#WriterWednesday Author Interview with Alice Fitzpatrick

/

I’d like to welcome Alice Fitzpatrick to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

Things you need for your writing sessions: I need absolute silence.

Things that hamper your writing: I can’t listen to music. As a singer, if the music has words, I want to sing along. As a dancer, if the music is orchestral, I mentally choreograph.

Last best thing you ate: It’s always vegan mac and cheese.

Last thing you regret eating: A large pizza but the regret was because of its size.

Favorite music or song: Anything by J.S. Bach, Stephen Sondheim, or George Gershwin.

Music that drives you crazy: Country and western music is tiny and whiny and grates like nails on a blackboard.

Things you’d walk a mile for: Vegan chocolate ice-cream

Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: Pictures or descriptions of animal abuse

Things you always put in your books: My mysteries always have at least one dead body.

Things you never put in your books: I could never hurt a child or animal, even fictional ones.

Things to say to an author: I can’t wait for your next book.

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Why haven’t I hear of you? This was actually said to me at a recent in-person sales event.

Favorite books (or genre): Traditional British mysteries, especially any book written by Elly Griffiths

Books you wouldn’t buy: Westerns and military fantasy.

The coolest person you’ve ever met: Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. The last time she was in Toronto, my Sisters in Crime chapter took her out to dinner. She sat next to me, and once she learnt I was a vegan, she told me all about her vegetarian son.

The celebrity who didn’t look like he/she did in pictures/video: Any writer who doesn’t update their social media headshots for twenty years.

Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done: I’m a classically trained singer and dancer.

A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it: I began to write a literary novel with no idea where it was going. Consequently, it went nowhere.

Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: In the first book in my Meredith Island Mysteries series, my protagonist’s investigation into the death of her aunt fifty years previous mirrored my lifelong attempt to understand the death of my uncle who died before I was born I’ll never know the truth of how my uncle died, but at least I was able to give my protagonist some closure with her aunt.

Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: Because I have multiple university degrees, readers may assume that my analytic, academic protagonist is based on me. In reality, I am a combination of her and her sidekick who is an impulsive, imaginative artist.

My favorite book as a child: Alice in Wonderland

A book I’ve read more than once: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Your favorite movie as a child: The Wizard of Oz

A TV show or movie that kept you awake at night as a kid (or as an adult): The Shining is the ultimate horror story for writers. Despite having all the time in the word with few distractions, Jack Torrance can only write nonsense.

About Alice:

Alice Fitzpatrick has contributed short stories to literary magazines and anthologies, including the Crime Writers of Canada 40th anniversary anthology, Cold Canadian Crime. She is a fearless champion of singing, cats, all things Welsh, and the Oxford comma. Her summers spent with her Welsh family in Pembrokeshire inspired the creation of the Meredith Island Mysteries which include Secrets in the Water and A Dark Death (finalist for the 2026 Crime Writers of Canada award for Best Traditional Mystery). The traditional mystery appeals to her fascination with what makes seemingly ordinary people commit murder. Alice lives in Toronto but dreams of a cottage on the Welsh coast.