From Federal Reserve executive to author: How Marisa Walz wrote debut novel ‘Good Intentions’

Marisa Walz has always wanted to be a writer, even if her career path might not reflect that. The suburban Chicago-based Federal Reserve executive was a journalism major in college, then switched to pre-optometry before changing gears again and earning a master’s in business administration.

“I was crystal clear on what I wanted to do but … it seems like a kind of unrealistic thing,” Walz said of her lifelong dream of becoming an author.

So she stuck with the business path instead. After finishing grad school, she took a few different jobs in that field before eventually landing at the Federal Reserve.

“I really like … that sense of accomplishment and more analytical type work,” Walz said of her full-time gig.

Even so, she “really missed doing something creative.”

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That feeling reached its peak about 10 years ago, after Walz had her first child. Just days after her son arrived, she was at home with the newborn and contemplating his future – and her own.

She thought to herself, “If he has a clear vision for what he wants to do or a real passion, I hope he just goes for it.”

From there, she said she realized that she might as well set an example for her son by pursuing her own lifelong passion.

The new mom made a decision: “I’m going to just try and go for it. I’m just going to write a book.”

The result of that decision is her debut novel, “Good Intentions,” which is being released Feb. 3. She will be in Marion to discuss the book Feb. 5 as part of an event sponsored by Swamp Fox Bookstore.

While “Good Intentions” is the fourth book she’s written since those newborn days, it is the first to be published.

All her books have been in the suspense genre, which she notes differs from the adjacent thriller genre. Thrillers are about “what’s going to happen next,” she explained, but suspense focuses more on “why is this happening?”

That is the key question lingering over “Good Intentions,” which centers on a grieving luxury event planner named Cady who becomes increasingly obsessed with a stranger -- a fellow grieving woman named Morgan -- whom she meets in a hospital waiting room.

As Cady’s actions grow more desperate, the “why” question becomes more urgent for readers. That dynamic is part of what draws Walz to the genre.

“You really have to trust the author that you’re going to understand why at the end,” she said.

Walz holds up her end of the bargain, with plenty of twists and turns along the way.

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There is a heavy focus on grief throughout the story, but Walz said that’s not because of any major personal experience she’s had.

“I didn’t set out to do a grief book,” she said, but decided to put that aspect at the forefront to help explain the characters’ actions.

“There was no way to write the story and have it be believable and not have the grief be really apparent and heavy within the story,” she said.

The characters’ work lives aren’t based on Walz’s personal experiences, either. Narrator Cady is a planner of glitzy parties, and her husband, Matt, works in commercial real estate. There are no financial analysts or banking executives to be found in Cady’s inner circle.

“Writing is my break from all that,” Walz said. “It’s allowing me to have that other creative side.”

Rather than drawing on things that have happened to her, Walz said she uses her keen observational skills to help craft her characters and tell their stories.

“I’m a very close observer of people,” she said, noting that she’s always been interested in listening to people and trying to understand them.

“That makes it easy for me to write about it in such detail, even if I’ve never known anybody like that, or that’s nothing like what I am,” she said.

There is, however, one thing about the book that is based on Walz’s own experience: the setting. All the action takes place in the Chicago area, from fancy parties in the city to small family gatherings in suburban homes.

“It was important to me to represent the Midwest,” said Walz, 43, who was partially raised in Bettendorf and has strong family ties to Eastern Iowa, with relatives in Muscatine, Clinton, Davenport and Maquoketa.

She noted that while many stories “are on one coast or the other,” she instead wanted to “capture all those different sides of the Midwest.”

Her next book will keep with that Midwest theme, with part of it set in Iowa. She’s not 100 percent certain that it will be published, but said the odds are “looking good” for it to be released sometime in spring 2027.

It’s still in the writing and editing process, which Walz said has been “challenging” this time around. But she added that it’s all started to come together in the past few weeks -- just another example of how her decision to “go for it” a decade ago still is paying off.