There’s a trope in cosy mysteries whereby the hero(ine)’s special skills and experience – crossword puzzle setter, antique Chinese furniture restorer, exotic animal vet, what have you – while seemingly unrelated to crime-solving, come into play in surprising ways, enabling her to solve the mystery.
We – Kate Sidley and Gail Schimmel – were sitting at the Franschhoek Literary Festival in South Africa a couple of years back, chatting over – it must be said – a glass of good Cape chardonnay, and we began playing with this trope. What if there were a hapless heroine, entirely lacking in useful skills, having spent years bouncing from one outlandish and ridiculous job to the next? How would she solve the mystery?
We went back to drinking our wine and laughing at our own jokes. Because we do find ourselves rather amusing. And then we thought, hang on, maybe we should actually write this book. Together. We had written a total 12 books individually, but never collaborated. We figured we’d at least go through the process of developing the concept and seeing if we could write a page-turner with humour.
We sat down (over tea this time) and played with the idea. We liked it. We thought we could make it work. And once we had the name Epiphany Bloom, we knew we had to write the darn book. That name was simply too good to waste. Epiphany (Pip for short), carried us along with her exuberance, grit and potential for humour. She brought her friends – two (yes, two!) love interests, a three-legged cat, a malapropistic sister, a mother whose ringtone is Ride of the Valkyries. Yes, her life was a series of bizarre and disastrous jobs, but, wait! Those brief stints in unlikely jobs gave her unexpected skills that do come in handy when she has to solve a crime or find a criminal. Would Pip be able to make her dream come true – to find something she’s good at, to save the day, to be the hero of her own story at last? You’ll have to read to find out.
So, Kate and Gail became Katie Gayle. The process of writing a book together was daunting, too, and potentially fraught. Way to ruin a friendship! There were brief moments of bitter resentment when one of us had to kill the other one’s darlings. We learnt to resort to directness – “Sorry, I know you think that line is funny, but it’s really not” – if the other didn’t take a subtle hint like “Mmmm. Let’s think about that…” We made it through with the friendship intact – so far!
Writing together turned out to be super fun. It’s a lot less lonely than writing a book solo, and a lot easier to work your way out of dead ends and plot problems. There’s someone else to say, “Hang on, what if we…” Plus, twice the ideas. We enjoyed Pip so much, we were delighted when Bookouture liked her too, and asked for two more books!
We wrote the second and third books in the series during the course of the pandemic and it was a very welcome source of entertainment and pleasure in the long months of lockdown. A fun writing project with a hard deadline is possibly the best antidote to boredom, anxiety and existential dread – we highly recommend it!
In years to come, when we look back on 2020, Epiphany Bloom will be a bright spot in that dark and brutal year. We loved writing her and it makes us very happy to see readers loving Pip too.
Katie Gayle is the writing partnership of Kate Sidley and Gail Schimmel. Their Epiphany Bloom series is published by Bookouture. They’ve written three books together. Kate has written another five, and Gayle another seven.
