Interview with Em Thompson, Author of The Sinisterhood of Celebrity Psyclones

What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write The Sinisterhood of Celebrity Psyclones – The Curious Case of the Swish Swiss Finishing School?

Some way into my scribbling obsession, I came up with the idea for a dark psychological thriller. Challenging. After several months of thinking, plotting, and researching, I finally put virtual ink to cyber-paper.

To set the scene, I had a detective visit the wife of the victim of a knife attack to break the grim news of her husband’s death. He was accompanied by an insignificant junior woman PC—a family liaison, I guess. She was just going to be part of the furniture: stand to attention, doff her cap, nod, commiserate… that kind of thing. However, she was having none of it. Within a dozen sentences, she had hijacked the entire novel.

And so Heather Prendergast entered my life… and stuck. A pretty, naïve, ambitious, strait-laced, archetypal English upper-crust wannabe detective, with a tendency to cause mayhem and an endearing ability to always land on her feet when she (frequently) stumbles, young Heather has amassed a sizeable following around the world. But Heather wasn’t satisfied with being the main event. She wanted a stylistic footprint commensurate with her humorously humourless character.

A penny dropped when I was searching for a word to describe Baby Caspar, one of the central characters in that first Prendergast novel, Elliefant’s Graveyard. After scrubbing out a dozen adjectives, I accidentally merged two words and came up with “a plumpenormous baby.” Perfect. And that was the genesis of the wordplay employed throughout the Prendergast of the Yard Casebooks—one reason why so many readers have compared the style to Lewis Carroll of Alice in Wonderland fame.

The other stylistic device I employed was to develop two parallel narratives in alternating chapters, colliding in the final chapter. So we have two protagonists, unaware of one another, pursuing the same or similar goals. It worked well. I enjoyed it, and readers were enthusiastic, many saying that Elliefant’s Graveyard was unique and they had never read anything like it. A cry went up… “more, more, more.”

Lockdown was stressful for us all. Now running my business from home, I was struck by a thought—what if Heather were called upon to negotiate the release of a kidnapped relative? Her inevitable, clumsy, and accident-prone efforts would be compounded if, unbeknownst to her and them, the kidnappers had snatched the wrong hostage. And so was born The Happy Thistle—maybe the most bonkers in the Prendergast series.

Lockdown one soon gave way to lockdown two. The Happy Thistle had ended on a cliffhanger, and to be quite honest, I had no idea what happened next. So, to find out, I wrote Murder on the Ordinary Express—pure Agatha Christie. I love this book. No matter how many times I read it, it makes me laugh out loud.

But hey—I’m taking a liberty. I was asked to explain how The Sinisterhood of Celebrity Psyclones came into being. Well, I decided to write a series of short stories charting Heather’s adventures before becoming a detective. Collectively entitled The Making of Prendergast of the Yard, I posted the first two (“The Curious Case of the Prawnographic Nibbles” and “The Curious Case of the Kidnapped Cat”) on Kindle and various other eBook resellers. Readers loved them—five stars throughout, without exception.

The next short story was to recount Heather’s adventures at a Swiss finishing school after being expelled from boarding school. The plot grew and grew and grew. Wacky characters invaded page after page. Before long, the story wasn’t so short, and before I knew it, I was plotting a fully-blown prequel to Elliefant’s Graveyard.

Mad, bad, and dangerous to read, Sinisterhood of Celebrity Psyclones is at once a demented romp and a satire on an age of social media influencing, body-shaming, and the objectification of girls and women. Of course, ultimately, the girls revolt against an authoritarian regime intent upon indoctrinating them as servile, sexual objects and defeat the forces of sexual darkness. Yes, indeed—a story with a moral, even if it is buried beneath the surface, like Professor Hans Beiderbecke’s celebrity psychoning laboratory.

So, as several readers have said, roll on Heather. Unique in the annals of detective fiction? Maybe. Maybe not. But definitely one of a kind.

If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of The SInisterhood of Celebrity Psyclones – The Curious Case of the Swish Swiss Finishing School, what would they be?

I spent most of my working life at the sharp end of the music industry. Of all those I met and worked with, Kate Bush stands head and shoulders above the rest. Years ago, she recorded a duet with Peter Gabriel entitled “Don’t Give Up.” It inspired and comforted me during a very dark period of my life. I think the sentiment would resonate with my young protagonist, Heather Prendergast. Accident-prone and naïve, her dogged determination always sees her through.

What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?

I read extremely widely, both non-fiction and fiction. Sure, I like humor and enjoy whodunits, but I also love diving into dramatic mysteries, adventures, biographies, and cliffhangers about cats.

What books are on your TBR pile right now?

Tough. Too many half-read novels. But I recently came across a writer called Brian T. Marshall and was blown away by his imagination and writing skills. In particular, his short novel A Stone Bled Dry is a remarkable work. I read it twice—something I NEVER do.

Why he isn’t a household name is beyond me.
https://www.briantmarshallauthor.com/

What scene in your book was your favorite to write?

Heather’s psychoning into Audrey Hepburn is pure Frankenstein on steroids. But I probably had the most fun with the aristocratic young ladies fighting off an attack from a Balkan horde—pure Saint Trinians.

Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)

I tend to work late into the night, with my two cats – Fusscat and Piglet – beside me.

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

Everything happens for a reason, no matter how difficult or painful.

If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?

Laughing out loud. And trying to remember what the devil the book was all about.

em thompson is the author of the new book The Sinisterhood of Celebrity Psyclones – The Curious Case of the Swish Swiss Finishing School

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