1--What is the title of your latest release?
THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO MURDER
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Monarch of the Glen meets Murder She Wrote! Three American authors arrive at a Scottish castle to write a novel about a century-old murder…but when the current owner turns up dead, all may not be what it seems in this mystery-meets-literary satire.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Years ago (in 2012, in fact) the three of us were boozing it up at a conference and agreed our lives would be infinitely better if we could hang out more often—clearly, we should write a book together, so our publisher would send us on book tour. In a haze of espresso martinis, we started throwing around ideas for a book set in Scotland, packed with men in kilts and playful sheep. In the end, we wound up writing a book set in New York—and then one on the Lusitania—and one in France—and one in Newport. But with this book, we decided it was finally time to return to our original inspiration and write that book set in Scotland!
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
We have three protagonists: Cassie, a cozy mystery writer; Emma, who writes very serious biographical fiction; and Kat, who writes paranormal erotica. They all have excellent taste in drinks, so, yes, we would absolutely hang out with them, toss back a round of French 75s, and exchange publishing horror stories.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
On the surface, Cassie is a Pollyanna, Kat is a vamp, and Emma is a prig. But that’s just the surface. Read the book, and you can come up with your own three words to see what they’re like underneath!
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
The proper pronunciation of the word “ceilidh”. (Just kidding, we knew that already.)
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
When the three of us work together as Team W, we meet to plot the book; then we write it round robin; and then we reconvene to edit it together.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Karen: Donuts. Any and every kind.
Beatriz: Truffled French fries. (They go well with champagne.)
Lauren: Cheese! I do love cheese. Many, many kinds of cheese. But particularly hunstman and cambozola.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
Karen: I have a lovely office in the front of the house with large arched windows (with the requisite bird feeders attached to two of them) looking out on the tree-filled front yard. When the weather’s nice, I use my standing desk on the back screened-in porch where I have even more bird feeders to distract me.
Beatriz: I tend to rotate among a series of writing roosts around the house and garden, depending on the weather and the location of the rest of my family. The closer I am to deadline, the farther away I move, until I end up at the local diner, where they refill my coffee cup all morning long.
Lauren: Starbucks! As a New Yorker with small children, a home office is a luxury I don’t have (my desk is tucked in a corner of the bedroom), so when it comes time for writing, I hoist my computer bag onto my shoulder and head for my local Starbucks.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Karen: Besides Beatriz and Lauren? Kate Morton. I love the complexities of her plots and her intricate characterizations.
Beatriz: I’ve been on such an Ann Patchett kick lately—she unfailingly brings her vivid, intelligent writing to cracking good stories that matter.
Lauren: My current obsession is Charlotte Vassell’s DI Beauchamp series: The Other Half and The in Crowd. They’re gorgeously written, hilariously funny, British whodunnits.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Karen: Gone With the Wind! The first (and only) time I ever skipped school was to read this book. It gave me such a book hangover that I had to read it three more times because I couldn’t pick up another book to read. I even started to talk like the characters which alarmed my family.
Beatriz: Up until my junior year of college, I was drawn to the classics of 18th and 19th century literature, thanks to my British father. Then I took a seminar on fin de siècle Europe and read Vera Brittain’s devastating First World War memoir, Testament of Youth, which shifted my attention to the theme that’s obsessed me ever since, in both my reading and my writing—the transition from the prewar world to the modern culture in which we exist today.
Lauren: When I was six, someone gave me E.L. Konigsburg’s “A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver”, which was both my first introduction to historical fiction and the book that convinced me I wanted to be an author when I grew up.
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.
Karen: It’s been so long (1998) that my memory is hazy, but I remember my agent at the time leaving a message on my answering machine (it was the nineties!) telling me that we had an offer. I saved that message and listened to it over and over again.
Beatriz: That would be February 2010, as a violent stomach flu was sweeping through the household, leaving only my husband (as usual) unscathed. I’d spent the week cleaning up after each of my four young children—and was beginning to feel a bit queasy myself—when the phone rang with a hardcover offer from Putnam Books for my first novel. I held it together until the call ended and promptly threw up. Needless to say, we had to postpone the celebratory champagne for a few days.
Lauren: For me, that was back in 2003! It was my first month at Harvard Law and I spilled coffee all over my Torts textbook when my brand-new agent called and told me that Penguin wanted to offer me a two book deal for my swashbuckling Napoleonic romance/chick lit novel, “The Secret History of the Pink Carnation”. I celebrated—and then when back to Torts homework!
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Karen: I go through a phase every 2-3 years. Right now, I’m in a “domestic thriller” phase that started when I read Girl on a Train.
Beatriz: I like to jump around genres—I feel like that’s what keeps my writing fresh! This summer my agent instructed me to try out some romantasy, and I have to admit that—for a girl who’s not than into dragons—I was a little bit hooked.
Lauren: Vintage mysteries are my happy place! When the world gets too much for me, I retreat to 1930s London with Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey or to 1980s Boston with Charlotte MacLeod’s Sarah Kelling.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Karen: Besides Gone with the Wind (since I already used it in my favorite book response), While You Were Sleeping is tied with Steel Magnolias as movies I can watch again and again and still have all the feels I had the first time I watched them.
Beatriz: I’ve been a vintage movie freak since my college days, and it’s hard to pin one down as THE favorite, so I’ll go with my family’s favorite “comfort watch”—On Moonlight Bay, with Doris Day and Gordon McRae, which wraps us together in a fuzzy blanket of nostalgic setting, laugh-out-loud comedy, and gorgeous vocals. (But I do agree with Lauren on the perfection of that Persuasion adaptation!)
Lauren: The Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds adaptation of Persuasion. Just perfect in so many ways!
15--What is your favorite season?
Karen: Autumn. It’s almost neck and neck with summer, but if it’s not too cold, I love the changing leaves and decorating the house with all things pumpkin-y.
Beatriz: Autumn! I love the nostalgic mood and the harvest food. (As usual, Team W is unanimous)
Lauren: Autumn! I’m all in on pumpkin spice, changing leaves, plaid skirts, apple picking, and fall baking.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Karen: Since my birthday usually falls on Memorial Day weekend, I love to spend it at our beach house with my family while I try to get them to wait on me hand and foot.
Beatriz: Dinner out with my husband and kids.
Lauren: Using it to guilt trip my kids into giving me some reading time…. “It’s mom’s birthday, go ask dad!”
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Karen: My husband and I just binge-watched the first two seasons of an Australian tv show on Netflix about a probate lawyer called Fisk. Incredibly funny, yet warm and smart.
Beatriz: On book tour for Our Woman in Moscow (my Cold War novel loosely inspired by the Cambridge Five spy ring) everyone asked me what I thought of The Americans. I hadn’t even heard of it—raising four kids while writing two to three books a year to support my family’s housing and grocery habits had left me exactly zero time for watching television. But with said kids now heading off to college, my husband and I finally sat down to watch this show, and we were blown away by the quality of writing and acting and the superb, layered storytelling. I wish I could sit down and binge it new, all over again.
Lauren: I’m obsessed with “The Rest is History” podcast—informative and hilarious! I recommend the episode on Lord Byron.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Karen: Italian. Preferably eating it while in Italy.
Beatriz: When I’m really hungry, nothing satisfies like a perfectly-executed steak frites.
Lauren: Any that I don’t have to cook myself.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Get together at Karen’s beach house and plot our next book! Because Team W is all about work, work, work. Also, prosecco.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
Karen: In July I have a single title set in the South Carolina Lowcountry called “That Last Carolina Summer,” and in November the third book my Royal Street series, “The Lady on Esplanade,” will be published.
Beatriz: I was so elated by the way readers took last summer’s Husbands & Lovers to their hearts, so I’ll be following up with a new book also set on Winthrop Island in the present day, going back and forth in time to a real-life steamship wreck off the coast in 1846. (But never fear, Wicked City fans—I’m also thinking about that long-awaited fourth book in the series!)
Lauren: “The Girl From Greenwich Street” is coming your way on March 4, 2024! Part true crime, part mystery, part historical fiction, this is Law & Order: 1800, based on the story of a true unsolved murder and famous trial that took place in New York in 1800, in which a woman was found drowned in a well and Hamilton and Burr teamed up as counsel for the defense.
Agatha Christie meets Murder, She Wrote in this witty locked room mystery and literary satire by New York Times bestselling team of novelists: Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.
There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together: a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors’ stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?
A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it!
Mystery [William Morrow, On Sale: November 5, 2024, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063259867 / eISBN: 9780063259881]
Tongue-in-cheek satire meets cozy murder mystery
A Satirical Literary Mystery with Some Funny Moments
Karen White is the New York Times bestselling author of 28 books, including the Tradd Street series, Dreams of Falling, The Night the Lights Went Out, Flight Patterns, The Sound of Glass, A Long Time Gone, and The Time Between. She is the coauthor of All the Ways We Said Goodbye, The Glass Ocean and The Forgotten Room with New York Times bestselling authors Beatriz Williams and Lauren Willig. She grew up in London but now lives with her husband near Atlanta, Georgia.
Intrigue. Espionage. Romance. Swordplay. Comedy.
Lauren Willig is a New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best, and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association's annual list of the best genre fiction. After graduating from Yale University, she embarked on a PhD in History at Harvard before leaving academia to acquire a JD at Harvard Law while authoring her "Pink Carnation" series of Napoleonic-set novels. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.
Beatriz Williams lives with her husband and children in Greenwich, Connecticut.
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