Introducing Author Vicki Tyley

This morning, I'd like to welcome Australian author Vicki Tyley to my blog. If you love mystery novels, I urge you to look for Vicki's books. I highly recommend them.

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Two of the most common questions I’m asked as a writer are:

Vicki Tyley, bestselling author of mystery and suspense

1. Where do you get your ideas?

2. Do you base your characters on real people? 

The answer to the first question is quite simple: the news. Each of my stories is inspired by a real murder case, the more unusual the better. After I’ve applied a series of what-ifs to it, the original true crime is so bent out of shape, it’s unlikely anyone would recognize the case that sparked it.

The germ of the idea for my most recent mystery, Bitter Nothings, came after hearing about the tragic murder of a young family. A murder with no apparent motive. What would drive someone to slay a whole family?

Bitter Nothings is a psychological whodunnit with a dysfunctional extended Australian family at its core. There’s no violence or gore in the book and the children’s deaths are only touched upon.

Talking of family brings us back to the second question: Do you base your characters on real people?

My characters are not usually based on specific people but rather grow from my observations of people over the years. Empathy is a good trait for a writer to possess. It makes getting inside your characters’ heads much easier. I’m glad no one can see me writing, because I often act out the scene. Not a good look.

Details drawn from real people and real life experiences help make fictional characters come alive, but it wasn’t until Bitter Nothings that I delved into my own family. And that’s probably because enough years have passed that I can now talk openly about it. In Bitter Nothings, the protagonist’s mother had committed suicide on what would’ve been her and her estranged husband’s thirtieth wedding anniversary. In one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twists, my mother committed suicide on my parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Obviously the details and motives are different and my parents were still married, but the emotion and questions are still the same. 

The two brothers in Bitter Nothings are loosely modeled on my own two brothers (except my brothers can tolerate each other even less than the brothers in the story can). However, that’s as far as the similarities go to my own situation. Dervla, the sister in the story, is nothing like myself or any of my three sisters.

Want to say hello or ask a question, email Vicki at vickityley@gmail.com

Website: www.vickityley.com  

Eucalypt Habitat – Living in rural Australia photoblog: eucalypthabitat.blogspot.com.au

Find Bitter Nothings:

In the US Kindle Store       In the UK Kindle Store        In the CA Kindle Store

In the Nook Book Store

In the Kobo Store

In the iTunes iBook Store