Leigh Dunlap

Leigh Dunlap is the screenwriter of the hit Warner Bros. movie A Cinderella Story. A native of Los Angeles, she attended film school at the University of Southern California. She now splits time and personalities between South Carolina and South Kensington and dreams of one day giving it all up and searching for buried treasure. Until then, she writes movies and books. Including Bless Your Heart, her debut novel.

My Q&A with the author:

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

Bless Your Heart. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? As if someone is wishing you well. In the south, however, it’s a passive-aggressive put down. It’s someone smiling while stabbing you in the back. It’s a great title for a murder mystery about the rich and powerful people of Atlanta. The original title for my novel, though, was The Buckhead Betties. They are the Karens of Atlanta. Beautiful, rich and insufferably entitled. The publisher wanted to change the title because they didn’t think people would understand what a Buckhead Betty was, and that’s a fair point. Bless Your Heart was a fine alternative. You thought this was a romance novel? Well, bless your heart…

What's in a name?

Along with the title of the book, the publisher questioned all the weird character names. Birdie. Hampton. Poppy. Wade. Auggie. Cash. Kolt. I had to get rid of a few others. That’s the south, however. Or at least in Buckhead, the Beverly Hills of Atlanta. Unusual names, usually old family names, are just the norm. I even know someone named Matthews. With an ‘s’. This is not a story of Johns and Marys.

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

My teenage reader self was a dreamer with a head full of mayhem. It was a swirling cauldron of worry, anger, love, happiness, misery, and angst. I don’t think teenage me would be at all surprised that I wrote a novel about a murder. Murderous thoughts were always lurking below the surface of teenage me! I hope she would just be relieved to know that she made it out of her teenage years and found an outlet in writing for all those feelings.

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

Every character in my novel is some part of me. Male or female. Rich or poor. Killer or victim. It’s as if all of my life was put in a blender and the result is a novel that has bits and pieces of me on every page.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Again, I’m going back to the blender! I’m definitely the person you want on your trivia team. I know a little about a lot. (What is the capital of Bhutan? Thimphu, of course.) I’m a media junkie and take it all in and reformulate it. Having grown up with television being my babysitter, and also being a screenwriter, means that movies and TV and their structure and references influence everything I write.

Visit Leigh Dunlap's website.

--Marshal Zeringue