What If the Rumors Were True? Behind the Scenes of Ways To Be Wicked by Steve Rush

What if the most popular teacher on campus wasn’t just charismatic—but dangerous?
What if the smartest, most beloved student in school was murdered at a dance?
And what if the killer was someone no one dared suspect?

Author Steve Rush shares how a salacious rumor turned into a gripping mystery. In this behind-the-scenes essay, he reveals the spark that lit the fuse for his upcoming novel, Ways To Be Wicked—and why he refuses to outline, letting the story unfold through the characters themselves.

“I wasn’t sure who the killer was until after nearly a year of writing.”

Meet the people, the secrets, and the questions that drove this story to the page.

📝 Read the full essay below—and stay tuned for the novel’s release.

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My novel, Ways To Be Wicked, was inspired by a rumor about a teacher colleague of mine. I discounted the rumor’s credibility, but its salacious nature led me to wonder “What if…” and the story was launched in my imagination, if not inside the hallways of the high school where I taught.

What if a popular uber-masculine teacher, Russell Rusic, actually was the seducer of attractive high school girls? What if he was a long-time coach at the school with a string of state championships? With a reputation so big that his supervisors were afraid of him.

What if one of those girls, Usaré García, was Polk High School’s best in every way, with a high grade-point average, an outstanding record of community service and activism, and a huge following on campus and social media?

And what if that girl was found dead on campus one night during a school dance, the obvious victim of homicide?

What if there were several suspects with strong motives?

Andre Carver, the young Black man that she’d recently dumped? Memo Martinez, the leader of a street gang who was trying to recruit Usaré as a prostitute?

And what if Rusic wasn’t the only staff member with a physical attraction to Usaré? Perhaps the killer was one of Rusic’s jealous rivals. Maybe even one of the school’s administrators, Enrique Tavish, a married man with a sexual addiction that he hides from everyone, a man who’s himself been the subject of rumors…

As the author, I was not the only one watching this narrative unfold. Within the story was also a cop, Jim Burgoyne, a veteran who’s been assigned as school resource officer because he’s too unpredictable for the street; he’s got his own methods for investigation and his own concept of justice.

This drama cooked for years inside my head, its characters taking shape and plotting what they were going to do once I unleashed them on the page. I finally put my butt into a chair and began to pass on the story.

I say “pass on” not because I intended to breathe life into an old rumor but because the story had acquired a life of its own… because I wasn’t sure who the killer was until after nearly a year of writing.

These are the reasons I don’t try to create a plot outline or to predetermine “character arcs”— these things seem unnatural. I don’t know exactly how my stories will end, and I don’t know how my characters will become “people on the page” until they develop as I draft the novel. Nowadays, if I knew these things, I could feed the information into a machine, and it would create the outline and the character arcs for me. It could even write the book, I suppose. But I’m damn sure a machine can’t create organic people, not even on the page.

And “people on the page” is how a novel comes alive.

So, please enjoy Ways To Be Wicked.

Author Steve Rush