We chat with author L.S. Stratton about Sundown Girls, which is a YA thriller about a Black teen whose fight for survival forces a small southern vacation town to face its dark history of racial violence.
Hi, L.S.! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I live in Maryland but grew up in Washington, DC. I started my journalism career as a crime reporter for a newspaper where I covered drug busts, the Hells Angels, murder trials–you name it! I started my fiction writing career when I was a finalist for a first-time writers’ contest while still in college. The prize was having a short story published in a romance anthology that was sold in bookstores throughout the country. I’ve been writing books off and on ever since.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Like many authors, I started as an avid reader first. Books were always present in my childhood. We took weekly trips to the library. I always bee-lined to the children’s section and picked up copies of the Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins. That’s how I got inspired to start writing. I started mimicking the books I was reading: I drew sketches in composition notebooks with little stories in the margin. The stories started to get longer and longer, until eventually, they were novel length.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Maybe The Baby-Sitters Club: Jessi Ramsey, the Pet-sitter
- The one that made you want to become an author: Zoya by Danielle Steel
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee
Your YA debut, Sundown Girls, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Visceral, emotional, mysterious, scary, and cathartic
What can readers expect?
I wrote Sundown Girls so it could be read and enjoyed two ways. The first way is purely for the thrill ride. The mysteries surrounding the former sundown town of Sparksburg, Va., and the missing girls in town, and the sense of danger the MC Naomi feels gradually escalate throughout the novel. It all comes to a big climatic end with just as big of a twist. But if you’re a book lover who likes to dig deeper in the stories you read, I also tackled a lot of topics in Sundown Girls: racism, mental health, and sense of belonging and identity—to name a few.
Where did the inspiration for Sundown Girls come from?
I always wanted to write a book about sundown towns but had to figure out the “right way” to do it. The topic has been tackled before in other books so I wanted to find a unique way to approach it in my novel. At first, I wrote the narrative as an adult thriller. The main character kept having flashbacks to her tumultuous past as a teen. But I figured out the meat of the story was in the past and changed the novel to a YA that’s set in the present in a former sundown town.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
The scene when Naomi goes zip-lining for the first time with her date Khalil was a fun, nice moment in such an intense, heavy story. It also holds so much symbolism for the character Naomi. She’s dating for the first time in her life and while on the date, she literally has to take a leap she’s never taken before. It’s a soft moment in the novel but also a brave move for the character, showing how she’s blossoming and changing.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
When you’re tackling so much real history–especially, such a dark chapter in American history, you want to do it justice, but you also don’t want to turn the novel into a massive historical info dump. I had to find a way to weave it into a novel that was a coming of age story about a spirited, complex young woman. I also had to remember that this was a mystery and paranormal horror. Trying to balance all those elements was a huge challenge but I decided to focus on the overall theme of the book: atonement for the past. I made sure all those elements were in service to the theme. That way, they didn’t compete with each other but worked together to support a purpose.
What’s next for you?
My next book is an adult mystery/thriller set for release in early 2027. It’s tentatively titled Good Morning, Luv, but that will probably change by its release. The book is about a newly engaged woman named Adriana who is haunted by the memory of her previous fiance, Lucas, who committed suicide the night of their engagement nearly a decade earlier. When her latest fiance is mysteriously murdered she starts to suspect that Lucas didn’t commit suicide and the two deaths might be related. The novel tackles sexual assault, the Me Too Movement, and the rise of Bro culture.
I’ve also started work on my next YA horror. It’s another thrill ride that incorporates European folk tales and African and Caribbean folklore in a modern setting. I’m loving it so much and hope to share more details soon!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
They’re a few books that I don’t have yet but are looking forward to reading:
- Dead First by Johnny Compton
- Mayhem and the Mortal by Shanora Williams
- You Should’ve Been Nicer to My Mom by Vincent Tirado
- Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
