The Thrill of It All

Lisa Unger, the New York Times bestselling author of 22 critically acclaimed novels, with books published in 33 languages and millions of copies sold worldwide, shares her inspiring journey as a writer and reveals how she came to call the St. Pete area home.

By Nick Steele

In person, Lisa Unger is as bright and breezy as a spring day in Florida. So, it may come as a surprise to learn that she is the mastermind behind a successful group of tensely wrought psychological thrillers that explore the darker side of human behavior.

Her easy smile and accommodating nature are on display as we sit down in the bustling Black Crow Coffee shop in the Grand Central District, next door to Tombolo Books— where she spends quite a lot of time engaging the community through signings, panel discussions and special events. What also is on display is her watchful eye as she discreetly surveys the scene and the people who swirl around us. One gets the sense that she knows where all the exits are and is ready to beat a hasty retreat if things go south. That’s partly because she is an adept observer of human behavior and part of being what she describes as an “extreme introvert.”

“That’s how I define myself,” she offers. “But when the pandemic happened, and everything kind of went away, I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not that much of an introvert.’”

This epiphany inspired her to create a YouTube interview series called Three Good Things, in which she spoke with fellow authors about their books and highlighted positive topics upon which to focus.

“I realized I have all these really strong relationships with people who I only see a couple of times a year at various events,” she recalls. “And, all of a sudden, we couldn’t see each other anymore. That’s why I started doing it, to try to keep those conversations going.”

Unger, who is co-president of the International Thriller Writers Society, says her fellow authors are not competitive with each other, but more like an extended family.

“I have heard that other genres maybe are not the same, but the mystery/thriller folks, we wind up at all the same events and kind of come up through the industry together,” she says. “So, we just try to support each other as much as we can.”

In Unger’s latest book, Close Your Eyes and Count to 10, a determined single mother enters “the ultimate game of hide-and-seek” through a social media competition, only to find herself unwittingly thrust into a ruthless fight for survival. The book will be released on February 18th and Unger will take part in a local launch event, presented by Tombolo Books, on February 24th at Coastal Creative.

Early praise calls it, “a compulsively readable story packed full of tension from the very first page.”

Born in Connecticut to a father who worked for Exxon, Unger’s family traveled quite a bit during her childhood, with stints living in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, before returning to the United States and settling in New Jersey. She attended NYU and began work on her first book at the age of 19.

“I’ve always been a writer,” she asserts. “You know, a reader first of course…I think most writers would identify as readers first. And I thought, that’s what I’m gonna do. My dad, who’s an engineer, was like, ‘No, that’s not a thing that people do. Don’t get to thinking that is a job, because it isn’t.’ So, I went into publishing because it felt like the closest thing I could do to follow my dreams without actually having any skin in the game. And I was good at my job, so, unfortunately, it just kept getting bigger and bigger and the time I had to write got smaller and smaller until I reached a point where I just wasn’t writing at all.”

That’s when she decided things needed to change. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m giving 110% of myself to a job that I don’t love.’ I had to get serious about my writing because, otherwise, I was going to look back in five or 10 years and say, ‘You never even tried.’ I couldn’t live with that. I could live with failure, but I wasn’t going to be able to live with never even having tried. From that point, I started writing every day. I had a lot of big changes in my life. I broke up with the guy who I was with for a very long time” she says. “About a year and a half later, at 29, I finished the novel I started when I was 19. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I was just happy that I had finished it. Because a lot of people want to write a book, and they never do. So, I was like, okay, at least I did this much.”

It was during a visit to Key West to see a friend that she met her now husband, Jeffrey Unger, whom she affectionately calls her partner in crime.

“It was like this Shazam kind of love-at-first-sight moment,” she shares. “Within six months, we had both quit our big corporate jobs and sold our homes. Jeff was in IT and he could go anywhere…do anything.

The company that he chose was in the Tampa Bay area, so we came here. I took my book and sent it to my five ‘top choice’ agents and I figured I’d give myself one year to sell this book and to write another one. I was signed pretty quickly by my agent, Elaine Markson, and she brokered a two-book deal for me with St. Martin’s.”

That first book, Angel Fire, was published under her maiden name, Lisa Miscione.

Unger says she knew she was on the right path with her journey into publishing and felt at home in our area.

“There’s a very beautiful, vibrant, creative energy in St. Pete, a kind of high-energy vibration,” she muses. “You can just kind of feel it in everything and it has only grown over the last 10 years.”

As a fixture on bestseller and “Best Book” lists, married to her best friend, with whom she is raising a teenage daughter, she’s living not a dream, but her original vision of what her life as a writer could be.

“I do feel incredibly grateful,” she offers. “I only knew that I wanted to be a writer, publishing books that hopefully someone other than my mom would like. The fact that my stories and my characters find their way into the hearts and minds of people is such an incredible gift. An amazing part of my own life is when, as a reader, I get lost in a story. The idea that I can give that to somebody, or many people, is really cool. The writing life also means a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the way, and some dizzying highs.”

Among the “highs” is the fact that Unger’s international bestseller, Confessions on the 7:45, is being adapted into a Hulu series starring Jessica Alba, written by Charise Castro-Smith and directed by Eva Longoria.

“They’re just an amazing team of women. I’m in awe. Jessica Alba and her team are the engine on the project. Now Eva Longoria is part of it,” she enthuses. “Charise, who is magnificently talented, is writing and that’s so exciting. As for my involvement, I’m available as much as they want for conversations about vision but I’m excited to see what their vision is. I mean, the book is mine and will always be. This next part is what the book has inspired.”

Unger will be the guest of honor at this year’s SleuthFest, a conference for mystery, thriller and suspense fiction writers, which will be held from May 14-18 at the Hilton Bayfront in St. Pete.

For more information, visit lisaunger.com