Welcome to mystery author, Victoria Dowd!
FYI, I'm a huge fan and can't wait to read Body on the Island!
Victoria
is a crime writer and the author of the Smart Women mystery series. Her novel, Body
on the Island, will be published on 23rd February. It’s the
sequel to her debut novel, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder, which was
published in 2020 by Joffe Books and was Classic Mystery’s Book of the Year. It
is also a finalist in The People’s Book Prize.
She
is an award-winning short story writer, winning the Gothic Fiction prize for
short fiction in 2019 and was runner up in The New Writer’s writer of the year
award. She has been short listed by Writers’ Forum and long-listed for The
Willesden Herald International Short Story Competition. Her work has been
published in various literary journals, including Aesthetica: A Review of
Contemporary Artists; Between These Shores Literary and Arts Journal; Dream
Catcher magazine; and Gold Dust.
She
also writes the Adapting Agatha series on her blog which can be found at https://victoriadowd.com/. She has spoken
at various literary festivals about Agatha Christie.
Victoria is originally from Yorkshire and graduated in law from Cambridge University. She was a criminal defence barrister for many years until finally hanging up her wig for my fictional crimes.
Website https://victoriadowd.com/
Twitter Victoria Dowd (@victoria_dowd) / Twitter
Instagram Victoria Dowd (@dowdvictoria) • Instagram photos and videos
Crime. The whodunit style.
Do your reading choices reflect your
writing choices?
Oh, very much so! I read a lot of Golden Age
Detective fiction, primarily Agatha Christie. I also like modern day writers in
this area of crime such as Martin Edwards. I’m currently reading a wonderful
series by Brian Flynn. I’m also revisiting Margery Allingham’s books which are
perfect for dark, cold nights by the fire. I do also read a lot of gothic style
novels such as Rhiannon Ward’s The Quickening. I like crime novels that have
that cross over between mystery and the supernatural. That really influences my
writing. I love evocative settings such as old, crumbling gothic houses. I
enjoy creating an atmosphere that immediately has the reader on edge. I do like
a sense in a murder mystery that it might not be one of the people we’re seeing
but perhaps something else. When I was doing a live FB reading one of the
listeners wrote a comment as I was reading that said, ‘It’s a ghost!’ I loved
that someone actually thought that the murderer might be something a little
more supernatural. I think the setting can conjure up all sorts of different
responses almost as if the reader can imagine new ‘characters’ wandering
around. I found Abbie Frost’s The Guest House was very evocative and had a
really wonderful dark edge to it. I also love to get into a crime series such
as Margaret Murphy’s amazing books and D.E. White’s. It really influences how I
see the books developing over time and the arc of writing a crime series.
Which type of characters are your favorite
to write?
I love writing strong
female characters. I like how they interact with each other. There’s a lot of
arguing and smart comments between the women in my book. They are a family and
I’m not sure strong female characters in a close relationship are always
conscious of the need to be ‘nice’ to each other. I think there are a lot more
layers to their relationships than that. There is genuine love and affection.
Nothing is fake or saccharine about these kind of characters. They don’t feel
the need to sugar coat anything. I want the readers to have really genuine
characters who are intelligent, funny but, more than anything, people they
think are real who they can relate to.
Do pictures, real life or plain
imagination create the character you want readers to love?
Very much so. I have a
strong image of Ursula, my narrator, and her mother. They’re not drawn from
real life pictures but are more my own imagination. I spend a lot of time with
these ladies so I can imagine every tiny bit of them now. I think that’s really
important to me, to be able to visualize these women walking around in the
story. I can see them in each scene I write and I know how they would react to
certain events. They’re very real to me.
Do your characters come before or after
your plot?
The characters came first. It’s a series so obviously for the sequel, Body on the Island, I already had most of my characters. But with the first book, I had a very strong idea that I wanted them to be a group of women who are at the heart of the books. The plots stem from these people and the kind of situations they might find themselves in.
How do you choose a villain and how do you make them human?
I like to choose the
kind of people who can hide in plain sight. Because they are whodunit books I
can’t make them obviously the villain but what I like to do is give them the
sort of characteristics that when I reveal who the murderer is, the reader can
imagine that might be the case. For instance, I might choose someone who has
irritating aspects to them that most people find annoying and experience a lot
in real life. Then when the killer is named, it’s a big reveal and shocking but
there’s definitely that part of the reader that says, ‘Yeah, I can imagine that
kind of person killing someone!’
BODY ON THE ISLAND
An uninhabited island.
Ten stranded strangers.
No way to escape.
Ursula Smart (not her real name), realising therapy alone
cannot teach her how to survive this life, is determined to make some changes.
She signs herself up for a survival course — along with her mother, aunts
Charlotte and Mirabelle and Bridget.
But the promised gentle weekend of foraging and camping in
the Outer Hebrides swiftly turns into a desperate battle for survival.
Their boat capsizes. Washed up on an uninhabited island, the
Smart women face starvation, freezing conditions and — worse — no Wi-Fi.
Then the murders begin.
Someone is killing them off one by one. Will the Smarts
escape or will they be next?
A Darkly Comic Golden Age Murder Mystery
Victoria Dowd’s brilliant whodunnit is perfect for
fans of Agatha Christie, Anthony Horowitz, Faith Martin and Stuart Turton.
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08W9F5ZKC
US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W9F5ZKC
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, Aunts 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.
Book link for The Smart Woman’s Guide to Murder https://geni.us/smartwomanvictoria
https://www.amazon.com/WOMANS-MURDER-classic-country-mystery-ebook/dp/B087C12B9L
Thanks for the Ideas
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