Whenever Daniel Wallace comes to my house, I’m left searching. I don’t mean for anything meta but for the tiniest rubber ducks acclaimed Chapel Hill writer leaves in his wake. I’ve found them on a book shelf, in my bathroom, even in my car (how did he manage to do that?). No matter, they quack delight. Daniel doesn’t quack himself, but his work exudes delight and by that I trust in the Merriam-Webster definition– “extreme pleasure or satisfaction.” Even his most recent book, This Isn’t Going to End Well, which is threaded with darkness, is such a satisfying experience. It’s also quite a departure for Wallace, best known for his novels like Big Fish and The Kings and Queens of Roam. Recently, Daniel agreed to answer my questions. Here are his answers.

Photo credit: Kate Medley

Q: You’re best known as a novelist and as the author of Big Fish, a novel of mythic proportions (as you wrote). This Isn’t Going to End Well is quite the departure. Why did you leave the fictional realm?

A: This book found me. In 2011, my sister died, and as we were sifting through the remnants of her life, I found a box of journals in the back of a closet. They belong to her husband, William Nealy, my brother-in-law. He was my mentor, a great man who stored vast amounts of knowledge and expertise in an unbelievably capacious mind, an artist and an adventurer – who, in 2001, had died by suicide. When I read these journals – after years of soul-searching – I discovered the presence of another man within the one we knew. This story of a self and its shadow self is what compelled me to write this book.

Q: How was it different—as a writer, in terms of process—to pen this book?

A: I faced a lot of perils writing this book. Writing intimately about my family. Sharing secrets that weren’t necessarily mine to tell, and sharing parts of myself too. These were challenges. But in the end all stories are the same. It’s all about telling a story sentence to sentence, page to page, something that keeps a reader reading. Finding out what happens next.

Caption: A Daniel Wallace original drawing, 2024

Q: What do you hope readers will take away from This Isn’t Going to End Well?

A: I don’t know, really. Every reader will find ways in which their own story or stories about someone close might overlap with this one. But exactly how and why I could never know unless they told me, and sometimes they do. My goal is always to make the experience of reading powerful, charged, consuming, and what happens after that is individual, personal, unknown to me.

Q: What do you love most about being a writer? What do you hate?

A: I love the writing, day-to-day. I love seeing what happens next. When I sit down to write I have no idea what’s about to happen so it’s as much a surprise to me as it is to my readers. The actual publishing process can be time-consuming, tedious, and arduous, especially when I just want to get started on another book. But it’s all good!

Q: I know you also teach creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill. What advice do you have for those who want to write, regardless of genre?

A: It’s the same for all of us, isn’t it? Read what you love, write what you love. If it sustains you, brings you joy, do it no matter what.