1--What is the title of your latest release?
A GRAVE ROBBERY
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Victorian sleuth Veronica Speedwell and her handsome sidekick Stoker are at it again! But when the wax figure they find turns out to be an actual corpse, they end up facing their deadliest foe yet.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I had just taken my characters into the country, so it was time to go back to London for a proper city adventure. I needed access to laboratories, private clubs, cemeteries, and gaslit streets.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
For a short period of time only. I adore Veronica, but I’m quite certain we would butt heads and I think she could take me in a fight.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Intrepid, resourceful, outrageous.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That no matter how hard I try to get my little ducks in a row, they will always choose chaos. I work extremely well under pressure; unfortunately, I seem to only be able to work under pressure, so if I have loads of time for a book, I will ruminate on it for ages and then invariably end up writing fast.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Generally, I draft and then edit, but every once in a while, a book fights back and I have to subdue it before I’ve written the ending.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Cheese. Just cheese. Cheese with a small glass of wine,
9—Describe your writing space!
I write in the converted attic space, so it’s a loft with a brick chimney breast and a low, sloped ceiling. It’s only accessed by a spiral staircase, and it has two window seats and a tiny door into the rest of the attic where the ghost is.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Jesse Q. Sutanto. She is talented, creative, and her work ethic is simply bonkers. She’s published in three different genres! And besides that, she is as kind and gracious and funny a human as you’d ever want to meet. She’s an automatic pre-order author for me, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Oyinkan Braithwaite’s MY SISTER, THE SERIAL KILLER. I read it on vacation a few years ago, and it opened up my whole world. It was my introduction to a more domestic thriller with female characters front and center, and eventually my first thriller was written because I took this book to the beach.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It’s been almost twenty years! But I remember sobbing—I’d been writing 14 years without selling anything when I got that call. I knew my life was going to change forever, and it has, in unimaginable and wonderful ways.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love to read in several genres, but my comfort reading is always mystery, usual Golden Age.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
I don’t have one—or I have loads, depending on my mood! I have a very soft spot for “The Thin Man” and if they ever remake it, I’ll sob. I’m a sucker for any Jane Austen adaptation, 1930s screwball comedies, and Agatha Christie films.
15--What is your favorite season?
Ooooh, how can you choose a favorite? They all have their charms. (Although February/March is a bit of a struggle to love. I’m working on it.) I will say it’s hard to beat a crisp autumn day…
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I’m a Gemini, so it varies from year to year. Sometimes I think I just want a good meal with my favorite people and that’s plenty, but last year on my birthday, I suddenly said,“Hey, let’s go to Venice.” Five days later we were there. (To be fair, it was also research for my 2025 book!)
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I can’t stop talking about how good the Apple TV+ adaptation of “Slow Horses” is. *chef’s kiss* I’m also completely smitten with the BBC version of “Ghosts.” So charming!
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Tex-Mex, hands down, although I will not turn up my nose at a full English breakfast.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Reading—of course! —along with Tarot and yoga. I dabble in knitting and crochet but there are toddlers who are better at fiber arts than I am. I also keep starting and stopping French lessons.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
Spring of 2025 will see the publication of KILLS WELL WITH OTHERS, the sequel to my first contemporary thriller, KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE, which hit #9 on the NYT list. After that, another Veronica Speedwell novel is on the way!
Veronica Speedwell Mystery #9
Veronica and Stoker discover that not all fairy tales have happy endings, and some end in murder, in this latest historical mystery from New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–nominated author Deanna Raybourn.
Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?
Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. From the underground laboratories of scientists experimenting with electricity to resurrect the dead in the vein of Frankenstein to the traveling show where Stoker once toured as an attraction, the gaslit atmosphere of London in October is the perfect setting for this investigation into the unknown. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain—a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved. Will they unmask him in time to save his next victim? Or will they become the latest figures to be immortalized in his collection of horrors?
Mystery Historical [Berkley, On Sale: March 12, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593545959 / eISBN: 9780593545973]
Intrepid Victorian amateur sleuths combine mayhem and discovery
New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including two RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, the Agatha, two Dilys Winns, a Last Laugh, three du Mauriers, and most recently the 2019 Edgar Award for Best Novel.
She launched a new Victorian mystery series with the 2015 release of A CURIOUS BEGINNING, featuring intrepid butterfly-hunter and amateur sleuth, Veronica Speedwell. Veronica returned in 2017's A Perilous Undertaking, and A Treacherous Curse, 2018. A Dangerous Collaboration was released in 2019, and book five, A Murderous Relation, was a March 2020 release. An Unexpected Peril, Veronica's sixth adventure, will be published in March 2021.
In addition to further Veronica books, Deanna is writing a contemporary novel about four female assassins on the cusp of retirement.
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