The Scoop on my NEW Novel: MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE!!
Hello Good Readers!
Since you’ve shown interest in my writing, I wanted to share the scoop on my NEW NOVEL, Midnight in Soap Lake, which is publishing on 4/15/25!
As you know from reading Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, I set out in that novel to capture the rare and open community of the indie bookstore. As a bookseller, I had years of experience in that world and care a lot about it, so it felt right to pay tribute to it… even in a story about murder.
In my new, stand-alone novel, MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE, I’m at it again: delving into community. But I’m doing it differently this time.
This new book weaves a lot together—a murdered single mom, a mineral lake with a history of healing, a small-town library with a cellar full of secrets, a creepy urban legend that holds a small town in its grip—but more than anything, it too is exploring a tight, colorful community.
The town of Soap Lake in the the novel is fictional, but it’s based on a place where I lived.
In 2003, right after our first baby was born, my wife and I were living in Boston, working as a teacher-bookseller and librarian, barely making ends meet. Affording day care was not an option and we missed the West, so when I landed a job at a small community college in rural Washington state, we jumped: bought a 3-bedroom house for $79,000 (!!) in Soap Lake, a town twenty miles from the college, surrounded by sagebrush and rock—population 1,500.
We knew it wouldn’t be perfect, but it was just what we needed at the time. We could live on one modest salary, raise our kids without daycare, become first-time homeowners, and give our sheepdog a field all to herself (instead of a balcony in Dorchester).
Some aspects of the town were grim—mostly having to do with meth—but the place was generally peaceful. I was a weekend writer, Libby an artist, and we had a second kid on the way, so the quiet was fine. Birds of prey soared overhead, moonlight rippled on the lake at night, and we met some sweet retired people who were thrilled by the sight of babies.
We noticed right away that because of poverty and related stigmas, Soap Lake was an easy town to dismiss. Vacant storefronts dotted downtown, empty cottages dotted the streets. Restaurants opened and closed. A BBC reporter called it “a ghost town.”
And yet: throughout it all there was a core group of people who—largely inspired by the mineral lake—believed in the promise of the place, and wanted to make it better.
They soaked in the lake’s rare water, celebrated its centuries of healing, and organized to protect it.
They stood on the stage of the small community theater, bringing stories into the desert.
They leaned into giant wooden boxes at the nearby orchard and, for a pittance, filled their bags with the most beautiful apples in the world.
They gathered to to play music, to share art, to play horseshoes on the beach. They even built the world’s worst golf course: a free, public 9-hole in the hot, rocky sagebrush. No grass.
One of them—a sweet guy named Brent Blake—transformed the former police station into an art gallery, and tried to put Soap Lake on the map by proposing to build a 60-foot lava lamp in the heart of downtown.
A student of mine who grew up in the area maybe phrased it best: she said she lived “in the middle of Somewhere.”
More than just a setting for a novel, this place felt like a story in itself. So, years later, when I sat down to write this book, I did my best to capture that: made the good stuff good, and—because this is a crime novel—made the creepy stuff worse.
Meet Soap Lake.
Beware. Take Care.
Hope you enjoy it!
~Matt
PS--It’s been a while since I’ve checked in, so huge thanks for sticking around and continuing to read! It may not look it, but I’m on GoodReads a lot, tracking my own reading in a different account. As usual, my TBR only grows!
Since you’ve shown interest in my writing, I wanted to share the scoop on my NEW NOVEL, Midnight in Soap Lake, which is publishing on 4/15/25!
As you know from reading Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, I set out in that novel to capture the rare and open community of the indie bookstore. As a bookseller, I had years of experience in that world and care a lot about it, so it felt right to pay tribute to it… even in a story about murder.
In my new, stand-alone novel, MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE, I’m at it again: delving into community. But I’m doing it differently this time.
This new book weaves a lot together—a murdered single mom, a mineral lake with a history of healing, a small-town library with a cellar full of secrets, a creepy urban legend that holds a small town in its grip—but more than anything, it too is exploring a tight, colorful community.
The town of Soap Lake in the the novel is fictional, but it’s based on a place where I lived.
In 2003, right after our first baby was born, my wife and I were living in Boston, working as a teacher-bookseller and librarian, barely making ends meet. Affording day care was not an option and we missed the West, so when I landed a job at a small community college in rural Washington state, we jumped: bought a 3-bedroom house for $79,000 (!!) in Soap Lake, a town twenty miles from the college, surrounded by sagebrush and rock—population 1,500.
We knew it wouldn’t be perfect, but it was just what we needed at the time. We could live on one modest salary, raise our kids without daycare, become first-time homeowners, and give our sheepdog a field all to herself (instead of a balcony in Dorchester).
Some aspects of the town were grim—mostly having to do with meth—but the place was generally peaceful. I was a weekend writer, Libby an artist, and we had a second kid on the way, so the quiet was fine. Birds of prey soared overhead, moonlight rippled on the lake at night, and we met some sweet retired people who were thrilled by the sight of babies.
We noticed right away that because of poverty and related stigmas, Soap Lake was an easy town to dismiss. Vacant storefronts dotted downtown, empty cottages dotted the streets. Restaurants opened and closed. A BBC reporter called it “a ghost town.”
And yet: throughout it all there was a core group of people who—largely inspired by the mineral lake—believed in the promise of the place, and wanted to make it better.
They soaked in the lake’s rare water, celebrated its centuries of healing, and organized to protect it.
They stood on the stage of the small community theater, bringing stories into the desert.
They leaned into giant wooden boxes at the nearby orchard and, for a pittance, filled their bags with the most beautiful apples in the world.
They gathered to to play music, to share art, to play horseshoes on the beach. They even built the world’s worst golf course: a free, public 9-hole in the hot, rocky sagebrush. No grass.
One of them—a sweet guy named Brent Blake—transformed the former police station into an art gallery, and tried to put Soap Lake on the map by proposing to build a 60-foot lava lamp in the heart of downtown.
A student of mine who grew up in the area maybe phrased it best: she said she lived “in the middle of Somewhere.”
More than just a setting for a novel, this place felt like a story in itself. So, years later, when I sat down to write this book, I did my best to capture that: made the good stuff good, and—because this is a crime novel—made the creepy stuff worse.
Meet Soap Lake.
Beware. Take Care.
Hope you enjoy it!
~Matt
PS--It’s been a while since I’ve checked in, so huge thanks for sticking around and continuing to read! It may not look it, but I’m on GoodReads a lot, tracking my own reading in a different account. As usual, my TBR only grows!
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