Thriller author Meredith Forde is tired of writing stories that no one will ever read.

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As a crime victim who has been forced into anonymity for her safety, she admits she is concerned the perpetrator may find her as she emerges into the public eye. But the risk she is willing to take to get her novels into the hands of those who enjoy the thriller genre far outpaces the fear she has in hiding.

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Why? Because she isn’t another victim just telling her story. Her purpose is far more meaningful as a master storyteller. She has found that as her plots thickened, she could offer something other authors in the genre could not – fictional prose crafted from firsthand truth. 

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“I feel like everybody has victim narrative fatigue, and the common thread that gets pulled among the reading public is that they are tired of it,” she said. “Because I have experienced crime and lived it from a victim’s perspective, I can tell a story in a way that, even though it is fiction, it is rooted in reality.”

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Numbers to Novels

 

Forde didn’t start out as an aspiring novelist. Although she earned a degree in the English Arts, she quickly found while working as a small-town reporter the industry wasn’t for her. She earned an MBA and pivoted into a corporate career, where numbers came to the forefront and writing faded to the background. 

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It was the documentation she was required to keep as a crime victim that led Forde back into writing. She admits she found no enjoyment in keeping detailed notes during the years it took her cases to get through the criminal justice system while living under a constant threat. 

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“After the perpetrator’s last conviction in 2022, I changed my identity. I am sitting there with no job, nothing but time on my hands, slipping into depression,” she said. “When your whole world is pulled out from underneath you, it is devastating. I decided before time had a chance to erode my memory, I would write everything. I wanted to get it out of my system, not to be shared with the masses but just to capture it in that moment.”

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Forde said as she stared at the 167,000-word document recounting her harrowing experience, she began to think of the possibilities of taking a different route with it. For someone trying to find a sense of belonging and normalcy, channeling her energy into the thriller category gave her a chance to put truth behind a genre that seems to have been missing in so many of the fictional prose on the shelves. It allowed her to translate her experience into imagined storylines. She could write an alternate ending to her own experience. And most of all, she could regain control of her life. Readers read to escape life. Forde began to write to confront hers, head-on. 

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“In my first novel, I got to write the kill scene of the perpetrator,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times I wrote that scene. It was very cathartic to kill him with my words.”

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Forde’s first book, which is expected to be released in 2025, follows the character Rebecca and her refuge in the Victim Assistance Program after unexpectedly falling victim to crime. 

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“This book is really an alternate ending to my personal story. I’ve often wondered what that path would have looked like, so I wrote about it,” she said.

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Her second book weaves a thrilling tale, told from the perpetrator’s point of view, with the frustration Forde encountered with the publishing industry. 

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“Writing from the perpetrator’s perspective was a learning experience for me. I had to dive deep into the criminal mind,” Forde noted. “As someone who has only ever had a speeding ticket, I wanted to wrap my head around the motivations of a criminal. And given the complexities of the publishing industry I was feeling at the time, I made my villain a publisher.”

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She is currently working on a third novel centered around a young reporter’s realization that people aren’t always who she thinks they are.

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“As a victim of crime, you look inward as ‘what-ifs’ play through your head,” she said. “In my case, I journeyed back to my humble beginnings, and it led me to writing this book. Although I didn’t pursue a career in journalism, I enjoyed my time in the newsroom.”

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An Emotional Toll

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As she penned her novels, Forde’s revisit through her terrorizing journey was not an easy one. In fact, she took a painful emotional beating as she recalled terrifying events. Eventually, she was affected physically as well. In March of 2023, Forde suffered a stroke. 

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“I had to put everything on hold and focus on my health. I had to determine what my capacity was going forward,” she said. “There were passages I was writing that I felt like I was back in the time period I'd worked so hard to move past. As I was writing, I had to allow myself to live in those days. They always tell emerging writers to write what they know. It comes at a personal cost.”

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At a time when many would retreat into a sense of safety, from others and their own memories, Forde continued on, battling through the often-unbearable recollections and the strikes against her as an author in hiding. She said even with a literary agent, books today aren’t selling to traditional publishers until the author has a social media following of at least 25,000.

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“The odds are completely against me, given my unique situation, because social media is a risk to me,” Forde said. “The goal in publishing my novels is to find a safe way to connect to people again. I live a very isolated life and insulate myself with a select few who are committed to helping me stay safe.”

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Forde has assumed a full-time career in writing, but reaching an audience is the biggest challenge she faces. Statistics on the publishing industry vary widely. More than 4 million books are estimated to be published annually with book sales of 788.7 million in 2022 generating $28.1 billion in revenue that same year.  

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“It’s a tough market but writing makes me happy and brings me joy. At the end of the day, writing is something I have control over. I use my fictional narratives to take back my control. And that’s the difference between why I write and why other authors write. I have found a way to empower myself and turn what was a weakness into a strength. No matter what, no one can take that away from me.”