How Critically Acclaimed Author Margot Douaihy Writes

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

Critically acclaimed debut crime novelist and poet, Margot Douaihy, spoke with me about what she learned from Gillian Flynn, subverting the hard-boiled mystery, and writing a queer, iconoclastic, chain-smoking, punk rock nun, for her latest SCORCHED GRACE.

Margot Douaihy is an award-winning educator, editor, and poet whose first novel is Scorched Grace, the inaugural title published by Gillian Flynn Books, an imprint with Zando. It was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Amazon Editors’ Choice, Apple Books Best Book of the Month, and one of the “most anticipated crime books” of the year by Barnes & Noble, Crime Reads, Electric Lit, LGBTQ Reads and many others.

The book has been described as a lyrical mystery that kicks off a series featuring protagonist “Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, [who] puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test…”

Don Winslow, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Power of the Dog and City on Fire, said of the book, “Margot Douaihy’s bold entry into the hard-boiled genre revitalizes it for our times. Skillfully plotted, propulsive, and deeply engaged with the communities it represents, Scorched Grace is one of the best crime fiction debuts I’ve come across in a long while.”

Margot has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, is the co-editor of Cambridge’s Elements in Crime Narratives series, teaches Creative Writing and Editing/Publishing at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, NH, and is the author of four poetry collections.

Her writing has been featured in Colorado Review; The Florida Review; North American Review; PBS NewsHour; Portland Review, and many others.

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In this file Margot Douaihy and I discussed:

• The winding path to celebrated debut novel
• Why we uphold a tragic misconception about writers
• How to honor, and repudiate, masters of the noir genre
• The ecosystem of her deep immersion and channeling of the muse
• How to find the broad brush strokes of causality in crime
• Why writers need to double down and follow their curiosity
• And a lot more!

Show Notes:

• margotdouaihy.com
• Scorched Grace By Margot Douaihy (Amazon)
• Margot Douaihy on Instagram
• Margot Douaihy on Twitter
• Kelton Reid on Twitter

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