We are delighted to welcome author Suzanne Munshower to Omnimystery News today.
Suzanne's new novel is Younger (Thomas & Mercer; April 2015 trade paperback, audiobook and ebook formats) and we recently had the chance to catch up with her to talk more about it.
— ♦ —
Omnimystery News: Introduce us to the lead character of Younger. What is it about her that appeals to you as an author?
Photo provided courtesy of
Suzanne Munshower
Suzanne Munshower: What I like most about Anna Wallingham is her imperfection. She's very human. She can be superficial. She can also be thoughtless as well as self-absorbed. But she also genuinely cares about others and is intelligent and excited about her creative work. Anna changes over the course of Younger. She's 57 years old, but she still learns a lot about herself and how she handled — or didn't handle well — events in her near and distant past. I think I'd like Anna if I met her. And I don't plan to let her go! Even though I'm busy writing a book with a different protagonist, Anna will be coming back in a sequel to Younger that I hope to start working on soon.
OMN: Into which fiction genre — or subgenre — would you place Younger?
SM: Younger is hard to categorize. In his review, the author Christopher Rice said the book "doesn't just blend genres. It defies their restrictions …" and I couldn't agree more. The team at Thomas & Mercer and I discussed this before publication: was the book a thriller, a mystery, an espionage tale, mid-list women's fiction? It's a complex book, and "thriller" comes closest, even though Anna's not trying to stop a ticking time bomb. I guess you could call it a "thoughtful thriller."
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in the book?
SM: Anna has a lot in her background that draws from my own — I waitressed in Greenwich Village, played at being an actress, and was a copywriter and publicist in the beauty industry — but she's a fictional creation. Several other characters resemble people I know, mainly because I think a character becomes real through possessing genuine mannerisms or speech patterns. I need to be able to see and hear my characters clearly as I write. An important off-screen character in the book, Madeleine Castaing, the elderly French interior designer with the chin strap, was very real. I had seen a French documentary about her and been mesmerized by the idea of a woman who wanted so desperately to look young that she would do all this yet was so open that she hid none of it.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
SM: I do nothing a writer is supposed to do, but I think we all have to find what works for us. I started out writing celebrity bios that had to be written very quickly, so I'm fast. I start with an idea and play with it in my mind and flesh it out, but I write down very little I start to write once I have a title, the main characters, the stimulus that gets the action started, the mystery which must be solved, and the ending. I keep and update timelines, plot points, and character definitions as I go along, and I revise constantly. By the time I have one draft finished, I've usually revised each part of it several times — and then I start revising the whole thing. After that I send it to a few trusted readers for comments so I can make more changes. Only then does it move along to my agent.
OMN: How did you go about researching the plot points of the story?
SM: I could be very happy just doing research. Having lived in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe, I had already been to the places Anna goes to in Younger, but I still went back and researched them and even included links to more information on my website for people who want to travel with Anna. I worked in skin care for many years so the treatments are based in fact, even though YOUnger the product doesn't exist. I had to rely on the Internet for information on Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, but I have a friend from Scotland Yard I could run the details by. The new book I'm writing is set in Las Vegas in the 1970s, and I own about fifty books on the city, many of them vintage. Plus, I live there now so I can take advantage of the Clark County Library, the Special Collections at UNLV, and the Mob Museum. The last is one of my favourite places anywhere.
OMN: How true are you to the settings in the book?
SM: I tried to use real locations like Gordon Ramsay's in London (closed now but open when Anna would have dined there), Café Louvre in Prague, and Rome's Bar Rosati, but one of the sites people are fascinated by is one I fabricated. That's the New York club Block, representative, I think, of all in places that manage to be terribly uncomfortable, exorbitantly expensive, yet relentlessly chic.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world to research the setting for a book, where would it be?
SM: I would love to go back to both Moscow and Hong Kong, two cities I found very mysterious. I'm sure I could think of a plot to fit one or both. And I'd love to set a book in Prague, which is, like Venice and Vienna, very much a city of intrigue, with streets that twist and wind and lead to surprising destinations and, I'm sure, secrets.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
SM: The best advice I ever got is the best advice I can ever give: if it doesn't advance the plot or better define the character, just ditch it. And let your characters be themselves; don't worry about impressing anyone.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a mystery writer and thus I am also …"
SM: I am a mystery writer, and thus I am also a nosepoke and an eavesdropper. I catch myself staring at strangers often and consciously listening to the conversation at other tables in cafés and restaurants. I'm still haunted by a single line I heard one person say to another as I walked down the street in New York decades ago: "And then he picked up the chair, but the leg flew off and out the window." I think writers by nature are incessantly curious about the lives of others. I will, and do, talk to almost anyone. Novelists have to be forensic scientists of personality, constantly taking people apart to find what motivates those who aren't at all like us, what drives them and how they think.
OMN: What kinds of books and films do you enjoy for entertainment?
SM: I've always loved to read both mysteries and character-driven fiction (as well as history and science non-fiction). I'm a big fan of terse writers like Joan Didion, Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, and Richard Yates. And I love the character development some of my favourite writers — like Elizabeth Taylor, Sarah Waters, Susan Isaacs. Ruth Rendell, and Carl Hiassen — bring to their work.
Since I love terse, I also like noir films like Grifters, The Last Seduction, The Man Who Wasn't There. The best movies I saw recently would be Nightcrawler, Mr. Turner, and the Argentinian film Wild Tales. All-time favorites? Goodfellas, which is my Holy Grail, Casino, Withnail and I, and some classic French films like Les Cousins and Un Coeur in Hiver. I prefer wild and character-based comedies: The Opposite of Sex, Flirting with Disaster, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. So many books and movies, so little time!
OMN: What do you look for when selecting a book to read?
SM: I read a lot of mysteries and spy fiction, and I lean toward series of just a few books rather than those that go on and on. I thoroughly enjoyed the first four of David Downing's "Station" mysteries. Every good book is a mystery in some way, of course, and knowing how it all turns out doesn't make it "finished" for me. I've read Le Carré's Smiley's People and A Murder of Quality several times. After turning the last page of Philip Hensher's Pleasured, I immediately started again on page 1. Richard Yates' Easter Parade and W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn and Austerlitz I read pretty much every year. I look for books with depth that are accessible — in other words, that don't make me work too hard. Andrew Miller's books are very good in this respect, as are Simon Mawer's.
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.
SM: Top 5 Favorite Authors Whose New Books I Await:
• Andrew Crumey;
• Philip Hensher;
• Belinda Bauer;
• Charles Cumming; and
• Ted Heller.
— ♦ —
Suzanne Munshower is a former waitress, short-order cook, go-go girl, movie extra, celebrity interviewer, journalist, fashion columnist, advertising copywriter, and beauty industry publicist. She has had more than 20 books published by major houses in the US as well as the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Japan. As a journalist, she has specialized in food, travel, beauty, culture, fashion and business articles for a diverse range of publications, including Bon Appetit, the Sunday Telegraph (UK), the Guardian (UK), Neiman Marcus' The Book, and CNBC Business; her articles have been syndicated in newspapers around the world. A native of Pennsylvania and former resident of New York, Los Angeles, San Juan, St. Thomas, London, Berlin, and Città di Castello, Italy, she currently resides in Las Vegas.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at SuzanneMunshower.com and her author page on Amazon, or find her on Twitter.
— ♦ —
Younger by Suzanne Munshower
A Novel of Suspense
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
When PR pro Anna Wallingham gets dumped by her last client, she finds herself running out of options in LA, where looks trump experience. Desperate to prove she is still relevant, the fiftysomething accepts a shady job offer from Pierre Barton, secretive billionaire owner of Barton Pharmaceuticals. Isolated in a facility outside London, she agrees to test a new top-secret product guaranteed to make her look thirty years younger. Anna is starting to look on the outside the way she feels on the inside: ageless.
But she soon discovers that her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, leading her to research just who stands to gain — and lose — with this miraculous product. When Pierre drops dead in front of her, she takes off on a dangerous journey across Europe hoping to stay alive long enough to uncover the truth.
With the hard-won knowledge that younger isn't always better, Anna is determined to escape and reclaim her life before it's too late.
— Younger by Suzanne Munshower
