Life is a gift, yet when you lose a partner, it feels like a punishment. The loss can be all-consuming. The lucky, although it doesn’t feel as if fortune is smiling upon them, are directed to a path they never thought they’d take – a journey they must endure in order to survive. It keeps them going when all they want to do is hide under the covers and disappear for eternity. Until reality sets in and they realize others are dependent upon them leading the way through the forest of tears and fears.
Author Sarah Lotz knows the reality of losing her other half and she turned it into something beautiful and dark, warming and heart wrenching, a tribute to the man she loved, a legacy for their children, and a gift to mystery readers.
Kym: Welcome to the Cozy Corner, Sarah!
Sarah: It’s an honor to be here – thank you so much for inviting me and for your fiendishly brilliant questions. I had a blast answering them.
Kym: You may have written every mystery writer’s worst nightmare – HOW TO KILL A CRIME WRITER coming true. And yet for you, it truly was a serious source of anxiety throughout the writing process. Besides all the support from family and friends, what helped you get the job done, because as wonderful as a support system is, we all have to get out of our own heads (while staying in our character’s heads) to finish the job.
Sarah: I’ve always used writing for distraction and procrastination purposes – there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing – so although I struggled to settle on an idea for a novel after Charlie died, once the HOW TO KILL A CRIME WRITER characters began to come into focus, they gave me a reason to get up every morning. Also, unexpected loss/bereavement is deeply destabilizing and making the murder victim a (ahem) menopausal crime writer was a deliberate, admittedly deeply dark-humored nod to my worst, irrational fear at the time – that I too would die suddenly and leave my daughters without any back-up. And it’s no coincidence that the two main protagonists – Niamh and Leah – are closely related to the murder victim and are around the same age as my girls (paging Dr Freud etc).
Kym: You lost your soulmate when your husband died a few years ago and it sounds like you’ve had an incredible support system ever since. I love the way you paid homage to each person, (they each have a little piece – the funny bits – you dedicated just to them.) What part of writing HOW TO KILL A CRIME WRITER was the most joyous for you?
Sarah: Thank you so much for reading my self-indulgent blather at the back of the book! I enjoyed writing all of it, but I had great fun exploring the relationship between Niamh, the novel’s socially anxious narrator, and Leah Overton, the “kick-ass” private investigator character who bullies Niamh into investigating her mother’s murder. I’ve always been a fan of “odd couple” narratives, so it was grand to pay homage to one of my favorite tropes (incidentally, my daughters describe Niamh and Leah’s relationship as a “weird womance” – try saying that after a few beers!).
Kym: OMG, I love that weird womance! You did something different in the format of your book in that you had the sleuth seeking justice for a loved one’s death, instead of attempting to clear the name of a loved one who is a suspect. What was the hardest part about writing a semi-cozy mystery in that fashion?
Sarah: To be honest, it didn’t occur to me to go the name-clearing route, although it should’ve done seeing as I’m a crime fiction addict. Thank you for teaching me something (every day is a school day in this business!). As for the hardest part: ensuring that the identity of the murderer wasn’t too obvious from the start was a bit of a challenge.
Kym: I love Leah, what is there not to love?! Smart, savvy, she’s a go-getter ready to kick butt. Except she can’t – she’s fictional! And she suddenly has very identifiable flaws that our heroine Niamh couldn’t see before they teamed up to solve Niamh’s mother’s murder. Were you worried readers would see Niamh as wacked, or did you just decide to embrace Leah for the fun she adds to the story?
Sarah: Wacked! What a great word. I was more concerned that readers wouldn’t engage with Niamh at all, because until she’s forced out of her comfort zone and cottage, she’s not exactly active. Bringing in Leah, who forces her to “get off her arse and do something for once” was a way of upping the ante. In turn, Niamh has to help escapist thriller protagonist Leah navigate the far less action-packed confines of the “real-world” (for example, Leah finds car journeys deeply discombobulating – in her fast-paced fictional thriller world, travelling is never tedious and usually involves a high-speed chase of some sort). It’s up to readers to decide if Leah is a manifestation of Niamh’s suspicions about the cause of her mother’s death, or if she’s a fictional character who literally leaps off the page and into the real world – either interpretation works in the context of the story. That said, towards the end of the book, the interpretation I prefer is given more weight.
Kym: Your heroine, Niamh, has to fight her own insecurities and battle through mental health issues, grief, and guilt to become the exact thing she feels she can never be: a strong, talented woman with a purpose in life. Did you plan on the book being a coming of age story for someone’s who’s well past the age of puberty? Do you feel like you’re going through that now as well?
Sarah: Blimey, Kym, you totally clocked me there! I’m afraid it’s a “yes” to both questions. Despite being in my fifties, I loathe “adulting” and all the soul-crushing admin it involves (sometimes it feels like it takes an entire village just to help me to do my VAT). I think there are quite a few of us out there who (ahem) secretly struggle with arrested development and executive dysfunction, and gifting Niamh with these less-than-dynamic aspects of my personality and coming up with off-beat ways for her to confront and deal with them was both fun and cathartic.
Kym: Personally, I think we all come of age every decade at least. I’m on a writer’s retreat while writing this and we were talking about the different places we’ve visited because of places other authors have mentioned in their books. So I have to ask, is the hamlet of Buckstone in South Shropshire real? If not, is it based on a real hamlet?
Sarah: The name is fictional, but the setting is a thinly disguised version of my extremely rural home in the Welsh/Shropshire borderlands. That said, the tumbledown cottage Niamh inherits from her late mother is far tidier than mine will ever be, and I had to invent a motley crew of neighbors who could double as suspects because I don’t have any (human neighbors that is – the woodland that surrounds my hovel is home to a vibrant wildlife community).
Kym: That sounds like a very lovely hovel. Other than Leah and Annie, who is your favorite secondary character in HOW TO KILL A CRIME WRITER?
Sarah: That’s a no brainer: Brian the cat.
Kym: Brian is brilliant! I ask all of my authors if they have a cozy corner where they like to read or write. If you do, can you describe it the way Leah would?
Sarah: She’d spotted the old leather chair in a thrift store. Bought it on a whim. Liked that it had a history. A history that like her own, few would ever know about. Sure, getting it home hadn’t been easy – squashing an armchair into a Mini Cooper isn’t a task for the faint-hearted – but so what? In her experience, nothing good came easy. I’ll use it as a reading chair, she promised herself as she hefted it up the stairs. I need one of those. But it was not to be. Buying a comfortable chair had been her first mistake. Deciding to put it in a cozy corner of the bedroom was her second. Because like the bed, and the couch, and the other comfy chair in her writing shed, within seconds it was claimed by her trusty partners-in-crime – Clem Fandango and Bastian. She wouldn’t be without them. Couldn’t live without them. They’d saved her life more than once. And yet, as she eyed the fresh layer of dog hair coating the chair’s upholstery, and the half-eaten Bonio left carelessly on its seat, she found herself thinking, if only I’d adopted some hamsters instead.
Kym: Ha, love it! What are you working on now?
Sarah: This is such a cop-out of an answer, but I never talk about a work-in-progress in case I jinx it.
Kym: We will be waiting…Where can our readers find you on-line?
Sarah: Nowhere – I’ve opted out of using algorithmic-driven media for ethical and mental health reasons (and yes, I do know how pretentious that sounds!).
Kym: Thank you for joining us on the Cozy Corner, are hearts are with you and your family and we are anxiously awaiting your next book!
Until next month, cozy up with a great mystery!
About Kym Roberts
Kym Roberts writes by day and is a pro-surfer in her dreams by night. Her humor is often raunchy, her jokes are often bad, but her hunger for a story keeps the adventures coming fast. Experience the thrill & catch the wave of passion, mystery, and suspense with her on her website, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
Her fourth Scandalous Sisters, THE WICKED BARONESS under the pseudonym Helene Matheson is available now for pre-order. Watch for her new Bow Street Mysteries coming soon.
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