Ask the Author: April Henry
Answered Questions (335)
April Henry
Hey Avery - thanks so much for writing!
Shock Point was my very first YA. In fact, at the time I was only writing books for adults, but I had read some news accounts about an evil company called World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), a for-profit behavior modification programs for troubled teens. The craziest was about a guy who was walking home from school when two men threw him in the back a van. He thought he was being kidnapped by serial killers, but instead his parents were sending him to an overseas WWASP school. There's a Netflix documentary called The Program about the stateside versions of these schools. When I wrote the book, I thought it was an adult book with a teen character, but my agent represented a lot of YAs, and she told me it was YA.
With Girl, Forgotten I had long wanted to do a book where someone starts a cold case podcast, but it turns out it's anything but cold. The part about her mom was very loosely inspired by a girl who showed up at our daughter's school in fifth grade. They became best friends, and even at that age the other girl never, ever talked about her mom. I figured she was dead, but the truth was closer to what was in the book. I did a lot of research into foster care and emancipation for that book. And I learned about podcasting and interviewed someone who has a cold case podcast. I also wanted an unexpected killer.
For The Lonely Dead, when my mom was alive, she sometimes knew things she shouldn't have known. Like when I told her I had bought a car, she said, "It's maroon, right?" I asked her to find the same color in a magazine, and she mailed me a torn piece of paper. When I put it on the hood of the car, it matched perfectly. (No one else in our family has that, unfortunately.)
I used to go for the same 4-mile run in my old neighborhood, and I started wondering what I would see if I could see the dead right where they were buried. I figured it would probably be buried pets. But one day when I was running, I thought - but what if my character saw a girl? A girl who didn't know she was dead.
Shock Point was my very first YA. In fact, at the time I was only writing books for adults, but I had read some news accounts about an evil company called World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), a for-profit behavior modification programs for troubled teens. The craziest was about a guy who was walking home from school when two men threw him in the back a van. He thought he was being kidnapped by serial killers, but instead his parents were sending him to an overseas WWASP school. There's a Netflix documentary called The Program about the stateside versions of these schools. When I wrote the book, I thought it was an adult book with a teen character, but my agent represented a lot of YAs, and she told me it was YA.
With Girl, Forgotten I had long wanted to do a book where someone starts a cold case podcast, but it turns out it's anything but cold. The part about her mom was very loosely inspired by a girl who showed up at our daughter's school in fifth grade. They became best friends, and even at that age the other girl never, ever talked about her mom. I figured she was dead, but the truth was closer to what was in the book. I did a lot of research into foster care and emancipation for that book. And I learned about podcasting and interviewed someone who has a cold case podcast. I also wanted an unexpected killer.
For The Lonely Dead, when my mom was alive, she sometimes knew things she shouldn't have known. Like when I told her I had bought a car, she said, "It's maroon, right?" I asked her to find the same color in a magazine, and she mailed me a torn piece of paper. When I put it on the hood of the car, it matched perfectly. (No one else in our family has that, unfortunately.)
I used to go for the same 4-mile run in my old neighborhood, and I started wondering what I would see if I could see the dead right where they were buried. I figured it would probably be buried pets. But one day when I was running, I thought - but what if my character saw a girl? A girl who didn't know she was dead.
April Henry
First of all, if you have any way of lettering your ELA teacher know that - do! Teachers sometimes wonder if what they do makes a difference, and clearly it does. First of all, all the great writers I read inspired me. I have always loved to read, and still read every day. The idea of doing the same thing as these people who inspired me was amazing. Second, I found I love thinking up cool twists or learning something interesting I can then share with readers. And third, it's hearing from people like you that inspires me. I can't tell you if you were already a reader when you read Girl, Stolen, but I love hearing that my books changed someone's mind about reading being fun. And to answer a question you didn't ask - I just turned in a third book in the Girl, Stolen world and it will come out in 2027. Which somehow is next year!
April Henry
I really liked Don't Breathe.
April Henry
When We Go Missing out in May, In the Blood out in 2026, and Untitled Girl Stolen 3 out in 2027 are all thrillers.
April Henry
I didn't answer your question right away because I was just in upstate New York doing a week of school visits. I still like and do school visits. I've already got 7 days of school visits lined up for the fall. Tell your school librarian to reach out to me about one!
April Henry
I have tips and story sparks on my website: https://www.aprilhenry.com/write.html. I also post writing tips daily on TikTok at @keeptheminsuspense Good luck! Basically read a lot (and think about what you read), write a lot, and focus on those things, you'll learn how to be write.
April Henry
I have been signing two book contacts for many years, and plan to keep doing that. So my May 2025 book is called When We Go Missing, about a girl who finds a camera card filled with photos of girls. My 2026 book is called In The Blood and is about an adopted girl who figures out her father is a notorious serial killer called the Portland Phantom. My 2027 book will continue one of my most popular books (it hasn't been announced yet). I will finish writing my 2027 book this summer and then plan to offer two more books to my publisher - but I haven't thought about what they should be yet.
April Henry
Hey Tabitha, I do answer all my emails, GoodReads questions, etc, but I'm also super busy so it can take up to a week.
Yes, your dream is fully possible, however it will be a lot of work. Sometimes people don't want to do all that work. First of all, right now you should concentrate on writing. The youngest I have ever seen someone get an agent (the person who sells your book to a publisher) is 16, and that was very unusual.
Once you have a finished book, you need to work on editing it yourself to get it as perfect as you can. You might ask other budding writers to give you feedback. You should read books about writing to get ideas on how to write better.
Once you are 16 or older, you can start looking for an agent. Agents don't make any money until they sell your book, so they will only take books and clients they think are a perfect fit for them. My first book didn't get an agent. My second book got me an agent and a bunch of nice rejection letters. My third book did not even get nice rejection letters. My fourth book sold in two days in a two book deal. That's actually fairly common.
So I could have given up at any time, but I kept trying and kept working making my writing better. That's what it takes to get published.
And to make it the only way you make money takes even longer. So I would go to college in something that interests you and write on the side until you make enough money you can quit your day job - if you want to.
Yes, your dream is fully possible, however it will be a lot of work. Sometimes people don't want to do all that work. First of all, right now you should concentrate on writing. The youngest I have ever seen someone get an agent (the person who sells your book to a publisher) is 16, and that was very unusual.
Once you have a finished book, you need to work on editing it yourself to get it as perfect as you can. You might ask other budding writers to give you feedback. You should read books about writing to get ideas on how to write better.
Once you are 16 or older, you can start looking for an agent. Agents don't make any money until they sell your book, so they will only take books and clients they think are a perfect fit for them. My first book didn't get an agent. My second book got me an agent and a bunch of nice rejection letters. My third book did not even get nice rejection letters. My fourth book sold in two days in a two book deal. That's actually fairly common.
So I could have given up at any time, but I kept trying and kept working making my writing better. That's what it takes to get published.
And to make it the only way you make money takes even longer. So I would go to college in something that interests you and write on the side until you make enough money you can quit your day job - if you want to.
April Henry
I really wanted to do a third, but my old publisher said the sales were better for my stand alones, and they wanted more stand alones. Sorry! I really liked Ruby especially and wanted to focus on her for the third book.
April Henry
First you find an agent. That's probably the hardest part of the process, because agents don't charge you any money until they make a sale (they take 15%) so they won't take a book on unless they feel fairly certain they can sell it. For a lot of folks, it's not their first or second book that gets published, but like their third.
So it's hard, but the people who stick with it and who work on improving their writing are the ones who ultimately get published.
So it's hard, but the people who stick with it and who work on improving their writing are the ones who ultimately get published.
April Henry
For Girl Forgotten, I knew I wanted to have a girl who got curious about a grave and then learned it was of a girl who was a murder victim. I like true crime podcasts, so I decided that would be how she decided to solve it. I borrowed some things from real life - my kid had a friend who had to suddenly move in with her dad, whom she really didn't know. And a few years ago I met a student who had a prosthetic leg, and she told she had never seen a character in a book with a prosthetic leg. It was hard to write the episodes and not repeat things - that was a challenge.
April Henry
I'm guessing you are in Portland. Yes, we did kung fu together and he did a bit of jiu jitsu and I switched to it.
April Henry
I was at a literacy conference in Nebraska one February. I did my keynote talk but the room where I was supposed to sign books was empty. The whole event was at this weird confusing hotel, so I went to the lobby thinking I had gotten lost again. Instead, people were running through it saying everyone was leaving immediately because a blizzard was going to blow in and trap everyone at the hotel for three days. I panicked because I had flown there. But I also immediately thought I wanted to have a group of teens trapped there after a blizzard forces them off the road. I did a lot of research into theater kids and competition for that book. Oh, and stage hangings.
April Henry
I feel kind of like a mom with 28 kids - I mean, shouldn't you love them all? I do like Girl, Stolen for learning about blindness; The Girl I Used to Be for the real case it was based on; same thing for The Girl in the White Van; The Girl I Used to Be has great twists, and I really like my book that is coming out May 28 called Stay Dead.
April Henry
I always do a lot of research. For my May 28th book, STAY DEAD, I talked to a jet pilot, a person who flies drones, I read a lot about assassinations, I talked to an engineer at company that makes jet plane wings, and I spent a lot of time talking to an expert in survival. Currently I am learning a lot about genetic genealogy and genetic reassortment for my 2026 book, IN THE BLOOD.
April Henry
I got the idea in April 2012 when a friend told us her teen was a volunteer with Multnomah County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue. Not only does MCSOSAR look for people lost in the woods, but they also recover bodies and they do crime scene evidence searches and they are a teen-led organization. The more I learned, the more I was sure I had found what I had long sought: a realistic hook for a teen mystery series. People in MCSO SAR were so helpful to me in researching and writing. The teens who volunteer for it undergo an incredible amount of training, including every Wednesday and one weekend a month. I attended several of their sessions.
April Henry
My fiction always has a healthy percentage of facts. Girl, Stolen began with a story I saw in the local news. A blind girl went out to dinner with her mom and stepdad. Afterward, her folks wanted to go Christmas shopping, but she decided to wait in the car and listen to her music. Her mom left the keys in the ignition in case she got cold. A man came along, saw the keys, jumped into the car, drove off - and didn't realize there was a girl in the back seat. After he figured out she was there, he forced her out of the car. She was unharmed.
But I thought, "What if he had kept her? And what if the thief was a teenager too? And what if his dad was running a chop shop for stolen cars? And what if they thought about letting her go - until they learned she was the daughter of Nike's president?"
To research the book, I bought a blind cane and learned how to use it. I read a lot of autobiographies written by people who had gone blind. Through them, I learned how important guide dogs are to many blind people, so I spent a day at Guide Dogs for the Blind in Boring, Oregon. They even put a blindfold on me and brought out a dog for me to harness and walk. It's very hard to do that if you have never seen the dog or the harness, but I finally managed. Then I tried to pat the dog on the head - and realized I had harnessed the tail end.
I also corresponded with a high school girl who was blind and going to a regular school. And I sent the whole book to a blind woman who has a radio program about books and who has strong feelings about how blind people are portrayed in the media. She had her computer read it to her and caught some typos. So Girl, Stolen was actually proofread by a blind person!
But I thought, "What if he had kept her? And what if the thief was a teenager too? And what if his dad was running a chop shop for stolen cars? And what if they thought about letting her go - until they learned she was the daughter of Nike's president?"
To research the book, I bought a blind cane and learned how to use it. I read a lot of autobiographies written by people who had gone blind. Through them, I learned how important guide dogs are to many blind people, so I spent a day at Guide Dogs for the Blind in Boring, Oregon. They even put a blindfold on me and brought out a dog for me to harness and walk. It's very hard to do that if you have never seen the dog or the harness, but I finally managed. Then I tried to pat the dog on the head - and realized I had harnessed the tail end.
I also corresponded with a high school girl who was blind and going to a regular school. And I sent the whole book to a blind woman who has a radio program about books and who has strong feelings about how blind people are portrayed in the media. She had her computer read it to her and caught some typos. So Girl, Stolen was actually proofread by a blind person!
April Henry
Hey Summer - we have similar names!
I write crime novels because in them justice is almost always served, unlike real life. I like thinking of complicated puzzles. I like learning about things like forensics. I like that they are high stakes. (I will never write a book about a girl who can't decide who to go to the prom with.)
I write crime novels because in them justice is almost always served, unlike real life. I like thinking of complicated puzzles. I like learning about things like forensics. I like that they are high stakes. (I will never write a book about a girl who can't decide who to go to the prom with.)
April Henry
It's supposed to contemporary - so set whatever year you are reading it. Of course, it was written a certain year (check the copyright in the front), so things in the book might change, like how a certain app works. Like I think that has Facebook, which was more current at the time, and you could only "like" things.
April Henry
Wow, that makes me so happy! That book was so fun to write. I feel a little bit in love with one of the bad guys (you'll see what I mean). And I got to talk to a jet pilot, a wilderness survival expert, a drone pilot, and an aeronautical engineer!
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Feb 20, 2026 01:48PM · flag