Catherine Mack's latest book is a mystery that serves up a healthy amount of Taylor Swift references
Q&A | CBC Radio | Posted: July 12, 2024 6:08 PM | Last Updated: July 16
The Montreal author talks about the novel Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies on The Next Chapter
Montreal-based thriller writer Catherine McKenzie is known for her novels Have You Seen Her, Hidden, Smoke and The Good Liar. Now she's back with a new book — this time under the pseudonym Catherine Mack – called Every Time I Go On Vacation, Someone Dies.
Staying true to its cheeky title, the novel follows a mystery writer's hilarious journey when she's forced to solve one in real life.
Mack joined The Next Chapter's Christa Couture to chat about the compelling characters she writes about the sneaky clues she slowly reveals.
Your main character is Eleanor Dash, the best selling suspense writer of a vacation mystery series. We meet her when she's in Italy for a 10-day book tour with some lucky fans, her ex and some other thriller writers. What's on her mind at the start of this trip?
The first line of the book is, 'Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I want to commit a homicide and murder.' On her mind is literary murder, not not actual murder.
She's very sick of Connor Smith, the protagonist-slash-antagonist of her books and her life, who has been blackmailing her for the last 10 years because his name is in the books and when she told him about it was too late to change it. And so she's just sick of him.
She can't get away from him; the only way she can see to get out from under him is to kill him off in the books.
When she makes that decision finally, she feels the need to confess about it to a priest in a church in Rome. Then right after she does that, Connor finds her and says that someone's trying to kill him and he needs her help.
The story unfolds entirely from Eleanor's perspective. What did you want readers to know about her?
Eleanor is somebody who's had a lot of success, but she also has a deep sense of imposter syndrome because all of it seems to have happened to her by accident and out of something bad that happened to her when she was 18.
Her parents died in an accident and she ended up becoming a parent to her younger sister and sort of giving up on her dreams for her sister to fulfil hers. When that was done and she had finished university, she finally had a moment for herself and she went to Italy at 25. That's where she met Connor Smith and had this sort of whirlwind romance and adventure that spurned her into writing her first book.
But as she says, right up front, she never meant to write a novel, which sounds insane. How do you write a novel by accident? But she did. Then because of that, I think she feels that all that came after that is unearned.
There's a lot of conflict and tension around where her success comes from. - Catherine Mack
Then on top of that, her sister is the one in the family who always wanted to be a writer but has never been able to publish anything that she's written.
So there's a lot of conflict and tension around where her success comes from.
You had said in an interview that all successful writers have imposter syndrome to some degree. Do you still feel that way?
Yes, of course. I think the longer you're in this business, you know that there are a lot of talented writers out there. We all have friends who are great writers and write great books and they don't get the attention they deserve or they don't get a book deal. Then that happens to us too.
It's very rare that someone has a smooth sailing career of New York Times bestseller after New York Times bestseller. So when you do have success, you can feel like, 'Okay, well, why me? Why this book?' And on the flip side of that, I think it's important to keep in mind too that it is sometimes just alchemy, timing. Yes, you have to put in the hard work and people who don't do that aren't going to be successful in this business.
It's important to keep in mind too that it is sometimes just alchemy, timing. - Source
But there are lots of people who do that and who write great books every year that just don't get the same attention. And I've written other books that I think are great and didn't get the same attention as this book.
One part of the book that was so enjoyable is the footnotes that are on just about almost every page. What do they add to the story?
Eleanor breaks the fourth wall in this book and she was doing that sort of early on in the writing process — or I had her doing that early on in the writing process. Right before we were about to take the book out on submission, I had this idea of putting in footnotes, which I actually always enjoyed as a lawyer because it's a way of giving other information. It just seemed to me to be the way for her to really talk directly to the reader and kind of drop in other jokes and clues sometimes.
I feel like more of her personality comes out in those footnotes. I don't know if someone has already compiled them already, but I want the playlist and the book recommendations from the footnotes… and I have to ask, are you a Swiftie? There's a lot of Taylor Swift references!
Yes. I definitely have a playlist. That's a good idea. I could put it out.
I always make a playlist whenever I'm writing a book. I make a playlist that I listen to during that time period or writing process and when I was writing this book, I was listening a lot to Midnights by Taylor Swift. I often find a song that really creates a mood or a tone for me.
And that song for this book was You're On Your Own Kid by Taylor Swift. And so that's referenced in the book. I would sort of play that song on repeat and I even learned to play the song on guitar. I've been listening to Tortured Poets Department on repeat, so stick around for book two and book three of this series.
There's more Taylor.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Corrections:- An earlier version of this article had the author's name written as Mackenzie instead of McKenzie. July 16, 2024 7:52 PM