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Welcome to The Epilogue... a writing podcast that goes deep into the art and craft of storytelling. Each episode, we sit down for a deep-dive author interview with a successful writer for an exploration of story and for writing advice you can bring to your own work.
Readers love a story that pulls them through its pages. They want to know what happens next. The pull of the next chapter. The cliffhanger. The unanswered question.
Michael:One more page. It's that special something that keeps the reader guessing. The mystery. What does your story need to build between the pages so you can make the reader follow your words through to the very last page?
Michael:Welcome to The Epilogue where everything makes sense in retrospect, hopefully. I have with me today the prolific author, Rhys Bowen, an author familiar to book clubs around the world. Her books have sold over 10,000,000 copies in 30 languages. It's been nominated for every major mystery award. She's won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and McCavity awards.
Michael:Her works include the Royal Spinus series, the Molly Murphy series, the Evan Evans series, and several historical novels. A category which is growing because she's just about to release another one with The Castle in the Glen, which as a recording of this is about to come out in August, I believe.
Rhys:Yeah. August.
Michael:Thank you so much for joining and welcome.
Rhys:Thank you. It's good to be here.
Michael:We're gonna talk about your new book since you're kind enough to send a preview copy. And we'll also talk about the book, the work that other your listeners are already familiar with. So but let's go ahead and start talking about Castle and the Glen. This is a historical novel. It has a dual timeline.
Michael:It does not have a contemporary timeline. Both of these timelines are historical. They're taking place in the past. It starts in the 1960s, and it shares pages with a previous time extensively in the nineteen thirties. Now, you've performed the split on this timeline in an interesting way.
Michael:Would you like to give everybody an introduction to the story?
Rhys:Yes, I would. I never like to, make things easy to myself. I always like to give myself a challenge of multiple timelines or multiple points of view. And this time I think was stretching it a little bit much because I wrote quite a bit of the book in the style of someone else. Not only someone else, but someone else who might have dementia.
Rhys:So, you know, putting myself in the in the shoes of another writer really required, a big stretch, I would say. The story simply, without giving away any spoilers, I'm not gonna try and do that, is that an aged, very, very famous writer, you have to think the level of Agatha Christie, is in her eighties and cannot finish her last novel. She wanted this novel to be something that summed up her whole career. In fact, she's written a prequel to her her famous sleuth inspector Melrose, whose most of the cases take place in London with the Scotland Yard. So this is taking place in Scotland and showing what he might have been like as a very young man.
Rhys:And so she's writing this, but she can't finish it. So she hires a young up and coming writer to finish it for her. And both of these women are Australian, although they now are both living in London. And when the young writer finds that it's set on the Isle Of Skye in Scotland, she's rather surprised because she can't understand why this writer has chosen this. So she goes up to Skye to do her research.
Rhys:And as she starts to research, she comes to believe that the story isn't fiction after all.
Michael:You do a lot of historical research, Mhmm. Not just for your historical novels. Your mysteries are also often taking place in a historical time period. This one, there's two and change time periods to to deal with. Do you start with the place and the time and then find the story in there?
Michael:Or do you start with a story and then work out where and when it fits?
Rhys:It depends on the novel. Sometimes, some of my novels, my World War II novels, I've started with like the Venice sketchbook. I knew I wanted a dual timeline in the present and in World War II. And I knew I wanted tense a mystery in World War two. And, I wanted it tied into the one in the present.
Rhys:So, you know, I start with that. But in this one, the thing that came to me first was the picture of this elderly writer who can't finish her book. And, you know, being of a certain age myself, that was very poignant to me to think about this. And, so she came to me first, that character, Iris Blackburn, a very, very clear character, rather a difficult woman, lonely woman. And, so that was driven from that.
Rhys:And so when you set things in the present, first of all, everything is too easy these days. You know, you can do DNA searches, you can you can look up on the Internet and find anything you want. Whereas in the past, you have to use your own intelligence, your own sleuthing to find out anything. Was there a newspaper from the time? Does anybody remember?
Rhys:You know, these are the things you had to do in the past. I think that's why I enjoy writing most of my books in the past because if I'm writing a mystery, you can't do the CSI type things. You can't say, well, let's get some, let's get some DNA from this and find out who did it. You have to, you have to follow the clues and that's why it's so delicious to do.
Michael:Your, historical research so going back to the nineteen thirties, going back to the nineteen hundreds, going back into the late eighteen hundreds, how do you find the pieces that are going to be relevant to the story or will add to the tapestry to make the reading richer with the details that the people reading this are going to enjoy without overdoing it? Where do you where do you start looking for what's the important pieces?
Rhys:Yeah. Well, the research, as you probably know, is very important to me. I I've had lots of lovely reviews about how accurate my thing I've, I've had in one of my Molly Murphy books, which take place in early 1900s New York, Molly's house is in Greenwich Village. And I once had a letter from a woman who said, I grew up in that part of Greenwich Village. My mother grew up there and my grandmother grew up there.
Rhys:And my grandmother used to get her bread from that shop. Thank you for bringing back my And that's when you know you've done a really good job on the research. So I do, I work very hard on the research. I always go to the place. It's usually a place I know well to start with.
Rhys:You can't just sort of say I'm going to set this book in Paris so I'm going to go there for three days and look at the Eiffel Tower. It's it's got to be somewhere I know well so that when I go back I can say, what do I want to find this time? Some of the things I want to find are those little details that make you really feel you're in a place. Like, you know, I'm standing on the steps in Montmartre. What do I smell?
Rhys:Or I'm sitting in a little village in Chianti in Tuscany. What am I hearing? And so when I go back, I'm completely open. So, you know, the the one thing that was a shame this time was, I could my my husband was very sick and has recently passed away, so that's been a big upheaval in my life. But I was due to go to Sky last fall and I had to cancel it because he was too ill to go.
Rhys:I'd been before and and and my my memories are very sharp. And the good thing with somewhere like Sky is nothing changes. You know, you can go back and things are just as they were in the 1930s in many ways. So it's not one of those places where you go in and they put in a great big data center since you were here last. It's still little tiny villages and mountains.
Michael:And
Rhys:so, you know, I I had a very clear picture of what I remember from last time. But my research is multi pronged. Before I write a book, I do background reading often. Like, for example, when I was doing the Venice sketchbook, which takes place in Venice in various time periods, including World War II, I went to Venice and I went to the antique, library in the Courier Museum. And I said, I'm an author.
Rhys:I'm researching this. I need to know this. And so they sat me in a room and they kept bringing me all these relevant books until they were piled up around me like a great castle wall. Of course, they're all in Italian. And in the end, I have to say, that's enough.
Rhys:You know, I can't do anymore. So I wanted to I was particularly wanted to find out how Jews were were treated, before World War II and during World War II in Venice as opposed to the rest of Italy, because Venice is a very tolerant society. So, you know, that was one of the things I was looking up. And when did the Germans come into Venice and what happened then? So, you know, I had all the books, so I so that's my background.
Rhys:So I do my background research. And then, and then I have to do the the picky research as I go along. The things like if I turn around this corner, what do I see? And I've used a lot of Google Earth in the past because, like, if I'm doing an Italian village, it really hasn't changed since World War II in in terms of where it's settled in the landscape. So, you know, I as I'm writing, I will use those various tools as I go along.
Rhys:But the the important thing, think, me in most of my books is that personal feeling of what was it like in this place. I don't want to tell you about a place and time. I want to take you there. Mhmm. I want you to think, oh my god, I've been transported to the Isle Of Skye.
Rhys:So, you know, I do Right. I do do And then I will ask people too, you know, how do you pronounce this word? And and, you know, I have Scottish friends and I will say, So what would they say in this case? And, so there's a lot of, you know, the the amount of time writing is probably, equal to the amount of time I do in the background stuff. And you asked about how much is too much, which is such a good question.
Rhys:It has to come in seamlessly so you don't know you're being told it. I've read books before where someone says, I've done all this research and now you're bloody well going to get it whether you like it or not. I read a book once and it was about a doctor in Tudor, England. And he's called out on a case, and he's coming down the stairs carrying his medicine bag. And halfway down, he can't help thinking back to the thirty years war.
Rhys:Now I don't know about you. I've never run down the stairs and stopped and go, woah, the thirty years war. You know? The thing the thing is she had done her research, and she wanted to get that in somewhere. And all it did was to slow down the plot because he's rushing out to someone who's just been murdered.
Rhys:So, you know, your research can never slow down the plot. It can never take you out of the time period. All it has to do is make you feel, oh, I've been transported back to the Isle Of Skye in 1934. That's what I want to do. Well,
Michael:that's why people love to read, you know, historical novels or or mystery novels in historical setting or or anything like that. They want that transportation. Want to be feeling that. First off, my condolences on your husband. I was not aware of that.
Michael:I
Rhys:Thank you. Yeah. Don't wanna been a tough spring. Yes.
Michael:I think the research you mentioned like, doing kind of a baseline and then digging into the picky research, that may be the trap that a lot of people fall into is getting picky whenever they're trying to do the baseline. They get it's easy to fall in love with a lot of these interesting historical facts and these places and stuff. So instead of just doing the baseline, they start figuring out Wrigley's gum was available in that era or something like that. When the characters are not going to be chewing the gum anyway, right? It's not part of the story and then they have to make it part of it and that's when you end up.
Rhys:The problem is that Michael, that someone who reads the book, it's going to matter to if you get it wrong. I mean, I know it's fiction and, you could say it's fiction and if the Wrigley's gum is called something that wasn't really, but it will matter to somebody. Can't tell you the number of times I've especially if you get anything wrong with trains or guns, someone is going to tell you.
Michael:Oh
Rhys:yeah. And, and I one of the Molly Murphy books, I had Molly Murphy going out from New York to San Francisco by train. And she's the train stops in Reno and it's very cold and she has to get a cup of coffee on the station. I got a letter from a band saying, do you not realize that that particular train would have taken the Winnemucca cut and thus would have bypassed Reno. It didn't she all she wanted was a cup of coffee on a station, but it mattered to somebody that I got it wrong.
Rhys:And things like that, you can't know you get wrong until someone tells you you get wrong because, you know, I'm not going to research every stop on the train when all I'm doing is getting her to San Francisco. So there's sometimes you don't know what you know and you don't know what you don't know until somebody tells you. But I do try and get, you know, I try and get right the right what they would be wearing, what they'd be hearing on the radio, what, what they'd be eating, all the things. The number of times I'm given a book to blurb and people get things wrong that drive me crazy, you know, because they haven't delved deep enough. I I had someone writing a World War two book once and they stop at a cafe and they have a meat pie and sticky toffee pudding.
Rhys:And I went, no. Because the amount of meat you had in the week did not mean you could buy a meat pie at a store. That wouldn't be available. Also sticky toffee pudding was invented in the 1960s. So I mean these are two things where somebody just didn't know.
Rhys:So the research, it is important. Even if it's fiction, I want someone to feel, oh, this is what it was like in 1930. This is what it was like in nineteen o one. And, you know, I like that when I read another book and I I am transported too, that that makes it special for me.
Michael:Yeah. It does. It it's it's the escape. It's it's the it's the only version of time travel that we have. Yeah.
Michael:Your historical novels will often have a mystery. There's often a a a connection that's buried, some truth that's hidden over time, especially with the dual timeline that seems to be a very prominent feature in that type of of story now.
Rhys:Well, I tell you one funny thing because I came to my standalones having written three mystery series is I'm writing a book that actually is a straight historical novel. And I think, well, where's the body? When are we gonna come to a body? You know, I'm so used to having my mystery that that I I expect to have a body somewhere. But if you think about it, every piece of good fiction is a mystery because the reader thinks, oh no, what will happen next?
Rhys:And they turn the page. So you've created a mystery for them. You want to know in this character's timeline, in their arc, in their journey, what's gonna go wrong. Oh, they're doing this. What's gonna go wrong?
Rhys:I have to find out if they're gonna be alright. And then you turn the page. So you're creating an amount of mystery in any piece of good fiction. But I do think that mystery comes into my historical novels even when I don't really intend it. I think because I have this background in mystery writing and because I like a good mystery.
Rhys:The last one I did, Mrs Endicott's Splendid Adventure, which, you know, is about it's a simple story of a woman who has been betrayed by her husband, and he wants a divorce. And she suddenly finds she's being cast out at the age of 50, and he expects her to go away quietly and live in a cottage and keep cats. But instead of that, she rebels and she steals his beloved Bentley car, and she drives to the South Of France where she comes across, an abandoned villa. So this is a nice story of someone reinventing themselves and finding their strengths and finding a new life. But then, because it's me, there's a whole mystery surrounding this villa.
Rhys:Why did someone leave it with all her clothes hanging in the closets? And and, you know, so so the miss the the so the villa becomes a big mystery in it. So I think I can't go through a whole book without having some intrigue of some sort in it.
Michael:There is a typical writing advice that I have heard for writing the mysteries, the body on the floor, that you gotta you gotta drop that body in the first chapter or two. You're not doing that all the time here. You're very consistently not doing that. What are you doing instead, I guess, to to these these poor girls to solve these murders?
Rhys:Well, I think if you were looking for a body in the first chapter in my book, you would be sorely disappointed. I can't even think of one that that might have happened in. Because as I said before, I'm not, I'm never doing a straight mystery. I'm never doing, Oh, someone's died. Let's solve it.
Rhys:Good. That's the end. I'm much more interested in the characters and the setting. I think my aim with all my books is to bring a cast of characters together, to let the reader watch them interact and to start to think, oh, no good can come of this. Else to be, you know, else or to be surprised when someone suddenly turns up dead.
Rhys:But I like you to get to know the people first so that you can be your own sleuth. You can sort of say, well, this person was really angry about so and so, and this person didn't tell us so and so. You know, you I'm giving you a fair sleuthing because you will get to know the characters. Also, to me, I am not as interested in the whodunit ever when I write a mystery as the whodunit. What would make an ordinary person kill?
Rhys:What would make me kill? What would push me into a corner so completely that the only way out was to kill somebody? I'm fascinated by that because, you know, I've asked myself, could I ever kill? Okay. Yeah.
Rhys:If I was in I was in Nazi Germany and a soldier burst in to take my child, I could kill him. But, you know, could I kill if someone was going to find out a secret that would cost me my job?
Michael:I
Rhys:couldn't say that unless I was actually facing it. So you have to say what to what lengths can someone be pushed before killing is the only way out? So I very rarely, in my books, have someone who is a psychopath, who, you know, is just an evil character who likes to kill. It's always someone for whom life has dealt them a really bad blow. And they feel that for some reason, they have to kill.
Michael:Well, we're you know, we're talking about your mysteries. I should probably do a quick introduction because I'd like to talk about maybe the differences between the the series is here. So you have her the constable Evans, Evan Evans, who is it's it is the quiet village mystery. It's a little bit more contemporary than the other two.
Rhys:Yes.
Michael:And then you have Her Royal Spiness, which is it's more whimsical, kind of the narration style is definitely much more that British sarcasm kind of way of looking at life. And then there's Molly Murphy, is definitely more serious. And, you know, we mentioned the historical time period that she's framed in. And so did you those are the three distinct ongoing series. Mhmm.
Michael:You said you you started with Evans first.
Rhys:Yes. Yeah.
Michael:How did how did how did each of those come to be? And you might wanna fill in some extra details, if if you wished, on each of those.
Rhys:Yeah. Well, Constable Evans came to be, as I was mentioning before, that when I, I thought I want to write a mystery that takes you somewhere. I, I want, you know, I want to have a great sense of place. And I was trying to think where I wanted to set this when I was telling someone about my childhood experiences in Wales. And every summer my aunt Gladys, who was militantly Welsh, would take me to stay with elderly relatives in Wales.
Rhys:And, as a child you accept that a lot of things are normal when in fact they were very unique to the place and time. You know, the people really did have nicknames in those days. You might have one village with 10 people called Evans in it. So you would have Evans the meat who was the the butcher and Evans the milk who was the dairy man and Evans the post who was the mailman. And that was a perfectly normal
Michael:Who read some mess?
Rhys:Yeah. And in fact, there were some very good, over the years, one has heard some very good stories about, really clever nicknames. The Welsh are very have very good, sharp sense of humor. There was one town in which there was a travel agent called Evans there and back. And then there was an undertaker called Evans one way.
Rhys:So, you know, people have had this great sense of humor there. So that was one thing. And of course, most of them were Welsh speaking as their primary language. So their English was often very colorful. And then the just the landscape itself to you had these these steep green slopes with with the sheep on them and the and when it rained, little rivets of rain running down, little ribbons running down the sides, and then the little little villages of local local slate, little gray villages.
Rhys:So it was a very distinct landscape and people had a distinct way of speaking to each other. So, you know, it was a great great way for me to revisit my childhood and put these people in books. And I think they were, you know, they were aimed at being a cozy mystery series, which they were. The interesting thing with those is as the series went along, they became more serious because I knew my setting, I knew my characters, and as a policeman, he was going to face some more difficult cases. And so I think maybe that was one of the reasons the series didn't do as well as as it could have because I did move away from the coziness and this and the stories got rather edgy towards the end.
Rhys:And so one of the reasons that I I moved on from that series was that Evan was beginning to annoy me. He was, he was a very placid, quiet sort of chap. And when his superiors were rude to him, instead of saying what he thought, he sort of went away mumbling. And I was dying for him to stand up for himself and, be a little more feisty, a little more like me, I have to say. So I was thinking about, I want to write a series with a feisty first person female in them.
Rhys:And I was thinking where I might want to set this. And then out of the blue, went to Ellis Island. It was just I just happened to have a free afternoon in New York and I hopped on the tour boat and I went to Ellis Island and I was completely unprepared for what I felt there. You know, I don't have ancestors who came through Ellis Island And yet standing there, I just oh, I could feel I could feel all those people crying out to me. It was just amazing.
Rhys:And then when you stand and you look out at that narrow strip of shining water between you and Manhattan, and you realize that you can be that close to America, but you can't take that final step unless the government says you can. And I thought this is the ultimate lock true mystery. And so Uh-huh. Holly Murphy I made Molly Murphy, an Irish young Irish woman who has had to flee from her village because she's accidentally killed the man who's trying to rape her. And he is the landowner's son, and she knows she'll get no justice.
Rhys:So she flees as far as she can, and she gets a chance to go to Ellis Island under an assumed name. And while she's there, a murder occurs and the name she is using shows up as one of the prime suspects. So that was the driving force behind Murphy's Law, which was the first one in the series, which actually won four awards including the Agatha best novel. So it was off to a good start.
Michael:Mhmm.
Rhys:And then, of course, Molly steps ashore in New York, and I thought, now, what do I know about New York in nineteen and o one? Absolutely nothing. I'm destined for research on every single page. So I did for those first few books. I would go to New York, and I would walk every single street that Molly walked.
Rhys:And I would say, you know, Do I get a breeze off the Hudson when I turn this corner? Can I hear a toot of a tug on the East River from here? So I would do all that. And, the series has always been, you know, it's this is a fairly serious series. Mhmm.
Rhys:And it it's been much much of it has been about the immigrant experience. You know, what what was it like to be an immigrant in New York? And, you know, what was New York politics like at the time? What was it like when Tammany ruled? And all those sort of things.
Rhys:So every every book has been a slice of night life in New York in the early nineteen hundreds. So, you know, I so I did I put Evan on one side when I started writing Molly. And Molly was going along very well. And then my publisher said to me once, we can't really break you out unless you write us a big, dark, standalone novel. So I started thinking about, oh, what do I want?
Rhys:Oh, how about child molesters, serial killers, terrorists poisoning the water supply? Then I turned on the television and I thought, hey, I don't want to be in darkness for six months. So I've sort of tucked my heels in and I thought, what what would be the most unlikely sleuth I could think of? How about if she was royal? But she was penniless.
Michael:Right.
Rhys:When it was the nineteen thirties, we have missus Simpson and the Prince of Wales and Noel Coward and all those delicious characters. So I started writing in the first person. And actually, that first chapter that I wrote, just literally almost stream of consciousness, became the first chapter in the book, absolutely word for word. So I sent it to my agent who said, oh, I love this. We sent it to the publisher who went, No, no, that wasn't what we wanted at all.
Rhys:So it went out, it went out to bids and it went somewhere else and it started doing very nicely immediately. It was quite satisfying. And so the thing with the the Lady Georgie books, the Royal Spinus, are that they're fun to write. I I get to sit there and chuckle and and, you know, and then, one of the characters says something really funny and Queenie does something really terrible. And, so they're very therapeutic for me because each time you know, with any series, the both of them are up this this is coming up to book 20 now in The Royal Spinous, and Molly Murphy is coming up to 24.
Rhys:So they've been around for a while, and it's rather like going back to a family reunion. You know the characters, you know the basic setting, you know how people interact. So, I mean, that's what people like. People I get fan letters about the Royal Spiners all the time and they never say, really liked that clever aspect of the plot. They say, I loved grand grandad.
Rhys:I I love Queenie. I hate Queenie. I love Fig. I hate you know, so they're very invested in these characters. And I think that's why I enjoy going back to it all the time, because I am too.
Rhys:I like to be with them. So, you know, that's that's the three different series and each came from a very different sort of angle. But the fact that now I do, I I'm sort of stepping back from Molly a bit because frankly, I can't do a big standalone and two series novels and I can't you know, that's just too much. It's pushing me too much. And so I put Molly on hold for a while, and I got all these all these, emails saying, when is there going to be another Molly book?
Rhys:So my daughter came to me and she said, I think I'd like to write the Molly Murphy books with you. And I was a little ambivalent. I know she's a very good writer, but I thought, well, what if this doesn't work out? And I have to say to my daughter whom I love, I'm sorry. No.
Rhys:But so I said, well, we'll give it a try. And she read through it was up to book 17 at that time. She read through all 17. She came in with Molly's voice absolutely pitch perfect and with loads of good ideas, and she's the ultimate researcher. She will read the New York Times for every day that we're writing about and pick up all these little interesting details that really make everything very real.
Rhys:She gets a little, obsessive sometimes, I will say, because I've before now, I've, we we've been doing alternate chapters, and she will say, oh, you had Molly go without an umbrella and it's going to rain that afternoon. And I say, it's fiction. I can stop it from raining if I like. So I'm now sort of she's taking over more of the more of the storyline and more of the ideas and I'm stepping back with each book, you know, as as the mentor in the background and she's writing more of it now and I'm I'm sort of the polisher and and the suggestor. So it's really nice because I enjoy working with her and I think we spark really good ideas from each other.
Rhys:You know, she'll read and say, well, how about if so and so? And I will go, yeah. And then they do so and so. You know, it's it's it's very good. It's it's we're sparking each other with great ideas.
Michael:So that's that's interesting. You're you have there's often I've I've seen, you know, talk to co writers before, but usually it's something where they're co writing it. This was the joint project from the beginning. You have a project that you have written by yourself and also with a co writer with which sounds lovely. You know, that would be great to, you know, work with the kids.
Michael:What's what is different about that? Like, writing it, obviously, you you you get to take a step back and have a little bit more freedom with with with some things. But what's different about the actual pen to paper part whenever you're have that same character and world with a co writer.
Rhys:Yeah. Well, it's a different way of working because when I write a book on my own, I'm very, seat of the pantser. I don't outline. I sort of vaguely know what I'd like to happen, but I like to be open to one of my characters saying something and I go, wait, what did you mean by that? You know, I like to be open to going in a direction I hadn't thought before because it happens in pretty much every book that someone will say something or do something that makes me really think, oh, oh, we're going over here.
Rhys:I didn't know that. Because I think if I planned out the whole book, then I'd be the puppet master and the character would be the puppet. And, I like to be I like to be surprised. I like to be scared. I like to laugh.
Rhys:And so, you know, if I'm I feel I'm following my characters one step behind, thinking sometimes, oh god, don't go in there. And they do, you know, I can't stop them. So I I really do believe if you if you create a real character, then it's their story. And I'm just the person who puts it down on the page. And I think that works really well for me.
Rhys:I know other people will be terrified When I give writing classes and I say that, I see these terrified faces in the audience like, I couldn't do that. So I mean, some people you have to. But when I'm writing with someone else, we have to plot ahead together because she's my co writer and she has to know where we're going. And so maybe we don't have those moments that I hadn't expected. But we do have a really good plot because two heads are really quite good at thinking out things and saying, well, if she was there, wouldn't she be doing so and so?
Rhys:Well, yes, she would. So, you know, they both work and they're both different. And of course, it takes a lot of the weight off my shoulders because I can say, Why don't you go ahead? You can see the party scene really well. You just go ahead and write that.
Rhys:And she, you know, she takes off with that. So, and I don't think we've ever come a time when I've said, oh, no, that's not working.
Michael:I could see how somebody who enjoys the spontaneity of writing without an outline, that co writing, even though you do need to structure it more, maybe that back and forth, like the the the character talking to you in one aspect, now you have the co writer who's who's maybe makes another suggestion that takes it in another direction and and could maybe add some extra spark that you would be missing from the outline process.
Rhys:Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah. It's, you know, definitely, working with someone else is very beneficial in lots of ways because, you know, sometimes you're going ahead with the story and it gets to sort of, oh yes, and now this is going to happen. And she can say, well wait, what if she didn't find that person there? And you go, oh, well yeah, that's right.
Rhys:And then you've got the two heads better than one syndrome. It works quite well.
Michael:That very beneficial. I might try that sometime, writing with somebody else. Not something that I typically do.
Rhys:You have to have someone you really trust and you trust enough to say, Oh no, that wouldn't work. And know that they're not gonna go off in a huff.
Michael:Right. Right. That that you have to have the same equal footing, I guess.
Rhys:Yeah. You do. Yeah.
Michael:Circling back to to these multiple series that you have, the the writing mysteries of Molly and Evan and and and Georgie. And we talked about the fact that you're not dropping a body on page one. You're starting with the character's story first. Then the the murder mystery comes in as as it relates to where the character finds themselves through the course of that story. Mhmm.
Michael:The primary driver of these, and you mentioned it for your fans as well, the driver is the characters. It's not necessarily the you care about the characters first, which is not always the case. There's always sometimes, you know, a mystery story, the detective character is like a shell that's basically just there as an engine to drive the plot stuff happening. You're very much more interested, it sounds like that's where you started because of that in the character's journey. Again, that writing advice, drop the body, page one, page two, chapter two, that kind of undermines that.
Michael:It's not a rule. It still gets to be a mystery, but you're driving it with the characters. Now, you still have to drive it with the characters. So how do you get the readers to follow that story until you get to that body in chapter six?
Rhys:Well, I mean, if you think back to people like Agatha Christie, all of her characters could be summed up in one sentence. The ne'er do will son, the busy spinster, you know, that they were they were, as you say, they were shells. We know very little about what makes him tick. What's we know he has a strong sense of justice and a puffed up self importance, but we don't know we don't know much about him. We don't really know what would make him weep.
Rhys:We don't know, you know, we don't know we know very he he is she's she's sort of created a character with like four sentences of description and that's all he is. And he doesn't really change over all the years. So I think with my books, what I want, I want people to be so committed to these characters that they have to find out what happens next. And I think the thing too, I mean the thing that's nice for people who write mysteries or people who know that I write mysteries, If you're reading this book and you see that Lady Georgie goes to this spooky country house and that there's an aged butler there and things, you think it's gonna be a murder here. So in a way you're waiting for it when you're reading it.
Rhys:You know, if you you pick that book off the mystery shelf, you know that at some stage someone's gonna be killed. So you're looking out for where that might be. I mean, with me, I have I have other problems going on in the books that are that are not that are not the murder. I think in each both the Molly books and the the the cut the Royal Spinus books, I have a story in real life. And then I have the the the, you know, in Georgie's life, what is happening to Georgie?
Rhys:And then there is the murder that she has to solve for some reason. And I always try and make it a good reason that she has to get involved in this. You know, I think too many cozy mysteries, you know, you've got the the bakery and the yarn shop and someone falls dead and people go, oh, good. A murder. Let's solve it.
Rhys:Well, most people in real life, if a murder happened near them, they think, oh, god. There's a murderer around here. Let's go away. So it has to be there has to be a motivation for wanting to solve this or finding yourself inadvertently caught up in solving it. So I'm very, very aware of that.
Rhys:So, you know, I think, for example, the last Royal Spinos book I did called From Cradle to Grave starts off with Obviously, these books have humor in them too. They do
Michael:Oh, yes.
Rhys:Oh, they poke gentle fun at the British class system all the time. So the book starts off with a a very distinguished woman arriving on Georgie's doorstep, and Georgie thinks it must be some duchess or something. It turns out to be the new nanny that her sister-in-law has sent to her. Now imagine the nanny from hell coming to live in your house, and Georgie can't think of a way to get rid of her without being impolite. So that's what she's battling with when she goes up to London to see a friend and the friend says, oh, sorry.
Rhys:I can't talk to you now. I'm going to a funeral of a of of a friend's son. Tragic tragic accident. And so, you know, that's just dropped off. You think, oh, that's nothing.
Rhys:And then Georgie is sitting in a London restaurant with her friend. And here's people talking at the next table, and she knows them. And they're talking about the funeral of a friend they've just been to. And when there's a third funeral, she realizes that this is this can't be coincidence. There are three young upper class men who have died in tragic accidents within the last few weeks.
Rhys:Can it be that someone is murdering the sons of aristocrats? And therefore, you know, then you've got the the mystery. So, you know, I think they just come into the story. They sneak into my stories often rather than, you know, rather than finding the body sprawled on the on the rug in the library at the beginning. They sneak in and then you think, oh, well that's suspicious.
Rhys:So I think, you know, that that's how I work and that's that's probably how I like to read too. But I really I mean, if I read, I like books where I really care about the characters. I there are some books I've read that are very clever stories, but I can't stand the main character. And, I find it very hard to finish. So you I I want my readers to be cheering for my my main characters.
Michael:I love the meta aspect, though, that you also mentioned, which I hadn't even thought about, where you're playing with the reader's expectation because they got that book off of this shelf. They know there's a mystery there. And so part of what's driving them is, in addition to the character's story, the anticipation of waiting for the body to drop. Has the body already dropped and we missed it? All of these questions going through the reader's mind for a few
Michael:pages. Think,
Rhys:I mean, having said that I don't have a body in the first chapter, I think that first chapter has to have something of intrigue in it that will make the reader say, Oh, you know, I when I I've been I've been a mentor at various writers conferences and things, and sometimes you have to wade through four or five chapters of people at a cocktail party saying inane things to each other and you think first of all, have to say, of these people am I supposed to follow? Which is which is which is my main character here? And then, you know, then you want to think, well, what's what's gonna go wrong for them? You know, what what is it that they want that's not gonna happen? Or what what is who is their adversary?
Rhys:And and, the classic one of these, years ago, I was asked someone had written young a James Bond, and this publisher sent it to me and said, do you think you could resurrect this and make it readable? Anyway, it starts with the young guy coming home to to to his parents' house and he has, his mother says, oh, would you like some tea, dear? So they sit and have some tea. And then she says, how about a game of tennis? And they're on the tennis court and playing and she says, by the way, somebody's kidnapped your father.
Rhys:And that's that's it about chapter four. So that's how not to do it. Alright? But you but no. That that first chapter I mean, I think a a good first chapter is is one way you you don't spell anything out.
Rhys:You make the reader think, what? You know how in The Lord of the Rings, how they're going through the Shire, the lovely, beautiful, safe Shire, and a black rider goes past and you go, what was that? That's what I like and that's what I like to do in the first chapters, just to have you have the reader go, wait, what was that? You know, if you have if you have a cocktail party and people are having an inane conversation and someone says, well, they didn't invite Sophia. Well, did they?
Rhys:And someone else says, well, how could they? And they go on and you think, well, who is Sophia? And why not? You know, that's, that's what you have to do in that first chapter. You have to make the reader say, why not?
Rhys:What's happening? And then they turn the page. Because any, any chapter where the reader doesn't turn the page, Again, if I'm doing a writer's conference, I say, you say in each chapter, why is this chapter here? Is it furthering plot? Is it furthering character?
Rhys:Is it enhancing setting? If it's not, then you throw it out however beautiful the prose is.
Michael:No. It's not just mysteries though. Like even in The Castle in the Glen, your your most recent one, you're starting out with like an excerpt from this text which establishes the parameters of the mystery in this book. Yeah. Which we don't get to for several more chapters, but, you know, you're you're giving the reader an advanced peek, like a page and a half of what this is going to be before we get to our driving character so that we know that again, there's that anticipation when's this going to come back in.
Rhys:Yeah. And also, I think we do the same as I was just saying with our main character in the in the the in the time period of the sixties, for this book is the present, is that we we throw in a few things, about, well, you can't go home because you don't have a home to go to anymore, do you? And just we don't Right. You don't find out a lot about that until much later. You don't find out why she's in London, what she what she's been wrestling with, what what is, you know, why she feels so lost, etcetera, and why she wants to make something of herself to prove something of herself.
Rhys:And you you don't find out those sort of relationships and things until much later in the book when, of course, they're gonna become important.
Michael:Right. Of course. Back in this spaghetti strands of this interview, back to the mystery series themselves, there's a different tone with each of these. You kind of established why you did those things, you know, where you were looking for stories in your writing path whenever you landed on, you know, setting for Evan, you know, trying to find something a little bit more sparky for Molly, and then a little bit of a reaction to look for something more whimsical for Georgie. But they're all mystery stories and they all have a body in them.
Michael:And you read them in a very different way. Whenever you're a reader, you're not coming into Molly Murphy looking for a Blackadder cast of characters that you would find with the the Georgie stories. How do you separate those? What are what are the tools that you focus on to to drive like, these are the the the lanes that this story is in?
Rhys:It's an interesting question, and I'm not sure how to answer it. I think, with Molly, I knew of first of all, she starts this the whole series in a very bad place. And when she finally is able to go ashore in Manhattan, she is completely with She's a fish out of water, completely with She's fighting for her life. She's She has no backup. She has no resources.
Rhys:And so she is the ultimate immigrant in New York City. So, I think we see her struggle for quite a few books. And then we see You know, we've seen what happens to other immigrants as one story that really mirrors the triangle fire, in which you see what happens to girls in the sweatshops. So I think that's what I I wanted to do with this. I wanted to show life in the raw in New York City.
Rhys:So, obviously, the tone the tone is going to be right for that, except that it's another first person. So you're going to see everything through the eyes of a young Irish woman who has a bit of an attitude and doesn't always take herself too seriously and is is apt to say something, if my mother could see me now, you know, she'd say it serves you right. So and and we have her voice. I think in each of my series, the voice is such an important thing. You know, Lady Georgie is then her first person voice.
Rhys:The moment she speaks to you at the beginning, you know who she is. You know, you can see her upper class background and you can see where she's living and everything. And the same with Molly. We mo we know Molly because of her voice. And I have to say Mhmm.
Rhys:When I was starting to write Molly, I wrote that first chapter, and and and that first sentence, that mouth of yours is gonna get you in trouble one day. And really, that really shaped who Molly is because, you know, the moment my characters speak to me, I know who they are. So I don't have to I don't have write 100 page character sketches or anything. They speak to me and that, you know, that's why dialogue is or first person is such a wonderful thing because the character is speaking to the reader instantly. So you know who they are.
Michael:Right. Right away. Yeah. It's the importance of the narrative voice. Like, it's it's a lot easier to make that distinction with first person, but it's something that can happen, you know, with you can do that with third person too, but that really is, I think, the tone separator.
Michael:The events, the environment, the setting, the world building, this is an aspect where world building, you know, you're crafting the world around these characters that has an effect on the story. It's not just for sci fi. Well, speaking of historical fiction, you have been writing a lot more historical and literary fiction stories, standalone adventures. That what you have decided to focus on now? Are we getting more of Molly or Georgie or Evan to coming up in the future for people to anticipate?
Rhys:Well, had You know, over the years, I've had great ideas like, Oh, I'd love to do a book about so and so. But then if you're stuck in a series, you are in within the limitations of that time and place and that character. So I've had to put these ideas on hold and it wasn't until about 2017 when I thought I was established enough that I could branch out and I The first one I did was called In Farley Field, was which was spurred by the fact when I read read this article on how British aristocrats had tried to help Hitler. And I was horrified by that and I thought I wanted to write a book about that. So, you know, I had the idea and I sort of jotted down, jotted down what I'd like to say on that.
Rhys:But then, it was back in the early two thousands and I showed it to my agent and she said, oh, well, nobody's interested in World War II. And, and and she said, I find it very insulting that you're showing people having quite a good time in England when everybody was suffering so much on the continent. So I put it on one side and, coincidentally, got a different agent. But,
Michael:It's a very good coincidence.
Rhys:Yeah. It wasn't until 2017 when I got this out again and looked at it and I thought, this is a really good idea. I like this. So we showed it to my agent and she loved it too. And we showed it to both my publishers who turned it down for different reasons.
Rhys:One said, oh, this is too far from her brand. And the other one said, well, this isn't funny. Well, no. World War two wasn't very funny, you know. So my agent said, I know who's dying to work with you, and that's Danielle Marshall at Lake Union.
Rhys:We went to them and they promised me the earth and the moon and the sky and they delivered it. And, you know, the book sold, I don't know, close to a million copies. But, you know, it just put it put everything in a different perspective. And so since then, I've been able to they've been so open to what I wanted to write. So any ideas I've toyed with in the past, you know, oh, I'd really like to write a book about Tuscany in World War II and a letter that was never delivered.
Rhys:Oh, that sounds wonderful. Oh, I'd really like to write a book about, children little girls who got on trains in in World War II and were evacuated and were never seen again. Oh, that sounds wonderful. You know, think I mean, I almost think if I said to my editor, I'd like to write a book about this man who goes into a cave in Tibet for thirty four years and doesn't see another soul. And she'd probably say, interesting.
Rhys:She probably wouldn't say, are you crazy? So, you know, it's
Michael:That kinda sounds like Yeah.
Rhys:So it's it's really nice to be given this freedom like the one I'm writing at the moment takes place in the present and in the year 1450 and slightly in the year 1830. So, you know, I'm Slightly. I I can't I well, there's a there's a diary from that that year which has an impact on the story. But Mhmm. So, you know, I'm I'm dabbling in things that are that are very, different in I mean, I like to be stretched.
Rhys:I don't I mean, my nightmare would be to have the sort of mystery series that was set in a setting, you know, in in the, the yarn shop or the the donut shop. And every time having to go back and then having enough, you know, the Jessica Fletcher syndrome is what I would hate to do. Mhmm. So I like to do something that's so completely different each time, Different in tone, different in voice, different in characters. And, you know, I I think that's what keeps me fresh.
Rhys:That and the fact that I can do a big standalone, which are often very intense. Then I move across to Lady Georgie, where I can sit and chuckle. Each time I'm writing
Michael:Little relief.
Rhys:Yeah. Well, each time I can look forward to the other one, like, when I finish this, I get to do this with Lady Georgie and vice versa. Oh, I'm having this fun with Lady Georgie, then pretty soon I've got to go back to this very intense thing that takes place in 1450. So, you know, it's think it keeps me fresh and I think that's why people still like the books.
Michael:That's good. It's a lot of build up then. It's worth carrying around that little pocket notebook with all the ideas in it that you think you're never going to end up using cause it eventually will come back around.
Rhys:You know, and I do. I do. Do have a physical notebook. I really like that. The fact that I can jot down ideas, not put them on my phone, but just jot them down and look at them and do little circles around them, little arrows to things.
Rhys:That's, you know, that's something I carry one of those with me.
Michael:There is something to that. Like, there's a lot of neuroscience research that it really helps you build a connection with the physicality of it whenever you're able to write on pen and paper. Or there's an extra dimensional connection that your brain is able to make to that. You know, it's And, not always convenient for everybody, but it's definitely something that I think is worth exploring if, you know, you if somebody is a writer who has only had their phone or only had their keyboard.
Rhys:Yeah. Yeah.
Michael:So, before we wrap up, is there anything else that, you know, you'd like to talk about or that you think that would be you wish I'd asked or nobody ever asks you and they should. We can I make some
Rhys:think we've covered an awful lot today? I mean, it's been it's nice because it's been a little more intense, you know. A lot of these interviews, especially when a new book's coming out, is essentially what the plot's about, where you got the idea from, and you know, how you know about Australians. Right. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I should mention that, you in the 1960s, I lived in Sydney, Australia, I worked I was working for the BBC in London and I got lured down to work for Australian Broadcasting.
Rhys:So, I was there in Sydney in the 1960s, which is how I feel I can write about a young woman of that time authentically because a lot of my friends were exactly that. And it was, it was the dream of every young Australian at that time to, especially women, young girls, to go and work in London for a while and to go back to what they still called it the old country in those days, you know, eve- because even if their grandparents came from England, that desire to go back and be part of English life for a while was was quite a strong one. And and most people would go and work in Europe for or in England for a year or so, and then go back to Australia. So it was something that people did.
Michael:Right. Right. That is a a great aspect of being able to probably approach these standalone stories, is being able to integrate more of these personal experiences as you, you know, you go from place to place and you're in different places in your life. And there's something there that you can integrate into a story that doesn't always happen in the small town in Wales. Right?
Michael:That you you have the opportunity to actually Yeah.
Rhys:I mean, this latest one too, on the Isle Of the Isle Of Skye. I have vivid memories of of the fact that Skye was at the same time beautiful and dangerous. My friends and I were were there and we were quite naive when it came to, dangers and we decided that, oh, this is this really interesting track up this mountain. Let's go and see if we get a good view. And we're going up the mountain and, suddenly the mist comes in and literally you couldn't see the person in front of you.
Rhys:And we're on a we're on this track with a really sheer drop on one side of us. And yet, when you suddenly realize that sky can turn on you in a second, and I hope that's what I brought out in the book, that there's always this element of danger wherever you go in on the island of sky. So, you know, that's where I personal feelings and personal fears. And so, know, Yeah. It has to be the personal aspect, think.
Michael:But we did see the the nature turning against you and all of that in there. Yeah, it's been lovely. It's been some really good conversation. I think we've had some good notes for people to take here as well, like whenever, you know, I really appreciate you and I know people listening, really appreciate you taking the time to dig into maybe some more academic or a little bit less a little bit deeper digging. See, I told you I have to edit my schedule sometimes on this.
Michael:So anyway, thank you once again for for being here and and for digging into this. Lovely stories. I'm gonna put links in the show notes for people to take a look, not only at your latest one, but at other at least the starting points of your other adventures that you have going. So thank you once again for appearing.
Rhys:Well, thank thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Good chat.
Michael:Of course. Thank you.
Michael:There is an element of mystery to every story. The reader turns the pages driven to find out what comes next. What does the next page have in store? No matter what shelf your story sits on, what genre it calls home, the mystery of what's next pulls the reader through. Romance, history, fantasy.
Michael:Look for ways to add that tiny spice of mystery your reader craves. Thanks once again to our wonderful guest Reese Bowen for talking to us today. Visit Rhys Bowen if you'd like to read more of her work, sign up for her newsletter, and find her social links. That's rhysboven.com. The Castle in the Glen, her latest work, is available to order now.
Michael:You will find links to order that book as well as the other books we talked about in the show notes. She has a lot more though so please do visit her website or find her bookshelf at your local bookstore. The show note links go to bookshop.org in order to help support independent bookstores. Clicking the links may also support this show in a small way. I hope you've enjoyed this interview.
Michael:This has been the very first episode of our second season. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe or follow this podcast in your favorite podcast player. We've got some exciting things planned for the show coming up this season, so visit the epilogue.net and sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss announcements or any of our exciting future guests. Thank you.