The Strangers: Frequently Asked Questions

Note: My answers may contain some spoilers for the book—please don’t read this if you haven’t finished the book!

Where did you get the idea for The Strangers and the rest of the Greystone Secrets series?

Of all the ideas for all the books I’ve written so far, this is definitely the one that had the longest gestation period. Way back in 1988 (i.e., before many people who might be reading this were even alive), I read a newspaper column by a writer named Rheta Grimsley Johnson. The column was about an odd and tragic situation: a woman found out about a car crash where three little kids were killed. And the kids who were killed were the exact same ages and had almost exactly the same names as her own children. Of course, that mother would have been saddened to hear of any kids dying. But because of all the similarities with her own family, she was truly devastated—and so freaked out that she stopped driving, at least for a while. That story was so strange that it lodged itself in my brain. But I didn’t think of it as leading to anything I might write until almost thirty years later, when I rather randomly recalled the story and suddenly thought, “Wait a minute. If that tragedy and all the similarities freaked out that mom so much, what would it be like to be one of the kids who discovered a tragedy affecting a family that seemed almost identical to their own?” I did not want to write about kids dying, so I changed the tragedy that happens to the doppelganger family. I wanted there to be a chance for rescue, for the tragedy to be undone.

Why is the book called “The Strangers?” Who are the “strangers” the title refers to?

I wanted the title to be something that could be interpreted in different ways. In the beginning, the Greystone kids see the Gustano kids as “the strangers.” To a certain extent, they also see Ms. Morales and Natalie as strangers when those two enter the story. But later on, the Greystone kids find out that in the world they’ve been living in, they are actually the true strangers. So it’s a multi-purpose title.

Which of the three Greystone kids are you most like? Which is your favorite?

I am probably most like a combination of Chess and Emma (though I am not nearly as good at either math or codes as Emma is). I can’t choose a favorite of the three kids--and it’s an even harder decision if you add Natalie as a fourth choice! But Finn’s perspective was definitely the most fun to write.

The Strangers reminds me of both A Wrinkle in Time and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Did you plan it that way?

I am hugely honored by those comparisons! But I did not intend any of the similarities to those other books/series. I was probably most influenced by A Wrinkle in Time because it was a book I particularly loved as a kid, and read again and again. It’s one of those books that burrowed deeply into my brain—and maybe my soul, too—and likely influences a lot of what I write, without me even realizing it.

I didn’t read A Series of Unfortunate Events until I was an adult, so it did not have nearly as great an impact.  And of course the Baudelaire kids’ “unfortunate events” and the Greystone kids’ challenges end up being very different.

What made the two worlds in The Strangers so different from one another?

THAT is something that readers won’t find out until the third book! So I really can’t provide that spoiler now.

How many books are there going to be in the entire series?

I think it will probably stay at three, although I did leave a possibility at the end of the third book for ways the series could expand. The second book is called The Deceivers; the third is The Messengers.