Credence
Credence
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Penelope Douglas on Credence
In them own words: quotes and insights from the author.
Why they wrote it
A daydream that needed a mountainDouglas’s previous books were rooted in small towns with the social friction that comes from neighbors who know each other’s histories. Shifting to a snowed-in Colorado mountain wasn’t a cosmetic change of scenery. It rewired what the story could do, because isolation removes every outside structure that might otherwise interrupt or resolve what happens between the characters.
Just daydreaming, I guess! I don’t have a great story behind most of my books. I just let my imagination wander, and if something still doesn’t feel exciting, I continue to ponder until I come up with a way to make it work in my head. I loved the idea of changing up my usual small town settings to something more secluded.
That wandering process rarely produces a finished idea on first contact. Douglas treats the gap between spark and workable premise not as a problem to solve quickly but as a necessary phase of development.
As with most of my books, the ideas developed more the more I think about them. It’s never a single moment where the lightbulb goes on.
For a book built around a relationship that many readers would call transgressive, the question of whether the subject matter gave Douglas pause has a short answer. Their comfort with difficult material isn’t specific to this book. It runs across their catalog as a stated principle.
Not many topics are too taboo for me. I love breaking rules, and I love taking myself out of my comfort zone.
That appetite for discomfort is part of what made the remote Colorado setting and the unconventional household at the center of Credence workable in the first place. Without it, the premise collapses.
How they wrote it
Three voices, one difficult endingDouglas’s process begins long before a word of prose is written, and it follows the same sequence regardless of what the book is. Credence, with its more unusual setup, was no exception to a workflow built around visualization first and outlining second.
My writing process never changes. I get an idea, and then I start a Pinterest board to begin visualizing. A playlist usually comes next. Then, the notecards or notebook as I start to jot down scene ideas and what order I’d like to place them in. Then, I transfer these bones to an outline on a Word document as I organize chapters. The outline is never done before I start a book, but I do get a good idea of my starting point before I begin writing.
thindbooks.wordpress.com, “Punk 57 by Penelope Douglas: Review and Interview with the Author – Thindbooks Blog”Most of Douglas’s books give the reader one male perspective to track alongside the heroine’s. Credence puts three men in close quarters with Tiernan, the novel’s protagonist, and each needed to read as a distinct person. Getting three separate male voices onto the page without collapsing them into each other was a problem Douglas hadn’t faced at that scale before.
It was also the first time I had 3 heroes’ POVs to write, so making sure they all had a distinct (hopefully) voice was hard.
Separate from the voice challenge was a scene-level difficulty near the book’s close. Douglas names it specifically, which suggests it required more revision than anything else in the manuscript.
When the villain attacks toward the end of the book, I have trouble with overdoing scenes like that.
Despite those two specific difficulties, one character held Douglas’s attention more than any other while writing. Kaleb, the most closed-off of the three men in the Van der Berg household, expresses almost nothing in words. Douglas’s affection for him centers entirely on what he does instead.
I loved Kaleb, though. His first scene in the book always gets me, and I love all the tiny acts of kindness. Holding her through her night terrors, giving her half of his plate when she gave the dogs her food, teaching her to draw.
Those details also explain why Douglas says they loved writing the book. When a character’s emotional life is legible only through action, each small gesture carries the weight that dialogue would carry elsewhere.
The personal thread
Damage recognized from the insideKaleb sits on a short list Douglas keeps of the characters they feel most personally connected to across their entire catalog. The list runs across books and series, but two figures from Credence appear on it, which is unusual for a standalone.
I relate so much to the really damaged ones. Damon, Jared, Jax, Kaleb…
The heroines Douglas names as closest to them share something with Tiernan: each carries a flaw or wound that makes her difficult to root for cleanly. Tiernan, who arrives at the Van der Berg mountain having been effectively abandoned by the living people in her life, belongs to that company.
As for the females, I relate to the flawed ones. Ryen, K.C., Tiernan, Banks, Emory…
The connection to damaged characters isn’t a writerly pose. Douglas grew up the oldest of five children in what they describe as a tumultuous Iowa household, and came to fiction writing only at 35, after nearly a decade teaching elementary school. The line below was said in the context of the Devil’s Night series, but Kaleb appears in the same breath as Damon and Jared when Douglas names the heroes they connect with most.
I had a hard childhood, too, so while I don’t project anger like they do, I do understand their despair.
What they want us to sit with
Connection before judgmentAsked broadly about what drives their fiction, Douglas doesn’t reach for theme or moral framework. The answer centers on a particular kind of reader experience, the moment when a character whose choices should repel you instead pulls you in.
I definitely write the kinds of stories I love. Lots of push and pull, forbidden glances, and situations that make a heroine rise to a fight.
Douglas hasn’t offered a lesson attached to Credence, and the absence is consistent with how they talk about fiction generally. The argument isn’t that the book’s events are defensible. It’s that defensibility is the wrong frame to bring.
I believe a good writer can spin any story in a way with which you’ll connect, and I endeavor to do just that with every book I write.
For a book that has divided readers as sharply as Credence has, that framing is both a challenge and an invitation: the question isn’t whether you approve, but whether you connected, and if you didn’t, what that tells you about your own edges.