Before we get started, I have two things I'd like to say.
- I had the great fortune of reading The Smart Woman's Guide to Murder! If you are an Agatha Christie fan or a lover of "locked room" mysteries, you'll absolutely enjoy Victoria's style of writing. She's updated the genre for today's audience and kept me engrossed and guessing until the end. Her descriptive writing style had me highlighting sections of text just to savor them. The entire old mansion setting evoked just the right feel for a murder during a book club retreat.
- Please read to the VERY END of this interview for a special surprise.
That's it! Welcome to author Victoria Dowd with her debut novel "The Smart Woman's Guide to Murder."
Victoria is also an award-winning short story
writer, having won the Gothic Fiction prize for short fiction in 2019 awarded by
Go Gothic. She was runner up in The New Writer’s writer of the year award and her
work has been short listed and Highly commended by Writers’ Forum. She was also
longlisted for The Willesden Herald International Short Story Competition and
has had short stories published in various literary journals and magazines. Victoria
also writes the non-fiction series Adapting Agatha about adaptations of Agatha
Christie novels. She is originally from Yorkshire and, after studying law at
Cambridge University, was a criminal law barrister for many years before
becoming a full-time writer.
What would you say are
your strengths as an author?
I’d say I’m pretty
diligent. I like to keep as organised as possible and, as a writer of
whodunnits, I plan meticulously. I have masses of notebooks and files filled with
research and a very big pinboard covered in maps, photographs and a lot of red
string. In some ways, it does look like I’m planning a murder! I go over the
details again and again, making sure there are no plot holes and that
everything fits together like a perfect jigsaw.
How often do you write,
and do you write using a strict routine?
I write Monday to
Friday, every day for about five hours. I try to take weekends off unless I
have edits that need to be finished and sent back. I am quite strict about that
otherwise I just wouldn’t get it done. I never usually write after about 6pm,
particularly since I may well have had a glass of wine by then and the writing
is absolutely awful after that!
Five years from now,
where do you see yourself as a writer?
Hopefully, as the writer
of a successful series of crime novels and, who knows, maybe someone will make
them into a TV series! Now that would be marvelous. Like most writers, I’ve
imagined who’d play each role and all the settings!
If you could offer one
piece of advice to a novice writer, what would it be?
Stick at it! Just keep
going and write as much as you can, as often as you can. Do it for the love of
writing and write what you love. Don’t write what you think other people will
like, write what you have a passion for. I adore Golden Age detective fiction
so that’s the genre I write in. But I also love ghost stories and the
supernatural so I write short stories in that genre. Don’t send anything out to
people until you’re absolutely happy with it and it’s finished. Make it the
best thing you’ve ever written until you just think it can’t be any better.
That might be more than one piece of advice!
What would you consider
to be the best compliment a reader could give your book?
It would be about the
quality of the writing. If people say it is beautifully well written, I’m a
very happy writer, because, after all, that’s what it’s all about.
What are you working on
now?
I’ve just finished
writing the second book in the Smart Women series. It’s called The Smart
Woman’s Guide to Survival and follows the women who survived at the end of
the first book. They decide they weren’t particularly good at survival so set
off on a Bear Grylls’ style survival weekend to the Outer Hebrides. When they
are shipwrecked on a deserted island, the murders begin. Is it one of their
group or was someone, or something, there already? I like to play with the
classic whodunnit scenario and put unusual people in unusual settings. I think
there’s a bit of everything in there this time, fear, humour and the all
important murder mystery to be solved. I’ve absolutely loved writing this one!
It’s been fantastic fun taking the characters on further and getting behind why
they act in the extraordinary way they sometimes do. I’m just waiting for the
edits to come back so I can get to work on those and, my favourite part, seeing
the cover art! I love watching the ideas and words come to life and finally
form into a book. It’s an absolutely magical transformation and a very special
moment when you finally see the finished book. I can’t wait!
Website link: https://victoriadowd.com/
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/VictoriaDowdAuthor
Twitter: @victoria_dowd
Instagram: dowdvictoria
THE SMART WOMAN’S GUIDE TO MURDER
A faded country house in the middle of nowhere.
The guests are snowed in.
The murders begin.
Withering and waspish, Ursula Smart (not her
real name) gate-crashes her mother’s book club at an isolated country house for
a long weekend retreat. Much to Mother’s chagrin. Joining them are
Mother’s best friend, Mirabelle, Aunt Charlotte and Less, and Bridget with her
dog Mr Bojangles. It doesn’t matter that they’ve read Gone Girl three
times this year already, this retreat is their chance to escape bustling
suburbia. But someone has other ideas.
A body is found in
the grounds.
Is a lone killer hunting them? Or has one of their
own group embarked on a killing spree?
What they need is to stop sniping at each other
long enough to solve the mystery before the killer strikes again.
What they need is a guide to survive.
A GOLDEN AGE COUNTRY HOUSE MURDER MYSTERY BROUGHT
BANG UP TO DATE
Funny and shocking in equal turn, Victoria Dowd's
brilliant whodunnit is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Anthony Horowitz,
Liane Moriarty, Faith Martin, Frances Lloyd and Stuart Turton.
Link to buy book: https://geni.us/smartwomanvictoria
AND NOW FOR THE SPECIAL BONUS!!
Victoria was absolutely thrilled to
be asked to give a reading of The Smart
Woman’s Guide to Murder on BBC Radio Devon and chat about writing, Agatha Christie and her favourite place - Burgh Island.
Here’s the link. She appears exactly 30 minutes in.
It's rewarding to read about dedicated writers.
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