Take Five: Densie Webb and BREATHING IN REVERSE

We are so excited to showcase an interview with WU contributor and author Densie Webb. You might know Densie best for her very thorough monthly roundup column, Getting Down to Business, but she is also an accomplished novelist. Her latest, BREATHING IN REVERSE, releases Tuesday, August 1st.  Here’s the pitch: “Breathing In Reverse is the story of Rachael’s serendipitous encounter with a celebrity, her brush with obsessive love, and the bittersweet gift left behind by the very person fixated on destroying her life.”

We couldn’t be more excited for our friend. Interested in a closer look? Read on.

Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?

DW: “Breathing in Reverse” is the story of a young woman’s serendipitous encounter with a celebrity, her brush with obsessive love, and the bittersweet gift left behind by the very person fixated on destroying her life.

Here’s the full description: A chance encounter with a celebrity, an impromptu video, and a shiny new espresso machine all added up to a juicy tale for Rachael Allen to share with friends. But when her best friend posts the video online without her knowledge, Rachael begins receiving bizarre threats from an obsessed fan.

Mick Sullivan, the star in her video, offers to help. Despite his fame and reputation as a player, he tries to stay down to earth. However, Mick has secrets. And there’s one he’s hidden even from himself.

Despite wildly divergent life paths, Rachael and Mick’s shared Southern upbringing and passion for good music create a common thread that draws them together. As their relationship deepens and the threats increase, Rachael is forced to decide if being with Mick Sullivan is worth the collateral damage.

Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

DW: The spark for the story came from an interview with a young “it” actor, whom I watched several years ago. He was being constantly hounded by paparazzo and screaming fans. In the interview, he was asked where he thought he would go from there and his answer stuck with me. He said something to the effect, “Well, someone could jump out from the crowd and stab me and it would all be over.” He laughed when he said it, but it was clear he felt incredibly vulnerable. While “Breathing in Reverse” is about a celebrity stalker, it’s also about an unexpected romantic relationship, family relationships, and the life-altering consequences of past actions. Settling on a genre has been a challenge. The story has elements of suspense, romance, as well as family drama, which give it a women’s fiction flavor. At first, Amazon had categorized it as “Contemporary Romance,” which put it with books that had shirtless, ripped guys on the covers—not where it belonged. (I don’t know who decides on those categories—maybe AI?) I was able to get it changed, with the help of my publisher, Red Adept Publishing, and it’s now more in the “Thriller” category.

Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

DW: It would be “challenges,” plural, but the overarching challenge is dealing with a series of events that throw the characters’ lives off course, starting off with a random encounter in a gourmet store in New York City, which is what sets in motion the biggest challenge of dealing with the very real threat of a stalker. I’m kind of obsessed with the idea that seemingly innocuous events or interactions can have explosive consequences. Turn right and run into your high-school boyfriend, which rekindles a romance. Turn left and you become the victim of a mass shooting. Sometimes, life is simply a matter of right or left, which can make you crazy if you dwell on it for too long. My last book, “When Robins Appear,” dealt with the ripple effect of a chance meeting. Same with my WIP.

Q4: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?

DW: Well, originally, I had several chapters from the stalker’s POV. On the advice of my developmental editor, I cut all 26,000 words from the stalker’s POV and created new ones from the protagonist’s POV. Them’s a lot of words, especially for this slow writer. The process was painful, but I think it was a good call. I’m tossing around the idea of making those 26,000 words into a companion piece. We’ll see.

Q5: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?

DW: As simple as it sounds, just seeing that I could do it again. I think every writer, who finishes a manuscript or a book, experiences crippling doubts as to whether they can actually do it again. I’m hoping, if I ever finish my WIP, it feels as rewarding! I also really enjoyed going down the rabbit hole of research about stalkers, specifically celebrity stalkers. I was able to interview an expert on celebrity stalkers, which was eye-opening. If the stalker’s actions in my book seem bizarre, keep in mind that they were based on real events, and I had a lot of truly mind-blowing real-life actions to choose from!

Thank you, Densie! You can learn more about Breathing In Reverse on Densie’s website. Or follow her on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads (@densiewebbbooks). 

Writer Unboxed

Writer Unboxed began as a collaboration between Kathleen Bolton and Therese Walsh in 2006. Since then, the site has grown to include ~50 regular contributors and a variety of guests on rotation throughout a given year.

In 2016, the Writer Unboxed team published a book with Writer’s Digest / Random House. AUTHOR IN PROGRESS: A No-Holds-Barred Guide to What It Really Takes to Get Published is a comprehensive guide focused on helping writers over/around/through hurdles faced at every stage of the novel-writing process. It’s received some ***** reviews; we hope you’ll check it out.

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