Today on the BookBaby Reads blog, we’re excited to spotlight Margaret Cravens, author of the suspenseful mystery Echoes of Red. In this gripping debut, a small town is shaken by the murder of beloved radio DJ Caleb Fredrick, and a determined private investigator uncovers that the truth — much like the past—never stays buried for long.
In our conversation below, Margaret shares the inspiration behind her story, her approach to crafting authentic characters, and the challenges and surprises she encountered while bringing Echoes of Red to life. Join us as we dive deeper into her writing process, her influences, and what readers can expect next.
What first sparked the idea for Echoes of Red? Was there a moment, headline, or personal experience that lit the fuse?
There wasn’t any one moment that I can pinpoint. One day I got this image of Julie in my head, this wild, kind of immature, incredibly intelligent young woman. Then I wanted someone to bounce off of her, someone who would balance her out, and I got Ben. At that point, well, I’d been wanting to try my hand at writing a mystery for a while, and they seemed like the perfect pair for the job.
Your story blends a murder mystery with the small-town music scene. What made you choose that setting, and how did music influence the mood or themes of the book?
Music has always been very important for my family. My parents made a band with some of their friends, and they play at a local bar once a month. I’ve been coming along to support them, and even helping them get set up since I was, like, thirteen. The small-town music scene was something I figured I knew enough about to write convincingly and including it in my debut novel felt like a fitting tribute to the role it has played in my family’s life. I think it gave the world of the story a personal touch that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Ben Clydesdale and Julie Bernard have very different backgrounds. What makes them an effective (or volatile) investigative duo?
I think the contrast between them is the heart of the novel. Julie’s very clever, and she’s good at those wild leaps of intuition, but she doesn’t have Ben’s wisdom, his methodical discipline, or his experience. Because of this, they each approach the case very differently, and sometimes it makes them clash, but it also means that they balance out each other’s faults and see things the other missed.
Caleb Fredrick is already gone when the story begins, yet he feels central to the narrative. How did you approach building a character who exists mostly through memory and secrets?
I found it really interesting to examine Caleb from the different perspectives of everyone who knew him, because you got to see him in several different ways and the different recollections don’t always add up. It says something about Caleb, but it also says something about the person remembering him and I think that’s what’s so interesting about these absent characters.
Small towns often hold big secrets. What draws you to the “quiet place with a dark undercurrent” style of mystery?
The style lends the narrative a sinister side I don’t think you can find in stories set in big cities. You can get this really rich contrast between the idyllic town and whatever grisly thing you’re setting in it, and that contrast makes the darkness feel a lot more powerful. You can also get more intricate motives and more complex characters that all serve to ground the story.
Was there a particular scene or character in Echoes of Red that was the most challenging — or the most fun — to write?
I really struggled with the final confrontation scene, especially with getting all of the emotional resonances right. It was the scene that probably changed the most from initial conception to final version, and it took a lot of experimentation to figure out how I wanted to balance action and emotion. In terms of what was the most fun, there’s one scene in particular that stands out. At the end of Chapter 10, Ben and Julie are confronting a possible suspect in a local bar. It was a late addition, one of the final scenes I wrote, and it was one where I really felt the characters taking control and writing the scene for me. It was really cool to feel them coming alive.
You’ve previously published short stories and poems. How did shifting to a full-length novel change your writing process?
It became a novel largely by accident. The first draft was meant to be a novella. I wrote that first version back in the summer and early fall of 2020, when I was fifteen. When it finished it was somewhere around 20,000 words. However, as I made rewrites over the following years, the story kept expanding and expanding. Eventually I realized there were enough ideas there for me to make it a full novel.
Were there authors, mysteries, or musical influences that helped shape the tone or style of this book?
When I was working on the first draft, it was the end of Covid summer, and I’d spent all that free time binging a bunch of different mystery shows (Bones, Endeavour, and Castle to name a few). From watching those, I knew mystery was a genre I really enjoyed, and so I decided I wanted to try my hand at it myself. As I continued to write and revise, I watched and read more mysteries, from noir to cozy mysteries to police procedurals, all of which have made some degree of impact in the final story in their own little ways.
What do you hope readers feel or question as they follow Ben and Julie through this investigation?
If there’s any recurring theme in Echoes of Red, it’s the way certain characters either let themselves be defined by their pasts, or try to run away from them. You see that both with the central mystery, and with Ben and Julie’s personal growth through the story. I hope that it gets readers to question how we let ourselves be guided by the past, and what it actually means to move forward.
Echoes of Red is your debut novel. What’s next for you? Can readers expect more mysteries—or perhaps more from Ben and Julie?
I’ve got a collection of short stories, The X-mas Files, coming out on the 28th of November this year. It’s a collection of five different stories set in the North Pole, following five different characters as they work to make Christmas happen. It’s been a blast to write, and I’ve enjoyed being able to explore a more fantastical setting. However, I definitely want to revisit Ben and Julie. I’m excited to see how their dynamic develops, and they’re a lot of fun to write. I’ve been working on a sequel for a while, figuring out where I want to take the characters and what sort of mystery will best bring that out.
