on it when you’re not writing?

Is it dark? I tend to trend that direction. I agree it is heavy, but there is a lot of light in Delilah finding her voice. It was a tough book to write, in part because we had some conflict in our home while I was working on it and I think that shaped some the characters. When I write I try to become my main character, to really understand how they feel and think. Delilah was squashed at the beginning of the book, and I’m not, so it was hard to find her core. I speak almost all of my dialogue aloud, which helps me to get the rhythm of the speech. When I step away from the writing, I try to put it aside and out of mind, so I can focus on my family, but the gears keep working through the conflicts and the next day’s writing generally reveals some solution that I couldn’t reach the day before.

4. You and your family like to travel. What are some of your favorite places you’ve been, and what made them special? Where would you like to go in the future?

We’ve travelled to Greece, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, of course, Scotland, as well as great places in the United States. When the girls were little, we did a lot of camping, which I miss more than I thought I would. I think, by nature, I am unrooted, and the idea of living out of a camper van is very appealing to me. When I think of myself as an old woman, I see my husband and I traveling the country to see the best sunrises and sunsets.

5. Do you have any authors or books that have inspired you, either to write or just in general? Any recommendations?

When I was young, I was heavily influenced by SE Hinton’s The Outsiders, and I think you can see that influence in the Alison Hayes books.  The fact that she wrote that when she in her teens and that it was about kids who felt unseen, much like I felt, made me realize that I could tell stories that I saw around me and I didn’t have to write to the formula but could let my characters drive the narrative. I am inspired by stories that feel real. People are resilient and the human psyche is amazing in its capacity to heal. I like stories that surprise me: Elinor Oliphant is Just Fine, Children of Men, You, Guilty, At the Water’s Edge, A Man Called Ove. I prefer to listen rather than read, these days, so an awesome narrator can work magic.