All Your Twisted Secrets

by Diana Urban

“Twenty kay is twenty kay. Besides, I had no plans tonight, and I like free food, so no rind off my orange.”

Scott is one of my favorite characters I've ever written (still to this day in 2023!). For whatever reason, it always felt like I was simply watching him and transcribing his dialogue. Yeah... being an author is weird sometimes. :-P

So here I was on the first day back after winter break, watching her cross the cafeteria, plotting my approach. Her besties, Amy and Maria, hovered around her like gnats, wasting away the minutes by chewing over the latest gossip.

In the first draft, this scene started with Amber and Priya biking to school together. It was a cute scene with a lot of banter, but while revising, I cut right to the tension—Amber being afraid to approach Sasha, the popular girl who intimidates her most, to ask for a favor that could help her get into her dream school. Sometimes to speed up the pacing you have to cut your darlings! (And if you're a writer who needs to rein in your word count, travel scenes are good places to start cutting.)

Listening to movie scores nonstop gave my mundane life its own vibrant soundtrack. But it wasn’t exactly mainstream. “Really? What’s your favorite?” He sounded genuinely intrigued. “Anything by Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, or John Williams.” He nodded appreciatively. “Nice.” Wow. Usually that answer got me nothing but blank stares and vacant frowns, so I’d started telling people my favorite musician was Taylor Swift. People liked her, right?

For my twelfth birthday, I got a CD of the Titanic score as a gift, and since then I've been obsessed with movie, TV, and video game scores. Amber inherited this passion from me, but unlike Amber, I am ABSOLUTELY a Swiftie. lol

“Call me mother of dragons.”

LOL you'll always be able to tell I wrote this while Game of Thrones was all the rage. The dangers of including pop culture references in books! This also just made my realize how this is the only book I'll ever publish that I wrote pre-pandemic times, and how even then, I was writing about claustrophobic situations. O.o

Zane kept his mouth shut except to order a burger and fries, and other than the occasional grunt and “Yep,” he was quiet throughout dinner.

Fun fact: In my early drafts of All Your Twisted Secrets, Zane was in the room along with two characters who no longer exist. Before buying this book, my publisher requested a partial revision where I cut the number of characters in the room from nine to six. I sent off the first fifty pages and revised the rest of the novel while I waited for their decision, and by the time they made an offer, Zane was completely extricated from the room.

“Alright, everyone,” said Mr. Greenwood, snapping me from my thoughts. “Today’s going to be fun. We’re going to have an egg-drop competition!”

I had to do this exact assignment in school... at LEAST twice, in different grades. I bet a lot of us have! I do not, however, remember the strategies I used or whether or not my egg even broke... just that I had a lot of fun going outside with my class and dropping whatever contraption I came up with from the top of a staircase.

Turning from the group, I snapped one of the sticks in half and shuffled them, leveling the top tips. I spun to face them, gripping the sticks with both hands.

This scene was inspired by the 1985 movie Clue, where the characters draw straws to determine how to buddy up and search each floor of the mansion for the murderer. While the tone and circumstances in the movie are WAY different, I had to include a nod to my favorite locked-room mystery! I'm pretty sure I watched that movie at least once a year growing up.

And it’d only take an hour.

I always knew how polarizing this twist would be. Since Amber is the first-person protagonist, it can make people uncomfortable to experience a story through the eyes of someone who makes such an enormous mistake. But at its core, this story is about how people aren't defined by their mistakes, but how they learn and grow from them. I wanted my protagonist to have the most agency within that theme. Amber's character arc is largely about making a huge error in judgment, acknowledging that she has done so, and facing the repercussions of her actions. I would rather people feel that discomfort while curled up safely with a book rather than out in the real world having made a huge impulsive mistake out of revenge or heartbreak or whatever else and needing to face repurcussions themselves. Not that I think my readers are going to lock six people in a room any time soon. (Please don't do that.) ;-)