Kristen Perrin: On Rolling With the Punches

Kristen Perrin is originally from Seattle, Washington, where she spent several years working as a bookseller before moving to the U.K. to do a master’s and PhD. She lives with her family in Surrey, where she can be found poking around vintage bookstores, stomping in the mud with her two kids, and collecting too many plants. Her middle-grade novel Attie and the World Breakers was published in German, Dutch, and Polish. How to Solve Your Own Murder is her adult debut.

Kristen Perrin

Photo by Leo Wilkinson

In this interview, Kristen discusses the major and minor changes that were made in the writing process of her new cozy mystery, How to Solve Your Own Murder, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Kristen Perrin
Literary agent: Zoë Plant, The Bent Agency
Book title: How to Solve Your Own Murder
Publisher: Dutton
Release date: March 26th, 2024
Genre/category: Cozy mystery
Elevator pitch: In 1965, 16-year-old Frances is told by a fortune teller that one day she’ll be murdered, so she spends the rest of her life trying to figure out who her killer could be before it happens. Her fortune comes true when she’s in her 60s, and it turns out that she set up her will to challenge her skeptical family members to solve her murder in a competition to inherit her millions.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I’ve always loved mysteries and I’d been writing in children’s fantasy for a number of years, and craved something that felt a bit like coming home. I do still love both children’s literature and fantasy as a genre, but during the pandemic I felt drawn to projects that felt comforting to me. (I know it sounds strange that solving murders could be comforting, but the Agatha Christie fans out there probably know just what I mean!) Once I started writing about the fictional village of Castle Knoll with its rolling hills and buried secrets, I knew I wanted to spend as much time as I could there.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

The process from having the idea to producing a clean draft that my agent sent to publishers was probably about a year and a half, and the idea never changed but my execution of it certainly did. During the drafting process, I wrote nearly half the book as a YA novel, where Frances’ niece Annie (one of our main characters) was actually a New Yorker who had to visit her estranged great aunt in England. I scrapped that draft when my agent (quite rightly) advised me that not only would Annie work better as someone in her early 20s, but that she should be from London.

Once I had Annie growing up in Chelsea, so many ideas grew from there, but it still took me another full draft to get the book to resemble the shape it is now. And once it was acquired, there were many rounds of structural edits and copy edits, and all of the essential parts of the publishing process that go on behind the scenes to get a book in the best shape it can be. So, all in all, I think it’s a bit over three years from idea to publication.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I think the surprises were all very positive ones, in that I just couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be publishing in so many places. The book will be translated into quite a few languages, and every time I see a new cover for it, I feel amazed that it’s going to reach people all over the world. As my children’s career has been entirely in translation (my middle-grade books are currently only available in German, Polish, and Dutch), having my work translated holds a special place in my heart.

As far as learning moments, I think the biggest one has been learning to jump between having my head down writing or editing, to doing more dynamic things like interviews, podcasts, or being out and about talking to booksellers or at festivals. They require a very different part of your brain, and the focus and energy needed is different as well. Ideally a writer can do both in a day, but I’ve had to train my brain to focus in a more organized way. I set timers for my writing, with word count goals, and then switch to more administrative tasks in a different block of time if I can. I think you just have to be regimented about your time management. Thankfully, in the past I’ve balanced writing time with a day job, and also with raising small children, so I was relatively seasoned at this already.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Quite a few, though to go into too much detail would be giving away spoilers! But I will say that I outline my books carefully, and every time I sit down to draft, I always end up drifting away from my plans. In some instances, I get to a planned scene and completely throw my careful notes out the window, but it’s always for a reason that I find energizing. When I’m at a part of the book that needs better pacing or it feels right to have a reveal come up and I’ve thought of a better one than what I planned from the start, I like to roll with the punches and see how new ideas come out on the page. I often hear writers refer to “discovery writing”, and I think this is a great way to picture it—sometimes you just have to get a couple of characters on the page and see where they take you, and some surprising twists can result from that.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

First and foremost, I want readers to enjoy their reading experience. I’d love for people to have fun, but also to be surprised in places, and maybe have a few places where they feel clever because they noticed a detail that turned out to be significant later. Getting sucked into the mystery to the point where you can’t help but try to puzzle things out before the end is always my favorite feeling when I read, so I hope to be able to deliver that. And if there are a few emotional beats that resonate with people too, all the better.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

I think the most important thing about the writing process is knowing enough about how you personally work best. This is something I’m always learning more about—what helps me focus? How do I deal with problems in my outlines, or if I’m procrastinating (which I have a huge tendency to do), what’s the reason behind it?

Keeping a writing journal has been essential for learning how I function best as a writer. I’ve got a document on my computer that I open at the start of every writing session (and often add to throughout the day), where I dump all my frustration, questions to myself, excited side-ideas, and generally anything I need to get out of my head before I start writing. It gets my fingers typing and, in many cases, helps me solve problems simply by talking them out with myself in that document.

Another bonus of the writing journal is that I can search back to entries from a year ago, or two years ago, and see what my thoughts were at various times in the process of drafting, editing, or brainstorming other books. If I’m grumbling about hating my work at the 20,000-word mark on a previous book, I can look at my current feelings at that point in a new book and think, “Oh, this is actually quite a normal feeling for me at this point in the process! And I pushed through and felt better about it back then, so I can do that again.” It’s amazing how much you forget about how you feel while drafting or doing major edits, and being able to go back and reflect and apply things I’ve learned has made a huge difference for me.

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