Stop! You’re Killing Me!!

Seven Tips for Writing Funny Mysteries

By Billie Thomas, author of 

Murder on the First Day of Christmas

When I count my blessings, I’m always careful to list the fact that writing humor comes easily to me. Notice, I didn’t say that I’m funny. That’s subjective. You can’t call yourself funny any more than you can call yourself cool or – god forbid – badass. No, I’m saying that I naturally hear the “beats” of humor, the way some people hear the beats I’m told are in music. (I don’t hear the beats in music, which is why I dance to the words.) But just as I’ve had to brush up on the skills that don’t come easily to me – plotting, for example – I think anyone can learn some tricks for writing humor. Will these tips make you funny? Again, subjective. But they can help you stack the odds in your favor.

Tip 1. Know your characters:

Having a thorough understanding of your character lets you understand how they relate to situations or to other characters. My protagonist, Chloe, for instance, is self-deprecating and a little ditzy. Funny things happen to her and she’s smart enough to see the humor in them. In Murder on the First Day of Christmas, a gynecologist corners Chloe at a party:

     “Hear you’re a personal trainer now. Maybe we could trade services. You get me back into fighting shape, I’ll give you free Pap smears for life.”

     I watched him lick lobster puff from his fat little fingers. Somehow, my usual line, “Let me check if I have any openings,” didn’t seem quite appropriate.  

See? Chloe is the type of girl that gets offered free Pap smears for life and she rolls with it. Her mother, Amanda, on the other hand, is more sophisticated and has a razor sharp wit. When the president of the Garden Club insults her, Amanda might fire back “Says the woman who puts the ‘hor’ in ‘horticulture.’”

The differences between Chloe and Amanda make the banter between them funny, but their affection for each other keeps it light.

Tip 2. Create a context.

Before you can deliver the laughs, you have to have set up.  Consider the context of your story and think about where the humor is inherent.  Will yours be a fish out of water story? One where the banter of two opposite characters provides the laughs the way it does for Chloe and Amanda? Maybe you’re writing a screwball comedy where zany things happen to unwitting characters? Whatever context you choose, don’t let your character in on the joke. “I’m a fish out of water,” your character acknowledges in a stage whisper. Your reader puts down your book and works on their taxes.  

Tip 3. Story first, humor second. 

The most important thing I’ve gleaned from all the rejection letters from agents and editors I’ve received over the years is that story is the entrée and humor is the seasoning. Hearing that your story is “laugh-loud funny but…,” that your writing is “great, however…” is more frustrating than I can communicate. As I said above, I’ve had to work really hard on plotting to make my stories strong without losing the humor. But relying on humor – the seasoning – at the expense of story? Look up “eating cinnamon” on Youtube to see what that’s like.

Tip 4. Don’t chase the joke.

This rule is as hard to obey as “kill your darlings.” And yet, it’s just as non-negotiable. A joke that requires too much set-up, that changes the trajectory of a scene, or worse, the story, that is out of context or undercuts the tension, simply has to die. Ok, it doesn’t have to die. It can be cut out, filed away and saved for another day. But it has no place in your book.

Tip 5. Repetition is funny.

There’s a saying that comedy happens in threes, so repeating a line, situation, or character foible can be a great source of humor. More importantly, it lets your reader feel like they’re in on the joke, giving them that “wait for it…wait for it” feeling that is so engaging.

I do this a couple of times in Murder on the First Day of Christmas with the way Amanda can’t help herself from commenting on something that annoys her about Chloe’s clothing choices. A repeated line, known as a callback appears in the beginning of the book and is the last line of the book as well. Also Chloe’s sister, Bridget is always tangling clichés. (“I know this town like the back of my head” or “You should march back in there and give him a piece of your ass.”) Repeating this character trait several times (but not every time we see Bridget) adds to the humor of her character.

Tip 6. Keep humor in its place. 

Mysteries have to have suspense. If your MC is cracking jokes while the murderer has a gun trained on them, the tension is sorely undercut. That could be what you’re going for – having your wisecracking character use humor to diffuse the situation. But if you want your reader on the edge of their seats, save the jokes for a different scene. The reader isn’t scared unless your characters are.

Tip 7. Mix it up.

Humor from any one direction is tiresome. If your book is all slapstick, all dirty jokes or all snark, your readers will get bored and start to tune out. Humor should also have an element of surprise, so let something slapsticky happen to the very poised person, or have the prude make an off-color remark. Using all the weapons in your humor arsenal will engage the reader and keep them turning pages.

What I love about writing humor is that the joy is inherent. Yes, there are tortured comedians and sad clowns, but ultimately humor comes from a positive place – the desire to make someone laugh. And, after what I did to Santa in my first book, I need all the good Karma that I can get.  

About Murder on the First Day of Christmas:

Finding a severed hand at a client’s house might throw lesser decorators off their games. But Chloe Carstairs and her mother, Amanda, won’t let a little thing like murder keep them from decking the halls. With a body under the partridge’s pear tree and a dead Santa in a sleigh, they have to crack the case before the killer strikes again – this time much too close to home.

Filled with laugh-out-loud humor, romance and a delightfully difficult mother-daughter relationship, this new series from Billie Thomas offers a fast-paced caper as these two southern ladies try to keep their very merry Christmas from turning into the Noel from hell.

Order on AMAZON

Order on BARNES and NOBLE 

About Billie Thomas 

Billie Thomas is the pseudonym of a Birmingham-based author. After the real Billie passed away unexpectedly at the end of 2011, getting Murder on the First Day of Christmas, the first of a series, revised and published was her daughter’s top priority as a way to honor the mom who had given her a lifelong love of books.

In her real life, Ms. Thomas writes within the advertising industry and is a founding member of the writing collective, IndieVisible. Other publications include Bar Code: Your Personal Pocket Decoder to the Modern Dating Scene.

 

Connect with Billie Thomas and her protagonist Chloe Carstairs at:

www.chloegetsaclue.com

Follow on Twitter:    @ChloeGetsAClue

www.facebook.com/chloe.cartairs.73

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6877693.Billie_Thomas

"What I learned from Nancy Drew and Scooby Doo" by K.B. Owen

Guest Blogger: K.B.Owen on:  What Nancy Drew and Scooby-Doo Taught Me About Writing Cozy Mysteries
 

Coming in February 2013! 

I’ve been a mystery fan ever since I can remember.  Not even graduate school – a place where the genre was considered “low-brow,” forumlaic, and barely literature at all – could dim my enthusiasm for mysteries.  I loved the classic authors, of course –  Doyle, Christie and Sayers – as well as the exciting new authors coming to the forefront at the time, such as Muller, Grafton, Deaver, Paretsky and Perry.  Locked rooms, secret passageways, the “footprints of a gigantic hound” – I couldn’t get enough.

But it was Nancy Drew and the gang of Mystery, Inc. who were my original inspiration.  They remain with me even today, as I write mysteries about an 1890s female literature professor who lives and teaches in a women’s college, getting into all sorts of trouble in the process.  A strange combination, wouldn’t you say?  Has Jill gone ‘round the bend in picking her guest authors now?  Ah, the connections may surprise you.

Lessons in constructing a cozy mystery, courtesy of Nancy Drew and the Mystery Inc Gang:

1.       Give your character freedom:  You want as many opportunities as possible for your character to stumble into some serious trouble.  In the Nancy Drew mysteries, for example, the extent of Mr. Drew’s parental oversight of his daughter is a frown and an admonition: “Be careful, Nancy,”as he hands her the keys to that sweet red roadster.  In other words, the sky’s the limit.  And did you ever notice that we never see the parents of the Mystery Inc gang?  Who’s keeping track of these teenagers as they drive all over creation, in search of the next mystery or groovy concert?  And who’s paying for the gas?  The only treasure they ever find is useless Confederate money.  No wonder they stumble upon a mystery with each wrong turn.  It’s a good thing for the Hanna-Barbera audience that GPS wasn’t invented back then.

2.      Use humor:  If placed carefully, humor dissipates tension quite effectively. Shaggy and Scooby’s hunt for a 3 a.m. snack in a haunted house can be just the ticket when things are looking oppressively gloomy. 

3.      Create sidekicks:  These characters are valuable assets in a mystery, on several levels.  Bess and George, Nancy’s sidekicks, are at the extreme ends of the femininity continuum, with Bess being the tentative, somewhat hedonistic girly-girl and George the outspoken tomboy.  Nancy is the happy middle between the two.  They act as her foils, her partners, and her sounding board.  Otherwise, Nancy would be deducing aloud to herself.   

4.      Include mannerism and dialogue “tags”:  These have value in reader/viewer identification and series branding.  The cast of Scooby-Doo is a fabulous example: 

• Velma “Jinkies” Dinkley: the brainy girl geek who frequently loses her glasses and can’t see a thing without them.
• Freddy “Well, Gang” Jones: big and muscular enough to simply tackle the bad guy, but instead builds criminal-catching traps that make MacGyver look like a mullet-sporting amateur.
• Scooby “Ruh-roh” Doo: the cowardly dog who can be bribed with Scooby Snacks.
• Shaggy “Zoinks” Rogers: a physical coward with a chronic case of the munchies.
• “Danger-Prone” Daphne Blake: she’s pretty, trips a lot, and extracts odd items from her purse from time to time to get the gang out of a bind (sometimes literally).

5.      Daring and ingenuity make a great combination:  These qualities in a protagonist can propel her/him into and out of sticky situations.  Nancy and Velma are great examples, and even fearful characters like Scooby and Shaggy will rise to the occasion.  This may seem like a “duh” point to make, but the current fiction trend seems to be leaning toward deeply flawed and internally-tormented protagonists (not that there’s anything wrong with that, LOL).  While many of those types are done superbly,  I think it’s good to give yourself permission to buck the trend, if that will serve your purposes.  The protag can still be three-dimensional, with flaws and blind spots.  I like some daring in my mystery characters.  I still remember one example of physical derring-do from the Nancy Drew mysteries: the bad guy leaves Nancy in an old well - in the dark, with rats - and no way out.  She uses old nails and bits of broken wood scavenged from the floor to dig toeholds in the dirt walls and climb out.  I loved that.  I’d never want to do it, but I got a kick out of reading about it!

6.      Using Formula:  Don’t be afraid of using some formulaic elements, as long as you can put a fresh twist on them.  Formulaic doesn’t have to mean predictable.  Perhaps this is more true of the genre-writing that I do, but in my opinion it increases reader pleasure and engagement.  Although not necessarily what one would duplicate in literature, Scooby-Doo is my favorite example of a fun formula.   During any given episode of the original series, the viewer knows that the following will happen:

• Velma will lose her glasses and, in her blindness, mistake the monster for Shaggy or Scooby.
• Daphne will inevitably find a hole, trick slide, or booby-trap to fall through.
• Shaggy and Scooby will find a kitchen and eat bizarre food items, usually cobweb-covered.
• Scooby will be the first to see the ghost/monster, but Shaggy won’t believe him, because it will be gone by then.  (But we know it will return!).
• Fred will rig a trap that rivals the most complicated Rube Goldberg creation.
• The trap will fail because Scooby stumbled into it.  The crook is caught anyway.
• We learn that either transparent skis, secret passageways, phosphorescent paint, or dry ice was involved in working the illusion.
• The bad guy, once revealed, will snarl:  ”And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for you meddling kids and your dog.”
• During the wrap-up scene, Scooby will steal and eat Shaggy’s super-duper-triple-decker burger, with lettuce, tomato, chili, and chocolate sauce (so that’s why he’s so thin).

Whether or not these “lessons” are ones you would adopt in your own writing, I hope you enjoyed this look at two classic childhood sleuths/sleuthing teams! 

Do you have any favorites that influenced you?  Jill and I would love to hear about them.  

 

K.B. Owen taught college English for nearly two decades at universities in Connecticut and Washington, DC, and holds a doctorate in 19^th century British literature.  A mystery lover since she can remember, she drew upon her teaching experiences in creating her amateur sleuth, Professor Concordia Wells.  Unlike the fictional Miss Wells, K.B. did not have to conduct lectures in a bustle and full skirts.  No doubt many people are thankful about that. 

She now resides in Virginia with her husband and three sons.  She recently finished the second book in the series, and is busily planning Concordia’s next adventure.   

Follow her on Twitter @kbowenwriter

 Check out her website for more historical mystery fun: kbowenmysteries.com

Order DANGEROUS AND UNSEEMLY  from one of the links below:

Amazon ebook

Scribd 
Barnes and Noble  

Interview with Michael Estrin

 Talk to me about Ethan, the main character in Murder and Other Distractions.  How did you come up with him?  Why do you think readers sympathize with or relate to a pot smoking, taco eating slacker? Ummm, how much of you is in him? (Answering this is in no way an admission of pot-smoking or taco eating...)


I’ve smoked pot and eaten tacos—the former sometimes leads to the latter. So I have that in common with Ethan, and millions of other people.
I don’t want to give away the ending of the book, but I’d actually worry if someone told me that they relate to Ethan or sympathize with him. Actually, I might even call the cops, if they said that. Let’s put it this way: for a while I considered calling the book Unlikeable Hero.

That said, there’s an element of truth to Ethan, especially for guys. I’ve been told that his internal monologue is what a lot of guys think, but don’t say. I’m not sure if that’s true for me, but there are times when I wish I had the real life balls for one of Ethan’s sarcastic quips. Then again, I don’t like getting punched in the face, so maybe it’s good that I pass on the sarcasm.

You’ve published several articles in publications ranging from Bitter Lawyer to Penthouse.       What made you decide to try your hand at novel writing?  In what ways do you think your other forays into writing helped you as a novelist?

I always wanted to write a novel, but I needed a day job, and I figured writer/reporter would be a pretty good place to start. 

No matter what you’re writing, you’re always thinking about what the story is. A novel is just a really big story, so you learn a lot by making a news story or feature work because you learn to ask questions.
A few years ago, Penthouse hired me to write a feature about guys panning for gold in the hills outside of Los Angeles. Sounds crazy, right? Well, yes and no.

Turns out, there’s more gold currently in the ground than what was mined during the California Gold Rush. But according to a government geologist I spoke with, that gold is buried so deep that it will take thousands of years—and hundreds of earthquakes—for it to reach the surface. A fact like that could have ended the story with a headline like Morons Dig For Gold Despite Overwhelming Scientific Evidence That They Will Fail. But I wanted to know why these guys were out there, day after day, if they weren’t finding much. Asking that question led me to the real story—the power of gold fever.

Once I saw that gold fever was real, I was able to put other motives like high unemployment and the rising price of gold into perspective. It also helped me focus on the right status details of some of the people I met hiking around in the mountains. Some of those guys were great characters, even if they needed a bath and some serious dental work.

 Humour may not be the first thing one thinks of as a characteristic of crime fiction, but one would quickly notice its absence.  In The Fine Art of Murder, author Jon Breen comments on “gallows humour” in hardboiled fiction; fans of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels or Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole mysteries often comment on the witty repartee, clever quips, and amusing wordplay in the books.  Talk to me about the dynamics between dead bodies and laughter.

Death is inevitable and universal—hardly a great revelation, right? But we all react to death, even if we choose to ignore it. Some of us, and I’d certainly put myself in this group, choose to laugh about death because laughing beats crying. 

The most interesting part of the dynamic between dead bodies and laughter is perspective. Look at the Darwin Awards. I’m sure the family members of people dumb enough to win a Darwin Award would call their loved one’s death tragic. But is it really tragic if you died in such a stupid way that the gene pool is actually better off without your contribution? 

In Murder and Other Distractions I wanted to tell a story about a really lousy murder suspect. The deaths in the book should give Ethan a new perspective on his life. But he’s so wrapped up in his own crap, that I think he misses the big picture, which is that he’s about to go to jail for murdering his ex, and she didn’t care about him nearly as much as he did for her. I think you can see that as sad, but viewed from a certain distance, it’s also funny, especially if you’re a little twisted.

What can you tell me about your current work-in-progress or next release?

The book I’m working on is a murder mystery set in the porn industry. It’s told from the perspective of a cub reporter working for a trade publication in LA’s San Fernando Valley, which is where I grew up. 

There’s a lot more to say, but I don’t like talking too much about a work-in-progress. I outline and I send early pages to a few readers, but I don’t go wide with drafts because I find that if you talk about a manuscript too much, there’s a tendency for things to become set in stone, which is dangerous because rewriting is where you make your money.

The publishing world has undergone a sea change in the last few years.  Put yourself back about six decades.  Do you think you still would have written a novel in a pre-Internet world?  What kinds of feedback or reactions might you have gotten in a 1950s pre-Amazon era?  Would you have even bothered writing a novel back then?

Stepping out of Doc Brown’s DeLorean, I’d have to say that I might be a little discouraged. Even though there were more publishers back then, the industry was really built around the idea of gatekeepers. A manuscript lived and died based on the opinion of a very small group of people. Those people worked in a defined genre and relied almost exclusively on their own tastes. 

While I think that editors and publishers are important, the old model really didn’t give us as much diversity as we have today. Murder and Other Distractions benefits enormously from that diversity. Some people choose to see it as a crime story or murder mystery, but I’ve had other readers tell me that it’s more of a dark comedy with elements of noir. And some people see it as literary fiction, although I prefer not to market it that way.

What I love about today’s publishing environment is that authors aren’t constrained by narrow categories and they aren’t kept out by narrow-minded gatekeepers. Does that mean there’s a lot more noise? Sure. But I don’t know if I could have published Murder and Other Distractions sixty years ago because I probably would’ve gotten a lot of pushback to make it a straight genre piece. 

The reviews on Amazon for Murder and Other Distractions are interesting – many are very, very positive, but a couple are negative.  In either case, reviewers have much to say – they give specifics, and are generous with superlatives -  about your book  (except one Master of Rhetoric who wrote: “I thought that this book was funny, as well as deep. Well worth a read. Blah blah blah blah blah”)  I know you’ve previously blogged about why one star reviews make you smile, but for those who missed that, give me some of your thoughts on writing that provokes a response – any kind of response.

What’s the point of writing if you don’t get a response? 

Good reviews and bad reviews go hand in hand, like dead bodies and call-back jokes. 

Some reviews do get under my skin, though. Like this one:

“No story to it just this guy who like [sic] to talk about what a stud he was. 

Never finished the third page.”

That’s the whole review.   

It seems you’ve had a rather peripatetic journey (which I think is way cool!) and along the way you’ve studied law, reported on porn conventions, and written film and TV specs, among other things.  Writing seems to be the dominant theme, or the common denominator.  What is it about writing that keeps you coming back?

I’ve been a professional writer for 10 years, but even before that I loved to write. When I was in school, I’d always load up on classes that were heavy on writing. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to do anything else. I write six days a week, and when I’m not writing I feel off. So writing is just something I have to do. It’s how I make sense of the world.

But I also get bored rather easily, so maybe that’s why I tend to jump around. It may not look so good on a resume, but it makes for an interesting bio. 

Think of any book (or movie) that you really liked, or really enjoyed... That is, until the end.  You just didn’t like the ending for whatever reason.  What book or movie ending would you like to revise?  What would you change it to?

I’m not sure if I have a specific book or movie in mind. Personally, I like ambiguous endings. Even if things work out, how do we really know they lived happily ever after? Life goes on. People do heroic things and then die in silly ways. Bad guys do awful things and then go on vacation.

That’s not to say that I’m for random endings. The ending needs to make sense with the story. But it doesn’t have to be tied up in a bow, either. 

Look at the endings of The Sopranos or Seinfeld. People argue with me whenever I say they were both pretty right on. But for me they worked. Do we find out what happens to Tony? No. But we do get an honest answer—the life he leads will weigh on him every second of every day until his last day. Same thing, different story with Seinfeld. The characters on that show had been going in hilarious circles for more than a decade, but they really hadn’t changed. If you listen to the conversation Jerry and George have in prison, you realize the whole story has come full circle, which in the Seinfeld world means we’ve gone nowhere and done nothing—perfect. 

Your house is on fire and you can only save three books.  What are they and why?  

I have an iPad and I listen to most of my books on Audible through my iPhone, so the cloud makes me somewhat fire-proof, I suppose. But my wife and I really do cherish the book collection that sits in our living room. A lot of those books are coffee table books, which I love to look through for inspiration. So here’s what I’d grab while running out of a burning house:

Banksy: Wall and Piece

Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo

Catalog L.A.: Birth of an Art Capital 1955-85

The last question is a bit of a freebie: What is the one question you wish I had asked you but didn’t?  Now go ahead and ask and answer that question.  

Do you really hate Tito’s Tacos?

No. I actually ate there a lot in high school. They make a hard shell taco with bright, orange cheese and ground beef that your mom would make on taco night. But they probably do it better your mom, or anyone else. 

Tito’s comes in for some tough criticism in Murder and Other Distractions, but here’s the thing: the critic is Ethan, and I think one reading of the novel is that he’s wrong about everything. No sane person would ask him for career or love advice, so I’m not sure why we should trust his instincts on where to get a good taco.

Check out Murder and Other Distractions on AMAZON



Follow Michael on Twitter @mestrin

Interview with author Ailsa Kay

Your first novel, Under Budapest, will be released this spring.  At the risk of starting off with a soft-ball, low-brow question, how does it feel to have your first book coming out?

Really exciting, and every part of it is new to me.   I received the proofs in the mail a couple of weeks ago and thought, “Oh, so that’s what they mean by ‘proofs.’”  The pages were formatted as they will be in the published book.  I didn’t know that.   And they look great.

You have published short fiction in magazines such as Exile and The New Quarterly.  For you, how does short fiction writing differ from writing a full length novel?

That’s a great question because Under Budapest started as a collection of linked stories, which then kind of novelized itself.   I wrote it in stories at first because I wanted short do-able writing tasks.  I could imagine writing a short story in a few weeks, but a whole novel?   As it turned out, though, the stories were inseparable as each contributes to the same story arc.   The book still has aspects of short fiction because each story/chapter focuses on one “problem”  and they are told in different narrative voices.  But, together, all stories contribute to a single narrative arc, the resolution of two main characters and a mystery. 

Any and every author in 2013 must must must promote and publicize and engage with readers such as never before.  I’m talking, of course, about social media.  I know you’re on Twitter@AilsaKay  and that you have a blog/website http://ailsackay.com/   Tell me, is this kind of interaction fun for you?  Did you have an idea of what you would need to do?  Do you resent it at all?  Has anything about the world of social media surprised the author in you?

You’re right.   I struggled for a while with the idea of a blog—does the world really need to know what I think about… blah?  And then when I decided one day that the blog really had to be about Budapest, and about where the stories began, then it all came together.  Now, I love writing the blog.  It gives me an excuse to post photos of my favourite spots in Budapest, drop teasers about the book, and in a way it lets me live inside the book and with my characters just a bit longer.   I don’t resent it at all.  I’m curious and slightly addicted.   It’s a massive shift, for sure—a modern-day version of the eighteenth-century explosion of print culture.   So where do we go next?  What does it make possible?

For those who haven’t yet heard of your debut novel, give me the one sentence pitch.

A mystery in pieces, Under Budapest excavates what lies beneath post-Communist Hungary as a woman searches for the sister she lost in the ’56 Revolution and her son becomes an involuntary witness to a murder. 

Which is harder for you to write: dialogue or description? 

Dialogue.  It takes me hundreds of revisions.  It’s not just about getting the characters to “sound” right, but also making sure the dialogue does something, provides the right information (and right amount of it) to keep the plot going.   And then, obviously, it’s about character.  Would Tibor really give that much away to his mother?  Would Agi really be so manipulative?

Now tell me about your work in progress or next release.

I’ve got one project I’d like to return to, a novel about an accountant in eighteenth-century Venice who falls in love with a counterfeiter.   Money is made and lost. Chaos ensues.  

What was it like doing the research for Under Budapest?  Was it ever overwhelming?  Trying to sift through facts and data and details and trivia?  And then trying to work all of that into a novel?

I love writing about historical events. It gives me something to start with, and some constraints.  So no, not overwhelming.   I found autobiographies, memoirs of the Hungarian Revolution incredibly moving and helpful.  The amazing thing is that when writing fiction, there’s no such thing as “trivia.”  The more trivial, the better, in some ways.  I hunted out the most trivial detail because detail is how we make fiction feel real.   And interestingly, the memoirs often provided that detail.  It’s as if the brain fastens on trivial things in traumatic times—a snippet of conversation, the weather, the headline, the jacket a woman is wearing, the sound and feel of marching in protest.    

This may seem like another dry, dreary question, but every author is different.  What is your writing approach?  Pen and paper? Laptop?  Silence?  A daily quota?  And how long - from the germ of the idea to submitting to publishers – did it take you to write Under Budapest?

I work on a laptop and I like to work in the morning.  I start early—7ish is best—and work as long as I can.  I’m also a college teacher, so I have the fortune of a flexible schedule.  Some days, I don’t have to teach until late afternoon and that means I can usually get a good long morning of writing done.  Under Budapest started with one story, which took a few weeks to write and then I put it aside.  I returned to it a year or so later, revised it and sharply scaled it down.  The rest of the book came very quickly after that.  I wrote most of it in 4 months of full-time writing—which felt like a fabulous luxury.   I was lucky; a couple of grants allowed me to take time off work to do this.

Name two authors who influenced you the most, or to whom you’d like to be compared.  

I loved Jonathan Safran-Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  I don’t think Under Budapest is anything like his work, but his daring in that novel inspired me.  He writes great plots out of world-shifting events, and with real, laugh-out-loud humour.  I also marvel at Ian McEwan’s control over plot.  He’s a master of pacing and suspense who makes it seem effortless.  

If a hotshot Hollywood director knocked on your door with an offer to make the movie version of Under Budapest, who would you cast in the lead roles? 

Tibor:  Matt Damon     

the older Agnes:  Helen Mirren    

 young Agnes (Agi):  Romola Garai

The last question is kind of a freebie.  What is the one thing you wish I had asked you but didn’t?  Now go ahead and ask and answer that question.  

Did you want to be a writer when you were a kid? 

No.  I wanted to be a detective.  But, that said, my idea of detective work had little to do with the reality of policing.   I just liked solving mysteries and puzzles.  Probably, I had read Sherlock Holmes, and decided it seemed right.  I think that what draws me to writing is similar; I like solving mysteries.   Only, as a writer, I get to set the mystery as well as solve it.  

For more on Ailsa, follow her on Twitter

 @AilsaKay  or check out her website and blog: 

http://ailsackay.com/

Order Under Budapest on AMAZON click here.