“The gate is open,” read Gillian Flynn’s e-mail with instructions on entering her Chicago home. “You’ll see a little door tucked in under the eaves . . . knock eight times and say Bloody Mary.” I couldn’t deny feeling a little like one of her characters: the wary huntresses who stalk her novels.

Six years ago, when her blockbuster novel Gone Girl was published, Flynn’s dark and mordant voice felt audacious, thrilling. Looking back at its success, and its tables-turning, sociopathic protagonist Amy Dunne, it’s hard not to see the seeds of deep female rage that have come to full bloom in our current #MeToo, Time’s Up moment. Since that book became a phenomenon, Flynn has mostly left publishing behind for Hollywood, including adapting Gone Girl for director David Fincher and co-writing the upcoming Widows with director Steve McQueen, about four women who pick up a life of crime after their husbands are killed.

Now, Flynn has set her sights on television. July 8 marks the premiere of Sharp Objects, HBO’s limited series based on Flynn’s 2006 debut novel. It’s a prestige production, with Amy Adams starring as Camille Preaker, a troubled reporter who returns to her hometown to cover the murders of two young girls and confront her own formidable childhood demons. An executive producer, Flynn was actively involved, writing episodes and collaborating with show-runner Marti Noxon (UnREAL) and director Jean-Marc Vallée (Big Little Lies).

With its theme of female complicity—the damage women do to each other—Sharp Objects could hardly feel more timely. I’d just watched the first three episodes when I met with Flynn, and its disruptive, gothic energy was still buzzing in my brain as we walked through her book-stuffed house, complete with a library that features a hidden passageway.

Vanity Fair: Let’s start with Sharp Objects. You began the writers’ room in 2016. Were there lots of discussions about the presidential campaign—about all those gender dynamics playing out?

Gillian Flynn: It would have been a conversation, but that really hadn’t started yet. But the show is so much a story about life before this new awareness, before #MeToo. It’s about what happens to women when they have to swallow down their stories—and what happens to that rage. And it feels like a cautionary tale at this moment when women are finally telling their stories, but we still have a president who’s a pussy-grabber. Despite a lot of brave, strong women, it’s still a strong current in America.

What were your priorities for the show?

I wanted to make it clear that the show’s about a matriarchy. I wanted it to be clear that power can be ugly, and a matriarchy is just as ugly as a patriarchy. It may look a little different, but power is bloody.

Women run the town; women do the bad things.

And this is a story about what women can do to each other—why women are cruel to each other, why women don’t reach down and help each other. As Madeleine Albright says, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

But we also know the reason why: it’s because there’s not enough space at the top. Men have always crowded out the spaces for women in every single strata of society. So there’s always been that fear of reaching down and helping up, because that means the space gets more crowded and do I get bumped out?