On Finding Community and Writing Through A Dystopia

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A deadly airborne virus ripping through the population. Government mandated quarantines and mask requirements. Overwhelmed hospitals. State maps with daily death tolls.

The Covid-19 pandemic thrust Americans—and much of the world—into the plot of a dystopian novel. Suddenly, gatherings of any kind were dangerous. Gone was the ability to pop into a local grocery store, take the kids to school, or work in an office—liberties once so central to existence that they seemed less liberties than chores. In those early days, the government urged everyone to stay indoors. Other people could kill you. Perhaps worse, you could kill them.

As a writer, the mandate to remain at home (hunched over a laptop) wasn’t much of a challenge. But the pandemic presented a unique problem with regards to creating fresh crime fiction. How to pen an entertaining page-turner with any meaning when the world outside was already so frightening and few could predict what would become the new normal?

This was my personal struggle when writing my sixth standalone novel, The Darkness of Others. As a domestic suspense writer who sets her stories in the present, I wanted to tell a tale that would provide a measure of escapist entertainment while also reflecting how the pandemic was currently changing lives, shifting perspectives, and rejiggering priorities.

Ultimately, I opted to set my murder mystery during the winter of 2020 featuring characters whose daily lives were impacted both by fear of the virus and the economic toll of shuttering entire industries. I picked Brooklyn Heights, NY, as the locale because it’s an affluent neighborhood where folks literally live on top of one another, and it’s populated by people in industries particularly affected by the shutdowns, namely the restaurant industry and Broadway.

My protagonist, Imani Banks, is a psychiatrist forced to grapple with how well she’s cared for her own mental health and that of her loved ones during this time after her best friend and neighbor, Broadway actress Melissa Walker, is accused of murder and goes missing. Driving the narrative is Imani’s search to find her friend and unravel what happened behind her neighbor’s long-closed doors. However, the stress of the pandemic on the characters’ lives, how Imani copes with a lack of social interaction and friendship, and the devastating economic toll of the shutdown on Imani’s husband’s restaurant factor heavily into the plot.

Another personal challenge for me during the pandemic was how to maintain a sense of community with other crime writers when our usual means of interacting—conferences and bookstore events—were cancelled. Fortunately, I was invited to collaborate with fellow crime writers on an audio book. Our zoom meetings to discuss plot and character proved a much-needed avenue for social and professional interaction.

I asked my cowriters of that work, Young Rich Widows, how they’ve dealt with writing their solo efforts during the pandemic, and how, if at all, did Covid-19 and the resulting lockdowns change their stories?

Kimberly Belle, internationally bestselling author of The Personal Assistant, wrote two books during this time and found the experience different with each one. “Where writing my first pandemic book was a welcome distraction from the world’s woes, with my latest one I had to fight for every word,” she said. “A story about an Instagram influencer, no less. Who cares about follower counts when your world is a dumpster fire? And then I realized that was maybe the point, and the lesson we all need to learn—my main character included. She had to reassess her priorities, to drill down to the very essence of what’s essential in life. As she learned in her story—as we learned in ours—the rest is just noise and fluff.”

Vanessa Lillie, author of Amazon bestsellers Little Voices and For The Best, found that writing during the pandemic focused her on the places she missed most during the travel bans. “I started a new crime fiction series set in my rural Oklahoma hometown, a place I hadn’t been able to visit and see my family because of the pandemic.” The resulting book, Blood Sisters, will be out from Berkley in the fall of 2023.

Vanessa also noted that subjects in her own life which became particularly salient during the pandemic emerged during the writing. “During the revision process with my editor, I noticed themes of isolation, loneliness as well as identity—issues I continue to kick around in this so-called ‘post pandemic’ world.”

Layne Fargo, author of They Never Learn, perhaps found her writing most impacted by the pandemic as it pushed her to reevaluate what she was writing and why. “As frustrating as it was at the time, the pandemic forced me to take a step back and reassess my writing career as a whole, from my process to the types of stories I want to tell. I’m following my bliss as an author now—concentrating on projects that bring me joy, rather than obsessing about what readers or publishers want. The world is burning, why not write what you love?”

Perhaps that’s the silver lining of the pandemic for crime fiction writers and fans. Having lived through a time when the lifeblood of authors—bookstores and libraries—were shuttered, authors have tuned into what’s important in their work and what they most love about writing. After the dark ages of shutdowns and sickness, a renaissance could be around the corner.

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