Thriller author Val Collins chats with me today about the newest novel in her Aoife Walsh series, Dying to Tell.
Bio:
Val Collins is the author of the bestselling Aoife Walsh Thriller series. She has lived in Ireland her entire live and her books are set in Ireland. Val began reading at the age of three and writing at the age of four. Although she continues to read daily, she abandoned writing at the age of ten and didn’t rediscover the joys of writing until she reached adulthood. She has now written five thrillers.
Welcome, Val. Please tell us about your current release.
Dying to Tell is the fifth book in the Aoife Walsh Thriller series. All five books are standalone thrillers and can be read in any order.
Aoife is a part-time office worker who is determined to break into journalism, but her investigations often lead her into difficult and hazardous situations.
In Dying to Tell, Aoife is asked to write a series of articles on missing people. She chooses Matt Gallagher as her subject. A year earlier Matt and his wife, Nicole, were on their honeymoon in Italy. They were lying on a beach when Nicole fell asleep. When she woke, Matt had disappeared without trace.
This is Aoife’s first assignment for a major newspaper, but what begins as an exciting opportunity turns into a high stakes murder investigation when Matt’s dead body is discovered in a ravine in Italy.
And when Aoife’s personal life gets mixed up with the investigation, she discovers her search for the truth has put herself and her loved ones directly in the crosshairs of a deadly killer.
What inspired you to write this book?
My mother knew somebody who had a very similar experience. Years ago this woman was on her honeymoon. She fell asleep on the beach next to her new husband and when she woke her husband had disappeared. He was never seen again. In reality, everyone assumes her husband drowned, but obviously that wasn’t the fate of my character. The minute I heard the story, I knew I had the plot for my next book.
Excerpt from Dying to Tell:
Prologue
Matt shut his eyes and took several deep breaths. After a few minutes he felt his pulse begin to slow. Good. Breathe in, hold. Breathe out. Okay, now do it again. And again. That’s better. Now think. How are you going to get out of this? Images popped into his mind and he jerked his head to one side to dislodge them. The people who caused this aren’t important right now, he reminded himself. What matters is figuring out a way to… His eyes flew open. What the—? Is that…? Oh dear God, no! He squeezed his eyes shut like a kid who believed things he couldn’t see would disappear. His heart beat so fast he felt the room spin. For a second he wondered if he was having a heart attack. The idea was so ridiculous he almost laughed. What difference would it make now? What difference would anything make?
One
The man settled down on the sunbed and looked around. It was as he’d feared, not one unattached female. Such a pity he hadn’t been able to get here earlier in the season. A family who had been occupying several sunbeds moved away and there she was, on the last sunbed in the row, staring out at the ocean. She was a little older than his eldest daughter, twenty-four or twenty-five, maybe, with alabaster skin and carrot-red hair. Not beautiful, definitely well below his usual standard, but she was pretty enough and he’d never been with a redhead before. She’d do. He was about to make his move when he noticed the towel, iPad and shades on the sunbed beside her. Was her friend male or female? It would be a mistake to rush in. What if her friend turned out to be a goddess? He could wait. He finished his drink, eyes roaming the beach in case a prettier girl walked by.
What exciting project are you working on next?
My newest thriller is about a time-travelling detective. A young Irish university student suddenly finds herself transported into the heart of Edwardian London. From a life of near-total freedom, she’s thrust into a constrained existence as the wife of a much older, very wealthy man and stepmother to his three children. As she grapples with adapting to her altered circumstances, she uncovers a sinister undercurrent in her new reality. Now, she must unearth a murderer’s identity before she becomes the next victim.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When my second book, Only Lies Remain, became a bestseller.
I wrote a lot when I was a child. At the back of my mind, I always thought I’d try writing again sometime, but I probably would never have found the time if I hadn’t been made redundant. Overnight I went from working ridiculous hours to having more time on my hands than I knew what to do with. Back then the Irish economy was in recession and I had no hope of getting another job any time soon, so I decided this was my opportunity to try writing again.
As I didn’t begin writing with the intention of becoming an author, I didn’t think of myself as a writer. Even after my first book was published, I thought of myself as an office worker who happened to have written a book. When my second book became a bestseller, I thought, “maybe I can do this, maybe I am a writer”. But it still took a while before I was comfortable being described as an author.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
No, I don’t write full time. That’s every author’s dream. I still do office work, but I don’t work full time anymore. Or at least, that’s the plan. It doesn’t always work out and sometimes I find I’m working five days a week again. I write when I get the chance. That’s mostly at night. I’m not a morning person.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I’m one of the many authors who can’t plot. As I get to know my characters, they come to life and I see them act out my story. I see them move around, speak to each other etc. It’s almost like watching a movie. Some writers have a specific word count they stick to each day. I write until the characters come to life and then I don’t want to stop writing because I want to see how everything works out.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was four, I wanted to be a teacher. Back then I lived in a tiny village where most of the teachers in the village school appeared ancient to me. Actually, most of them were ancient. They were approaching middle age when they taught my dad. My teacher when I was four was the only exception. I think she was in her early twenties at the time. I remember her as bright, colourful, cheerful, kind and happy. I thought she was perfect and I wanted to be just like her.