This past September saw the release of Stephanie Wrobel’s latest novel, The Hitchcock Hotel. I enjoyed the book, calling it “a suspenseful love letter to the legendary director of enduring films like Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds and, of course, Psycho.”
Just in time for Biff Bam Pop!’s 31 Days of Horror 2024, I had the chance to ask Stephanie a few questions over email about The Hitchcock Hotel, her love of Hitch, and more.
Andy Burns: Stephanie, congrats on The Hitchcock Hotel. It’s a great book, and I read it extremely quickly. Could you talk about how you came up with it?
Stephanie Wrobel: Thank you so much! The idea came to me while thinking about the Agatha Christie trend in my genre. Lately a number of my fellow suspense writers have built on Christie’s work with their own books. I brainstormed other past giants of the genre and felt Hitchcock deserved the Christie treatment. Obviously his work has been studied, admired, and imitated for decades, but I wanted to pay a more explicit homage. The Hitchcock Hotel gave me the opportunity to watch even more of Hitch’s movies than I already had—all in the name of research. The day-to-day of a writer’s job is typically unglamorous, but sometimes it’s exactly as fun as it sounds.
Andy Burns: How were you first exposed to the work of Alfred Hitchcock?
Stephanie Wrobel: I took a film studies class in college with a professor named Dr. Scott (sound familiar?). There, I was introduced to Hitchcock’s work when we watched North by Northwest in class. I’ve been fascinated by the director—and his impact on my genre—ever since.
Andy Burns: Like all great mysteries, The Hitchcock Hotel has many twists and turns. I’m curious about your process and how you went about mapping those twists as you wrote—were they all in your head? Did you have any sort of notepad or board that you’d throw your ideas on?
Stephanie Wrobel: I use a site called Padlet to keep track of potential book or screenplay ideas. It’s essentially a digital corkboard. Most of the pins are only a couple words or one sentence—half-baked topics of interest worth further exploration. I prune these pins every six months or so, deleting anything that no longer intrigues me.
For individual projects, i.e. novels, I use paper and digital journals (Moleskines and/or Word docs) to sketch out the general contours first. Once the idea begins to take shape, I work in Scrivener. I like their digital corkboard as well. The goal is one notecard per chapter, and each chapter gets a one-sentence summary. With past novels, I refused to start drafting until the notecard outline was completely fleshed out, but more recently, I’ve loosened this process. A handful of notecards is enough to get me writing.
With The Hitchcock Hotel, I knew from day one the twist that would happen halfway through the story. Without giving too much away, the challenge of that development was the main reason I wanted to write this book.
Andy Burns: As you were writing, did you ever surprise yourself with a scene you created or the actions of any of your characters?
Stephanie Wrobel: I knew from the beginning who would be murdered but didn’t know the killer’s identity until probably halfway through my first draft. I also knew most of the hijinks that would take place (poisoning, slashed tires, etc.) but not who was behind them. It was a lot of fun making the puzzle pieces fit together along the way.
Andy Burns: Along with the obvious Hitchcock inspiration, who or what else, if anything, inspired your work on the novel?
Stephanie Wrobel: Voyeurism is one of the major themes of The Hitchcock Hotel. In 2016, a New Yorker article by Guy Talese, called “The Voyeur’s Motel,” caught my attention. I devoured the piece with great interest, then moved on. Back then, I had no plans to write a story about a voyeur. Still, the visual of Gerald Foos’ spying platform lodged itself somewhere in the back of my brain. Seven years later, I put it to use.
Only after finishing this novel did I realize it had a precursor. In 2017 I wrote a short story entitled “Open Windows” about a neighborhood Peeping Tom named Jasper. I had totally forgotten about the story! I’ve now unintentionally written two stories starring voyeurs. Sometimes I’m unaware of my preoccupations until I’ve written (multiple!) stories about them.
Andy Burns: Finally, we’ve all got our favourite Hitch films (Rear Window for me); what is yours and why?
Stephanie Wrobel: Rear Window is an excellent choice. It’s hard to pick just one, but let’s go with Rope. The murder happens during the opening scene. The rest of the movie is spent watching the two murderers try to prevent some party guests from discovering the victim’s body. This is a very simple premise with few surprises, yet I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I learned a lot about suspense vs. surprise from that film.
Thanks to Stephanie Wrobel for taking the time to talk to Biff Bam Pop!, and to Lisa Wray at Simon and Schuster for making it happen. The Hitchcock Hotel is available now.
