\nPhotos by Kathleen Dooher<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/files\/2022\/05\/PeterSwanson-6698_B.jpg\")
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For anyone who has ever pulled an all-nighter to finish a term paper, Peter Swanson\u2019s technique as an undergraduate might sound familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it was a 10-page paper,\u201d he says of his early writing assignments, \u201cI\u2019d start it 10 hours before it was due. I\u2019d write a page an hour. If I finished a page early, I\u2019d take a break.\u201d<\/p>\n
For many, such feats of academic derring-do could be written off as youthful folly. For Swanson, a member of the Trinity College Class of 1990, they turned out to be essential training.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t always great at getting my stuff done early,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I always got it in on time. And now I\u2019m one of the few writers I know who always hits their deadlines.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, Swanson\u2019s deadlines demand more than 10 pages. The Sunday Times<\/em> and New York Times<\/em> best-selling novelist is the author of eight books, several of which have been optioned for feature films. His most recent, Nine Lives<\/em>\u2014which, as usual, involves malice and murder\u2014hit shelves in March. His stories, poetry, and features have appeared in Asimov\u2019s Science Fiction, The Guardian<\/em>, and The Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, among other outlets. The Boston Globe<\/em> has praised his plots\u2019 \u201caudacious and spectacular twists,\u201d and The Wall Street Journal<\/em> has compared his writing to that of Alfred Hitchcock\u2014who happens to be one of his heroes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always been drawn to the notion of a moral gray area,\u201d Swanson says. \u201cMy favorite filmmaker is Hitchcock, and his favorite subject, I think, is ordinary people in extraordinary situations. I love the idea of basically good people crossing over into criminal behavior. It\u2019s really my favorite thing to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n Swanson\u2019s work habits have changed a lot since his college days. Nowadays, rather than waiting until the last minute, he spends every morning at his desk in the home on the North Shore of Massachusetts where he lives with his wife, steadily putting words on the screen. Barring emergencies, he writes 1,000 words a day, seven days a week. It\u2019s in some ways an unlikely vocation for an English major who once aspired to become a high school teacher, worked for 20 years as a project manager at a Cambridge nonprofit, began his professional career publishing poems and short stories, and didn\u2019t try to write a novel until he was in his mid-30s.<\/p>\n \u201cI found I liked having a day of writing where I woke up and I got back to my computer and my story was half told,\u201d Swanson says of his first forays into long-form storytelling. \u201cI just needed to move it along a little bit, and that was my day\u2019s job. I really turned out to love that.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, his first years as an aspiring novelist were tough. He wrote three novels and hundreds of query letters without any signs of interest from agents or publishers. Six or seven years went by without a nibble. Then, when he was almost ready to give up, persistence met serendipity. Days after publishing The Girl with a Clock for a Heart<\/em> in novella form in an obscure online magazine, he got an email from Nat Sobel, a veteran literary agent in New York.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing I did was look him up to find out if he was legitimate,\u201d Swanson says. \u201cAnd he was.\u201d<\/p>\n Sobel asked Swanson if he could turn the novella into a novel. Swanson agreed to try, and the book that resulted, plus the promise of a second, sold to William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a completely amazing event,\u201d Swanson says. \u201cI didn\u2019t have any kind of following or any kind of writing career at that point. And the lesson I learned is, it can\u2019t hurt to get your stuff out there, because you never know who\u2019s going to read something. I mean, if it\u2019s in your drawer, no one\u2019s going to read it. If it goes out somewhere, someone might<\/em> read it.\u201d<\/p>\n Swanson\u2019s own love for books started early. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, he haunted the local Annie\u2019s Book Swap, scouring the shelves for Agatha Christie, John D. MacDonald, and Stephen King. In high school, he developed a taste for literary fiction, and at Trinity, his passion for reading and writing found fertile ground. He fondly remembers studying the classics with then-Professor of English Dirk Kuyk and developing a thesis on zombie films with then-Charles A. Dana Professor of English and American Studies James Miller, both now deceased.<\/p>\n \u201cAt Trinity I learned a lot about how to write, how to read, how to parse texts,\u201d Swanson says.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately you leave a college behind,\u201d Swanson says, \u201cbut the part that continues is the people that you met. I made some very good friends at Trinity, and we stay in touch. For me, that\u2019s the most important part.\u201d<\/p>\n Among those with whom Swanson remains close are classmates Liz Horn and Nina Tiger.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the best things about my Trinity experience has been enduring friendships like the one Peter and I have,\u201d Horn says. \u201cSince graduation, we have never lived in the same place but have always remained close. A group of us from Trinity, along with our spouses and kids, have made it a cherished tradition to get together one or two weekends a year (interrupted recently by COVID). Since we live within two hours of each other, I\u2019ve been able to go to many of Peter\u2019s book-release parties. It is wild to be in the audience and see \u2018fans\u2019 of your college friend line up to get his autograph!\u201d<\/p>\n From the earliest days of their friendship, Tiger says, Swanson\u2019s broad knowledge of culture and enthusiastic appetite for the macabre made a strong impression.<\/p>\n \u201cPeter was always passionate about music, movies, and books,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things I remember about him from college. And he had really good taste in all of those things. He made me watch The Exorcist<\/em> when I hated scary movies! He said, \u2018This is a really good movie\u2014you need<\/em> to watch this.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n The three remember hanging out in the residence halls, snacking at the Cave, talking late into the night at the Arts and Leisure coffeehouse on Zion Street, and watching countless new and classic films at Cinestudio, the independent film theater on campus where Horn and Swanson volunteered. They also studied in Mather Hall, the name of which appears in several of Swanson\u2019s books as that of a small New England college with a campus\u2014including a chapel\u2014that Bantams might find unnervingly familiar.<\/p>\n \u201cI chose Trinity, oddly, because I fell in love with it on a sort of aesthetic level,\u201d Swanson says. \u201cIt has a classic college feel that borders on the Gothic. I loved the Chapel for the way it looked and felt\u2014the gargoyles and carvings and secret spaces around it. In Girl with a Clock<\/em>, there\u2019s a sequence involving a secret staircase in the chapel that leads up to a balcony, and I included that. I\u2019ve also included some secret underground passageways, which I never personally saw\u2014although there were rumors\u2014in some of my books as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Horn and Tiger have both noticed these resemblances\u2014and others. When they attended the party in Cambridge to celebrate the publication of Swanson\u2019s first book, figuring out the fictional connections to real life became a kind of parlor game for the Trinity people in the crowd.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the spring of junior year, a group of us from Trinity shared an apartment on a study-abroad program in London,\u201d Horn says. \u201cI have so many great memories from that semester\u2014and there are many allusions to that time and place in Peter\u2019s novel The Kind Worth Killing<\/em>. It is so much fun (and sometimes a little creepy) to read all the tiny details or references to our time in college woven into Peter\u2019s novels.\u201d<\/p>\n Tiger\u2019s still not sold on horror or suspense\u2014she generally stays away from scary stories. But she deeply admires Swanson\u2019s writing, and his books have a place in her heart and on her shelf.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll continue to read them,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause of how much I love Peter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With a string of successful mysteries and a new thriller just out, best-selling author Peter Swanson \u201990 keeps readers spellbound By Abe Loomis Photos by Kathleen Dooher For anyone who has ever pulled an all-nighter to finish a term paper, Peter Swanson\u2019s technique as an undergraduate might sound familiar. \u201cIf it was a 10-page paper,\u201d … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/files\/2022\/05\/PeterSwanson-6715-v2.jpg\")
He also made some lifelong friends.<\/p>\n