Mighty Aphrodite!
The Amy Myers Interview

Amy Myers has a collection of short stories hot off the press. Published by Crippen & Landru, this anthology features her series regulars, Auguste Didier the Victorian chef, Tom Wasp, chimneysweep... and best of all, Aphrodite, Greek Goddess of Love (and reluctant sleuth).

Amy Myers graciously agreed to discuss her Olympian detective with The Sibyl & Sleuth: Read Interview Below!

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Read an Aphrodite Mystery by Amy Myers
"Who Killed Orpheus?"
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Amy Myers Interview

S&S: Amy Myers, thank you so much for speaking with The Sibyl & Sleuth on the publication of your new book – Murder 'Orrible Murder  (Crippen & Landru,  www.crippenlandru.com), a collection of short stories featuring your series characters: Auguste Didier, a Victorian master chef; Tom Wasp, a chimney sweep; and Aphrodite, Greek Goddess of Love.

AM: On behalf of Aphrodite, I’m very honoured to be invited to discuss her.  She constantly feels that  her intellect isn’t taken seriously enough, and that far too much attention is paid to Plato and Sophocles and such other boring individuals. 

S&S: On your website (www.amymyers.net), you discuss the birth of Auguste Didier,  but what about the Birth of Venus? …uh, that is to say, how did the Aphrodite mysteries come about?

AM: I had only recently begun to write short stories, when Mike Ashley who edits a wonderful series published by Robinson in the UK and by Carroll & Graf in the US asked me if I could write one with a classical theme.  Problem.  My knowledge of  Greek and Roman history was very rusty. Did I risk it, or did I not? Then I remembered what I did know about: mythology.  When I was about ten I had developed a mania for myths and legends, so much so that, having completed a genealogical table of the British kings and queens going back to 1066 I embarked on a similar family tree of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Now – to a child who hadn’t yet learned the facts of life – working out the ‘marriages’ posed quite a problem.... I gave it up in the end, but I still had the sense of unfinished business where Olympus was concerned, and faced with my poser over the short story, and remembering that the gods could be gently mocked (as in Thorne Smith’s The Night Life of the Gods)  I thought of Aphrodite. Only of course she takes herself very seriously.

S&S: Do you have a background in the classics, or mythology?

AM: Not a specialist background. I took classics at university but it wasn’t my major subject.  I’m not sure where my interest in myths first arose, but I’m glad it did.

S&S: So far, Aphrodite has only been featured in short stories; will she ever get her own full-length novel?

AM: I’m not sure Aphrodite has the stamina to investigate a case to that depth, though please don't tell her I said so. Nothing, in her view, is beyond her powers. Nevertheless,  I feel that short stories are more her style, whereas my current series detectives, Peter and Georgia Marsh, need the length of a novel to investigate the ramifications of their cases. Auguste Didier, a French master chef and my previous series detective, is anxious to  point out that he lends himself to both novels and short stories.

S&S: You’ve created an incredibly diverse set of series characters. How do you keep them all straight?

AM: Once they step into my mind, they remain as their own characters, and I have no problem using their particular ‘voices’. When I began writing, I did have a little bit of difficulty. I was writing an Auguste Didier detective novel under one name, and then changing to a pseudonym to write women’s fiction.  They demanded two very different styles, and Auguste’s idiosyncratic character kept popping up in my women’s novel.  Now that doesn’t seem to happen – I suspect because they are now much more embedded in my mind.  I wrote an Aphrodite story last autumn after a gap of a year, and was a trifle worried that I wouldn't get back into style. I needn't have worried; Aphrodite simply barged in, pushed me out of the way, and got going.

S&S: How do you decide when you will write about which character?

AM: Sometimes ‘market forces’ decide – in other words, I’m asked to write a Didier story for example, or a comic story, or one set in  a particular period. Sometimes I write the stories on spec and then try to place them.  The Aphrodite story I wrote last autumn was one of these. I had been leafing through a reference book of myths in a friend’s house at Christmas and saw a few ‘facts’ about Orpheus that I hadn’t known before.  Hence, Aphrodite sets out to discover ‘Who Killed Orpheus?’

S&S: Imagine that Auguste Didier is entertaining Aphrodite, Tom Wasp and the Marshes. What would he serve? And what discussions might go around the table?

AM: Auguste, for all his consciousness of his own superiority, is a tactful person, and would naturally therefore treat Aphrodite with all due respect, particularly as love plays a large part in his life. 

The first course would undoubtedly be oysters therefore, the great Aphrodisiac, especially suited to ladies who are born leaping out of the sea in a shell. Tom Wasp would feel at home here, since they were so common in London in the Victorian age that they could be his everyday fare. As for the Marshes, well, they haven't really developed special tastes yet, but perhaps Auguste's oyster pie with sweetbreads might tempt them.

For the main course, Aphrodite would need something akin to ambrosia, and only  honey comes to mind. This would mean Auguste harking back to the rich combinations of sweet and sour beloved in medieval times, or the Elizabethan pork recipe with the meat cooked in a sauce of apricots, lemons, oranges, apples (she'd like that), honey, raisins, herbs, spices… well, you get the idea. Poor Tom Wasp would do his best to struggle through it, but I suspect the Marshes would help him out and ask Auguste to produce a good a nice meat pie for him.

The dessert, well, no problem about this. It would have to be apples  in honour of the golden apple presented to Aphrodite by Paris who judged her the fairest of the three goddesses disporting themselves nude before him. There is an eighteenth century recipe for preserved golden apples that might suit very well, and they are not so different from codling apples, made with far humbler ingredients, that Tom Wasp would recognize in the East End of London. As for Peter and Georgia Marsh: Peter tends to brush food aside if the current case summons him, particularly something as healthy as an apple.

All in all, I think Auguste would have his work cut out.

S&S: When did you first want to become a writer? And what path did you take to become one?

AM: As a child I thought the writer’s life would be a wonderful, but apart from childish efforts I didn’t actually try to write anything till my late twenties. Then some man or other came along, and the novel was put on one side and disappeared. (It wasn’t very good.)  When I was forty, I decided enough was enough. It was time to get going.  I worked in publishing, and I showed a publishing friend the first paragraph of my Great Theatrical Novel. She told me to continue, and slightly surprised I did. She became my agent in due course, and still thankfully is. It took about five years writing in my spare time to get published (and no, publishers can’t just publish themselves, or ask a chum to do so!).

S&S: What is a typical day in the life of Amy Myers?

AM: I open an eye, and wonder whether this might be the exception: a whole day when I can devote myself to writing and nothing else. Then reality sets in: no, the gasman cometh, I have to go to the village to post a parcel, I simply have to do this or that, but I can still have the morning to myself, can't I? No, the computer plays up, or just as I begin Chapter X, the proofs arrive for something else. Then I run up against a forensic problem. Do I got on writing and solve it  later, or try to solve it now. Then  it's time to get lunch (a grand word for whatever's left over in the fridge) for myself and my husband, who also works from home. I go back to work, take a look at what I did in the morning and  decide to give up writing for good.  Then I remember I can't do that, I've signed a contract. So maybe I'll give it up after this book.  Conclusion: every job has its highs and lows.  The lows are only so that one gets a bigger  kick out of the highs. 

S&S: Do you have a writing routine? (i.e. sit  in a special chair? drink a certain kind of tea? Write first thing in the morning/late at night?)

AM: No, that’s the way to trouble in my opinion. Writing might be rewarding and fun, but primarily it’s a job and has to be treated as such. I keep office hours, begin usually at 8.30, write till lunchtime, and maybe a bit longer, then in the afternoon I do the admin work, or research, or some editorial jobs. I used to work in publishing and still keep my hand in with some freelance work.

S&S: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

AM: I do. Over the years I've seen countless scripts by aspiring authors and sometimes been able to follow their progress. The advice seems the simplest, but can be the hardest to take. (a) Keep at it, no matter how many the rejections. (b) take to heart and put into practice any advice from informed sources, i.e. friends' opinions are balm for the soul and valuable for that, but not as regards what is right and what is wrong with your work.  (c) learn to self-edit.  Very difficult, but the more one cuts and hones to the nub of what you want to say, the clearer the message. It's very easy when beginning to write to record a conversation exactly as it would be said in real life. But fiction is not real life; you need to get the message of each scene over clearly. Cut out all the fill-up words, all the helloes, the goodbyes, the ums and ahs, which the readers will assume occur anyway, and then take each speech and see how many words can disappear without harming either the meaning of the speech or the character's voice.

S&S: Do you have any final words for your readers, and how can fans contact you?

AM: I am very fond of my Aphrodite stories, and it  is a great pleasure to know that others might be enjoying them!  I was at the Washington Malice Domestic conference a few years ago when someone asked me about them, and where they could get hold of them. Aphrodite was so proud she nearly burst the buttons on her chiton. It's not (easy) when one works at home to visualize the fact that one's work doesn't stop within these four walls but that out there people are actually reading what one writes.  A story or novel is a sort of pact between two people, the writer and the reader; neither can do without the other.  That sounds pretty obvious, but it's easy to forget, and it shows up in one's work. All the time one writes one part of one's brain is creating, while the other part is thinking of the effect of what one is writing on potential readers. So thank you all! 

(S&S: You may contact Amy through her website- www.amymyers.net)

S&S: Again, thank you very much. Congratulations on all your success!

AM: It's not often Aphrodite has a chance to express her gratitude in print, and I join with her to say thank you very much.

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- Kris Swank, interviewer
The Sibyl & Sleuth: Historical Mystery Fiction of Ancient Greece
(personal.riverusers.com/~swanky/greece.htm)