Author Biography
J. Woollcott is a Canadian writer born in Northern Ireland. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers in Toronto. A Nice Place to Die won the RWA Unpublished Mystery/Suspense Daphne du Maurier Award in 2019 in New York, was long-listed in 2019 and 2020 in the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence and was short-listed in 2021. A Nice Place To Die is published by Level Best Books.
She is a member of Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, and the Suncoast Writer’s Guild.
When did you start writing? Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
No. I didn’t know. I had always loved to write, but doing that for a living never entered my mind. This may have had something to do with time and place. I grew up in Northern Ireland, and it was never an occupation I considered. At school we were encouraged to write and studied literature, Chaucer––indecipherable to me at thirteen, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Waugh, Orwell etc., the great poets too, but the idea of actually writing a book seemed far-fetched, to me anyway. That was for grey-haired Oxford graduates who now lived in alcoholic squalor in attics somewhere.
I studied ballet for many years and dreamed of that as a career. Almost did, as I was offered a place in a London ballet school. But that offer came just as I discovered art. And that’s what I decided to focus on. After I graduated in Art and Design in Belfast, I emigrated to Canada and spent many years as Director of Design at a major television network.
Luckily, I was able to retire early, but I found that I needed something to focus on apart from travel and reading. I had always loved mysteries, in fact as a very young girl I devoured Enid Blyton’s books. As an adult I loved Ann Cleeves, P.D. James, Ian Rankin, and the like. Reading has always been an escape for me and mysteries were my genre of choice.
I decided to go for it. Not with any real belief that I would publish, oh no, that was the last thing I imagined. I just had an idea and started to write it down. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I needed some help. I took a formatting course, and learned how to lay out the pages. What size and what typeface to use. We also had short lessons in style and writing.
I resumed work on my novel and decided to join Crime Writers of Canada. From there I gained a mentor who helped me and read the final manuscript of Abducted. She suggested I enter it in the unpublished awards that year. I did and much to my surprise and joy was long-listed. That was all the encouragement I needed.
How did you come up with the idea for A Nice Place to Die?
I don’t know, not exactly. My first manuscript, Abducted, was set in New York and Mexico. I have been to both places for visits and holidays. Writing a book based in places you don’t know intimately requires a lot of research.
I grew up in N. Ireland and knew it well, I had a relative retired from the police force so I had some inside information available to me. When I thought about it, I realized this was perfect. There had been a lot of talk about setting as a character and I had always loved books rich in description and setting.
As to the storyline, I just don’t know. I did know I wanted a detective sergeant as my protagonist. I also needed a small team, a partner to play off him, a nerdy guy as a researcher and a young, smart woman. As to the story, like most writers, I got a random idea, a what if? And I started to write.
Did you have a specific writing routine/process for A Nice Place to Die? Has that process changed at all over the course of your successful writing career?
I’ll start here with Abducted if I may. It’s in a drawer. But the process to write it was a learning experience for me. I literally started at the beginning.
Again, with a what if? In that case, what if a young boy is kidnapped from a Mexican Market? But what if he’s not just any little boy but the illegitimate son of a wealthy American and no one is supposed to know. Do they know? Or is it a coincidence?
I began to write and write until the end. No plan, no outline and let me tell you, therein lies madness. I did finish it and I may return to it someday. But I wouldn’t recommend doing it that way. I took a course with writer Simon Wood and learned about plotting and outlining. Now I do a bit of both.
You published with Level Best Books. What was it about that publisher that made you want to sign with them? Do you have any advice on what writers should look for in a publisher?
I’m a rather unusual case. I had just started looking and applied for a grant to attend a convention, the grants chair loved my submission and asked to read the book. I didn’t get the grant, but she was a publisher and eventually offered me my contract.
If you have an agent, they will offer your book to different publishers and they will help you decide which offer to take. I didn’t get to that point, but If you direct submit make sure the publisher is reputable.
There’s a terrific site called Writer Beware, you can check with them or ask around before you sign anything. And if you don’t have an agent guiding you, have a lawyer or literary agency check your contract. I did.
You have a new novel coming out in August of 2023, Blood Relations. What is that new novel about and how did you come up with the idea?
Blood Relations is part two in the Belfast Murder Series. It continues on from A Nice Place to Die, but they are both standalones.
Retired Chief Inspector Patrick Mullan is found brutally murdered in his bed. Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride and his partner DS Billy Lamont are called to his desolate country home to investigate. In their inquiry, they discover a man whose career was overshadowed by violence and corruption. Is the killer someone from Mullan’s past, or his present? And who hated the man enough to kill him twice?
I wanted to take things up a notch in book two and it is a little darker in subject matter. But there’s humor too and the same easy camaraderie.
So now that A Nice Place to Die is out and Blood Relations is coming soon, what are you working on? Do you have another story in the works?
Yes, I have a couple, although I can’t work on them full time. Blood Relations is due to the publisher early February and that means a ton of work getting it ready to go, and then more work as the various edits come back to me.
As to the other books, I’m excited about a mystery I’ve started based again in N. Ireland on a small island just off the Antrim coast. A bit like Rathlin Island but smaller. I’m calling it Murder on Killennis, (at the moment) and my hero is a Police Inspector who left the force when he lost his wife in a shooting. He takes on a case of two missing girls as a favour. Then he meets an enigmatic woman and becomes close to her. Shortly afterwards she disappears. That makes three women gone in three years.
I’m also working on a WW11 romance/mystery called The Linguist.
What book(s) are you reading at the moment?
Damascus Station by David McCloskey and The Maze by Nelson DeMille
What book(s) most inspired you to write?
That’s a difficult question.
I have always enjoyed mysteries, even as a child I loved The Famous Five and The Secret Seven by Enid Blyton. P.D. James and Ann Cleeves. I love that kind of investigative writing.
I’m not sure I can choose one book, but I’ve always loved writing and I suppose there was a point about ten years ago when I thought, I wonder if I could do this?
I do keep re-reading Lou Berney’s November Road and Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky.
What do you hope people take away from reading your books?
There are no earth-shaking messages in my book, just I hope, an enjoyable mystery and a murder to solve. I don’t write graphic violence and I hope instead readers enjoy the careful unravelling of clues, the characters, and the setting too.
Northern Ireland is such a great place to visit and it would be lovely if even just one reader felt inspired to visit Belfast and the countryside there.
