Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest mystery author, Daisy Bateman. Daisy is theauthor of MURDERGOES TO MARKET.

Daisy is a mystery lover, cheese enthusiast, and world-renownedexpert in Why You Should Buy That. Her educational background is inmolecular biology from Caltech and UC Berkeley, and in what passesfor normal life, she works in biotech. She lives in Alameda,California, with her husband and a cat, only one of whom wears atuxedo on a regular basis.

Norm:Good day Daisy and thanks for participating in our interview.

Pleasetell our readers a little bit about your personal and professionalbackground. 

Daisy:Hi, thanks for having me! I’m a lifelong mystery reader and catperson, currently raising my first puppy. In my non-writing,non-treat-dispensing life, I work in biotech research.

Norm:What do you think is the future of reading/writing? 

Daisy:I think the future will look a lot like the past, though sometimes itwon’t seem that way. Our attention is stretched more than ever, butno matter how many other forms of entertainment become available,nothing will ever really replace the immersive experience of reading,where you can create whole worlds in your own mind.

Norm:How did you get started in writing? What keeps you going?  

Daisy:What got me started was a love of the stories and characters Icreated, and the desire to see them live for other people. What keepsme going, as far as I can tell, is sheer bloody-mindedness.

Norm:Are you a plot or character writer?  

Daisy:A little bit of both, I think? In a mystery, the plot has to becentral, so that’s generally where I start. But within thatstructure, I try to let the characters drive the action.

Norm:What helps you focus when you write?  

Daisy:Setting a timer for half an hour and forcing myself to stick with ituntil the alarm goes off. The internet is full of temptations, andit’s much too easy to decide that you’re stuck on something whenreally it’s just hard and you’d rather go read Twitter.

Norm:What has been the best part about being published?  

Daisy:Having people read my book! And I made an excursion out to my localindependent bookstore to see it on the shelf, which was a thrill ofits own.

Norm:If you could relive a moment in your life, which moment would youchoose and why?

Daisy:Ooh, that’s a tough one. Maybe when I got the call from my agentthat we had an offer on the book--because of the time difference, Iwas still in bed, and I didn’t get the excitement of it right away.For the do-over, I would be prepped with champagne.

Norm:Does the line between truth and fiction sometimes become blurred foryou?

Daisy:Doesn’t it for everyone? Not in terms of mistaking imaginarycharacters for real people, but more for the idea that events in reallife should follow some kind of narrative arc, with conflict andresolution, and the million-to-one chance that works every time.Terry Pratchett wrote about this, and I think about it a lot.

Norm:Please tell us something about MURDERGOES TO MARKET?

Daisy:It’s a book! More specifically, it’s a cozy murder mystery abouta woman who opens a marketplace for artisan producers, and is forcedto turn detective when one of her tenants is murdered.

Norm:Did you write the novel more by logic or intuition, or somecombination of the two? Please summarize your writing process. 

Daisy:A combination of the two. There needs to be logic--the plot has tomake sense, actions have consequences, and I need to get from thebeginning of the book to the end in a reasonably orderly fashion. Andintuition comes in for the individual scenes; how would thischaracter respond to this situation? What does their response looklike to the other characters? And so on. The two need to worktogether, so that you don’t have a book that’s eitherpaint-by-numbers bland or an unwieldy mess.

Norm:What process did you go through to get your book published?  

Daisy:A long one! Murder Goes To Market is actually the fifth bookI’ve written, and the second to find a publisher (the previous onehad its imprint close before the book reached publication). I amnothing if not a poster child for the importance of persistence. 

Norm:How much of the novel is realistic?  

Daisy:The setting is fairly realistic (though the actual town on the Sonomacoast on which it’s based is smaller than the San Elmo Bay of thebook), and I did my best to make the food as real as possible. Thepart where a small business owner solves a murder on her own? Not somuch.

Norm:What did you enjoy most about writing this book?  

Daisy:I really loved creating the characters and seeing them come to lifeas they developed throughout the story.

Norm:Where can our readers find out more about you and  MURDERGOES TO MARKET?

Daisy:Infrequently-updated WEBSITE

Mostly-newsFacebook page

More-about-the-inner-workings-of-my-brain-than-you-needed  Twitter  

 Largely-puppy-picturesInstagram

Norm:What projects are you working on at the present? 

Daisy:Marketplace book 2! It’s going to be a lot of fun, with even wilderadventures for Claudia and her growing group of friends.

Norm: As this interview comes to an end, what advice can you give aspiringwriters that you wished you had received, or that you wished youwould have listened to?  

Daisy:That it’s only failure if you let it be. Everything else is just asetback.

Norm:Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors

NormGoldman -- bookpleasures.com
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