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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTexas author Ashley Winstead brings grit, glamour and female rage to her new thriller, \u201cHot Girl Murder Club.\u201d \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTexas author Ashley Winstead brings grit, glamour and female rage to her new thriller, \u201cHot Girl Murder Club.\u201d \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Luis Noble<\/p>\n
Ashley Winstead<\/a> knows exactly what a well-placed knife can do \u2014 to a chest, to a plot, to a reader who thought they saw the twist coming. Her new thriller, \u201cHot Girl Murder Club,\u201d is a stiletto-sharp book about pop stardom and vengeance that hides a serious whodunnit question inside its glossy packaging. On July 21, she\u2019s bringing it back to the city she says built her, as Winstead will stop at Dallas\u2019 Interabang Books<\/a> on her book tour, ready to answer questions and share anecdotes.<\/p>\n Texas grit and fire<\/strong><\/p>\n Winstead didn\u2019t grow up in any one place, exactly. As a self-described \u201cNavy brat,\u201d she moved every couple of years, packing and unpacking a childhood in boxes. Texas, though, is the place she\u2019s stayed longest \u2014 the closest thing she has to home ground.<\/p>\n Living in the \u201cblue bubble of Houston\u201d inside a famously red state has helped unveil the tension that feeds her.<\/p>\n \u201cIt contributes to this sense of defiance,\u201d she says. \u201cIt keeps my fire lit.\u201d<\/p>\n You can feel that fire in her fiction. Texas, she points out, has always harbored its share of defiant citizens, and that lineage runs straight into the feminist revenge thrillers she\u2019s become known for \u2014 books like \u201cThe Last Housewife\u201d and now \u201cHot Girl Murder Club.\u201d Dallas gets a special share of the credit. Winstead earned her Ph.D. at Southern Methodist University,<\/a> and she doesn\u2019t hedge about what the city meant to her.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s where my brain was born, in a lot of ways,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Giving herself permission<\/strong><\/p>\n That brain was, for a long time, a very obedient one. Trained in academia and devoted to the literary canon, Winstead spent years believing that \u201creal\u201d writing meant something austere and lofty \u2014 and, crucially, not female.<\/p>\n For her undergraduate creative writing thesis, she wrote exclusively from male perspectives. She was convinced, she admits, that women\u2019s voices \u201cdidn\u2019t deserve to be on the page.\u201d<\/p>\n It took over a decade \u2014 a decade of rejection and working other jobs \u2014 before she gave herself the permission that changed everything. She could write, she finally realized, from \u201ca bitch\u2019s perspective or a cheerleader\u2019s perspective,\u201d and find genuine value in those voices the canon had trained her to dismiss.<\/p>\n The result is a writer who takes the most maligned, glittered-over versions of femininity and treats them as worthy of scrutiny, sympathy and menace. That reclamation is the whole engine of her new book.<\/p>\n Blood on the marble, lyrics on the wall<\/strong><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the setup: Ten years ago, aspiring singer-actress Scout Sage lost the one person who mattered most, her younger sister, Georgia, who died under murky circumstances at a fancy Hollywood Hills party. Scout has spent the decade since clawing her way up the music industry, gathering a cohort of ambitious women around her like armor.<\/p>\n Then bodies start dropping. A string of targeted murders hit Los Angeles, each one aimed at a powerful figure who hurt a woman and walked away clean, and every crime scene points back to Scout. One killer even scrawls her song lyrics on the wall in blood. Overnight, she goes from mid-tier pop star to the world\u2019s most famous alleged murderer, and detective Grey Holloway, no stranger to tragedy herself, is the one assigned to untangle it.<\/p>\n It\u2019s propulsive, glamorous fun. But Winstead is doing something sharper underneath the sheen. The novel opens with one of its most haunting lines, spoken by Grey: \u201cAll dead women look alike, if you think about it\u2026 Like a man\u2019s worst fear and his darkest fantasy combined.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s a book fascinated by how we consume violence against women, and how women themselves are pulled toward the spectacle. Balancing that darkness is the fierce loyalty at the story\u2019s core, captured in the vow the women share: \u201cI walk in the shadows but am not afraid, because you are with me. There is no such thing as one woman alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Even the title carries a double meaning. It arrived before the plot did, sparked by internet culture \u2014 a riff on Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s \u201cHot Girl Summer\u201d and Winstead\u2019s own private nickname for a wave of books by women under 35. Inside the novel, being a member of the \u201chot girl murder club\u201d isn\u2019t a badge of honor; it\u2019s a way for outsiders to shrink and dismiss the women it describes. The book spends 300-plus pages daring you to underestimate them anyway.<\/p>\n A homecoming at Interabang<\/strong><\/p>\n For Winstead, the Dallas stop is a return to the place where her intellectual life took root.<\/p>\n \u201cDallas readers are incredible,\u201d she tells us. <\/p>\n You can see her on Tuesday, July 21, at 6 p.m. at Interabang Books (5600 W Lovers Lane, Ste. 142) for a discussion and signing moderated by \u201cThe Secret Attic\u201d author and Dallasite Chelsea Conradt. Details are available through Interabang\u2019s event page<\/a>. Bring your copy, bring your questions and bring a little Texas defiance. Winstead will recognize it.<\/p>\n