Caroline Kepnes On Her Latest Joe Goldberg Novel, For You And Only You

You worked in television before you became a novelist and you also worked as an entertainment journalist. How did those experiences play into you writing "You"?

Oh God, so much. With journalism to start, I loved being edited. I loved deadlines. I remember going to Entertainment Weekly from Tiger Beat, which was my first big journalism job, and they had fact-checkers and editors. They were like, "You're going to write this 300-word review of the show." I'm like, "300 words?" To see it go through round after round [of edits] and to learn firsthand, under that deadline ... I like journalism, especially back then. It was weekly and it felt intense. To write it, to get to immediately apply what you just learned to something else — that was the energy that I loved. To this day, I do that with my writing.

I love television and I love the entertainment, the way the story moves and moves. That experience was great too — getting to see how things play out in the simplest way of the difference between what's in the script [and] what an actor does with it when they read a line. With the audiobook, with the first book ["You"], when I heard Santino [Fontana], I'm like, "Oh my God, he's a genius." I love what he's doing with the words. When someone is that focused, they do bring a humanity, their own take on it. It felt natural for me with Joe that, because I have watched so much TV too, I'm like, "I want this to be as fun as watching TV." 

My very first creative job was at Conan O'Brien, where I was a script intern. That was every day, and I did not last long because that gave me a nervous breakdown. I always wanted to write books because I like how long you have to rewrite everything. It's why I'm very bad at Twitter. I like to rewrite. I like to walk away from it, go look back. Books feel good.

What do you hope fans will take away from your new book?

I hope that if they're reading and writing, they'll read and write more. With this book in particular, I hope they'll know that with bad things that happen to you, there is a way to make them good and let them reshape ... [and] make you come out better than before. It's a lesson of so many books. So many books with that theme have inspired me, and this is my dark, sick version of — without spoiling things — seeing Joe go into the dark and reemerge a little better.

"For You and Only You: A Joe Goldberg Novel" is out now from Random House.

This interview has been edited for clarity.