KD Aldyn

KD Aldyn lives everywhere and nowhere (home is where the Wi-Fi is). She most often wears black (and sometimes red) and sometimes dances like Elaine from Seinfeld.

Sister, Butcher, Sister is her debut.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

There are three sisters and one of them is a killer, so the title is perfect. I can say this without being boastful because the title was gifted to me by my editor and her team. It is so clever. My original title was She and when I first saw the cover I cried with joy because the publishers had incorporated that word into the Sister Butcher Sister graphic.

What's in a name?

The sisters’ names came to me in my sleep, and I built the characters from there. The name Kate suggests physicality and movement to me. Aurora sounds musical. Peggy has that kind of ragged, wayward sound to it (sorry to all the Peggy’s out there!)

The main detective’s name didn’t come so easily as he didn’t really enter the scene until much later. In fact, I kept muddling Nick Timms: one minute he was Nic, then Rick, then Nick. At various places, I called him Detective Simms instead of Timms. By the end of the writing process, he’d formed more fully in my mind.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

From the age of about twenty, I read mainly literary novels, short stories and poetry. I even enjoyed the odd romance. But I wasn’t reading or writing in the crime thriller genre.

So, when thinking about this question, I got a bit of a jolt.

When I delved further back into my memories, I found that I was quite taken with blood and guts as a teenager. I liked anything macabre and frightening.

So maybe teenage me wouldn’t be too surprised at all.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

It varies. In the case of Sister Butcher Sister, the ending was harder. You see, I had these three sisters almost fully formed in my mind. The opening came easily. What I didn’t have, even vaguely, was an ending.

I knew one of the sisters was a serial killer, but I had absolutely no idea which one it would be. I was waking up at ridiculous times in the early hours of the morning, racing to the computer, hunching myself over the keyboard, desperate to find out who the killer was. I changed my mind constantly.

In the end, the right character or characters rose to the challenge and accepted responsibility. What a relief!

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Many of my friends have said they can’t believe I could write such gruesome images and when my husband first read the manuscript, he went rather quiet. So, I am a little wary in saying I could have something in common with any of the sisters.

To be honest though, I do have something in common with each of them: Aurora’s love of music, Peggy’s relationship with her son, Kate’s fixation with her grandfather’s house.

I can even relate to the anger that simmers within the killer. However, when that simmer comes to a boil and the killing starts, I’m a world apart. Believe me!

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Inspiration is everywhere: song lyrics, an overheard conversation on a train, a beautiful painting.

But it was a dinner party conversation that got me interested in serial killers. Fueled by wine from memory, an intense debate began with friends and family, and the conversation became the spark for this novel.

Everyone seated around the table seemed to agree that the feminine makeup excluded a woman, generally, from becoming a murdering psychopath. Even those accepting the examples I put forward, said the scarcity of female serial killers was somehow because of nature. I was alone in my argument from the feminist perspective that, given the opportunity and motive, a woman could easily turn into a killing machine.

This book is, in a way, my way of rising to the challenge to [fictionally] prove a point.

Visit the Karenlee Thompson / KD Adlyn website.

--Marshal Zeringue