RAPID FIRE QUESTIONS WITH: Lisa Walker
In our author interview series RAPID FIRE, we’re getting to know our authors a little better by throwing a few quick questions at them. Next up to the plate is Lisa Walker, author of Trouble is My Business, the next Olivia Grace mystery.
Lisa talks about her current 1960s-flavoured reading habits, the book that most inspired the character of Olivia Grace, and something she wished she'd known about publishing before getting started.
What are you reading right now?
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. I’m a big David Mitchell fan, and I’m loving this story of an imaginary 1960s rock band. I just finished Daisy Jones and The Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which is also about an imaginary 1960s rock band, so the Summer of Love is in the air for me right now!
What book has had the greatest influence on your work?
In terms of the Olivia Grace novels, I think the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich were the most influential. Like Olivia, Stephanie Plum is a mile-a-minute feisty heroine with a complicated life.
What do you wish you’d known about writing when you first got started?
That every single novel I write will feel like a plotless disaster when I’m about halfway through. And that, if I keep writing, the shape of the story will gradually reveal itself.
What do you wish you’d known about being published when you first got started?
Getting published is fulfilling and exciting, but it’s not the end goal. It’s the pleasure of discovering new stories that keeps me coming back.
Best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Don’t worry about your first draft being awful. That’s what first drafts are for.
What book do you wish you had written?
So many! Most recently though, I have swooned over ‘The End of the World is Bigger than Love’ by Davina Bell. It is beautiful, wise, mystical, and both hopeful and heartbreaking.
Trouble is My Business, the second Olivia Grace mystery, is now available. Find out more, or purchase the book here.
Olivia Grace, recently retired teen PI, has her priorities sorted. Pass first-year law, look after her little sister, and persuade her parents to come back from a Nepali monastery to resume ... well, parenting. But after Olivia's friend Abbey goes missing in Byron Bay, a short drive from Olivia's Gold Coast home, she can't sit back and study Torts. It's time to go undercover as hippie-chick Nansea, in hippie-chic Byron Bay, hub of influencers and international tourism, and home of yoga, surfing and wellness culture.
Olivia's looking for answers, with the help of her stash of disguises, the PI skills her irresistible ex-boss Rosco taught her – and a nose for trouble. Her suspects include a hardcore surfer who often argued with Abbey in the surf, a charismatic cult leader and an acrobatic botany student.
And then there's Rosco, officially assigned to the case, and proving impossible to avoid.
Lisa Walker's second Olivia Grace novel is another rip-roaring excursion into madcap sunshine noir, with nods to Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and a flavour of Veronica Mars meets Elmore Leonard.