CRIMINALLY GOOD: Interview with author Sally Andrews

1) So, who are you & what have you written?

I am Sally Andrew, and I live on a nature reserve in the Karoo, South Africa. I have written Recipes for Love and Murder and The Satanic Mechanic, the first two books in a series of feel-good Tannie Maria mysteries. Follow me on Twitter as @TannieSall and check out my website, HERE.

2) Why do you write crime fiction?

I enjoy the shape of a good mystery; it is a clothes horse on which I can hang so many themes. I like the tautness of problem, suspense, clues, solution.

3) What informs your crime writing? 

I am inspired by the classic cosy mysteries (Christie, Erle Stanley Gardner etc), but I also love to play with the beauty of words and archetypal characters and emotions. My work is infused with humour and a love of the Karoo area in which my main character and I both live. I explore themes of love and justice, and personal and political empowerment.

4) What’s your usual writing routine?

I sit on a bench welcoming the morning light onto the hills of the Klein Karoo. I do some Qigong (Chinese energising/healing movements) then settle down somewhere my laptop (usually at the dining room table, with earmuffs). I intersperse writing sessions with foraging for food, attending to emails, and splashing my face in the nearby stream. Later I go for a long walk through the veld, where I loosen my mental and muscle knots.

5) Which crime book do you wish YOU’D written, and why?

I am reading Bosman’s Cold Stone Jug again, about his time in prison after he’d committed a murder. I don’t wish for his experience in jail, but I do long for his skill with words, storytelling, humour, understatement and the way he weaves the everyday with the profound.