Hannah Deitch (Photo by Trisha Harrison)
MELISSA WHITLER | NBCU Fellow
Melissa@DallasVoice.com
Killer Potential, Hannah Deitch’s debut publication, follows SAT tutor Evie Gordon after she finds her employers murdered and a mystery woman tied up in a closet. On the run from the law, Evie’s only way to prove her innocence is to figure out who the real killer is.
A thriller perfect for fans of Parasite and Thelma and Louise, Killer Potential hit shelves on March 18.
A former SAT tutor herself, Deitch has studied Marxist theory and contemporary pop culture. Her work has been included in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Ahead of the book’s release, Hannah Deitch sat down to talk about her writing process and publishing experience.
Dallas Voice: How does it feel to have your first book published? Hannah Deitch: I don’t think I’ve processed it yet, honestly. There was a moment of catharsis when I received the finished copies, but I still don’t feel like it’s real. It’s hard to accept that it’s not just a Word doc anymore.
It was a long journey to finally get published. It’s hard when you come outside of the publishing world; I’ve never known someone who published a book. I got an agent after a couple years, went through two other books, and then left that agent and started the process over again. Thankfully my new agent saw promise in this story.
Where did you get the idea for Killer Potential? Did you know who the killer was from the beginning? The first part of the book came to me — someone found tied up in a house where a murder had taken place. I knew how it was done and their motivations, so I worked kind of in reverse. This was the hardest and most fun part.
The story evolved through revisions, as I tried to prioritize what Evie would be thinking, what she would need to learn to solve the mystery.
A lot of myself ended up in Evie. I hadn’t tutored for like three or four years when I started writing. I was shocked at how much I had internalized and was holding on to. I never thought I would write about it; the only reason it came back to me was because I was working a full-time job in tech and was seriously considering taking on another job. I was thinking about what I could do on the weekends or evenings, and SAT tutoring was a possibility. I felt a lot of dread came out about going back to that, and it helped produce the idea of the book.
What do you think was the difference with this story that got it published compared to your first two attempts? That’s one of the great mysteries of publishing — why some things get accepted and others don’t. My best guess is the plot premise, but I wasn’t writing with the intention to fill that. I write what I want to read.
I wrote the first draft really fast in three months when I was still working full time. I just committed to writing on the weekends and gave myself imaginary deadlines. After that I put it away for a while and then revised, and then I guess it was just Evie’s time.
A big part of the book is Evie being on the run, traveling across the U.S., including Texas. How did you write about these places? I’ve actually done the road trip from Atlanta to LA four times. During the COVID-19 pandemic I also drove from Georgia and Florida because we couldn’t fly. I had the characters take the exact same route, so I know what that highway feels like; I’ve been in those hotels.
For the rest I did a lot of online mapping, looking for interesting town names, trying to discover what the texture of the place feels like.
Even though it is a murder mystery, your book also includes a love plot. What was it like balancing something so serious with something more hopeful? It’s pretty hard to write the love plots; the two are in total opposition to each other. I wanted to honor both in equal measure. It’s a fun challenge and finding that balance is interesting.
I don’t know if I would be capable of writing something without a queer element, so a queer relationship was always going to be present. With the ending, I wanted readers to feel like a door was left open for some kind of hope, to feel like another way is possible.
There’s something haunting about the possibility of change. There’s always the possibility of love within oppressive systems; seeds of dissent are available too. Even in this horrible situation there can be some hope.
Can you tell us a little about what you have coming up next? I’m working on a book that I first drafted before Killer Potential. It’s based on the satanic panic set in early 2000s in Georgia where I grew up, a sort of second Salem witch trial. I’m loosely basing it on the West Memphis Three. There will be more murder, and it will be very gay.
Visit HannahDeitch.com or the Killer Potential Goodreads page for more info.