By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting the Gulf Coast region has a 50-60% chance of being hotter than usual, according to the agency’s website. With the prediction of higher temperatures, we are going to need to find ways to keep cool without putting out too much personal energy.
A good way to cool down, some suggest, is to think cool thoughts, it’s not yet proven that you can cool down by thinking cool thoughts. But you can take yourself on a little mind excursion to a cooler climate by picking up the just released novel, “Vanishing Hour,” which Apple Books has listed as one of its Best Books of June.
Texas author Seraphina Nova Glass has spent some of her life living in New England, and that’s where she decided to set her latest book.
“I wanted it in a cold climate and wanted it to have a certain eeriness that’s why I selected New England in the winter for this book,” Seraphina explained.
“Vanishing Hour,” as the title implies, is a thriller and takes the reader down paths of uncertainty and presents multiple options for who the guilty character might be.
“The red herrings are very important parts of thrillers. It’s a rip off to a reader if you don’t give them enough clues. There is a moment where you doubt each character,” Seraphina shared.
Indeed, Seraphina weaves together a stream of characters who at times seem to be loving, caring individuals ready for sainthood — then she reveals their flaws and possible moments of deception. Turn a few more pages, and you learn the explanation for the shadier side of the character, and this explanation eliminates him or her as a suspect.
Though the readers get to keep trying to figure out who done it in the snow, the author knew who did it, and what the outcome would be of her mystery novel before she wrote the beginning. That’s because she starts writing at the end of her book.
“I always start with the end first, I need to know how it’s all going to come out in the end,” Seraphina said.
Once she has the end down, she said, she begins an outline. “Outlines help me keep track of clues in each chapter. 70% of the book is done when I’ve completed my outline,” Seraphina said.
Seraphina doesn’t just want to leave her readers feeling scared she explained she wants to give some hope and she adds a slight love story to her thrillers.
“The Vanishing Hour” makes it clear she wants to give a little hope to her readers with the evolution of one character and an obscure, slight romance. But, not in the traditional sense where a couple meet and fall in love. The love story that builds in “Vanishing Hour” is subtle with an unpredictable outcome.
Seraphina didn’t start her writing career writing thrillers. She is an award-winning playwright and a screen writer. She reports that she spent several years crafting screenplays with a few of them having options for production, but to date her romantic screenplays have not been produced on film.
It was her commute to direct a play for a college theater arts class that opened her eyes to thrillers.
“I listened to an audiobook while driving to rehearsals,” Seraphina explained. “It was a thriller and then after the play was over, I knew I wanted to write thrillers.”
Since then, she has been nominated for an Edgar Award for third book, “On a Quiet Street.” “Vanishing Hour” is her fourth novel. Though she did not win the Edgar Award for “On a Quiet Street, she said she was thrilled with the nomination and the chance to attend the awards in New York City.
Seraphina reports she can write one of her thrillers in 12 weeks.
Her creative and detailed thought process might have been developed while she was just a child attending a private school. She described the school setting as a place with children in desks with dividers and no direct teaching. Rather than direct teaching, she said, the children learned through reading and completing assignments.
The formula for her early education was somewhat different from what most of us have experienced. In fact, the students were required to score their own assignments.
“It felt like God himself might punish you if you cheated on your scoring,” Seraphina said. She reported that she did cheat on her self-scoring a couple times.
For high school, she transferred to a traditional public school. As we might expect, she said traditional high school was a bit of a shock to her.
“I was the only student whose mom made her culottes,” Seraphina said.
Though she did find her favorite class was English, she had a lot of insecurity regarding her fellow students and didn’t really pursue writing as a teenager.
By mid-10th grade she dropped out of high school.
She tells of her life after dropping out, describing herself as a young rebel out exploring what lay beyond the experiences of her earlier years.
“I got an apartment and a job and did crazy things,” Seraphina said. She did not elaborate on how crazy her behavior was. That is left to the imagination.
Being a creative woman with, as she said, an “intellectual curiosity,” she did get back behind a desk and finished her education. She now holds two Masters of Fine Arts. One MFA is in Dramatic Writing from Smith College and the other is in Directing from the University of Idaho.
Along with being a thriller author, she is an Assistant Professor of instruction and Playwright-in-Residence at the University of Texas in Arlington. Her next thriller, “The Vacancy in Room 10,” is already available for pre-order.
