Q&A with Tess Sharpe

 

 

 

Tess Sharpe is the author of the new novel No Body No Crime. Her other books include the YA novel The Girls I've Been.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write No Body No Crime, and how did you create your characters Mel and Chloe?

 

A: This was really my “necessity is the mother of invention” novel. I was actually supposed to write another book two years ago, but I was working on a TV pitch that had some similar elements to the book I was supposed to write and I was really worried about voice bleed.

 

But I had to write something in this chunk of time I had, so I asked myself: what if you take everything you normally take very seriously and kind of flip it and make fun of it and lean into the campiness and absurdity of rural crime and modern gold rush country? And thus, No Body No Crime was born.

 

I’ve written about Harper’s Bluff—the place where Mel and Chloe are from—before. It’s the setting of my first YA novel and also the setting of my next YA novel. It’s a fictional place that’s part of the larger “Calabama” fictional world I’ve created in far NorCal where all my books are set. I do like to think of all of them existing in the same world.

 

I tend to fictionalize the main towns the books take place in and then all the other landmarks and places are real. But I had scribbled down some vague history of the town and the family it was named after a million years ago and was always drawn to the idea of writing about a Harper ranch daughter—because really, what would it be like to have roots that deep in a town that’s named after your ancestors?

 

I’m also very in love with opposite attract stories. Chloe and Mel couldn’t be more different in terms of their upbringing, but they find themselves in the same place, the same roles—forced into becoming killers in self-defense—and of the same mind in a lot of ways.

 

They’re very much two sides of a coin. They’re both queer girls in a small town—one who doesn’t really care who knows because everyone has already written her off for many other reasons and one who has kept it hidden out of necessity because she has to care what people think.

 

Mel is really a heroine after my own heart—hard-scrabble, sarcastic, resilient, but with that heart of gold for the people she loves.

 

And Chloe as the fallen princess archetype is something that really intrigued me. Her entire world-view about good and evil gets shattered in a split second when she witnesses a hit and run that kills a child and realizes there will be no justice unless she brings it herself and then she changes as a person in split seconds repeatedly, always trying to pivot, always trying to survive, always trying to protect.

 

To write someone who is constantly in this state of survival and change was really intriguing, because Mel is much more steady in ways, partly because Mel has grown up in trauma and chaos and Chloe has it introduced to her later in life, when she’s already formed her ideas about the world…and they’ve been proven wrong.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between them?

 

A: The thing I love about Chloe and Mel is that they’re both profoundly changed by their love for each other and how they had to survive together as teens…and they’re also incredibly stunted by that experience when they’re reunited in their 20s.

 

They revert right back into their teen selves at times because they’re being forced to survive again and together and no matter how much they’re bickering, no matter how many secrets are being kept, they still love each other more than anything—enough to die for each other, to kill for each other, to face down a group of feral peacocks…or an entire political crime family—together.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: Normally my answer to this question is “my endings never change!” It’s very hard for me to start a book without knowing the end first. But this book evolved more than any other novel I’ve written during the writing of it. I think it’s because I stopped and started it so much. Typically, I write a proposal, I put it on sub, it sells (hopefully!) and then I dive into finishing it and that all happens in like, a six-month period.

 

But I wrote the proposal for this, it went on sub for longer than I’m typically on sub, I kind of was like “Oh, my weird little book is not gonna sell. That’s sad!” and then we had a meeting with an editor and then there was a bit of a wait for the offer after, which caused me to think it was totally dead in the water or I had botched that meeting…luckily I hadn’t! And then suddenly we had an offer!

 

But because we’re in the age of AI, contract negotiations understandably took a long time to hammer out very new contract language to protect the work and to protect the publisher, so as a full-time writer with a lot of projects, I had to focus on other stuff I had already been paid for while that was happening.

 

When I got a really comprehensive AI clause from my publisher (thank you, Macmillan! Still the best and most detailed AI clause I’ve seen!) I was able to pick the book up again, after a wait of quite a few months.

 

So it gave me a lot more time to contemplate the book, the characters, and the direction the book was going to take. It evolved quite a bit during those waiting times—for the better, I think!

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I had a terribly generic working title for this book. I’m one of those writers who really nails a title every eight books or so. They’re a big struggle for me most of the time. Which is why I turn to writer friends when I’m stuck…which is exactly what I did here!

 

I could not for the life of me to come up with something good that my agent didn’t shoot down (he said I couldn’t call it In the Bush which I thought was a very funny title, but I also understand why he shot that down, he’s savvier and smarter than me).

So I turned to one of my lovely writer’s groups, gave them the breakdown of the book and was like GO! The amazing thriller author Cindy R.X. He had suggested No Body No Crime and everyone said: “Oh, that’s perfect! Also the hilarious Taylor Swift connection!” and Cindy was like “Wait, that’s a Taylor Swift song?” which was so funny. Taylor does have a lot of songs, so it’s understandable when we can’t keep track of all of them.

And thus, we had a title! I really love it because our central problem circles around no one finding Toby Dunne’s body after my girls kill him and dispose of him as teenagers, but we also delve into the grief and violence that is experienced when there isn’t a body to bury…but I can’t go too far into that without getting TOO spoilery.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m about to dive into revision for my 2026 YA thriller, How She Fell, about a teen filmmaker who is thought to have fallen to her death off the bluffs near a small town…and only her best friend knows the truth: that she was pushed. It’s a book told both in prose and in illustrations in the form of story-boards.

 

I’m also knee-deep in my next adult thriller, about a childfree woman who finds herself thrust into a nightmare when her family influencer sister and husband are murdered, leaving the guardianship of their children to the sister.

 

It explores parasocial relationships and circles around the question of who are you and how do you form true identity when your entire life—from your mother’s pregnancy with you to your birth to your every childhood and teen milestone—has been monetized for content and served up to an audience of millions by the parents who are supposed to protect you?

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: You can find me on instagram @forest_of_arden and same on Threads. And if you like behind-the-scenes publishing stuff, go to tess-sharpe.com to sign up for my newsletter, WRITE. COOK. REPEAT.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb