One April day in 2013, I got a creepy idea that would not let me go. I sat down and started writing in the voice of a girl who visits the mind of a serial killer every night in her dreams. Only she knows what he’s done; only she can catch him. And that might just mean becoming a killer herself.

Over the course of the next six months, that idea became a book. A book that took me from small-town Vermont to Route 66 to the wilds of the New Mexico desert (in my imagination), inspired me to watch YouTube videos about handguns and ammo, and generally haunted my dreams.

Fast-forward to the present: I’m so thrilled to be able to announce that my debut novel, a YA thriller called The Killer in Me, will be published by Disney-Hyperion.

Here’s the official Publishers Marketplace announcement:

Margot Harrison’s THE KILLER IN ME, in which a girl who sees through the eyes of a serial killer in her dreams hunts him down, only to find herself face-to-face with a charming family man who’s linked to her in a way she never suspected, to Laura Schreiber at Disney-Hyperion, in a pre-empt, by Jessica Sinsheimer at The Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency (World).

My agent, Jessica Sinsheimer, saw the potential in this book and helped me make it shine with her amazing suggestions. (Thanks to her, from now on I’ll never be able to visit Home Depot without spotting all the potential murder implements on the shelves!) She also made my year by comparing it to In Cold Blood.

My intrepid critique partner, Nicole Lesperance, told me flat out when my protagonist was being kind of a bee-yotch to the cute guy friend — with an unrequited crush on her — whom she drags along on her harrowing quest.

With their help, I kept in mind that a scary story needs its light moments, too — and people and relationships the reader can care about.

I’m so excited to work with Laura Schreiber at Disney-Hyperion, who shares my love of plot twists and turns. I hope this story creeps out readers as much as it did me.