The Dog Sitter Detective -Antony Johnston @antonyjohnson @allisonandbusby @richardsonhelen #TheDogSitterDetective

Today on my blog I am delighted to be joined by author Antony Johnston.

About the book

Meet Gwinny, an unlikely bloodhound, and her four-legged friends determined to dig up the truth. Bestselling author Antony Johnston launches a brand-new contemporary cosy crime series, ‘The Dog Sitter Detective’, following former actress Guinevere ‘Gwinny’ Tuffel who stumbles upon murder cases and embarks on a burgeoning romance, often accompanied by her canine companions. Each book follows a different breed of dog influenced by the author’s lifelong love for dogs and support of rescue charities.

Retired actress Guinevere ‘Gwinny’ Tuffel is finding life hard after inheriting her late father’s run-down house and discovering she’s broke. So she is delighted to be at Hayburn Stead in Hertfordshire for her best friend Tina’s upmarket wedding to a handsome Italian business magnate. But when the big day ends with a dead body and not a happily-ever-after, Gwinny is left with a situation as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.
When her friend is accused of murder, Gwinny takes it upon herself to sniff out the true culprit. With a collection of larger-than-life suspects and two pedigree Salukis in tow, she is set to have a ruff time of it.

Hi Antony thank you so much for popping over to The Book Blogging Bureau for a chat and for answering my questions.

1. You have had a very varied and successful writing career in comics, video games what made you decide to write a murder mystery novel?

It just felt like the right time. It’s not my first novel, and it’s not my first murder mystery, but it’s the first time I’ve done both at once.

I was supposed to be writing a spy thriller when the first Covid lockdown hit, so I had to put that book aside. Having also lost two elderly hounds not long before, I created The Dog Sitter Detective as a way to cheer myself up by combining my love of mysteries with my love of dogs.

2. What inspired you to write a book about a dog sitter detective?

I’ve been a mystery reader all my life; as a child I devoured the Famous Five and Three Investigators series, later moving on to things like Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie, and now continue to read (and watch) mysteries and cosies.

So my main inspiration was that lifelong love, and as I say wanting to write something light-hearted and cheery during lockdown. I wasn’t even thinking about trying to get it published. But with each chapter I enjoyed writing it more and more, and by the end of the book I realised I’d had so much fun that I wanted to do it again.

3. Do you have a favourite crime writer and who inspires your writing ?

(I could cheat here and simply say Agatha Christie, or Conan Doyle. Easy answer, requires no explanation! But that’s a bit boring.)

There isn’t a single author that I’d call my favourite; I consciously read a broad range within the genre. There are people whose books I’ll pick up sight unseen, though, and they include Vaseem Khan, Steve Cavanagh, Fiona Veitch Smith, CL Taylor, and Anthony Horowitz. It’s fair to say they all inspire me in some way or another, too – but I’m also a big SFF reader, and there are authors in that field like William Gibson, Lauren Beukes, and Becky Chambers who inspire me just as much.

4. I really like Gwinny as a character a slightly older woman who has had a career and is having to start a new life after the death of her father was, she based on a real-life person or purely fictional?

I draw on bits and pieces of real life in order to make stories and characters more genuine, as I think most authors do, and Gwinny’s no exception. But most of her comes directly from my imagination, so I’m glad that she resonates with so many people. I think it goes to show that some things – like feeling left out, or worrying you’re past it, but deciding not to let yourself be overlooked – really are universal.

5. This is the first book in the Dog Sitter Detective series. Did you always intend for the book to be part of a series, or did it develop over the writing process?

I’m afraid the answer to that is both/neither! When I started writing, I had no thoughts about it being a series. I didn’t even have much thought about publishing it. But about halfway through the book I began to see how the concept could become a series, and started building on that to make it work.

6. Who was favourite character to write in the book ?

Definitely Gwinny herself. Any author’s main character has to be the person they enjoy writing the most, don’t they? They don’t have to be our favourite person per se, but they must be someone who interests and intrigues us, because we’ll be spending so much time with them.

If I had to choose someone else, though, it would be the dogs. Any dog owner knows that canine personalities are distinctive, and writing Spera and Fede always made me smile.

7. How did you keep track of the plot of the book?

I started with a (very) rough outline, and kept that with me throughout – although things actually took a left turn part-way through the book, away from the outline. But that’s fairly normal, and doesn’t bother me. I need an outline to get started, but it’s not sacrosanct. If a better idea suddenly strikes me while I’m in the middle of writing, I’ll use it.

So for a large part of the book the plot was all in my head, or rather scribbled in notes which are only intelligible to me, and even then just barely. If I’d keeled over at my keyboard, I don’t think anyone else could have finished the book from those notes!

8. Can you tell us anything about future books ?

Death in Little Venice will be out in January 2024; in that book Gwinny is hired to stay at an ageing rock star’s houseboat and look after his border collie while the singer is on tour. But two days later his body turns up in the canal – he never made it out of London, and while the police think it was an accident, Gwinny is convinced it’s murder…

Thank you for dropping by and if you would like to know more about Antony and his writing you can catch up below with an interview for UK Crime Book Club via You Tube. https://youtu.be/jsVTThZy8BY