We chat with author Stephanie Wrobel about The Hitchcock Hotel, which follows a Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda who invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel.
Hi, Stephanie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Sure! My three passions are storytelling, travel, and food. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs but have been a rolling stone for most of my adult life. I’ve lived in London, Chicago, Boston, New York, and will be moving to the West Coast next month. I’ve been lucky enough to travel to 40 countries so far—a trip to Australia later this year will bring that number to forty-one. Whenever possible, I try to visit the places I set my novels. Travel research is one of my favorite parts of the job.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I don’t really remember that love as a discovery, to be honest. The earliest memory I can still access happened when I was six years old, and by then, I was already reading and writing stories. The first story I remember writing was called How Mary Ann Got Lost at the Zoo. My mom helped me type it and add black-and-white graphics of zoo animals to the cover page. (This was the early nineties!) Then we printed and bound the story with comb binding. I still have that sole bound copy. I don’t know why I felt the impulse then to tell that particular story, nor why the impulse kept returning throughout my youth and into my adult years. I have just always loved telling and receiving stories—it feels like something I was born with.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: I truly have a garbage memory, so questions like these are a challenge. The books I most remember from childhood are the series I read, probably because I spent so much time working through them. My favorites were Baby-Sitters Club, Nancy Drew, and the Thoroughbred Surely I read plenty of shorter, simpler books at an earlier age, but I have no recollection of them.
- The one that made you want to become an author: I think the desire to become an author came from the sum of books I’ve read versus any one in particular. When you’ve read thousands of books, you understand just how wide the canvas is for storytelling, how many choices are available to you. Point of view and structure and movement through time and the prose itself. No matter how many stories I’ve told or books I’ve written, I’ll never run out of craft challenges. The mechanics of storytelling are endlessly fascinating to me.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Oh gosh, just one? This is a nightmare. Let’s go with Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I have been dissecting the structure of that book for ten years. Not to mention its incredible ode to art, deep sense of place, and captivating characters. What a flawless novel.
Your latest novel, The Hitchcock Hotel, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Hitchcock fanatic has an agenda.
What can readers expect?
Twists and turns, unraveling secrets, and plenty of winks to Hitchcock!
Where did the inspiration for The Hitchcock Hotel come from?
In college I took a film studies course with a professor named Dr. Scott. (This should sound familiar to anyone who’s already read my new book.) We watched North by Northwest in class, which was my introduction to Hitchcock. His films have riveted me ever since.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Alfred Smettle is my main character and owner of the Hitchcock Hotel. Getting his voice right was a lot of fun. Alfred grew up in the nineties, but his interests are what you might call old-fashioned or at least quirky. He prefers black-and-white movies, keeps fifty crows as pets, and has a formal self-presentation. My instinct while writing a first draft is to make my characters as strange as possible—my editor is always having to nudge me to make them more realistic. I think Alfred landed in a nice place between those two poles. Hopefully he’s a believable oddball.
This is your third published novel! What are some of the key lessons you’ve learned as a writer and the publishing world since your debut in 2020?
I’ve learned the sparks needed to write versus sell a novel are two different sparks. What excites me about any given book idea is probably not going to be the focus of my pitch. A pitch needs to be high concept and organized with an inciting incident and sense of plot/character/momentum, whereas the spark that brings me to a book is usually a weird niggling thought like, What would happen to a person’s brain if they didn’t speak to another human being for three years? If you sell your books before writing them, as I have with every novel except my debut, the trick is figuring out how to pitch your book before you really know what it’s about. Not an easy feat!
I’ve also learned a lot about the volatility of an author’s career, from sales, income, critical, and creative perspectives. I had read a lot about this before becoming an author, but reading it and living it are wildly different experiences. Your greatest creative achievement may be your worst-selling product, or vice versa. Accepting the roller coaster nature of the job—especially if you’ve come from corporate America, where you’re paid biweekly or monthly and used to steadily climbing a ladder—is a challenge and something I’m still working through. The highs are incredible if you can hang on through the lows.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on my next thriller, which I can’t say much about other than that it will publish in 2026!
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
My favorite book so far this year is Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End. I also loved Tracy Sierra’s Nightwatching. On the non-thriller side, I devoured Nathan Hill’s The Nix, Rebecca K. Reilly’s Greta and Valdin, and Catherine Cho’s Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness.
As for titles I can’t wait to read, my TBR currently has 236 books on it! I’m particularly excited for The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, All Fours by Miranda July, Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy.
