“When I was working on the other books, that was always my goal, and when the goal wasn’t reached, I became pretty devastated by that.”

“I think in our culture there’s this focus for writers that the end goal is publication, even to the detriment of the work itself,” Julia continues. “I would never have written The Writing Retreat without having certain frustrations during the path to publication,” Julia says of the inspiration behind the book, which is not the first one she’s written - it’s just the first that’s made it to publication. Julia and Andrea have always been close and lived together for eight years after college in Brooklyn, where they still reside, albeit separately, getting together for dinner regularly.Īndrea went from school to working in magazines during the recession, while Julia took a more belabored route through educational and science publishing after graduating, before going back to school to become a therapist, which she says has helped her in her writing. Julia Bartz and Andrea Bartz are pictured with Andrea’s novel, We Were Never Here. This surely influenced their output of The X-Files and James Bond spec scripts, as well as an illustrated book series entitled The Ghost Gang. “We had our own banned-books library!” Andrea exclaims. Stine and Christopher Pike, their mom brought them home to the Bartz household. When the school decided to purge its surprisingly robust collection of horror novels and thrillers by such writers as R.L. Their love of words was fostered in particular by their mother, who was a volunteer librarian at their Christian grade school. The Bartz sisters grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The only problem is, Alex has been suffering from acute writer’s block - and the last-minute addition of her ex-best friend Wren to the writing retreat surely won’t help matters. At the end of the retreat, Roza will offer a lucrative publishing contract to the writer who produces the best manuscript. The Writing Retreat, out February 21 through the Emily Bestler Books imprint of Simon & Schuster, is about disillusioned publishing staffer Alex, who is just about ready to give up on her dreams of ever making the transition to author when she’s given the opportunity to attend the mysterious and exclusive titular writing retreat headed by one of her heroes, the equally mysterious horror author Roza Vallo. But did you know she has a sister, Julia Bartz, who is also an author and will be making her publishing debut with the similarly twisty The Writing Retreat?

You’ve probably heard of Andrea Bartz, author of the New York Times best-selling thriller and 2021 Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here, as well as 2019’s The Lost Night and 2020’s The Herd, and The Spare Room, forthcoming in June.

The writing retreat julia bartz