Saundra Mitchell: On Finding Her Writerly Voice in Adult Fiction
In this interview, author Saundra Mitchell discusses shifting from teen and tween writing to her first book for adults, This Side of Gone.
Saundra Mitchell has been a phone psychic, a car salesperson, and a denture-deliverer. She’s dodged trains, endured basic training, and hitchhiked from Montana to California. These days, she lives in Maryland. Follow her on Instagram and Bluesky.
In this interview, Saundra discusses shifting from teen and tween writing to her first book for adults, This Side of Gone, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Saundra Mitchell
Literary agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret
Book title: This Side of Gone
Publisher: William Morrow
Release date: January 6, 2026
Genre/category: Mystery/Procedural
Previous titles: All the Things We Do in the Dark; The Prom; All Out; Mistwalker; and more
Elevator pitch: A former homicide detective on the run from her past finds herself searching for a missing teen who has a dark past of her own.
What prompted you to write this book?
I’ve had a version of Vinnie Taylor bouncing around in my head for 20 years, but I had to grow into her to finally write her story. She was initially inspired by “Homicide: Life on the Street,” so it’s no surprise that she wasn’t ready to make her debut until I moved from the Midwest to Baltimore. We had to go through the crash course of leaving everything behind together.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
That’s hard to measure! Because I did create the character two decades ago, I could say it took 23 years. But I didn’t try to write her book until 2023, and the world will get to meet Vinnie in 2026. In pure numbers, it took me four months to write the first draft, then two months to revise with my agent, Jim McCarthy. Laura Schreiber at William Morrow snapped it up in the first weeks of submission, and we spent eight months in revision and editing. From the first words on the page, to off to the printers took about 15 months—honestly, super fast. It usually doesn’t happen like that!
The initial idea for This Side of Gone is pretty similar to the finished novel. Certain details changed, for sure—especially names. I don’t know what my deal is, but I name characters, then rename them, then name them some more. I also had a slightly different concept for the villain of the piece, but he also got tweaked as I worked with Laura. I’d say if you read my first draft, and then the finished book, you’d feel like they’re definitely siblings.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I’ve been publishing young adult and middle-grade fiction for almost 20 years; it’s a real culture shock to come into the adult side. Mechanically, most things are the same—you revise and edit with your editor and copy editor, you do line-edits and scour the review copy for errors—but it’s interesting to see how different publicity and marketing are. As you can imagine, schools are a huge part of publishing teen and tween lit; there’s an emphasis on getting into school book fairs and selection services like Junior Library Guild. On the adult side, schools aren’t part of the equation at all—but cool things like Reader’s Digest Condensed versions and podcasts are. Nothing has been shocking, but it’s all been fascinating!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Because this was my first book for adults, after a career of writing for teens, I struggled to get the voice right. It felt like writing a book for the first time, and I was just out whacking in the weeds, trying to make something useful happen. It was also the first time that I didn’t simply write 1000 words a day, every day, until the book was done. This one came in waves, and I was surprised to find out that I could both keep my momentum this way and actually finish a draft in about the same amount of time. It just needed different things from me, different kinds of focus. It was its own process, and I had to learn to go with it.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope that they’ll get a procedural they love, that’s still allowed to question the structures we have in plan to deliver justice.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Don’t stop. Writing for a living is sometimes like playing the lottery for a living. It can be invigorating and crushing, beautiful and vicious. There are so many elements out of our control as writers, but the one variable in our control is whether we keep going. If you haven’t gotten to yes, yet—don’t stop. Keep going. We’re waiting for you.
