HeyJaredOnly on Paper, April Henry's Substack
As the New York Times bestselling author of 31 thrillers for teens and adults, I kill people, but only on paper. Sharing behind the scenes peeks into writing compelling thrillers, interesting research, and things that have caught my eye.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Sep 24, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 16, 2026
Latest issues
A snake eating its tail (or tale) (opens the original)
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Anthropic used a half-million pirated books to train Claude, its large language model (an LLM is a type of AI). Twenty-two of those books were mine.Anthropic was sued. The judge in that case said it was okay to use authors’ books to train the LLM, but it wasn’t okay to use pirated books. Thanks for reading Only on Paper, April Henry's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<form class="subscription-widget-subscr
How a New York Times bestselling thriller author goes from a vague idea to a book (opens the original)
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For me, the new year doesn’t start January 1. It feels like it really begins with the first day of school. As we progress toward fall, I’m scheduling school visits. And I’m playing around with three new book ideas: a young adult thriller and (surprise!) two middle-grade thrillers.Thanks for reading Only on Paper, April Henry's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<input class="email-input"
Roald Dahl Made Me a Writer (opens the original)
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When I was a kid, Roald Dahl not only wrote the stories I read—he helped a story I wrote get published.I was in grade school when I started writing my own stories. My first was about a middle-aged woman named Maggie. When she is driving behind a logging truck, one of the logs comes loose, lands on her car, and crushes her. I still remember how I felt after writing her final moments. I was filled with the exhilarating realization that I could do anything in a story. Even kill people! (Maybe it sh
My Dad Had a Secret (opens the original)
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How do you eat an elephant? “One bite at a time,” that old joke, is still true. I am currently eating an elephant made up of the dozens of letters my dad sent home from WWII. He was in the Marines and wrote his parents every few days. Because both my parents are gone and I am the oldest, I ended up with them. Looking at them has always been daunting. There were probably interesting things in them, but whenever I pulled one out and read it, there was a lot of this: “The PX over here has all kind
The meanest thing another kid ever said to me (opens the original)
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When your clothes cause you painAfter my last newsletter about growing up food insecure, I heard from so many of you about your childhoods. One even had to dumpster dive for food as a child. (Writing that newsletter helped me be strong enough to toss food and spices that expired the previous decade. Even though I knew I would never use them, it was still a struggle.) Another reader told me she still feels the echoes of growing up with only two pairs of pants. Man, did that set off echoes. <p cla
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