Welcome to another Poisoned Rationality Special Edition! Today we have Carolyn Crane, author of the Disillusionists Trilogy!

Synopsis: (book 1: Mind Games)

Justine Jones is a hopeless hypochondriac whose life is crippled by fear…until one day when a handsome, tortured mastermind named Packard peers into her soul and invites her to join his psychological hit squad.

Justine resists until she gets a taste of the peace Packard can promise. At first, Justine enjoys being part of the thrilling world of neurotic vigilantes who battle Midcity’s paranormal criminals. Things get complicated when she uncovers certain secrets…and falls for one of her most dangerous targets.


Hello everybody, and Lexie, thank you so much for inviting me over.

So, here’s the deal: I have sort of a big mouth in real life, and I’m terrible at keeping secrets. After Mind Games came out, a lot of readers asked what would happen with certain characters and it was SO HARD not to tell! I actually confidentially told one or two readers who really begged. LOL. And then after Double Cross came out, it was so so so hard not to spill what was coming up in book three. Phew!

But, I love for my characters to have and keep secrets, and unlike me, my characters are excellent at keeping secrets. I love most when readers know about secrets characters hide from each other.

In my first book, Mind Games, my tortured hero, Packard, is keeping most of the secrets. In Double Cross, a dream invader messes around with two of my characters. Result: one character keeps getting glimpses of another character’s deepest darkest secrets while sleeping. In book three, Head Rush, everybody knows a secret that one character doesn’t know.

In my forthcoming novella about my character Simon, he’s carrying around this big secret that is the key to why he acts the way he does. Naturally Packard has guessed it, but nobody else has. Oh, how I love secrets.

Part of my fascination with secrets comes from watching soap operas at a young age.

Soaps are like a master class of using secrets to build anticipation. In a soap, when one character has a juicy secret, that secret will be milked for endless excitement. I remember spending days just dying for one character on a soap to find out a secret, usually something like, Henry, who pretends to be in a wheelchair, runs around at night killing people. Or somebody has an evil twin. And then, the next week, I’d be dying for somebody else to find out, just dying to see the surprised look on their face.

Soaps showed me how fun it can be to look forward to secrets being revealed. I love books where my anticipation builds and then gets rewarded with a secret-reveal. If there are no fun reveals, either of the love kind or the secret kind to look forward to in book, I lose interest. I think every writer strives to write books she wants to read, and juicy secrets and fun reveals are hugely important to me.

Sometimes working with a lot of secrets can get kind of mind-bendy, because different characters carry secrets in different ways, or know different things at different times. Sometimes I will stop writing a scene and go from one character to another and think about their private thoughts and what their special secrets are. Even if they don’t have important things to do in the scene, secrets and subtext are leaking out. 

Are other readers and writers as big on secrets as I am? What books have you read lately that have the juiciest secrets?