At first, she expected to take on a range of different, less demanding acting roles.
Nothing excited me enough.
Bonfireis centered on young environmental lawyer Abbys return to her hometown of Barrens.
Credit: Cindy Ord/Getty Images; Random House
The book, out Tuesday, introduces Ritter as an exciting new voice.
Read on below, and orderBonfirehere.
I wanted to have a crime set around a small town, everybody working together to cover it up.
What happened is I had my TV pitch ready to go.
This was the one idea that was No.
1 on the pitch sheet.
And they didnt think that I would be able to sell it in the marketplace at that time.
They were kind of like, Lets focus our energies on this other thing.
I was like, Well, okay, I really like this.
SoJessica Jones2 was going to go afterThe Defenders.
But this idea and this book did.
So I just started writing, and I got really disciplined.
It ended up selling in a big way and it kind of just happened.
I put all my time into it.
Having that discipline is good for a novelist.You need a good work ethic to get anything done, right?
Its so easy to be daunted by fear, daunted by just a heavy workload.
Obviously, you have almost 300 pages to fill, its a lot.
But every single thing takes a good work ethic.
Shes an unreliable narrator, in that her emotions are clearly animating and informing her descriptions.
I wanted to do that, too.
Its kind of one my favorite things to uncover in reading a book.
Shes repressed a lot of feelings in her past.
Thats all the fun character work that I wanted to do, and find a lot of pleasure in.
Ill totally admit that a lot of the scenes and the scenery are plucked right from my brain.
Theres a lot of me in the book.
But I always use myself as a way in its kind of how I work with anything.
And I would imagine as youre writing scenes, its just a natural place to turn to.Definitely.
Turn left, here, and this is what it looks like.
Everyone says, Oh, I read this in a day.
Maybe you read it in two days.
ButSharp Objects,I really did read it in a day.
I read it in a day!
I just couldnt put it down.
That inspired me quite a bit.
Going home and dealing with stuff.
I think everybody relates to that.
Thats stuff that I always like to talk about in life and explore in anything creative.
And the people in the small town are like, See?
What they just did was good.
That was something thats frustrated me and was the nugget of the idea.
People getting taken advantage of.
I didnt want the book to be too political, you know?
I wasnt trying to go in and make it red versus blue.
Im not trying to make it too message-y.
It was a lot of work, yes.
But theres not much else that is this satisfying.
Its terrifying, yeah its scary.
But just being able to not necessarily always be the face of something.
And I do a lot of different things.
Im an actress and I write and I produce stuff.
I have a guitar and I have my knitting stuff.
I definitely would love to do another book.
Its just about having that time its key.
Ive already been thinking about ways to do, and themes that I want to continue on with.
