In this post, we’ll be hearing from author Roz Nay. I hope you are as thrilled as I am about this interview! (See what I did there?) Check out her author bio:
ROZ NAY’s debut novel, Our Little Secret, was a national bestseller, won the Douglas Kennedy Prize for best foreign thriller in France, and was nominated for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Mystery and the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Her second bestselling novel, Hurry Home, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Best Crime Novel award and The Hunted, her third, was nominated for Best Crime Novel in 2022. The Offing is her fourth novel. Roz has lived and worked in Africa, Australia, the US, and the UK. She now lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her husband and two children.
More details about Roz and The Offing can be found here.
Roz, your first novel, Our Little Secret, began as a creative writing assignment and grew into a full-length manuscript. Tell us about that process. At what point did you decide to pursue novel writing and what did you learn at those early stages of your writing-for-publication journey?
I only kept going with my first-ever manuscript because I missed writing class, and needed to hang onto some part of it. I just patchworked together a narrative around a voice I’d created in class, and wrote it over a year while my two little toddlers napped. I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing, other than that I’d built a world I was enjoying writing. When I look back now, that time was fairly chaotic but what I learned most was that, when you have a story you want to tell, one way or another you get it done.
Beginning writers are often told, “write what you know.” For your thriller Hurry Home, the inspiration stemmed from your career in child services. Your newest book, The Offing, draws on your experiences while traveling in Australia. Roz, what does your writing process look like? How much preliminary research is required and at what point do you forge ahead with writing a draft?
Lately, I’ve been into writing travel thrillers and I’m basing the stories on actual adventures I’ve had. I find it fun to do this because I can revisit all the memories I have (and all the dumb, dangerous things I did) and turn them into narratives where it all goes completely wrong. It’s fun to sift through my past this way. I don’t tend to spend a lot of time researching beforehand, mainly because my memories are already in place, but also because I know I’m in danger of procrastinating. I do some thinking about problems and cast, then pretty much jump in.
Besides writing, tell us about another art form you currently practice.
I learned how to play the drums recently. Does that count? I haven’t kept up with it, though, and I’m hard-pressed to dedicate time to much else other than writing.
Roz, in addition to writing bestsellers, you give back to the community by teaching and mentoring. What has been the most surprising part about mentoring aspiring writers? In what ways does this differ from your previous experience as a high school English teacher?
I love mentoring because for most new writers, they’re not sure yet that their ideas are valid, or that they deserve to give themselves the space to write them. It’s really fulfilling being able to assure them that they have a voice, and that the energy they put into their work is always worth it.
Let’s talk about writer’s block. From time to time, it is natural for writers to experience a creative slump. Roz, what’s your go-to activity to help the words flow when a writing project seems stuck?
I recently got a deal for a new project that I’d pitched just as a concept. This was new, since usually I’d have written the book by the time it’s pitched, and once the deal was done, I felt very intimidated to begin, and struggled to write even the first sentence. What I did was just wait and relax, and try not to worry. I knew that if I gave myself the space, my brain would come around to being excited, and that would be the right time to start. It took me 3 weeks, and now I’m loving writing the new book. I think if I’d panicked and bullied myself, I would have got stuck for longer.
For new writers, the idea of completing a full-length book is both exhilarating as well as daunting. What advice do you have for writers who are just starting out with a manuscript?
I’ve learned that I need to plot it out into stages of story, just so that I have a vague scaffold of what will happen when. If I don’t do that, I can get lost in the narrative, and write chapters I won’t end up needing. I think if you have the big beats of inciting incident, midpoint turn, and dark night of the soul (to quote my novel-writing bible, Save the Cat), you’ll have a map you can carry into the opening. That always makes me feel safer as I start out.
Roz, who are your all-time favourite authors? Which contemporary writers do you recommend checking out?
I’ll read every thriller Lisa Jewell writes, and the same goes for Gillian McAllister, too. I also recently read Tracy Sierra’s Nightwatching, and it was truly, brilliantly terrifying.
Your newest novel, The Offing is available for purchase. Are you working on a manuscript now? What can you tell us about your work in progress?
I’ve actually just handed in a fifth thriller and am due to get notes back from Penguin any day. That one should be out next year, and then I’m ten chapters into a brand new book which will be part of a series. Spoiler alert: It might not be a thriller …
More Roz Nay online:
Roz Nay’s Website
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Cover Image: Photo by Monica Silvestre on Pexels.com
Pauline Shen 