We chat with author Daniel Kenitz about The Perfect Home, which is a suspenseful and witty domestic thriller set in the world of home renovation TV–featuring a woman who becomes public enemy #1 after a horrifying discovery prompts her to flee her celebrity husband with their twin babies.
Hi, Daniel! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m an author from Wisconsin who’s been paying the bills with freelance writing while working on the dream of writing books full-time. When I was a kid in grade school, I remember thinking: “So clearly I will make a billion dollars by the time I’m thirty—at that point I’ll retire and do what I really like, which is writing stories.” And it kind of turns out you can skip the acquiring-a-billion-dollars step and just do what you love. The Perfect Home is my first published novel, though I’ve also been published as a short story author.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I think I had about 40 of the Goosebumps books when I was a kid, and looking back on that, it probably set me on a track toward thrillers. I loved My Teacher is an Alien. The unmasking scene felt like a huge twist even though it was pictured on the cover. Anything that upended an ordinary life with a completely unexpected story was a lot of fun, which might be why domestic thrillers resonate with me. Later I graduated to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and realized: oh, there’s a whole art to this. And if you’re good enough at it, you can make a reader care about a random old man in a boat, too.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: “Are You My Mother?”
- The one that made you want to become an author: “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: “Gone Girl.”
Your debut novel, The Perfect Home, is out January 7th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
“Gone Girl meets reality TV.”
In fact, I when I was finished, that’s how I wanted to describe it to agents, but I avoided that because it seemed like it might be too obvious—what thriller author wouldn’t want to compare their book to Gone Girl? But I think the parallels eventually won out. Other people described it that way, too, and it’s probably the best way to elevator-pitch it to readers.
What can readers expect?
A fast and entertaining read, I hope. There’s a lot of suspense and and the occasional commentary on the reality TV-lacquered world we find ourselves in, but one of the more meta-impressions I wanted readers to get out of the book was that it should also feel like you’re having a good time binging your new favorite reality TV show. There’s that moment on Netflix where an episode cuts to credits and it starts the episode timer and you’re thinking: “No way am I stopping now.” I get a lot of feedback from readers that they gobble it up at similar speeds.
Where did the inspiration for The Perfect Home come from?
There was an old tip—I think it was from Stephen King—to look at news headlines and start asking “what if?” questions. So I was browsing through headlines and seeing if I could try a new riff on an idea already familiar to readers. Somewhere I saw a headline about a kidnapping and thought: “Okay, how would I reverse that? What if the person doing the kidnapping was the one doing the protecting? And if the whole country had the story wrong, how would they get out of that?”
The setting of a semi-famous reality TV couple seemed ideal for that. We all know reality TV is staged and set up and even scripted, but we still can’t help but believe the “reality” of these shows because it’s fun to buy into them. Once I had the basics down and the reality TV backdrop, it felt like the book was off to the races.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Writing my main character Dawn was a pleasure because it was easy to relate to her. There’s a moment where she’s under a lot of stress while trying to manage the insanity of everything she’s been through and she finally confesses to the reader: “I am not cut out for this.” One of the reasons I’ve read a lot of domestic thrillers is that it takes ordinary people and ordinary situations and suddenly slingshots them into something extreme—it’s so compelling to wonder how we’d react in the same situation. And writing Dawn, it was fun to play against that, try to put myself in her shoes, and admit where I might come up short.
Did you face any challenges? How did you overcome them?
There was a moment after I finished writing The Perfect Home. I was researching agents to send it to. I read one in particular, where the agent listed the types of books not to send her. What she described had a lot in common with The Perfect Home. That’ll make you think: Oops. Do writers send her 50 versions of “The Perfect Home” every day? Did I just waste all this time writing a book no one will ever like as much as I do?
I sent it out anyway. Over time I learned what might make The Perfect Home different for readers and thriller fans, of course. But you can only discover that if you don’t self-reject. Other people are happy to reject you, so let them do the work. And besides, you have to try, or else what are you doing writing? Life is short. Try.
Another challenge was making sure I did justice to parts of the novel I don’t have close personal experience with. Nashville seemed like the appropriate setting even though I’ve only ever been through Nashville, so I hope I did them proud. I also don’t have a personal glimpse into the fertility issues that open the book, but I know many readers may face infertility and hope those aspects of the book resonate with them. My personal recipe is to try to find some emotional common ground with the character, even if you don’t share their literal experience.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
I’ve wanted to be a published author for most of my life at this point, so writing stuff and getting rejections from all over the place was never going to be fun. Publishing can move slowly and it takes a long time to write a book, so becoming an author can be a really long test of your patience. There are a lot of slow years where you meet with extended family at Christmas and they’ll ask you “how’s the writing going?” and you have no answer despite having worked on it all year. That’ll test you.
And on the flip side, it’s more than worth it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been past an airport bookstore and told myself: “One day, I’ll be there.” But if you told me a few years ago that it would take twice as long to end up where I am, but I’d be guaranteed to arrive in the same place, I’d take that deal in a heartbeat.
I remember reading Scribner books (The Great Gatsby, say) in study hall in high school and daydreaming about what it would be like to be a published author. And here I am, a Scribner author on the 100 year anniversary of that book. Seeing my name on the same page as that logo is maybe my all-time pinch-me moment.
What’s next for you?
I don’t know how much I can say, but I have a follow-up in the works that I think is something readers of The Perfect Home would enjoy. It might hit on a familiar theme or two, but then leaves a lot of mystery about where the story might go from there. (I’ve already said too much.)
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up in 2025?
I was lucky enough to meet Marcie R. Rendon at a conference and we traded advance copies of our books, so Broken Fields is on that list, even though I’m cheating by already reading it before it’s out. Any time Stephen King publishes something of course you’ll pay attention, so Never Flinch would be up there. And as a fellow “perfect” titler, how could I not want to read The Perfect Divorce by Jeneva Rose?
