Ask the Author: Bryan Gruley
Answered Questions (7)
Bryan Gruley
I'm working on the third book in the Bitterfrost series set in the small northern lower Michigan town of Bitterfrost.
Bryan Gruley
The writing. Honest. A good day's work makes for a good day.
Bryan Gruley
I'm so sorry I didn't see your question until now, Virginia. And thank you for your kind words about Bitterfrost!
Purgatory Bay is about a young woman bent on revenge for what she perceives as the destruction of her immediate family--an apparent mafia hit that killed everyone but her. It was inspired by a notorious 1960s murder in northern Michigan where the Robeson family was slaughtered in their cabin. It includes a few of the characters from the book that preceded it, Bleak Harbor.
My next book, River Deep, will be published July 7, 2026. It includes all of the main characters from Bitterfrost and involves a woman who is accused of drowning her children in a river. I hope you read it!
Purgatory Bay is about a young woman bent on revenge for what she perceives as the destruction of her immediate family--an apparent mafia hit that killed everyone but her. It was inspired by a notorious 1960s murder in northern Michigan where the Robeson family was slaughtered in their cabin. It includes a few of the characters from the book that preceded it, Bleak Harbor.
My next book, River Deep, will be published July 7, 2026. It includes all of the main characters from Bitterfrost and involves a woman who is accused of drowning her children in a river. I hope you read it!
Bryan Gruley
I have a saying attributed to oJack London taped to my laptop: "You can't wait around for inspiration. You have to hunt it down with a club." In other words, you have to do the work. So I write.
Bryan Gruley
The first rule of writing: Ass in chair. Write. Write for 5 minutes a day if that's all the time you have, but do it every day. Next thing you know, it'll be 10 minutes, then 20, and the words will start to pile up. Words will not write themselves.
Bryan Gruley
Short answer: sit down and write. If it's crap--sometimes it is--I can fix it later. I also think of my pal Marcus Sakey's answer to someone who asked him about writer's block: "Plumbers can't get blocked." In other words, writing is your job. You just gotta do it.
Bryan Gruley
The central event that spurs the rest of the book was inspired by the murder of the Robison family in their northern Michigan cottage in the late 1960s. I was a kid who read about it in The Detroit News. Not long after, my parents bought a cottage not far too far from where the Robisons were killed. I would like awake at night terrified that someone would come in and kill us all.
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