An Author Interview with Robin Stevens, Author of ‘Murder Most Unladylike’

Hello, everyone! I’m actually very exited to be posting this interview, because I recently read Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens, and I absolutely loved it! It was such a fantastic book series, especially since it’s not often I find a good murder mystery for middle-grade!

I enjoyed Murder Most Unladylike so much that I reached out to Robin Stevens, and she very kindly accepted my interview request! It was amazing getting to ask her a few questions about her writing and her process for writing mystery books, and it was great to hear all her fantastic answers to all these questions! Her books are wonderful mysteries and especially great for people who may be looking for murder mysteries for middle-grade, and you should definitely read them all!

Anyway, I’ve likely rambled on long enough! I shall now let you hear from Robin herself!

1. Hi Robin! Thank you so much for doing this interview! To start us off, what do you think was the hardest part of writing the Murder Most Unladylike series? What was the best part? How did you originally get the idea for this series?

Thank you so much for interviewing me! I got the idea because I really did go to boarding school, and I loved murder mysteries… and I thought that someone should put those two things together! The hardest part, I think, was crafting a murder plot that actually made sense throughout – it definitely didn’t in the first draft! The best part was making up Daisy and Hazel. They felt so immediately real to me, and they still do all these years later.

2. Can you share what your writing process is like for writing mysteries? Do you plot out your books ahead of time, and do you always know who the culprit/murderer is when you first start writing the book?

I plan quite carefully – I always know the murderer and the victim, as well as suspects and location and crime, before I start to write. Not all authors are like me, but I do think that if you’re writing a murder mystery you need to plan so you don’t trip yourself up in the writing process!

3. I agree with you on planning mysteries! I don’t think I’d ever be able to write a mystery without at least some planning beforehand. What did the first draft of this series look like and how many drafts did it take to get to the finished draft?

It took me about four years to go from the MMU first draft to it being published – a LOT of drafts and a lot of changes! That was the book I was working out my writing process with – now it’s much quicker, usually only a year to go from idea to published book. But I still do about 5 or 6 drafts – I think drafting is really important in making a book as good as it deserves to be.

4. The characters in Murder Most Unladylike are such fun, especially Daisy, who may or may not be one of my favorites! How do you come up with the characters and how do you determine what role each character will play in the mystery? Does their role in the book ever change as you edit and revise?

I usually base main characters on aspects of people I know well, mixed up with people I’ve read about or met – I try to make them feel as realistic as possible! I tend to know what role they’re going to play while I’m creating them, though some of them (like May and George) surprise me by becoming much more important than I thought they were going to be!

5. How do you come up with what mysteries Hazel and Daisy are going to solve in each of the books?

I like choosing a place that I’m interested in, or I know well, one that’s enclosed and has an interesting group of people in it. Then I look at other mystery books, or TV shows, or historical cases, and use that to inspire the crime itself. But it’s different with each book!

6. Do you have a secret pen name that nobody knows about?

If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret! But no, Robin Stevens is the only name I’ve ever been published under.

7. Are there any books/movies/TV shows/any random things that have helped to inspire your books?

Agatha Christie is one of my biggest inspirations. I reference her books in almost everything I write! Apart from that, it’s all very random – there are bits of my favourite pieces of media in all of my books, I think, sometimes in ways that you wouldn’t notice. I recently watched the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies six times in a row to help inspire a project I’m currently working on, for example – you won’t be able to tell when you look at the finished product, but I’ll know!

9. What’s your advice for young writers (or writers of any age!) who really want to start writing and get their books out there into the world?

Read a lot and write a lot! Writing is all about knowledge and practice – learning how other authors write, so you can decide whether or not you want to be inspired by them, and working out how you specifically want to tell stories and practicing until you can do it confidently. AI is useless for this, so please don’t use it – it stops you learning and honing your creativity, and it’s the opposite of what you need to be doing. 

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And it’s me, Isabelle, here again! Robin Stevens, thank you so much for doing this interview! It was amazing to hear your thoughts on the writing process, especially your thoughts on AI, since I really do think that AI is one of those things that really does need to be addressed in the creative community. I also loved hearing about how you come up with each of your characters! I don’t think I’d ever be brave enough to base a character off of someone else in real life, even if I did change them in the book!

But yes! And thank you, dear reader, for reading this interview! 🙂 I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about Robin’s writing process, hearing her advice for young writers, and I hope that you took something away from this interview! And definitely don’t forget to check out all of Robin’s books! They’re fantastic!

Anyway, I should probably wrap up this post now. Again, thanks so much for reading, and I should probably get back to panicking over my own book launch now… But if you enjoyed reading this interview, then don’t forget to check out Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday to find lots of book reviews, author interviews, and more bookish stuff!

Isabelle