Behind the Book is an ongoing series wherein I tackle a new chapter of Croak each week and give you all of the secret, behind-the-scenes tidbits and trivia that went into writing it. For an archive of past chapters, click here. To read the spoilers, highlight the blank spaces marked with <<hi>>; proceed at your own risk if you haven’t read the entire book. Enjoy!
Chapter 7: The Oreoing
- Only seven chapters in, and we’re already getting into spoiler alert territory. First hint that <<Zara is the bad guy: Lex would get into trouble for wanting to pursue the murderer she saw, but that’s not why Zara is stopping her from bringing it up to Uncle Mort. Now that she’s seen Lex in action, she’s realized they share the same sort of vengeful tendencies, and that she might be able to lure Lex over to the dark side. >>
- “Lex frowned, but lowered the sugar bowl she had readied.” I think in the first draft, she threw it anyway, shattering it against the wall. Lex used to be a lot more violent, if you can imagine it.
- Additionally, once she and Driggs got up onto the roof, Lex originally threw her slice of pizza at him. It was pointed out to me that if she were really as hungry as she is, she wouldn’t be hurling her dinner off the roof like that. So I changed it, because pizza is indeed a sacred, holy thing. And should only be thrown onto roofs, not off them.
- As mentioned in the previous chapter, the << Ghost Gum tree has a nest in it.>> It is mentioned again in this one. That’s because I knew I would be using it for something important in the next book, though I did not yet know what.
- The deal with <<Driggs’s parents,>> however: I knew exactly. There’s a reason this whole conversation is so squirrelly. Only had to get through two more whole books to reveal why.
- The real reason I made Driggs addicted to Oreos: <<so that he could be that much more devastated that he couldn’t eat them when he became a ghost. The Croak trilogy: brought to you by sadism.>>
- I have yet to find a guy–and a teenage one at that–who will cop to loving Titanic. So I made one up instead. But there must be some of you out there! Reveal yourselves!
Got any questions about Chapter 7? Post them below!
Gina 
this series needs to be made into a movie
I’m too squeamish for that. Love the book, but all those tragic dead kids?
Oh my goodness, I have been completely an utterly obsessed wit your book Croak! I get Scorch in a week or two but I can not wait to get it! I hope that there will be more romance between Driggs and Lex though… There wasn’t as much as I had hoped in Croak… Since he had lived her for so long I would have thought he’d jump right into her 😂 Have you written any other books that might interest me? Thank you so much for writing suck a riveting novel!! ~Shea