Dispatch #3: Why I Wrote a Paranormal Noir Thriller (Even Though I Don’t Read Them)
I’m going to start with a confession:
I don’t really read thrillers. At least not the kind that dominate BookTok with bright covers, twisty blurbs, and breathless young readers declaring, “I gasped on every page.”
I also don’t read paranormal books.
Or noir.
Or whatever you call the messy, moody combination of the two.
And yet… that is exactly the kind of story I wrote for my debut novel.
A paranormal noir thriller.
The first in what will (hopefully) be a long-running series.
So the natural question is: Why?
How does someone who doesn’t even read in that genre end up writing in it?
The answer is less glamorous than you might expect, but it’s honest:
I wrote the kind of story I wanted to read…and couldn’t find.
Returning to the Old Stuff
Like a lot of people my age (Xennial, aging millennial, whatever we’re calling ourselves these days), I’ve found myself drifting back to the TV shows, movies, and books I grew up with. Not because everything new is terrible…it’s not. There’s a lot of great modern television out there. We’ve enjoyed From, Tracker, Running Point, and others.
But somewhere along the way, so much entertainment started to feel… tired.
Either another reboot no one asked for, or a storyline weighed down by messaging that doesn’t fit the genre. I love a good political drama, but I don’t need a moral lecture tucked inside every superhero movie. Sometimes I just want a story that remembers it’s a story.
So my husband and I began rewatching our favorites. The comfort shows. The ones that hit differently as you get older.
Our rotation included:
Penny Dreadful
LOST
The Last Ship
Spenser for Hire
MacGyver (the real one — Richard Dean Anderson)
The X-Files
Dark Shadows (pre-Barnabas chaos era)
the Dirty Harry movies
and a whole spread of weird, atmospheric classics
The more we rewatched, the more I found myself thinking:
Why isn’t anyone making stories like this anymore?
Why can’t I find a mystery with this tone, this grit, this sense of the uncanny?
And then the next thought came:
Well… maybe I could write one.
The DNA of Max West
Max West didn’t start as a character on a whiteboard.
He started as a feeling…a mixture of things I loved but couldn’t find in one place.
He’s part Spenser: smart, handsome, quietly principled, always two steps ahead.
He’s part Fox Mulder: curious, relentless, willing to believe in what can’t be explained.
He’s the guy who keeps digging when everyone else walks away.
The villains in the first book are inspired by the Collins family from Dark Shadows…dramatic, powerful, secretive, and fabulous.
His best friend? A nod to Hawk from the Spenser universe.
And the world itself is stitched together from so many pieces of my life: the ghost stories my grandfather used to tell, my obsession with ancient Egyptian lore, my fascination with things that don’t logically add up.
Add a little noir influence — The Maltese Falcon and its descendants — and suddenly I had a world that felt like home.
Not because I grew up with paranormal-noir-thriller books…
but because I grew up with mystery, wonder, shadow, grit, and questions.
What My Bookshelf Actually Looks Like
If you walked into my house and checked out my shelves, you’d probably be confused about why I wrote the book I did.
You’d find:
Historical fiction (I loved Shogun before the reboot made it cool. Tai-Pan is my favorite of his books though.)
Beach mysteries (Janet Evanovich is my go-to airplane companion)
Political commentary (education policy, healthcare, space exploration — these are my passions)
Classic literature (Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, and other old souls)
What you wouldn’t find?
A big stack of paranormal thrillers or noir detective novels.
And that used to bother me a little.
Shouldn’t writers consume the genre they’re writing in? Isn’t that the rule?
But over time, I’ve realized something:
What you create doesn’t have to perfectly match what you consume.
Sometimes the story you’re meant to write comes from the gaps in your own reading life.
Maybe especially then.
Why This Story Works Anyway
I don’t think my lack of paranormal-noir reading makes me unfit to write one.
In fact, I think it might be my biggest advantage.
I didn’t mimic anybody’s style.
I didn’t follow genre trends.
I didn’t try to make Max West fit neatly on a bookstore shelf.
I wrote a world I wanted to escape into.
I wrote the show I wished existed.
I wrote the kind of mystery that feels sharp, strange, nostalgic, and new all at once.
It’s uniquely mine…a blend of all the things I love, all the things I miss, and some things I’ve lived.
And if you end up enjoying it too, that’s the real magic of storytelling.
— Kat
