Boreal Book Club: The Offing by Roz Nay

Perfectly paced and expertly plotted, The Offing is a claustrophobic, high-octane thriller that can easily be devoured in one sitting. It is slick and propulsive and full of shocking twists. This escapist novel is as menacing as it is beautiful—a must-read this summer.

GWR: How did you start writing/become a writer?    

RN: I always wrote stories as a child and remember being sent out of English to a music lesson in fifth grade, only to return early and find the teacher reading my work to the class. I was mortified! (That hasn’t changed.) Beyond that, my husband signed me up for a writing class as a hobby after we had kids. I loved that class and it kind of snowballed from there.

GWR: How long did it take you to write The Offing, and how many drafts were there before publication?

RN: From start to finish, it took me about a year to write this one, but the early drafts took a while to pin down. Sometimes I’m impatient with the characters and think I know them before I really do. I find that I write scenes that don’t make the second draft, because once I’m deeper into knowing who these messy people are, I can spot all the moments that don’t quite ring true.

GWR: What was the genesis of the novel?

RN: The Offing is actually frighteningly autobiographical. When I was 27, I went backpacking on my own to Australia, and took a job on a whim as crew on a family-owned yacht. The boat in the story is an exact replica of the real one, along with the journey, the dad, the daughter, and the cat. Obviously in my version, there’s less murder and more of a successful finish line, but I’m ashamed to say that I did all of the stupid and dangerous things these girls did, which is why it was easy for me to write about them.

GWR: Do you pair your characters to the book—what characters would survive the scenario—or do you write them situationally?

RN: With this one, I had the boat, the skipper, the daughter, and the cat first, because they were in the original true version. I also knew the setting, including how claustrophobic the boat was, so that part was also in place. After that, I had to figure out where the danger was coming from, and who might be running from it. I wanted to explore female friendship, too, so I knew I needed two young backpackers who knew each other but not that well… In a sense, with The Offing, the main characters came late to the cast list, but I think that’s because I lived this story and had some characters ready to go.

GWR: What do you have more fun with, character development or plot?

RN: Again, with every book it’s different but with The Offing, I liked how I was pushing myself structurally as a writer. The book has several worlds running concurrently—that of the boat itself (which feels present but isn’t), the police interviews (which are present), and anything that might have happened prior to the girls climbing on board. I also had to solve the problem, plot-wise, of creating a thriller on a boat but not letting the girls feel so freaked out that they’d simply get off at the next stop. That’s more complicated than it sounds and I enjoyed the challenge of it.

GWR: What’s the one element of a thriller that is a must?

RN: Menace. I think you can create compelling characters, a cool setting, some hooky love interest, a good twist – but unless you have a pervasive sense of dread and menace right from the outset, you’ll lose your thriller reader to the TBR pile. It’s a busy genre and you have to keep them turning pages.

GWR: How do you write effective red herrings when you are so close to the material?

RN: By the time I’ve finished a first draft, I’ve got my red herrings in place—and in fact, they present themselves quite quickly once the plot is watertight. What I do in the second draft—now that I’ve told myself the story—is make sure I’m not overcooking them. The trick is to keep readers unsure for as long as possible, so that those blind alleys remain tempting and don’t feel like too obvious a decoy.

GWR: Did the story end the way you’d initially thought?

RN: Yes, although the body count stacked up a bit. I didn’t have all the outcomes for the villain(s), but I knew who’d done what and to whom.

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be? 

RN: I’m going to say it’s a Negroni because it’s layered—it has solid gin that you can trust, but then that complex, bitter Campari, and can you really rely on the sweetness of the Vermouth?

GWR: What are you working on now?

RN: I’m writing my fifth thriller which is about a house swap that takes place between a woman in the UK and a man in the USA. It’s like the movie The Holiday, but the thriller version. So, you know. Creepy plotline and no Jude Law.