Q&A with Daisy Bateman

Daisy Bateman is a mystery lover, cheese enthusiast, and scientist working in biotech. She also has fantastic taste in shoes. Last year, her debut novel wowed critics with it’s wit, intelligence and charm.

Please tell us about your debut novel.
Murder Goes to Market is a cozy mystery set in the (fictional) Northern California seaside town of San Elmo Bay. Claudia Simcoe has left a career in tech to move there and open an artisan goods marketplace. Things are going about as well as can be expected when she discovers that the hands making her tenant Lori’s “handmade creations” belong to overseas factory workers, and Claudia has no choice but to cancel Lori’s lease. Which would have been enough trouble for one week, but the next day Lori turns up dead in the marketplace, having been hit over the head with a jar of pickles and strangled with a cheese wire. The police chief thinks Claudia looks like an easy pick to be the killer, and he closes the marketplace to put the pressure on her. So, Claudia has no choice but to solve the mystery herself. Relying on the tech skills from her previous life and some help from her quirky new friends, Claudia races to save her business and herself before the killer adds her to the region’s local, artisanal murders.

I’ve read that only 4% of the people who start a novel, finish writing it. Why did you beat the odds?
Pure bloody-mindedness. At some point, I decided that this was a thing I was going to do, and I kept at it until I did it. There was also a key moment some years ago when I asked myself, “ten years from now, do I want to be a person who wrote a book, or who watched a lot of TV?” It was close, but I went with the book thing.

Was your debut novel the first book you wrote?
Hardly. Murder Goes to Market is the fifth book I finished, and the second I sold to a publisher (the first one went unpublished when the publisher closed the imprint directly after acquiring it). Other past non-hits include a murder mystery set in a world of fairies, one in a town under quarantine for a global pandemic (no, really), and a thriller about giant, underground squid. I can’t imagine why it took me so long to get published. (Also, they weren’t very good.) {Editors note: they are actually great books. In a world where Sharknado exists (and had multiple sequels), why not land squids??]

What was your process like getting an agent?
Pretty straightforward, to be honest. Just querying and getting rejected, repeat ad infinitum. Finally, with the previous book to this one, it was the right book for the right agent and she agreed to sign me (after a couple of rounds of revisions!).

Daisy Bateman

What was the most exciting moment involving the publication of your debut novel?  (The moment you first saw the cover? The call when you learned when it was being published? When you cashed your advance check?)

There were a lot of exciting moments, but for me I think the biggest was when my author copies arrived from the publisher. After so long, to actually hold a printed and bound copy of my book in my hand was really special.

What’s your best advice for someone who wants to be published?

Keep at it. And don’t give up on yourself, but do be prepared to give up on a specific book. I’m serious—as soon as you send something out, querying or on submission, start working on something completely unrelated. (NOT the next book in the same series.) Because sometimes, no matter how much you love something, you have to get to the point where you admit that this is not the one you’re going to sell, and it’s time to move on, and that is a lot easier when you already have something to move on to.

What are you currently reading? Or, what's one of the best novels you've read lately?

Late to the game on this one, but I recently “discovered” Ngaio Marsh, and I’ve been devouring her Inspector Allyn mysteries. I’m also a big fan of Jenny Lawson, and I’ve got her latest essay collection sitting next to the computer right now.

What are you working on now?  Any projects coming out soon?

I’ve just sent off a draft of Marketplace book 2 to my editor and am waiting (im)patiently for the notes. No publication date yet, but I’ll let you know!

Thank you Daisy! If you are interested in following Daisy, follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can also visit her website.