Robin Merle

Robin Merle is the author of Involuntary Exit: A Woman’s Guide to Thriving After Being Fired, which earned the Gold Medal from the Nonfiction Authors Association. Kirkus Reviews called it “a nuanced look at the psychology of organizational loyalty and the grief that results from the end of a professional relationship.” Foreword Clarion Review gave it ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, declaring it “a must-read for career-driven people of all genders.”

Her debut novel, A Dangerous Friendship, was released on October 28, 2025, by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Robin has published short fiction in The Chouteau Review, South Carolina Review, Kalliope, and Real Fiction. She holds a master’s degree from The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, where she earned a fellowship.
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In her other professional life as a nonprofit executive, Robin has raised over a half-billion dollars in philanthropic support to improve individuals’ quality of life and access to opportunities. A long-time New Yorker, she now lives in Maine with her family.

Your novel blends dark humor with psychological tension. How did you strike the balance between making readers laugh and keeping them on edge?
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Dark humor is often how people survive situations they don’t fully understand or can’t control. That's exactly where Tina lives for much of the novel.

I tried to let the humor stay slightly off-key, and used dialogue for sharp, sarcastic effect.  Spike and Tina are snarky, quick-witted New Yorkers so their banter is genuinely funny.  If a moment made me laugh and uneasy at the same time, I trusted it. The tension deepens as Tina begins to realize that what she once found absurd may actually be leading to a volatile confrontation. Ideally, readers feel that shift too: the jokes don’t disappear, but they start to land differently, leaving you smiling one moment and unsettled the next.

Tina and Spike’s friendship is intense, obsessive, and at times destructive. What drew you to exploring the kind of female friendship that feels both irresistible and dangerous?

I've always been interested in female friendships. Friendships that come into our lives at times of loss—like Tina's and Spike's—can be particularly intense since we're bonding over something painful.   When a woman is trying to reinvent herself after loss, she can be especially open to influences, forming relationships with people she might never otherwise have known.  I wanted to explore the idea of the dangerous friend who comes into our lives when we're vulnerable.  We know the archetypes of the popular girls and the mean girls—but what about the dangerous ones—the women who promise to give us power? Who tell us stories that we want to believe are true because our own lives seem so stale or we're unsure of what we want next.  That’s what makes these friendships so irresistible.

Tina’s desire to reinvent herself after a failed marriage is a powerful catalyst. What aspects of 1980s New York City made it the perfect setting for a woman trying to escape mediocrity and chase a bolder identity?

New York City in the 1980s had an electric vibe.  It pulsed with the sense that anything could happen if you were open to it.  I lived in the City during that time and it was magical, creative, and gritty all at once.  Wealth, street art, theater, fantasies of changing your life in a New York minute—it felt intoxicating.

At the same time, the decade was shaped by a second wave of feminism with women fighting for equal rights and questioning cultural and social norms.  That history fans the flames of Tina and Spike's relationship -- and their confusion.  They want power on their own terms, but they're also drawn to the idea of being lifted into a different reality by wealthy men.  That tension is very much of the moment.   

Spike is seductive, magnetic, and deeply mysterious. How did you approach crafting a character who is both a mentor and a threat—and why do characters like her continue to fascinate us?

I created Spike as a storyteller.  She mentors through her stories and through her rigid rules about how men and women should behave.  But the stories themselves always contain a threat -- either to Spike or to others around her. The rules tend to appear after someone has done something she doesn't approve of and carry the implicit threat of punishment or revenge. 

I wanted to make her character magnetic and mysterious by recounting the stories she told, the ones she wrote, and the ones she claimed to have lived.  I showed her attracting the very  attention she insisted she could conjure.  Her energy comes through in how she talks, flirts, and presents herself as all-knowing—especially when it comes to manipulating people.

She's a bit like a celebrity, and celebrities fascinate us.  They allow us to safely explore desire, ambition, and danger from afar.  They act out our fantasies.
 
The scenes in the rural summer cabin create a stark contrast to the electric pulse of NYC. What does the shift from city to backwoods reveal about Tina and Spike’s unraveling dynamic?

Tina and Spike feel like they're on overload from the constant push and pull of the city.  New York allows them to indulge their hopes, fears, neuroses, and wild sides.  They dream of going to a more rural, laid-back environment where the temptations of the city will be flattened and they'll be able to relax and write their stories.  Instead, they bring their toxic energy with them. They can't sit still.  Spike needs to go out—and when she does, she opens the same well of sexual energy, drugs, and mania they thought they were escaping. 

All of this unfolds in a small, shared, fairly isolated cabin, which accelerates the emotional turmoil they've been stirring all along.  Tina realizes they both lied to themselves about what they wanted.  They weren't looking to withdraw -- they wanted to both be the center of attention, just without the competition of the city.  That realization marks the beginning of the unraveling.

The story dives into nightlife, drugs, sex, and power. How did you ensure these elements supported character development rather than becoming shock value?

Nothing is gratuitous.  The bars introduce the "locals," who become real people in Tina and Spike's lives rather than stereotypes.  The drinking and drugs create space for confessions, reflections, and humor.  Sex is integral to the way both women view themselves and helps build out their relationships with men.  And, ultimately, the book is about power—between the two women, between men and women, between socio-economic classes, and between the city and the country.  Power isn't separate from character development; it is the engine of how these characters evolve and how their stories unfold.

As the women become increasingly entangled, readers start to sense something ominous beneath the wild fun. At what point did you want the audience to start questioning Spike’s intentions? 

There are clues from the very beginning.  When Tina finds Spike sitting on her porch at the writers' colony for no apparent reason, she instinctively steps back in fear.  Tina also offers an explicit warning early on: "It's tough to say whether Spike is good or evil.  Or whether I imagine too much about her." With that introduction, readers should be following the story with a wary eye. 

Readers should start questioning Spike’s intentions when she stays out all night with one of the men she met at the local bar—someone she had openly derided—then brings him back to the cabin. She deliberately encourages Tina to spend time with him, only to punish her for it afterward. Tina later describes him as “an omen,” a warning sign she doesn’t yet fully understand. That unease deepens when another man, Cody, comes to visit the cabin and Spike has literally nailed his photo to the wall as her next conquest. It's obvious that their nights of wild fun are shifting into something more disturbing.

The novel deals with blurred lines—between desire and danger, admiration and obsession, liberation and self-destruction. Which of these thematic tensions was most compelling for you to explore and why?

Desire and danger intrigue me because they're born out of vulnerability. Tina's marriage fails, Spike's father dies, and both women want to claw their way out of the lives they know into another world where they can be someone new--someone unknown to the people and places that shaped them. 

Their desire is to be loved and accepted as these new versions of themselves.  Moving out of their comfort zones promises to accelerate their reinvention and give them courage.

We've all read many stories where desire and danger drive relationships and bad decisions.  What interests me is how characters extricate themselves and what they take away from their experiences once the illusion cracks.

The 1980s are almost a character themselves in this book—gritty, glamorous, reckless. What kind of research or personal memories informed your depiction of this era.

I lived in New York City during the 1980s, and those memories are vivid.  I remember the dirty streets and startling art that kept popping up downtown.  The subways were filthy and overheated in the summer, and the city was deserted as everyone fled.  It was also the era of AIDS, Bernie Goetz, restaurant hero worship, and Wall Street gone wild. 

What I didn't remember clearly, I researched.  I looked into the protests for women's rights, which is a backdrop for women redefining their roles during that decade.  I researched real estate moguls, society pages, and financiers.  I reread books that captured the character of the city:  Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker; Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities; Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City; Emily Listfield's It was Gonna Be Like Paris; Edie by Jean Stein, among others.  I also revisited books on women's psychology written at that time, many of which are so deeply chauvinistic, they're shocking to read now.  
 
Without giving too much away: Tina eventually has to confront the truth about Spike. What do you hope readers take away from Tina’s journey toward self-preservation and reclaiming her power?

I hope readers reflect on the friendships that have shaped them, especially the ones that taught them things about themselves that they didn't know or didn't want to know.  I also want them to appreciate that we each have the power to stand up for ourselves and to realize that the person who has our best interests at heart is ourselves.

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Purchase the book here: 
https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Friendship-Novel-Robin-Merle/dp/B0DXD5JSLM