We chat with author Kate White about I Came Back For You, which follows a mother who begins to challenge everything she’s been told about her daughter’s murder in a shocking novel of suspense by a New York Times bestselling author.
Hi Kate! To get started, can you tell your readers a little bit about you?
I’m the New York Times bestselling author of 19 mysteries and psychological thrillers, the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, the married mother of two kids, a nature lover, and an avid traveler (and bird watcher!), who lives in New York City but spends each winter in Uruguay with my husband.
What was the first book you read that made you realize you wanted to be an author?
I loved to read when I was young and remember being mesmerized by the Nancy Drew series, like so many girls my age, and blown away by books like A Wrinkle in Time by Madelein L’Engle’s. But I think I wanted to be an author before I even read a real book, unless you count See Jane Run. I had written a little story in second grade that the teacher had me read to the class, and the thrill of that experience set me on my course. I think I just loved story telling (perhaps influenced by all the storis my grandfather told me).
Do you have any writing rituals?
Well, even after writing lots of suspense novels and five non-fiction books on career success, I’m embarrassed to say it’s still easy for me to get distracted. So, I use the Pomodoro technique, which involves working for twenty-five-minute stretches (with the help of a timer) and then taking five-minute breaks in between. I reward myself every hour with a cup of tea, and I usually have a scented candle going to make my office more inviting. And mostly I need to work in total silence (though I wrote a book a number of years ago listening to Carmina Burana, the famous cantata by Carl Orff, over and over again—not sure why but that really did the trick for me).
Your upcoming novel I Came Back for You is set in upstate New York. How important was this setting to you and did you have to do any research while writing?
I Came Back for You is the story about a woman named Bree Winter who learns that the serial killer who is thought to have murdered her college-aged daughter has given a deathbed confession saying that yes, he did kill four women, but her daughter wasn’t one of them. Bree feels she has no choice but to go back to the college town where it happened and try to determine whether he’s lying or whether the real killer is still at large.
So the town and the campus were very, very important to me—and yet I initially had no idea what to base them on. And then I was asked to give the commencement speech at my college in upstate New York, Union College. It’s a fantastic school, one of the first colleges in the country, and I was in the first coed educational class in almost two hundred years. When I was there giving the speech, I suddenly realized, “Oh wow this would be a perfect place to set the book.” It’s beautiful but kind of spooky at night with all the trees and old buildings (The Way We Were was shot there). I was too busy that weekend trying not to die from stage fright to take any notes, but I went back another time and took a lot of pictures and made notes. And that’s where the idea of Carter College in Cartersville New York came from.
If you only had five words to describe I Came Back for You, what words would you choose?
Gripping, unputdownable, a killer twist. (Ha, thanks for letting me brag a bit because I’m really happy with how this book turned out.)
Where did the inspiration for I Came Back for You come from?
I’m not exactly sure. I do get a fair number of book ideas from news headlines or from reading research about real crimes, but this idea just kind of came to me one day in a couple of sentences—I pictured a mother going back somewhere to figure out who had really murdered her daughter years before. I have no idea of the origin point. Once I had those sentences, I just kept using that technique a lot of authors use, which is asking, “What if…?” again and again.
What are you most excited for your readers when they dive into the story?
I want readers to be invested in Bree’s intense search for answers but I also want them to enjoy the whodunit aspect of the book, knowing that the killer might be hiding in plain sight.
What’s next for you?
I just completed my next psychological thriller, Gone Silent, and it will be out in 2027.
