You Don’t Want to Know by Lisa Jackson

By John Rabb

Lisa Jackson is a #1 NY TIMES Bestselling author and one of the best in the thriller genre today. She is back with her latest release “You Don’t Want to Know” and here is a little preview:

In Ava Garrison’s dreams, her son, Noah, looks just the way she remember him: a sweet two-year old in rolled-up jeans and a red sweatshirt. When Ava wakes, the agonizing truth hits her all over again. Noah went missing two years ago, and his body has never been found. Almost everyone, including Ava’s semi-estranged husband, Wyatt, assumes the boy drowned after falling off the dock near their Church Island home. Ava has spent most of the past two years in and out of Seattle mental institutions, shattered by grief and unable to recall the details of Noah’s disappearance. Now she’s back at Neptune’s Gate, the family estate she once intended to restore to its former grandeur. Slowly, her strength is returning. But as Ava’s mind comes back into focus, her suspicions grow. Despite their apparent concern, Ava can’t shake the feeling that her family, and her psychologist, knows more than they’re saying. But are they really worried for her well-being or anxious about what she might discover? Unwilling to trust those around he, Ava secretly visits a hypnotist to try and restore her memories. But the strange visions and night terrors keep getting worse. Ava is sure she’s heard Noah crying in the nursery, and glimpsed him walking near the dock. Is she losing her mind, or is Noah still alive? Ava won’t stop until she gets answers, but the truth is more dangerous than she can imagine and the price may be more than she ever thought to pay.

To know about Lisa Jackson, check out the interview below.

In your latest book, YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW, how complex of a character is Ava and how difficult was it for you to write her? 

Oh, man Ava was extremely complex, though not difficult to write about because she had been in the back of my mind for years.  Years ago, I was in a workshop when I had a vision of a small child on the end of a dock.  It was foggy, and his image faded in and out, but he was there and I felt my heart began to pound wondering if he would jump, fall in or be pulled to safety.  I wrote the scene from the frantic mother’s point of view and, for some reason, it always stuck with me.  Haunted me. The image of a mother desperately trying to reach her young son, reliving any parent’s worst nightmare, tapped into some of my own fears as well. By the time I started to write this book, I felt I pretty much knew Ava. The tricky part to writing Ava was that when the story opens, she’s a paranoid wreck of a woman obsessed with finding her missing child.  Despite her state of turmoil, I wanted to show that she’d once been a strong woman who was in control.  I wanted to make her vulnerable, yet give her an inner strength that allowed her to be a fighter even when she questioned her own sanity.  I had to work to make certain that the fractured woman on the pages was not a frightened victim, that she had strength and resolve. I used flash-backs a little in the first part of the book, and then had to show how she regained her strength all over again.  Of all of my heroines, she’s made the widest journey from brilliance to mind-shattering paranoia.  So, yeah, that wasn’t easy.

What scares Lisa Jackson?

Aside from looming deadlines?  Maybe everything?  I’ll tell you what scared me—the opening scene in THE EXORCIST.

Do you find yourself having to write about things that make you uncomfortable, simply because that is how the story is going or how the character in your book brings you to?

I go where the story and characters take me and I do write about uncomfortable subjects, but I have certain lines I won’t cross.

In YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW, what character surprised you in having a bigger voice than you originally thought?

Oh.  Let’s see.  I didn’t have anyone in the proposal from the police department other than the Sheriff, so they were new to me and I guess I didn’t really realize how much I would be showing Wyatt (Ava’s husband’s) feelings.

Ava Garrison, the main character in “You don’t want to know” is sitting in front of you, what do you want to ask her?

“ Why didn’t you bitch-slap the lot of them?”

What is on your DVR right now?

GAME OF THRONES and GLEE.

What is your favorite word? And your least favorite?

Love: “love” and Dislike: “like.”   “Don’t you just LOVE that?”  “Oh, I’d LOVE to!”  “I’m so in love with puppies!  She is SUCH a love!”   Like is now being used for says, for example: “And I was like . . . “, “And she was like . . .”  Please .  . . SAVE ME!!!!!  (Yeah, and I do it too!)

Do you secretly laugh when you get an email from a fan saying “I was up all night from your book, because it scared the hell out me?”

Oh, man, yes!!!  I love it, though.  How fun is that???

A powerful beginning or a climatic ending, which do you prefer in a book?

I have to go with the beginning, I guess, because if it’s not great, I won’t read the rest of it.  However, if it ends with a fizzle, I won’t read the next book, so both are very necessary.

Have you ever had a haunting experience and if not, would you like to ever go on a ghost hunt?

I’ve never seen or felt a ghost, if that’s what you mean.  And sure, I’d love to go on a ghost hunt.  Wonder if I’d live to tell about it?  Maybe YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW!

We would like to thank Lisa for this interview and the many hours she has kept us from getting sleep with her books. YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW comes out August 7, 2012.

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Lisa Jackson is the number-one New York Times bestselling author of more than seventy-five novels, including WITHOUT MERCY, DEVIOUS, MALICE, LOST SOULS, RUNNING SCARED and BORN TO DIE. She is also the co-author of WICKED GAME and WICKED LIES, co-written with her sister, Nancy Bush. There are over fifteen million copies of Lisa Jackson’s books in print in 20 languages. She lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest.

To learn more about Lisa, please visit her website.