Iain Reid on pitching his book idea to a sheep

Iain Reid had two successful, feel-good memoirs under his belt when he decided to try his hand at writing a thriller. The result is I'm Thinking of Ending Things, a slim volume about a woman on her way to meet her boyfriend's parents for the first time, struggling with whether she's happy in the relationship. Creepy and suspenseful, the novel is quite a departure from Reid's earlier work.

In his own words, Iain Reid explains why he decided to write a thriller, and how hanging out with an elderly ram on the family farm helped him get his ideas in order.

Switching gears

"I wanted to do something that was new for me, and challenging. I had written two books that were similar in tone — both were about people in my life, family members, experiences that I was able to reflect upon and then write about. They were pleasant, and my hope was that they would be comforting books to read. After writing those two, for the sake of my own interest and my own progression, I wanted to do something very different. And I felt it was the right time to try writing a novel, which for me is harder. After having written two books, I felt prepared to write fiction."

It was a dark and snowy night...

"The entire setting of the book is based on my experience of growing up on a farm and living in a rural area. I still go back and spend a lot of time on the farm, so I'm really familiar with that kind of environment, and for me it fit very well with the content of the story and what happens to these characters. I wasn't drawing on one particular snowstorm or one ominous drive, but rather all my years of driving in the country, both at night when it's very dark, and in winter when it can become very treacherous."

Writing with sheep

"Marshall was a very old ram that we had at our farm. I was staying out there a couple of summers ago while I was writing the early part of what became this book, and I got into this routine where I would go out in the afternoon and he would be lying in the shade under a tree, and he'd just stay there the whole afternoon. So I'd find him, usually under the same tree, and I'd throw some apples to him and just chat with him. I'd work out some stuff I was thinking about, and it's amazing how much that can help, just talking something through. And Marshall was the perfect audience — he wasn't going anywhere, and he couldn't get bored with me or frustrated that I was rambling on about something. [Rambling! We see what you did there, Iain.]

"I had two editors working with me on the book, but I do think that I would give early credit to Marshall as my first editor. He didn't give me a ton of verbal feedback, but certainly as a sounding board he was excellent. He died not that long afterwards, so I remember him fondly when I think back to that early part of writing the book."

Going out on a limb

"I'm glad people are reacting strongly to the book. In my mind, this is the kind of book that will probably be more successful if it's polarizing, and if there are certain people left confused by it — or left wanting to throw it out the window! At the same time, I'm hoping there are other people who really enjoy it and haven't ever read anything quite like it and want to go back and re-read it right away. That's my ideal situation, I think — it means I got to the point I was hoping for. With my first two books, it's different — no one is going to be upset that I wrote a book about going on a trip with my grandma. So with this one I figure it's totally up to them to draw their own conclusions on what it's about. I don't have any say in how they interpret it — if you take the time to read it, I think you have the authority to tell me what it's about."

Dark places

"Writing a story like this, it stays with you. So it took years to write, and you may just spend two or three or four hours a day working on it, but you're kind of obsessed with it the whole time. Especially when the content and the ideas are what they are in this story, it can leech into the rest of your life in a way I wasn't necessarily anticipating. But I'm doing it again — I've already started another novel that's also very uncomfortable. So I'm doing it to myself. I think I had probably a week off where I was thinking about baking cookies or something, and now I'm back in this other world." 

Iain Reid's comments have been edited and condensed.