This week we had the pleasure of interviewing New York Times bestselling Author Rhys Bowen! Her historical mysteries have been nominated for several awards including the Left Coast Crime Lefty Award and the Malice Domestic Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel. Her new novel about a woman uncovering the mysteries of her father’s past, The Tuscan Child, comes out today! Check out what Rhys has to share with us about writing a good mystery!
Have you always wanted to be a writer or did you interest develop over time?
My mother tells me I started writing at 4, so I guess it’s always been part of me. I have always told stories.
You started your career writing plays, children’s books, and YA novels and then switched it up to write mysteries. Was it difficult to switch genres? What was your inspiration to start writing mysteries?
I moved to mysteries when I felt I had said all I wanted to in YA books and realized that for my own reading it was always mysteries. Why not write what I liked to read? I think the one motivating point was discovering Tony Hillerman. He transported the reader to another place as well as telling a fine story. I wanted to do that.
What in your opinion, is the most important part of building a really good mystery?
It’s not the whodunit. For me it is the characters and the setting that are more important. What drives the antagonist to kill? What drives the sleuth? What would make me want to kill? And where am I taking the reader this time? How do I do this?
How do you plan out your work? Do you start with an ending in mind, leaving clues along the way for the readers? Or do you discover the solutions with your characters as the story develops?
I usually start knowing very little. Often it’s a place. I’d like to set a mystery in the sweat shops in New York City. Or I’d like to take Lady Georgie to Italy. And in the case of In Farleigh Field, I’d like to set a thriller in the middle of WWII. Sometimes i start knowing key pieces—who is going to die, who the murderer is and why they must kill. Sometimes even these emerge as I go along. The first fifty pages are always in panic mode because I can’t quite see the way ahead. Things get easier as I go along.
I imagine it takes a great deal of finesse to add just the right clues in just the right places so that the solutions are not too obvious but that they still make sense once you have the full picture. How do you know when you have the placed the perfect clue?
For me clues are more often personal observations of behavior rather than the spent match, the telling footprint. But one has to be fair with the reader. Sometimes when I read through after a first draft I ask myself “Do we really need to know this right here? What would happen if we didn’t find out until later?”
In your bio, you talk about loving to read books with a “great sense of time and place.” Many of your works are set in different eras or in interesting places, like Her Royal Spyness, which is set in Great Britain during the Great Depression or your award-winning Molly Murphy series that follows the spunky sluth, Molly Murphy from Ireland to New York City during the turn-of-the-century. How important is setting to your stories? What advice would you give a new writer on how to create the perfect setting?
Setting is one of the most important aspects of my writing. My aim when I set books in a historical time and place is to take the reader there, make them feel what it was like for the characters–the sights, smells, feel of the era. To do this I put in a lot of time in research. My new book, that comes out Feb 20 is set in Tuscany, mainly in WWII. I spent time in Tuscany studying up on the food, on the flowers, the sights and sounds of the little towns. Now I can take you there.
What are you reading when you’re not writing? Any favorites that you’d like to share?
I have always been a big fan of mysteries—the classic mystery with a lot of character development and great setting. So I read Louise Penny, Deborah Crombie, Jacqueline Winspear, Charles Todd. Strangely enough these people all happen to be my friends!
How was the publishing process for you? Do you have any advice for new authors on how to attract the attention of a good publisher?
I’ve been a published author for most of my adult life so I don’t have much insight on how to get published today. But when I started writing mysteries my first book’s print run was 2500 copies. My latest book has sold over 200,000 copies so far so the one piece of advice would be that you have to keep writing better and better books, working harder and harder and eventually you will reach a stage when you are noticed. And don’t ever write a book because you think the subject is ‘in’ right now.
How did it feel the first time you were published?
I was in my twenties and I got a one page write up in the New York Times. At that time I didn’t realize what that meant. Now I’d love a mention in the Times! I don’t think one ever fully appreciates anything at the moment. It’s only when we look back on it and think, “That was pretty amazing.”
What lessons have you learned the hard way during your writing career?
I think the first realization when I started writing mysteries was that nobody was going to do anything for me. There would be no publicity budget. Nobody would ever know about my books unless I worked my own tail off, visiting bookstores, sending out mailings, trying to contact with fans… and writing books that got noticed for awards. The irony is that publishers don’t start promoting books until those books are already earning them money!
And a snippet of advice: concentrate on writing the best book possible. All the rest doesn’t matter if the book has no substance.
It can take a lot of courage to first put your work out there for the world to see. A lot of new writers are scared of putting themselves out there to be judged. So much so, that many of them never even take the first step. What advice would you give to them? How did you find your courage when you first started out?
As I said before, I have told stories all my life. It’s just that now somebody pays me to tell them. Write where your heart is. I think every single book I’ve written has been because I wanted to read that particular story and it wasn’t on the shelf. So I wrote it
Don’t be afraid to fail. Join a writing group or a circle of people you trust and get feedback. Join professional organizations, like Mystery Writers of America and get a feel for what is happening in the publishing world these days.
And to be noticed you have to write something new and different. You can write a fun and lively donut shop mystery but if the publisher already has a series set in a donut shop, it will get rejected.
What’s next for you?
I have a new book coming out on February 20 called The Tuscan Child. It’s a story set in two time periods, in WW2 and the 1970s in Tuscany. It was a lot of fun to write. I’ll be doing various events around the country and the schedule can be found on my website, www.rhysbowen.com
Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our readers?
Yes, thank you for reading my books. I do appreciate all the messages I get. If you’d like to keep up with my news and musings please come over to my Facebook page.
