All the Details About Her New Book (Exclusive)

Gone Girl is a tough act to follow — and Gillian Flynn knows it.

When asked how her next book is coming along, the author and founder of the Zando imprint Gillian Flynn Books admitted to PEOPLE that trying to write a new novel in the shadow of the beloved thriller is no small feat.

“Oh, my goodness, it’s going! It’s hard to write after Gone Girl,” Flynn told PEOPLE. Specifically, she said, it’s difficult not to compare the 2012 smash hit — which was famously adapted into a 2014 film starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike — to her forthcoming fourth novel.

“I hope that people like it,” she continued. “Gone Girl is just lightning in a bottle, never gonna be replicated. So I have to kind of accept that and finish writing the dang book.”

And in order to do that, Flynn has to “stop getting in my head,” she admitted, adding that it’s “not a helpful place to be when you’re writing a book.”

The Sharp Objects and Dark Places author also teased a bit about the work-in-progress, which — fans of Flynn may be excited to learn — is another thriller like her previous page-turners. 

“It’s a character-driven psychological thriller. I don’t wanna say too much more,” Flynn told PEOPLE, teasing that “it’s definitely in the same vein” as Gone Girl.

Plus, she added, “I love my main character, as always.”

There is another notable throughline in Flynn’s work that she has no plans of breaking with the forthcoming novel: it will mirror her current life stage.

“I wrote Sharp Objects when I was single and it was very much about — it’s probably the closest to me — a single woman in her early 30s who’s struggling with some stuff,” the author said. “Then I wrote Gone Girl when I was getting married and had just gotten married, so I was thinking a lot about marriage and gender roles.”

“Now, I’m writing something where it involves a parent, a mom,” she said. “I do sort of trace my origin story as we move along to different books.”

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Flynn also noted that despite its success, she doesn’t know if Gone Girl would have gotten published in today’s market.

“It’s a weird book, when you think about it,” she explained. “It’s a whoddunit, and you find out who done it in the middle, [with] two main characters who aren’t very likable.”

But the “weird” worked, and the book was an immense success. Gone Girl sold more than 20 million copies after debuting at No. 2 on The New York Times bestseller list in 2012, and later became a hit David Fincher-directed movie (for which Flynn also wrote the screenplay).

The novelist also served as a co-writer when her Sharp Objects (2006) was adapted into a 2018 HBO series starring Amy Adams and she is currently working on an HBO limited series based on her book Dark Places, which was previously adapted into a 2015 film.