12 or 20 (second series) questions with Alice Fitzpatrick
AliceFitzpatrick hascontributed short stories to literary magazines and anthologies and is afearless champion of singing, cats, all things Welsh, and the Oxfordcomma. Her summers spent with her Welshfamily in Pembrokeshire inspired the creation of the setting of the Meredith Island Mystery series. She was a third of the way through the first draft of Secrets in the Water, the first book inthe series, when she realized this story of lost family history was inspired byher own family. Alice lives in Toronto but dreams of acottage on the Welsh coast. To learnmore about Alice and her writing, please visit her website at http://www.alicefitzpatrick.com.
1 - How did yourfirst book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to yourprevious? How does it feel different?
I always imaginedif I ever became a published writer, I would spend my days writing, but I underestimatedthe amount of marketing I have to do to get my name, my book, and my series outthere. Because I live in Canada butwrite a aeries that’s set in Wales, I have to promote to three geographicalareas: Canada, the US, and the UK. Self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to me,but I’ve learnt to push myself. While I’mgetting more and more comfortable with it all, I still wish I had time to write.
2 - How didyou come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
My first publicationwas in an anthology of high school poetry edited by Canadian poet GeorgeBowering. Buoyed by this success, I decidedto become the youngest poet to win the Governor General’s award, until I realizedI wasn’t a poet. I need space to tell mystories, and so I moved on to short fiction and later the novel.
3 - How longdoes it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writinginitially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear lookingclose to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It’s relativelyeasy for me to come up with ideas by asking “what if this happens?” I don’t normally do an outline for my books,but I do make notes on the characters, their relationships to each other, and theirsecrets. Before I begin to write, I haveto know the identity of the first victim, their killer, and the motive. This gets me through the first seventy or sopages. When I’m writing, I need to knowwhat’s happening in the next few scenes so I don’t get stuck.
4 - Where doesa work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces thatend up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?
I always know whatform a story will take. Obviously some ideaslend themselves to a shorter focussed format while others need the space of anovel. Having said that, the idea for Secrets in the Water came from a forty-pagestory I’d written decades before about the Welsh seaside resort where I spentmy childhood summers. At that point, myprotagonist, Kate, was a fourteen-year-old investigating her aunt’s death. When I decided to turn the story into afull-length novel, I made Kate a retired English teacher who wrote historicalnovels and gave her a sidekick.
5 - Are publicreadings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort ofwriter who enjoys doing readings?
I enjoy public readings. As a teacher, I’m quite comfortable standingin front of people and sharing my work with them. However, I get nervous if I’m recordedreading or being interviewed. I fear anymistakes I make will exist forever, whereas an in-person reading is ephemeraland quickly fades from memory.
6 - Do youhave any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions areyou trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the currentquestions are?
As someone whowrites genre rather than literary fiction, I don’t feel my work offers anyinsight into deep philosophical issues, but I do have themes for each book beyondsolving the mystery. Secrets examines different kinds of loveand what we’re prepared to do for that love. It’s also about recovering family history, the fragility of memory, andhow we tend to mythologize people who have disappeared from our lives. This makes Kate’s job of solving thefifty-year-old murder of her aunt all the harder. Whereas other authors might write crimefiction because it allows them to set the world straight, to provide justice tovictims, and bring order to chaos, for me it’s the need to understand whathappened and why. I’m intrigued by what makes seemingly ordinary people commitmurder.
7 – What doyou see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they evenhave one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
In times ofdistress and uncertainty, we all need an escape. During the Depression, people flocked tomovie houses, and the movie musical was born. The world of Meredith Island is one of community and support, and thesedays we need that more than ever.
8 - Do youfind the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (orboth)?
I don’t have betareaders or belong to a writing group, so I value my publisher’s objective eye. When my edits arrive, I’m always nervous incase I’ve got things so wrong that the book can’t be saved.
9 - What isthe best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
My favouritepiece of advice comes from Darcy Pattison: “The first draft of a story is totell you what the story is. The nextdrafts are a search for the best way to tell this story.”
As aperfectionist—and what writer isn’t or doesn’t aspire to be—I would get hung upon getting the first draft as good as I could. In the past, this would often stop me in my tracks as I edited andre-edited what I’d already written, often afraid to go on. Pattison’s advice gives me permission to letgo of expectations of immediate perfection. Wandering off the path is a valuable part of the process.
10 - How easyhas it been for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel)? Whatdo you see as the appeal?
I started mycareer writing literary short stories. Secrets took me so long to write becauseI had to learn not only how to write a full-length novel, but the requirementsof crime fiction. At the first Bloody Wordsconference I attended, an established crime writer gave me feedback on an earlyversion of my first chapter. She observed there was very little description. When I told her I was a short story writer,she smiled and said, “Oh, that explains it.”
11 - What kindof writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
I’m awake ateight, read for an hour, and then check my emails and social media—just in casethere’s something important that has to be dealt with right away. There never is, although I tell myself thiswill free me to write uninterrupted for the rest of the day. While I’m eating my breakfast of oatmeal andtea, I watch one crime TV show which I rationalize as research and to kickstartthe little grey mystery-writing cells. By now it’s noon, guilt is setting in, and I can’t put off writing anylonger. This is when I drag myself up tomy office and start to write—after checking my emails and social media one moretime. The good news is that once I get started, I usually keep going until six,seven, or even eight o’clock.
12 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?
My writing onlygets stalled when I don’t know what the characters will do next. That’s usually because I’ve started writingbefore fully understanding who they are and what motivates them. At that point, I have to take the time to fleshout their backstory.
13 - Whatfragrance reminds you of home?
Because I spentmy summers at my aunt and uncle’s hotel on the Welsh coast, home is the yeasty smellof beer coming from open doors of pubs, the greasy odour of fish and chips fromcafes, and of course seaweed and salt water. All of these have found their way into my books.
14 - David W.McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other formsthat influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
When I wasyounger, I would listened to classical music and imagine that my writing wouldcreate the same deep emotional feelings in the reader that music brought out inme. However, music touches a place deepin the soul, bypassing the analytic brain. Words can’t do that. They needour brains to decode their meanings.
15 - Whatother writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your lifeoutside of your work?
When I firststarted writing my series, I discovered Jasper Fforde, a Welsh fantasy crimewriter, whose books opened my mind to a new world of possibilities, giving mepermission to create quirky characters and to ask my readers to suspend morethan a little disbelief.
16 - Whatwould you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like totravel to Ireland and other parts of the UK. Ultimately I’d love to buy a seaside cottage in Wales.
17 - If youcould pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately,what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
For most of mylife, I was a high school ESL and English teacher. I taught people—and myself—about language andstory-telling structure, and that has served me well. But I would also have loved to have been anarchaeologist. My Master’s degree is insocial history, and a lot of archaeology is social history. But I don’t have a head for science. So instead, I decided to have somearchaeology students come to the island to dig for the remains of an earlymedieval monk’s cell in the second Meredith Island Mystery, A Dark Death.
18 - What madeyou write, as opposed to doing something else?
I’ve been astoryteller ever since I can remember. It’s how I comprehend and interact with the world. While other people arrive late and offervague references to problems with public transit, I delight in recounting everydetail. Before I graduated from highschool, I’d received my first rejection letter when I sent Carol Burnett asketch I’d written, completed my first novel, and was published in a poetryanthology edited by Canadian poet George Bowering.
19 - What wasthe last great book you read? What wasthe last great film?
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz both awed and intimidatedme, while Thomas King’s CBC Massey Lectures TheTruth about Stories: A Native Narrative taught me about the power ofstorytelling. I rarely watch films, but Ido watch a lot of British television mysteries such as Midsomer Murder, Father Brown, and Sister Boniface Mysteries.
20 - What areyou currently working on?
I’ve justfinished the edits for A Dark Deathto be released in June, 2025, and am writing The Secret House of Death, the fifth book in the Meredith Island Mystery series. I’m also searching for apublisher for a stand-alone private investigator/police procedural/suspensenovel called That Which Was Lostwhich was inspired by a horrific car accident that killed eight teenagers in my hometownfifty years ago. Andif someone would like to make a series or film from the Meredith Island books,I wouldn’t say no.
