The Woman Behind the Mysteries

Writing by Gia Miller

Photography by Justin Negard

Katonah resident and New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub is known for her thrilling suspense and mystery novels 

It was the mid-1980s, and Wendy Corsi Staub was a college senior determined to become an author. After a $29 flight from Buffalo to Newark, she took a bus to Manhattan, dropped a quarter into a pay phone on 42nd Street, and dialed a phone number she’d written on a napkin.

Staub called Lucia Macro, a senior editor at Silhouette Books. She didn’t know Macro, but her roommate’s sister met her on a summer internship, so there was a distant connection.

“I didn’t realize what I was doing,” she says. “I was too young to know any better. You don’t do things like that. But all I wanted to do was move to New York and get published. I was this small-town girl from Dunkirk, just south of Buffalo, and I just called her blindly. It was insane.”

Macro was in her office, right around the corner, and she picked up the phone. She invited Staub to her office that very moment, and they hit it off. They talked about how she might break into publishing, find an affordable apartment, and a way to support herself in the city.

“If she had been anyone else, she probably would have said no,” Staub believes. “It was just one of those things. We had so much in common, and we became good friends and then colleagues. Eventually, she became my editor for 17 years at Harper Collins until she retired this summer. We’re still really close, and we text daily.”

Staub, who now lives in Katonah, is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who has written over 100 books, if you count the ones she’s ghostwritten for celebrities. She’s known for her suspense and mystery novels, and she also writes women’s fiction under the pseudonym Wendy Markham – one of which, “Hello, It’s Me,” was adapted into a Hallmark movie that she says is on “heavy rotation.” 

Her young adult series about Lily Dale was optioned by Tish Cyrus’ Hopetown Entertainment and recently sold to NBC’s Peacock. Additionally, she has published books as Wendy Brody and Wendy Morgan. And she even co-authored four books with former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and three with model/actor Fabio.

The beginning

When she was in third grade, Staub’s teacher assigned the class their very first writing assignment: an essay. Staub, who had recently gone on a family trip to Springfield, wrote about Abraham Lincoln.

“I was obsessed with Lincoln, and I was the only kid in the class who didn’t mind the assignment,” she remembers. “It was the first thing I ever wrote. The teacher really liked it, so she called me up in front of the class and put it up on the bulletin board. I was humiliated because I was so shy back then, and it wasn’t cool to like writing. But secretly, I was very proud.” 

Embarrassment aside, Staub continued to write, and eventually she sold her first piece while still in college.

“My first sale was a poem to Seventeen magazine; I cashed that $15 check to buy beer for my friends,” she says. “I was always submitting my writing. I even submitted that Abraham Lincoln essay to magazines, and I still have the rejection letters. I was in third grade, and I received a letter saying, ‘Sorry, this is not right for McCall’s magazine.’”

Staub moved to Queens in January of 1987 after landing a job in the textbook marketing department of McMillan Publishing. But it wasn’t editorial, and she was bored, so after six months, she left to pursue temp/freelance work. When she began freelancing at an ad agency, she quickly made friends with the staff and transitioned into a full-time position. She began writing her first novel on the side. 

Try, try again 

Staub believed she knew what it took to get published. She’d worked at two independent bookstores during college, and one of her responsibilities was to arrange The New York Times bestsellers every weekend. She dreamt of having a bestseller one day, so she studied these books to learn what makes a novel become a bestseller. 

In 1988, Staub finished her first novel and submitted it everywhere – agents, publishers, contests. No one wanted it. So she wrote another. By then, she was an associate editor for romance novels at Silhouette Books, so she wrote a romance book and submited it everywhere again. This time, under a pseudonym. 

“I rented a P.O. Box out of Grand Central because I knew people in the industry,” she remembers. “I got rejected again. Then one day, my boss, a senior editor named Valerie Hayward, called me into her office and said, ‘Shut the door.’ I thought I was getting fired. Then she said, ‘This is you, right?’ She was holding my manuscript. She continued, ‘You’re going to be published. You’re a really good writer. But this is not the book. Why are you writing romance? That’s not what you like to read. You should write what you read.’”

“I’ll never forget that,” she continues. “She gave me a gift, even though she probably shouldn’t have. She was great, and she gave me all this feedback.”

Staub took the advice to heart. At the time, she read a lot of young adult novels, so she wrote that. While writing her third book, she went on a job interview. In the end, it was between her and Ann Brashares (author of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”), and Brashares got the job. 

“The editor called to tell me I didn’t get the job, but before she hung up, I said, ‘Can I submit to you, because I have a partial,’” she remembers. “She said, ‘Sure,’ and she read the partial. You usually don’t get a first book deal on a partial. But on May 18, 1992, at about 6:00 p.m., I was in my office, and I got a phone call. I screamed so loud! My friend across the hall heard me and slid a note under my door that said, ‘I know you just sold your book. Congratulations!’ I think I still have that note, and we’re still friends.”

“Summer Lightning,” a young adult thriller, was released in June 1993. After that, she began writing and publishing several books a year. 

Embodying the mayor

Two years after “Summer Lightning,” Staub was eight months pregnant with her first son when she got a call from her publisher. They’d hired someone to ghostwrite a book for Ed Koch, and it needed to be rewritten. Could she do it? 

“It was so weird,” she says. “I came to New York with no money to be a writer. I had zero money, and he was THE MAYOR. When I first got here, I was living in Queens in basically a bathtub. Then, a few years after I published my first book, I was pregnant with my first son, and I got this call.”

They told Staub they needed the rewrite in a month. Since she was “just waiting to have a baby” and she hated being idle, and because her mother was three weeks late with her three children, Staub said yes.  

“I thought it was a good time for me to take it on because I thought I had plenty of time,” she explains. “But, of course, my son was born a few days early on a Friday night in March. I got flowers from my publisher on Monday morning, and my agent called that afternoon. I had just come home from the hospital. She wanted to know if I got the flowers and then told me they still needed the book by Friday.”

She finished the book on time. Then, a few weeks later, her phone rang. 

“I answered the phone, and I hear, ‘Please hold for Ed Koch’” she remembers. “I was home with a newborn, so I ran into his room, put him in his crib, and shut the door. He began screaming, probably wondering why I did that, but Ed was on the phone. He said, ‘I hear that I owe you a big favor,’ and then he heard my son crying in the background. He asked me if that was a baby. I said yes, and then he asked, ‘How old?” I said, ‘He’s three weeks.’ And he was shocked. He couldn’t believe I finished his book right after I had a baby. Then they officially hired me to write with him. He was a good guy. He was a mensch, as they say.”

Staub and Koch wrote three more books together, including “The Senator Must Die,” “Murder on 34th Street,” and “Murder on Broadway.”

Building her brand

Over the years, Staub has mainly written mystery or suspense novels. 

“I’m a control freak, and I used to be afraid of everything until I started writing books where I was in control of the scary stuff,” Staub explains. “I feel like if I write about it, it can’t happen – I know that’s a weird, superstitious thing. But I’m also really nosy and really curious. I love a secret, and I love a big twist. And I like to write them. I write what I like to read.”

Staub says there’s a difference between mysteries and suspense. 

“In suspense, you’re building towards something; something’s going to happen, and it’s scary,” she explains. “In a mystery, it’s already happened, and you must unravel it. I think I started writing true suspense when I became a mom. It shifted the way I looked at things. Suddenly, everything seemed so fraught and dangerous, and I knew I would do anything to protect my son.” 

But writing a novel isn’t as simple as coming up with a plot. Staub says she does “a ton of research, and so much of it never makes it into the book.” That research includes the location of the book, the characters’ psychology and occupation, police procedures, and even current events and/or weather during that period of time. And because she says writing “is a really lonely business,” she has become close friends with a group of women who are also well-known mystery and/or suspense writers: Alison Gaylin, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, Kellye Garrett and Alafair Burke. 

“We have this little daily thread, and we go back and forth all day,” she describes. “We will throw something out there, and then we all go down the rabbit hole together. One will say, ‘Have you seen this?’ or someone will ask, ‘Did you watch this true crime show?’ The research can be so much fun. It doesn’t force you to sit in a room by yourself and write all day.”

Fact or fiction

Once a novel is released, one of the most common questions she’s asked by her friends is if a character is based on them. 

“They think I’ve written them,” she says. “They’ll tell me, ‘This character seems so familiar.’ But unless I’m writing something for a charity, I don’t base my characters on people I know. Sometimes, I’ll do a little cameo, but that’s it. I actually have one friend who was convinced I wrote about her house, but I didn’t.”

However, that has somewhat changed over the years. The first character ever to make a guest appearance as themselves was her cat, Chance the Cat, who first appeared at their doorstep one evening, very pregnant and very ill. 

“I posted on the Katonah Parents Facebook page asking if someone lost her,” she remembers. 

No one claimed her, so Rescue Right took Chance in until she had her kittens, then her son’s history teacher fostered Chance and the kittens until Chance could wean them.

“After she gave birth and went to the foster home, she began hemorrhaging,” Staub remembers. “So, the foster mom and I brought her and the kittens to the Bedford Animal Hospital in a box; she was dying. We didn’t know if she would make it through the night. My boys were at friends’ houses, but they kept calling me and pleading with me, saying, ‘Don’t let her die! Do whatever you have to do.’ I put the whole thing on our credit card – it was a couple thousand dollars. And I kept wondering, why didn’t she go to Alec Baldwin’s doorstep? Why was she on mine? I can’t afford to put this kind of money on my credit card.”

“The next morning, I was swimming at the Saw Mill around five o’clock, and the woman from the animal hospital called me,” she continues. “She told me the cat had made it through the night. Then she said, ‘You know, there’s something really special about this cat.’ So, while I was swimming my laps, I thought about how everything happens for a reason. But what was the reason here? We already knew we were going to adopt her, even though my husband and my sons are all really allergic. But I knew she was there for a reason. Then it occurred to me – I was supposed to write about her. A few days later, I began writing “Nine Lives,” and the story included a pregnant rescue cat. Since then, I’ve put real-life cats in all my stories. I’ve put my cats and my friends’ cats in my books. Right now, I’m writing “Dog Days” as part of the Lily Dale series, so I’m including my friends’ dogs.”

Lily Dale

In 2005, she began writing what has become her favorite series: Lily Dale. It began as four young adult novels – “Awakening,” “Believing,” “Connecting” and “Discovering.” She hadn’t written young adult novels in over a decade, but this one felt right. Once the series was complete, she wrote five more traditional mysteries about Lily Dale, and two more are on the way in 2024 and 2025.

“Lily Dale” is a paranormal mystery series set in the real-life upstate New York village of the same name. The young adult series features a teen named Calla Delaney whose mother suddenly dies. When the young teen visits her grandmother in Lily Dale, she begins to learn that her mother’s death might not have been an accident. The adult series features a new protagonist – widowed mom Bella Jordan – who ends up in Lily Dale somewhat by mistake. While the heroine is new, many of the characters from the young adult series are back, and they’ve all grown up. 

Staub grew up near Lily Dale, so she was familiar with the area, but she still did her research. As she began writing the series, there was one similarity between Staub and her young adult heroine: their moms. 

“I was writing them when my mom was dying in 2005, and my mom and I would visit Lily Dale together,” she remembers. “We were both thinking the same thing: when she was gone, she would try to reach me somehow in Lily Dale. And I feel like she did. Right after she died, a famous medium was there, and my father, her two sisters and my cousins all went to meet him. It was so specific that it was shocking.” 

“I began by just researching Lily Dale for a book, but in the end, it was cathartic for me,” she continues. “I was really channeling that grief when I was writing that character. It wasn’t intended to be that way, but life imitated art.” 

The young adult series was recently sold to NBC’s Peackock, but it’s not in development yet.

Things have definitely changed

With over thirty years in the publishing industry, Staub has seen a lot of changes. The biggest, she believes, is social media. There are parts of it she loves because she’s “interested in people,” but when she feels obligated to post regularly to sell books, she’s not a fan.  

In 2022, Staub felt immense pressure to be on social media for the release of “The Other Family.” Unfortunately, her father-in-law died suddenly, and his funeral was on release day. The publisher had set up an Instagram tour that she had to cancel at the last minute.

“I was supposed to be liking and responding to all the bloggers, and the publicist told me that it was okay to cancel,” she remembers. “Obviously, it was okay, but I just remember feeling like my book would fail because I was mourning someone instead of being on social media. And to this day, I wonder if that book would have done better if I had been able to do that tour. But on that day, it just seemed so unimportant.”  

Since then, she’s kept those boundaries.

“I was actually told I needed a TikTok channel to release my last book, and I didn’t do it,” she laughs. “I told them I’m not going to do dance videos – it’s not my thing. I’m busy with life. I want to spend time with my husband and kids.”

Her town and her tribe

Staub loves Katonah. She’s fictionalized it numerous times in her suspense and women’s fiction novels. She often changes the geographic location and the names of businesses, but she does “name drop” some of her favorites, like Mardino’s in Mount Kisco. (Insider tip: Katonah is usually referred to as Glen Haven Park, but it was Townsend Heights in her first bestseller, “Last To Know.”)

“It’s always the town where nobody locks their doors, where you feel safe, and you never know who’s living next door,” she explains. “I love that because I like danger striking close to home.” 

“We moved here on purpose,” she continues. “We lived in lower Westchester, and then we moved to Rhode Island for a couple of years for my husband’s job. When we came back to New York in 1996, I didn’t want to live in a crazy busy place because we had a taste of a bucolic life. Katonah was our happy compromise, and we’ve never looked back. This became home. The town has a personality; it’s such an unusual place.”

She’s been in the same house ever since, and she says she loves her “old house” and the people she’s met. 

“I talk about it all the time – this is home,” she says. “I’m so grateful for the people; our library is great, and so are our local business owners. I’ve been shopping at the same places for years. I know the names of everybody in the stores, and they know me. So, it’s really special to me.”

Her friends are also what make the town special. At the beginning of the pandemic, they started a tradition that they, the Friday Night Girls, have continued.

“Every Friday night, we met on someone’s deck, even in the dead of winter, and we would talk and enjoy some wine six feet apart – just to stay sane,” she explains. “We keep it up to this day. When I sold the series to NBC, it was a Monday, so we had an emergency Friday Night Girls gathering. My friendships, especially my local friendships, are very important to me.”

So, it’s fitting that her dream is to spend more time with the people she loves. 

“I’m a people person; I cherish family and friends,” she says. “And there’s so little time – not just with my boys, but with our friends and family. I always feel rushed. I always feel like nothing is ever enough for me. I would love to feel like there’s enough time to savor the people that we love. And my other dream? I want a pool in my backyard! Hey town officials, if you’re reading this, please put the sewers on my street, because we have a septic field, and I want a pool.”

This article was published in the November/December 2023 edition of Connect to Northern Westchester