We chat with authors Kimberly Belle, Layne Fargo, Cate Holahan, and Vanessa Lillie about their new release Desperate Deadly Widows, which is the highly anticipated follow-up to Young Rich Widows, where nothing’s more dangerous than a widow with nothing left to lose.
Hello! Can you tell our readers about yourselves in one sentence?
Kimberly: I’m an Edgar Award nominated, USA Today bestselling author of thrillers and suspense novels with over one million copies sold worldwide.
Layne: I’m the Chicago-based bestselling author of The Favorites and other deliciously dramatic, unapologetically feminist books.
Cate: I started off writing about dead people, obituaries, in high school for the local paper and in some ways never stopped, which is why I now am a USA Today bestselling thriller author and screenwriter.
Vanessa: I’m a Cherokee author from rural Oklahoma, now living in the smallest state, writing bestselling thrillers while being closely managed by a pugapoo named Violet.
Desperate Deadly Widows is the sequel to Young Rich Widows and it’s out now! If you could only describe it in three words, what would they be?
Kimberly: Funny, twisty & action-packed
Layne: Juicy, Glamorous, Empowering
Cate: Twisty, Fun, and Sexy
Vanessa: Campy, propulsive and yacht-y
What can readers expect?
Kimberly: The widows’ friendship is tested this go-around after the mayor’s death has the women scrambling to prove their innocence. Along the way, they’ll meet some charming new characters, but not everyone has their best intentions at heart. Someone is trying to take them down, and the widows will have to band together in order to survive.
Layne: Desperate Deadly Widows takes everything you loved about the first book and turns up the volume, so you can expect bigger, better adventures with our quartet of zany 80s ladies!
Cate: This novel has a lot of fun with the fabulously wealthy behaving badly, think Dynasty, while also looking into some of the real world consequences of the abuse of wealth and connections, particularly as it relates to minorities.
Vanessa: I love the opening hook (Mayor of Providence drops dead in the back of a strip club from poisoned champagne) because while it’s fiction, it’s not not something that could have happened in the 80s in Providence!
Where did the inspiration for Desperate Deadly Widows come from?
Layne: We know these characters so well now, a lot of the plot came from thinking about what would stress them out / force them to grow the most. Also, the whole point of this series is to have fun – and for people to have fun reading the book, first we had to have fun writing it!
Cate: We have really loved some of the books and movies pointing out the dangers of extreme wealth inequality and the rich and famous behaving badly. We were all Succession fans and White Lotus fans. So we wanted to bring that into this book in a very personal and Providence way.
Vanessa: I’ll add that there’s a plot around land rights and the Narragansett Indigenous community in Rhode Island that I really appreciated being about to share. We went to the Tomaquag Museum, which shares the culture and history of the tribes of Southern New England, and interviewed the Executive Director, Loren Spears. We developed a lawyer character to tackle these questions (and maybe as a love interest!), and we also incorporated a real issue in Providence when our downtown mall was built on a Narragansett burial ground. I find real life issues to be the biggest inspiration.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Kimberly: I loved getting to give my character Camille a love interest in Aiden. He’s exactly the kind of man she wouldn’t choose to fall far–smart but not slick, successful but not rolling in cash–and at first he seems immune to her charms. Their push-pull as the story evolves was a real joy to write.
Layne: My character Meredith is now the owner of the strip club where she was a dancer in book one, and it was really interesting to explore the challenges she faces being taken seriously as a businesswoman (though a bit depressing how little has changed from the 1980s to now…).
Cate: I loved writing the scenes with Justine where she has to learn how her identity is being used and, in many respects, weaponized by others. She has to recognize not just how she sees herself but how others see her, and really learn not to assume money, attractiveness and connections means good character.
Vanessa: I like the idea of what happens when you start getting what you want, mo money, mo problems, if you will. For the widows, especially Krystle who I write, she starts to get money, access to power and prestigious clients. But that comes with slippery morals and big conflict.
With four of you working on the novel, what’s the process like?
Layne: We kept basically the same process from the first book (which Cate explains in detail below), though this time we were able to meet up in person and do some IRL research, rather than googling everything like we did when writing Young Rich Widows in the depths of COVID lockdown. Think yachts, Newport mansions, and more!
Cate: We spend weeks plotting the novel and giving ourselves a roadmap of what challenges the characters will face and how those challenges will change them throughout the course of the story. Then we decide whose POV is best to tell certain stories and convey certain reveals. After that, we outline. Then we write, each taking out POV character. Every week, we go through each other’s chapters for consistency and continuity, as well as tweak the language of our individual POV characters in the chapters to make sure the “owner” of that character feels that their actions and words dovetail with who they are and their motivations. As we write, the characters sometimes take us to different places, so then we go back – usually around the midpoint – and have another intensive re-plotting/redrafting session, and we adjust the prior chapters accordingly.
What’s next for you all?
Kimberly: My solo book, The Expat Affair, publishes June 3rd from Park Row Books, and I’m already busy writing my next. And of course, there’s an exciting new adventure for the widows coming in book 3.
Layne: I’m working on a follow-up to my ice dance drama The Favorites for Random House. Desperate Deadly Widows will be my last Widows adventure, but Kim, Cate, and Vanessa are already hard at work on more totally tubular installments in the series!
Cate: I have my solo book, The Kidnapping of Alice Ingold, coming out on September 23rd from Thomas & Mercer. And we have the third book in the Widows series.
Vanessa: I started a new series focusing on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (the first was Blood Sisters) and the second book is out October 28th, called The Bone Thief, which is set in Rhode Island and delves into the past of the Narragansett tribe we feature in Desperate Deadly Widows.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
Kimberly: I can’t wait to dive into Julie Clark’s The Ghostwriter – and I’ll be hanging with her on June 4th at Poisoned Pen. I’m also really looking forward to Chevy Stevens’ The Hitchhiker, out later this year.
Layne: I recently read an ARC of Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, which shares a release date with the Desperate Deadly Widows paperback, and I’ll never be able to fly again without thinking of Folk’s unhinged heroine Linda. Later in 2025, I’m also looking forward to August Lane by Regina Black, Play Nice by Rachel Harrison, and of course Taylor Jenkins Reid’s next book Atmosphere.
Cate: I am very excited for Vanessa’s second installment of Blood Sisters, The Bone Thief. And I’m looking forward to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s upcoming Atmosphere, which is set in the 80s like our books.
Vanessa: I’ll share something only slightly self-serving I just learned: my next book, The Bone Thief, is being released on October 28th along with two other Cherokee authors’ books, The Devil is a Southpaw, by Brandon Hobson and To the Moon and Back, by debut Eliana Ramage. So we’re calling it Read a Cherokee author day LOL 🙂
