The Cemetery Spot by Jenna Moquin
TPP EP 02

TPP Episode 2 with Jenna Moquin

[00:00:00]

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, where you come for the pitch and stay for the story behind the story. I’m your host, Mark P.J. Nadon, and you’re listening to episode two. This episode is also sponsored by me. If you’re an author and wanna sponsor a future episode, just head to markpjnadon.ca links in the show notes.

My book, the Collective explores how far a parent would go to rescue their child. In a world where there’s no one left to help. When Aiden is taken by a religious cult, one that believes parents must sacrifice their kids to fight in an army or donate their organs to save others, his only hope for survival comes from within.

It is a post-apocalyptic thriller, the first in a trilogy, and it has vibes of the road meets the institute.

Today’s guest is Jenna [00:01:00] Moquin. She’s been writing dark fiction and poetry for years with work, appearing in various literary magazines and anthologies. After releasing a collection of short stories and editing a charity anthology, she made her thriller debut in 2024, publishing stocks in the cemetery spot, just six months apart.

Jenna’s stories explore the shadows between everyday life, and she’s currently working on her next twist filled tail.

Jenna. Hello. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show.

Jenna: Thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Mark: I am excited to get into this. Let’s just jump right into the pitch.

Jenna: Great. So the book I’m pitching today is The Cemetery Spot. It is a psychological thriller, came out a little under a year ago.

It features, two sisters April and August who have a very tumultuous relationship and one night April walks in on her sister on a surprise visit, and her sister [00:02:00] August has stabbed her abusive husband, Roy. Who’s lying on the kitchen floor with a knife sticking out of his back. April due to a debt she has from her sister, which is something that’s revealed about halfway through the story, she agrees to help her cover up the murder and bury the body in the woods. But unfortunately they make a lot of mistakes. First time covering up a murder, why wouldn’t you? And as the story unfolds and they start, they realize someone had watched them, and it becomes like a game of cat and mouse.

And throughout the story, April starts questioning, can I really trust my sister? Was she even really telling me the truth about that night?

Mark: Oh, I love that. Yeah,

Jenna: yeah,

Mark: Yeah, I do. I read, like maybe the first six chapters and I was really into it, so I’ll have to get to

Jenna: Oh, cool. I’ll have to get to the rest of the book.

Mark: I, oh,

Jenna: great.

Mark: Quick question comes to mind before we, we get into the whole, behind the story is, I, so I noticed that, Freida McFadden had, commented on, do you know Freida? Like how do you, how did that happen?

Jenna: I do, she’s an old [00:03:00] friend of mine. We met years ago at a writing group in Boston. I was actually an early beta reader for a lot of her self-published titles, like The Surrogate Mother and The Perfect Son, and she’s been such a great help and inspiration for me.

She gives me great writing advice, great publishing advice. She blurbed my very first debut thriller Stalks that came out in 2024. She has a little blurb on it saying she couldn’t put it down. Yeah, I saw that. So I’m very, yeah, I’m very grateful to her. She’s a wonderful woman. Oh, that’s very cool.

Mark: Awesome.

Jenna: Yeah.

Mark: So what inspired you to write this book?

Jenna: I had an idea playing around in my head for a little while. I wanted to write a domestic thriller, but not make it about a husband wife relationship because I feel like that’s very kind of overdone and I wanna do something different. So I thought a sister relationship might be kind of interesting for a domestic thriller.

And then I read this great book years ago called My Sister The Serial Killer by an African author named Oyinkan Braithwaite. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing her name correctly, [00:04:00] but it was a great book and it was funny, it was suspenseful. And I said, I wanna write something like this. And that was a, that really inspired me to go on with this one.

Mark: And was there a moment in your life that kind of shaped, shaped the story or the characters or anything?

Jenna: Oh yeah, I helped my sister kill her husband years ago.

Mark: Oops. It’s out there now. Hopefully you made fewer mistakes, right?

Jenna: That’s funny. I think it’s mainly just my my own tumultuous relationship with my sister. If anyone who’s had like a same sex sibling, it goes up and down over the years, but you’re always there for each other, even when you wanna wring each other’s neck sometimes. And you love them. You have a relationship with your sibling like no one else in the world.

And I like exploring that in books.

Mark: Awesome. So like how did Exactly, exactly. Siblings, how did the I do, yeah. I have four sisters, yeah.

Jenna: Oh, nice.

Mark: Yeah. Very busy. Very busy household growing up. [00:05:00] Yeah. So how did the writing process go for this book? Was it just like you sat down and started writing the book and it all just kind of came to life?

Jenna: I actually decided to take this idea. I had playing around with two sisters and I put it in for Nanowrimo, and I think it was 2020 or 2021. I Do you, have you heard of Nanowrimo?

Mark: Yeah. Novel writing month, right?

Jenna: Oh, okay. Yeah. And so I decided to do it, and I didn’t win Nanowrimo that year. I only wrote about 25 to 30,000 words in the book, but I kept with it, and then I finished it officially, I think in 2022.

Mark: So did that, so did you have a plot going into n Nanowrimo because you, I. No. No. Okay, so you were pantsing so to

Jenna: speak? Yeah. Okay. Definitely.

Mark: Okay. And then that transitioned eventually to the novel that you have now?

Jenna: Yes, exactly. A couple of the books I’ve written, I definitely don’t know what I’m writing.

I just have like an idea or a vision that I start with and I [00:06:00] just throw it in there. And after I’ve got the first draft down and I’m starting to plot, that’s when I start plotting instead of pantsing. Start off, pantsing, eventually go to plotting.

Mark: Okay. So it was a bit, you start off a bit messy, so to speak, and then it gets a little bit structured as you go along.

Jenna: Yes, definitely. My first drafts were a hot mess.

Mark: And how much research did you do to write the book?

Jenna: I did some research, like I listened to a lot of true crime podcasts to talk about like what people do if, like, they’re trying to hide a body and the little, little things here and there. I read that book, My Sister the Serial Killer.

I also, what a, oh, I also read, a Chevy Stevens novel. Called, what’s the name of that? Oh, Still Missing. And that really inspired me too, ’cause that that’s a book about, without giving a spoiler, it has a very tumultuous family relationship in it that I took, I drew a lot from when I was doing this book.

Mark: Awesome. And was there any points where you almost wanted to give up on the [00:07:00] book?

Jenna: Yes it actually, Fred McFadden is the one, kept me, told me to keep going with it. She’s like, you got a really good story idea here. Don’t, don’t not finish this book. She’s like, you have to finish it.

Mark: That’s awesome. And where That’s awesome.

Where did, where in the story did that happen? I.

Jenna: I really just had like the basic first draft and I didn’t know how I wanted to end it. I had the, the opening part of the book, which she even told me too. She was like, the first half of this book is perfect, but you really need to fix the second half.

And I wasn’t sure how I wanted to end it. I had like three to four different endings in mind, and so I ran it by her and a couple other beta readers and got like feedback on what ending they thought would be best for the book.

Mark: And were the beta readers like contradictory? I know I’ve had beta readers that, you know, one will say, do this, and the other pretty much says the opposite. I know. Do the opposite thing.

Jenna: Oh, I know. The writing group I was in with Freida McFadden, I remember one time they workshopped a chapter and I, there were seven of us in the group. I got [00:08:00] seven different piece of advice on how to go with a story. So I feel that, yeah, that happens. You just gotta, yeah.

Mark: How do you choose? How do you choose whose advice to go with?

Jenna: I think I just go with my instinct. Like I’ll take all of their feedback with a grain of salt and I also kind of think about the type of books I like to read and how I would like it to end. So, and sometimes it isn’t always, it doesn’t always go with like. What I want it to be, whether or not it’s gonna be the type of ending that I think audiences will like.

So sometimes you have to do that. You have to weigh it out.

Mark: And you called this a psychological thriller. Is that mostly what you read?

Jenna: Mostly? Yeah. I also like horror.

Mark: Oh, nice. So how did you go about creating the characters?

Jenna: Well, April and August, they do…I definitely took a lot from me and my own sister.

There’s little pieces of each of us in both [00:09:00] characters. There’s a lot of crossover there. April is the main character and she’s the younger sister. I’m actually the older sister with my sister, but I kind of feel like I’m the younger one sometimes because she’s a lot more mature and responsible than I am.

And so that took a lot from that when I was going back and forth on the characters and how to develop ’em. I like to get inside character’s heads ’cause I feel like that really brings a lot of humanity in for a reader. Mm-hmm. When you get inside a character’s head and you really feel like you’re living the story through their eyes.

Yeah.

Mark: Did you ever stop to consider, I was thinking this when I was reading it, the beginning. Did you ever stop to consider if. Well, I haven’t read the whole thing, so this may be a spoiler, but if the husband should be a, like, would’ve been a good guy, how that would’ve impacted, like at any moment.

Jenna: Okay. Oh yeah, I’ve been, I played around with that a lot.

Okay.

Mark: I won’t make you give up spoilers ’cause who knows what happens in the end with, if there’s any twists or anything. But, yeah, that came to mind. I

Jenna: hope you [00:10:00] like it.

Mark: Oh, so far I’m right into it, so yeah, I definitely have to

Jenna: Oh, cool. Have to

Mark: finish it up. So did you, was there a character who was the most fun to write?

Jenna: Honestly, April, the main character was the most fun to write because I wanted to make her as human as possible. And human beings, we, we all make mistakes all the time. And so I kind of had fun making her a little bumbling throughout the story.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was, yeah, it was good.

How do you go about creating side characters?

Jenna: Side characters I feel can be a little tough. And especially with a psychological thriller, you wanna put in as many red herrings as possible to throw the reader off their track. So I tend to have trouble with side characters because you don’t really develop them as much.

And so if they almost feel like ciphers to me sometimes, but they are very important.

Mark: Awesome. Is there any any characters you had a particularly hard time writing where you just couldn’t quite figure out who they were and you had to like do a bunch of redrafts?

Jenna: There kind of was, and [00:11:00] I don’t wanna spoil it for you, but there’s a character who shows up about halfway through the book that I had a little trouble writing, but the funny thing is, almost everyone who was a beta reader said that this character was their favorite character in the book.

Mark: Awesome. Isn’t that how it goes?

Jenna: Yeah, I know.

Mark: And were there any scenes that were difficult to write for you that you had a hard time either, you know, emo I guess you’d say emotionally or creatively?

Jenna: Yeah. Honestly, without giving away the ending, there’s actually a pivotal climactic scene at the ending between the sisters and another family members that was a little emotional for me to write.

Mark: Okayy. And was there, I know for me in the editing process, sometimes I, I’ll write a scene and it’ll hit me really emotionally, and then I’ll go back to edit the scene and I’m like, oh, it kind of fell flat that second time. Did you, did you have any moments like that happens that Yeah.

Jenna: Oh, [00:12:00] absolutely. That’s what, you know, multiple drafts are for, right? Yeah.

Mark: And how many drafts, what was the process like for this one? How many drafts did you have to go through? You mentioned like getting beta readers and what, what other, you know, who else touched the book? I guess you could say.

Jenna: Pretty much just beta readers.I did a rough draft for Nanowrimo and then sat on it for a little while, revisited it. I hadn’t really figured out the ending yet when I sent it to my beta readers, and then after I got their feedback on what ending should be, how I should do it, I sat on it for a little while longer. I feel like sometimes putting some distance between yourself and the story, you sometimes get even better ideas when you come back and look at it.

Mark: Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Do you have any favorite places where you get ideas like. Nature trail walks or

Jenna: mm-hmm.

Mark: Or the shower. One of my favorite places is the shower. I don’t know why I can come up with so many ideas

Jenna: in the shower. I know the shower is great. I do like walks too. Walks are perfect. Like if you have some writer’s block taking a long walk and just getting outside for a [00:13:00] while.

’cause sometimes just open that up. It’s great. Yeah.

Mark: I used to have a friend that we played Frisbee with. I used to, we used to have like little writing sessions and we’d go out and play Frisbee in between writing sessions. That’s cool. Break. Cool. Yeah. And then we could kind of spitball ideas at the same time, which was nice.

Jenna: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. You’re getting some exercise always helps. Yeah,

Mark: yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s kind of like breaking up the process, but at the same time giving you a chance to, like, in the back of your mind, you’re still kind of thinking about it. ’cause you, you know, you’re there for that.

Jenna: Exactly.

Mark: Anything you had to cut from the book, any scenes that people were, that maybe you liked and people were like, nah, it doesn’t really work.

Jenna: Yeah, I, I did have some scenes that I felt like were basically me kind of writing out my own relationship with my sister that had nothing to do with the story, and my friends were like, yeah, this is going in her head too much. You might wanna cut that. You know what they mean? That’s what they mean when they say kill your babies.

Right?

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Those tough scenes that you have. Yeah. Yeah. So it wasn’t essentially, it wasn’t moving the plot forward, right. [00:14:00]

Jenna: Right. Exactly. That’s the problem. I mean, if you find yourself, if the reader finds themselves bored, you gotta cut it.

Mark: Yeah. Is that kind of feedback sometimes you’re, that you’re getting from beta readers?

Like these moments were bored. I was bored.

Jenna: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do a lot of stream of consciousness writing and it doesn’t always work in thrillers.

Mark: Do you? Do people feel like it reads like a movie? I know some people when they read, they’re like, I feel like when I was reading this, it played it like a video, like a movie.

Jenna: I did have one reader tell me that I thought that was kind of cool. I have envisioned, envisioned this being a movie several times. I picture Julia Lewis and Melanie Linsky as the sisters.

Mark: That’s awesome. And so if you had to cut a chapter, because we know you already did, but if you had to cut one that’s actually in the chapter keeping in mind that obviously everything is in there for a reason, so hopefully there’s nothing you really wanna cut.

But let’s say there [00:15:00] was a, something you had to cut a character or a chapter, who would it be and why?

Jenna: I thought about this and I, I probably would have to cut just ’cause it’s not that necessary. There’s a scene in the book between April and August and the mom and the mom’s kind of punishing them for something.

It’s really not that necessary. I could probably cut the mom right out. It’s really in there for some character development, which is important too.

Mark: Right, right. And how do you balance that when you’re looking at, when you’re looking at your book, what is I. What’s slowing the plot, but what’s also building character and building scenes.

Because the funny, I mean, with thrillers, it’s like fast paced, right? Like that’s, but there also has to be a reason to want to care about the character, right? So you also have to fill in that stuff. How do you balance that?

Jenna: It is a tough balance and that’s something that I think a lot of thriller authors struggle with is where do I put the backstory?

Where do I put this so that they know this about the character? It’s really tough. I feel like with thrillers you might, you start with something that grabs the reader a hook or some, you [00:16:00] know, scene that’s like, oh my God, I can’t believe that happened. So they keep reading. Mm-hmm. And then I think it’s good to introduce backstory on the main character, somewhere between page 40 and 50.

I just feel like that’s a really sweet spot to start introducing some backstory or some background to what’s going on.

Mark: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s pretty far into the book. I wasn’t, okay. Have you ever had feedback that you, that like I look at the buildup was felt late, I guess.

Jenna: I have had that. I’m really bad with slow burns.

Like I, I like I’ll edge a lot until I get to the big payoff. And so that’s one of my big problems with finishing a book.

Mark: Okay. And that’s just in the editing process that you’re looking at kind of adjusting these things? Yeah. Okay. So , we’re just gonna kind of wrap up a little bit. I want to ask this kind of a selfish question.

What advice would you give to someone who just published like a first or second novel? [00:17:00]

Jenna: Start working on your next book. Seriously. The more books you have out there, the better. And honestly, the more books you have out there, the more income they start bringing in as well. So you finish your book, it’s time to start the next one.

Mark: Just go right to the next one. Okay.

Jenna: Yeah, exactly. Keep writing, especially while those juices are still flowing. Yeah, yeah,

Mark: yeah, yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And do you believe in series versus trilogies versus, standalones?

Jenna: I do prefer standalones both reading them and writing them, but I know that they’re very popular with readers.

So I have thought about doing a series, nothing in the works.

Mark: Maybe We’ll, we’ll hear about that in the future.

Jenna: Well, the, my debut thriller thriller Stocks that came out in 2024, I have been working on a sequel for it. I’m just not sure if I wanna do a sequel or if I wanna revamp it as a standalone thriller.

’cause it could kind of work either way. Okay.

Mark: And where can listeners find your [00:18:00] books?

Jenna: So Cemetery Spot is is on Amazon. I have it on Kindle Unlimited, so it is exclusive to Amazon, for KU. But a lot of my other titles I’ve cross published on draft to digital, so they’re available on Kobo Hoopla, Barnes and Noble Apple Books.

It’s really just my two psychological thriller full novels that I have on Kindle Unlimited for now. Okay.

Mark: And you have a new one coming out, right? Soon?

Jenna: Yes. So Island is, um, a book I’ve been working on for a really long time and I’m releasing it in January. Are you familiar with the British 1970 Sci-fi series?

The Prisoner? I am not. Have you ever seen that? No. It, it’s a wild show. And I watched it years ago and I thought it was one of the most amazing things I’d ever seen. It’s very cerebral. It’s very twisty and it plays with your mind. And I wanted to write something kind of like it. It’s like a Alice in Wonderland type.

Someone who’s just like thrown into this. She doesn’t know where she is and her trying to [00:19:00] figure out what’s going on there.

Mark: I love those kind of stories.

Jenna: I guess it’s, it’s, oh yeah.

Mark: Yeah. I love those kind of like, almost like amnesia. It can be like, almost like amnesia. I mean, it’s not in that case, but like, you know, there’s just something going on.

What’s going on? You know why am I hear, I love that too. That little bit of reveal. Yeah. It’s a lot of fun. Mm-hmm. To kind of get into that little at a time.

Jenna: Oh, cool. I’m excited. I know I had a lot of fun writing it. In fact, I said to one of my friends, this book is my favorite book out of every book I’ve written.

So I’m really excited about that one. I also have another book coming out next May. I just signed with a British publisher called Baum Books. It’s called The Red Possession. This is a horror novel. I. It’s sort of like a modern day exorcist about a woman who’s battling menopause and a demon that’s trying to possess her at the same time.

Oh, wow.

Mark: Wow. That is quite a story. And that one’s written already. I guess they’re both written there. Yeah.

Jenna: Island’s, I still need to do a little bit of work on it and some editing. It’s basically done, but the Red Possession [00:20:00] is done. I’ve already signed the contract. It’s just not coming out till next year due to the publisher’s schedule.

Mm-hmm. Okay. And so that should be going over a pre-order probably soon. That one’s, that one’s a lot fun too, too.

Mark: Congratulations. That’s, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So we are gonna wrap this up. I got a couple extra questions for you if you don’t mind sticking around after the show. Sure.

Couple follow up for our newsletter subscribers, kind of behind the scenes stuff, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time. Is there anything else you wanna mention about your book question? Anything we didn’t get to?

Jenna: Let’s see if anyone wants to sign up for my newsletter, I am.

My website is jennamoquin.com. I’m also on TikTok Bluesky and Instagram. I have a substack. I’m just starting it out, so if you’re on Substack, I’m on that too. Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Awesome.

Mark: Thank you. I will link to the, to all that in the show notes so people can find you easily.

Jenna: Great.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, you can support the show and get early access to future [00:21:00] episodes on our Patreon links in the show notes. Some guests are also sharing bonus content in our Patreon, like short stories behind the scenes extras and novellas. So check it out over there.

If you’re into post apocalyptic stories about sacrifice, survival, and family, the collective might be for you. If you like the show, please follow, rate or share it with another Thriller fan. It really helps me out. I’ll see you in the next episode where I sit down with Cole Chase, author of the Shadow Fast Thrillers, and we talk about his book Metal Spies.