Author Talk: Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Writing Place, Space, and Setting with M.L. Rio

The best novels in any genre are inescapably immersive, redolent with sensory detail that transports you across time and space. How do writers achieve this full immersion effect in fiction? Does setting inspire story, or do you begin with a story in search of a setting? M.L. Rio has written about boarding schools and graveyards and diners and dive bars and, most recently, long drives from one coast to the other — always hoping to craft a story you can climb inside and live in for a while. For her recent road trip novel, Hot Wax, she sold her house and lived out of a two-door Honda for nearly two years to do “boots on the ground” research to bring the book to life. This author talk explores creative approaches to writing and research, how fact and fiction work together to create a multisensory experience of place in prose, and how to find inspiration anywhere in the world–no wheels and no passport required.

M. L. Rio is the internationally bestselling author of If We Were Villains and Graveyard Shift. Her most recent novel, Hot Wax, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2025. She is a music writer, record collector, and regular contributor to The Vinyl District. She holds an MA in Shakespeare studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe and a PhD in English from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research examines representations of “madness” and mental disorder on the early English stage.