AMANDA SELLET’S Flirting with Murder is a cosy and romantic YA murder-mystery, where we follow Virginia Tillis as she tries to solve a murder in her grandmother’s apartment building. Virginia and her new assistant Felix crack Castle Claude’s most complex mystery yet?
Read on for a Q&A with the author.
MEET AMANDA SELLET
What sparked the idea for Flirting with Murder and why did you decide to set the book in Florida?
The characters of Virginia and her larger-than-life grandmother came to me first, and the rest of the story filled in around them. Florida was a natural choice for a book set at a retirement community, but I also have a family history there stretching back many generations and lived in Florida off and on from early childhood until my thirties. I’ve earned the right to make fun of it!
Where did you get the inspiration for the murder-mystery board game Killing Me Softly?
Wish-fulfilment, mostly, starting with the idea of a communal living arrangement surrounded by your best friends. Like Virginia, I’ve always been drawn to theatre without having the nerve to tread the boards myself, so I often find myself writing actors into a story. My daughter and her friends are also big on tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, and in a way Killing Me Softly felt like a less sedentary version of that.
Finding an actual dead body after only role-playing murder mystery games feels like a big jump. How did you balance tone in this cosy romance book?
My personal inclination as a writer is always to skew more goofy than serious, so the struggle for me was deciding how much menace and suspense needed to be present to keep the mystery side of the plot from feeling too insubstantial. Any time you blend genres there’s a risk of leaving half your audience unsatisfied, so I’m always delighted when people enjoy both aspects of Flirting with Murder.
On a similar note, the murders from the Killing Me Softly game sound pretty gory. Do you discuss how games can sometimes make the players feel desensitized from actual real life in Flirting with Murder? How does Virginia react to the death after only seeing it through the realm of fiction?
It’s not unlike the experience we have as readers of the genre. You grow accustomed to accepting certain plot points – including murder – as conventions of the form. Because Virginia and Felix are young people rather than seasoned detectives, I didn’t want to gloss over their emotional response to the reality of death. There is a pause in the narrative that I hope conveys some of the gravity of that experience, instead of being cavalier about the loss of life. Even though this is a lighter mystery, I wanted them to feel like characters rather than caricatures, and having believable reactions was a big part of that.
Can you tell us more about Virginia and Felix. They’re forced to work together to solve the crime, but how does their relationship change?
Felix is more of a golden retriever type, so his immediate response to meeting Virginia is “hooray! A friend! Who I also think is pretty!” Whereas Virginia is more cautious and cat-like: she doesn’t let her guard down until she knows Felix is as sincere and enthusiastic as he seems. There’s a spark from the beginning, but it’s not until they get past that initial reserve (mostly on Virginia’s side) that they realize how similar they are.
Who was your favourite character to write and why?
Grandma Lainey, hands down. It’s always fun to write a character with no filter, who says the things the rest of us only dare to think.
Your previous YA book Belittled Women was a love letter to Louisa May Alcott. Are there any famous crime writers that you are paying homage to in this story?
Dorothy L. Sayers is one of my literary heroines, especially when it comes to detective fiction with a strong romantic subplot. On the comedic mystery side, the ‘Amelia Peabody’ series by Elizabeth Peters and ‘The Spellman Files’ books by Lisa Lutz are at the top of my personal reading pantheon.
Do you have any new projects on the horizon?
I am in the thick of revisions on the sequel to Flirting with Murder. It’s called Ticket to Die and if that sounds like a clue to the setting, let’s just say the train puns don’t stop there. And if you like the banter between Virginia and Felix, and are looking for an escape to the French countryside, you might enjoy my adult rom-com My Best French Wedding, which will be out this August.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amanda Sellet (pronounced Sell-ay) is a former journalist who has written book reviews for The Washington Post, personal essays for NPR, and music and movie coverage for VH1. She has an M.A. in Cinema Studies from NYU. After a mostly coastal childhood, she now lives in Kansas with her husband, daughter, and cats. Her books include Belittled Women, By The Book and Flirting with Murder.
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