‘Veronica Speedwell’ creator comes to Watermark for first Wichita visit

Whenever author Deanna Raybourn releases a new book – the 10th in her Veronica Speedwell series, “A Ghastly Catastrophe,” comes out Tuesday – her publicist schedules a tour with some traditional favorite cities and some wild cards.

“I always go back to Houston and Phoenix and Richmond (Va.), because those are the three cities with bookstores that have had a huge impact on my career, and then my publicist always tries to include a couple cities I’ve never been to before,” she said in a Zoom interview from her home in Williamsburg, Va. “So, this time I get to go to Wichita.”

Her book signing and discussion takes place at 6 p.m. Monday at Watermark Books, 4701 E. Douglas.

“It’s always a little bit frenetic and wonderful,” she said of book tours. “You never really get to spend much time in a city, so you’re just zooming past things, but it’s enough to pick up a vibe, so yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing a place I’ve never been before.”

Raybourn’s heroine, Veronica Casewell, is a “spunky lepidopterist” in the Victorian era, whose natural historian beau, Stoker, provides romance to go with the mystery.

The characters were introduced nearly 10 years ago, and Raybourn is grateful she has been able to continue to write Veronica’s adventures.

“You always hope you’re writing something that’s going to have legs,” she said. “I tried to set up characters that would have enough space for growth and development that I could just keep mining that.

“Every book is a standalone mystery,” Raybourn added. “The book is complete in and of itself as far as the whodunit part, but the character relationships kind of continue to evolve over the course of the series, so I’m lucky I’ve got the best of both worlds.”

Like many series, she said, the books are written so a reader can pick up any in the series and not be at a loss for backgrounds on the characters and situations.

Veronica Speedwell, she said, is “an homage to the Victorian female explorers that I was absolutely fascinated with.

“One of them in particular, named Margaret Fountain, was a lepidopterist, which is just a fancy word for butterfly hunter, and she made a fantastic living for herself, traveling the world, hunting butterflies, having premarital affairs, which you would not have expected for a Victorian woman. And she kept these fantastic journals, which have been published. They’re out of print now, but I ran across a couple, probably, 25 years ago, and I just thought she was the most extraordinary woman.”

Raybourn had already written about a Victorian-era heroine in her 13 Lady Julia Grey mysteries but wanted a different perspective with Veronica.

“I really wanted to kind of pay my respects to these women who packed up their carpet bags and set off to adventure and to do things unexpectedly. That’s very much who Veronica is,” Raybourn said. “She is a person who is obsessed with butterflies and murder.”

A double major in English and history, Raybourn researches the eras she writes about.

“I’ve had a lot of years to kind of add to that knowledge base,” she said. “It’s given me a lot of opportunities to add to what I already knew. For each book, I absolutely have to do some fresh research based on maybe how I’m killing people in that book or just refreshing my memory as to what was going on in that particular year in London or, you know, in the UK more generally. I also love to do a little bit of research about whatever the hook is going to be for that book.”

Raybourn says she calls her writing method an “organized pantser.”

“I don’t plot super, super tightly before I start a book, but I don’t just sit down and see where it’s going to go, either. I have a general plan mapped out,” she said. “I usually know where we’re starting, where we’re ending, and probably three or four major plot points along the way, and how I get between those points is where the discovery and the fun and the spontaneity happens.”

Sometimes, Raybourn said, she will “revise what I’m thinking is going to be the ending,” halfway through writing.

“I may change up who the murderer is, if I can come up with a better motive for someone else who’s maybe a little less expected as a murderer,” she said. “Usually I have a pretty good idea of where I’m going. And it usually comes in segments, too. I’ll know where I’m starting off, and I’ll get about 50 to 100 pages in, and then I have to spend a day brainstorming to figure out exactly where the next little bit is going to come into.”

In 2022, Raybourn began writing contemporary thrillers. Her second, “Kills Well with Others,” was released in paperback last month.

“The process is a little bit different when I’m writing a contemporary thriller, because that’s a new thing for me,” she said. “Writing those books is a completely different experience. I still try to have a vague idea of what I’m going to do, but the world is still so new to me that it’s very much a tightrope act, and there are a lot more surprises when I’m writing, and a lot more zigs when I’m expecting to zag.

“Which is fun, it keeps things fresh,” she added.

With streaming services providing more platforms for fictional works to become movies, Raybourn was asked if any of her works were getting a cinematic treatment.

“All I’m allowed to say is that I am in discussions,” she said.