NIGHT LIGHTS by Sarah Epstein
Sarah Epstein is the awarded author of YA thrillers Small Spaces, Deep Water and now Night Lights.
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Night Lights is another gripping read and is shortlisted in the 2023 Davitt Sisters in Crime awards. It is also a finalist in the Aurealis awards.
Thank you for speaking to Joy in Books at Paperbark Words blog about your chilling new thriller, Night Lights, and how you have made a success of self-publishing, Sarah.
Guest Author Post by Sarah Epstein
Night Lights
Night Lights is a young adult thriller about 16-year-old Owen and his family who are visiting a former gold-mining town called Wooralla for a two-week holiday in a remote cabin. The town is known for its history of UFO sightings, and from day one of their stay, creepy and peculiar things start to happen. Owen tries to keep his little sister safe while piecing together exactly what’s going on and why their family holiday has spiralled into chaos.
Like my two previous YA thrillers, Night Lights gets a little dark in places and straddles the genres of psychological thriller, mystery, and crime. While I also write in other genres, I always find myself returning to darker stories because I enjoy crafting the mysteries and have a fascination with human behaviour and why people commit the crimes they do, as well as how this affects the psychology of the victims.
I always seem to write stories with complicated family dynamics even though at first glance that’s not what the plot is about. But complex family relationships always reveal authentic character motivation, so my stories tend to be equally plot- and character-driven (at least, that’s what I aim for). It’s important to me that my characters act in believable and relatable ways given the situations they find themselves in, but also given their histories, their goals and fears, and the relationships they have with those around them. The challenge for writers is getting enough of that down on the page so that characters act in ways that make sense for their situation and backstory.
Through every step of the writing I’m always very conscious of who my target audience is and how I could lose them at any point in the story. So some things I consider while I am writing are whether I am providing enough information and clues to intrigue the reader without frustrating them, and I pay particular attention to my chapter endings to coax readers to keep turning pages. The last thing an author wants is for their book to be put down and never picked up again. I play around with structure a lot in my thrillers, and have utilised elements like multiple points of view, converging timelines, transcripts, newspaper articles, and flashbacks.
In Night Lights, the story opens with Owen and his little sister in a dire situation, and then jumps back to the beginning of their family holiday to recount, day by day, how it all went wrong. I knew that the place where the two timelines converged would answer some questions for readers, but not all, and it’s at that point the story starts building towards the climax. A big reason for splitting the timeline was to draw readers into the sense of chaos and confusion that Owen and his family are feeling, and drip-feed answers to readers at the same time Owen is discovering them himself.
Unlike my first two YA thrillers, I chose to self-publish Night Lights rather than seek a contract with a traditional publishing house because I wanted full control over every aspect of producing it. So much is out of the author’s hands when it comes to working with publishers, and many authors are okay with this, while others (like me) find it frustrating. With Night Lights, everything from the writing, cover design, marketing and promotion, even the hand-painted title text on the cover, has been created by me. So I have really poured myself into every aspect of this book. I’m also enjoying the feeling of forward momentum instead of the long and tedious timelines of traditional publishing.
Self-publishing is not without its challenges, though. It’s a tonne of work to get the books ready to release, and even more work to get them across the sales platforms and figure out how to market and promote them. But I relish learning new things and putting my full skillset to work. I’ve always been entrepreneurial, so running the whole show suits me down to the ground. And two recent literary award shortlistings for Night Lights has been really validating, confirming that it’s the story that is the most important thing, regardless of whether it has been traditionally published or self-published.
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