Season 10 - Episode 11: Nick Petrie

March 12, 2026·52 min·4 clips

Petrie's three-pass reading method — plot first, then craft mechanics, then structural 'bones and gears' — is the one technique he credits from his MFA.

Petrie arrives with a ninth Peter Ashe novel. Stephen James starts with a Wisconsin storytelling memory, then guides Nick Petrie into the work of suspense fiction without making it feel like a lecture. The mood is easygoing, but the craft talk has teeth. Petrie talks about moving between planning and instinct as the story pushes back. One line from a panel sticks: write by the seat of your pants until plotting becomes necessary, then plot until the story needs air again. Stephen keeps pulling the chat back toward practice. He cares less about whether a writer outlines than about what makes a tense story feel earned on the page. There is a good detour about a discouraging class, the kind of advice that can freeze a writer instead of helping. Petrie treats process as uneven ground. Sometimes the writer needs a map. Sometimes the next turn only appears by walking into it. From there, Stephen moves to character. How does one protagonist carry nine books when so much writing advice says characters have to transform? The answer lands in a useful place: in a long-running series, revelation can do more work than reinvention. Peter Ashe is the example. The episode argues, gently, that suspense is not only trouble getting worse. It also depends on whether the person in trouble feels true. Stephen closes by recommending the Peter Ashe novels, mentioning The Dark Time, and pointing listeners back to other Story Blender interviews.

As heard by us

Nick Petrie makes the push and pull between plotting and discovery feel practical, candid, and useful.

The Story Blender’s conversation with Nick Petrie uses his new Peter Ash novel, The Dark Time, as a way into the messier mechanics of suspense writing.

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You want to hear Nick Petrie talk through what happens when the plan gives way to discovery.

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