Please join us for a Q&A with Peggy Townsend, author of five novels including The Botanist’s Assistant.
I’d like to welcome Peggy Townsend to our BookBrowse Community Forum.
Peggy is an award-winning journalist and author. Her work has appeared in Catamaran literary magazine, Santa Cruz Noir, Globe Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. She is the author of four novels, including See Her Run and On Thin Ice, both of which feature disgraced investigative journalist Aloa Snow, and the thriller The Beautiful and the Wild. Her latest, The Botanist’s Assistant, hits the shelves on Tuesday, November 18.
Please use this space to ask Peggy questions about her work. As a reminder, to reply to an existing comment, click the grey Reply on the right side under the comment. To ask a new question, click the blue Reply button a little lower down.
Peggy, thanks for being here! Please tell our group a little about yourself.
Thanks so much for inviting me to talk about my new book, The Botanist’s Assistant. I’m a longtime journalist with a box of awards stuffed somewhere in my garage and lots of stories to tell. I turned to fiction as a challenge to myself, and found out it was a lot harder than it looked. I read and studied and attended conferences and found a wonderful workshop group of writers who supported me. (We call ourselves The Rough Drafts.) It’s been a wonderful, and sometimes hard, journey but I am grateful for every moment.
Congrats on your new book, Peggy! I see it publishes tomorrow. I can’t imagine how exciting that must be, (athough it’s your fourth book so maybe it’s old hat by now). Will you do anything special to celebrate?
For those who haven’t read the book, The Botanist’s Assistant is about Margaret Finch, a woman who works in a university lab developing a plant-based cure for cancer. When her boss turns up dead in his office, the exceptionally observant Margaret notices irregularities that lead her to believe he was murdered. She proceeds to investigate her theory in spite of the pressures from university officials who insist the man had a heart attack.
Margaret is a wonderful character - she’s a loner and quite the introvert, yet she’s got the observational talent of Sherlock Holmes and refuses to be put off.
Peggy, where did the idea for this character come from?
Actually, launching a book into the world never gets old and always brings a whole shipping container of feelings. I’m excited and terrified and have to stop myself from refreshing Goodreads reviews every fifteen minutes. I’m nervous about bookstore and podcast appearances but also grateful for them. I’m thankful for readers, for having the opportunity to tell stories and for all the people who support me: my editors, agent, publishing team and book influencers. As for celebrating, my husband has a bottle of champagne chilling and, most fun of all, I bought a new outfit for my launch reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz. I love having an excuse to dress up!
Welcome Peggy,
I have not read your book but it is downloaded on my nook. I am a night owl so I am eagerly waiting for midnight to start reading. The book’s review is very intriguing so I’m curious about the setting. A science lab seems like a mundane location for a murder mystery thriller. How did you decide upon the setting? The traits of the main character are unlike those of a normal mystery fictional heroine. Did you know someone with these traits that compelled you to develop this character. However please remember I have not yet read your book.
Ms. Townsend, I enjoyed your book! I appreciate the character of Margaret Finch being neurodivergent and using her strengths to investigate the murder. What strategies did you use to develop her character?
@Lynne_G Thanks so much for downloading my book and for your great questions. After my newspaper job, I worked as a writer for UC Santa Cruz and got to meet some amazing scientists in the process. Their work was fascinating and I found each of them to be wonderfully curious, persistent, smart, detail-oriented and with a great devotion to science and public knowledge. One day, I had the realization that the traits of a good scientist are also the traits of a good detective and Margaret was born. I also liked the idea of a campus setting with its mix of young students seeking adventure and experiences, professors who sometimes had huge egos, a shared drive for grant funds and grades, and research that could be dangerous in the wrong hands—the perfect mix for a mystery and for an array of suspects. Margaret and I also share the traits of organization and attention to detail, which can be both annoying and admirable. I guess it’s up to others to decide!
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@Holly_Batsell Oh, I’m so glad you liked the book—and Margaret. Like most writers, I’m a magpie when it comes to character development and I often pick small traits from different people to create those who people my books. For Margaret, I put a bit of myself in her. She and I both love organization and have a tendency to notice details (it’s why I often find money on the ground!) but I exaggerated my own traits to create hers and also drew on women scientists I’d read about who did great work but were often dismissed and/or ignored all together. As I developed Margaret’s character more deeply, I also made sure to tell the story of how her present was rooted in her past. As I explored, I Margaret came fully alive for me. I just love her.
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The idea for Margaret came both from my own tendencies to organize things and pay attention to details but also from people I’d met as a journalist. Some of my favorite articles were written about people who kept going no matter the odds and/or who accomplished something no one expected them to do. I remember the son of a farmworker who dreamed of being a boxer, a woman who had little in material goods but met each day with gratitude, and a guy with a genetic disability who made his way out of a institution to live on his own. Margaret’s tenacity was partially born from them. She fits none of the socially acceptable norms. She is ungainly and large, slightly eccentric, middle-aged, solitary and drives a 20-year-old truck. People make fun of her and, yet, she soldiers on. People threaten her and she marches forward because she believes what she is doing is necessary and right. I adore her as a character.
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I think I read that you started with an outline for the book. Did your plan for the novel change at all as you were writing? Were there directions the plot went that surprised you?
Which parts of The Botanist’s Assistant were the hardest to write? Did you encounter any creative roadblocks? And how long did it take you to write it?
I am a huge outliner because I want a reader to be able to look back after they finish the book and say of the killer: “oh my, it was there all along. How did I miss it?” I had a 30-page outline for The Botanist’s Assistant but, of course, the plot did change. I don’t want to give anything away, but a certain character showed up out of the blue as I was writing and the final chapter was completely different than what I had planned. As a writer, I’m always pleasantly surprised by what comes out of my fingers and suddenly appears on the page.
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Hi, Peggy. Thank you for writing The Botanist’s Assistant! I enjoyed the heck out of it. I have a question for you: When you decided to write novels, what authors were an inspiration for you?
@Lloyd_R I’m so glad you liked The Botanist’s Assistant. I had such fun writing it. And, what a great question about authors who inspired me when I decided to write novels. I love William Kent Kruger for his great characters and storylines and Karin Slaughter for her gritty reality. I also read a lot of Nevada Barr and Dana Stabenow as inspiration for turning setting into character. There are so many great mystery writers but those were the ones I studied as I turned to fiction from my career as a journalist.
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This novel was a quick one. I think I wrote it six or seven months and the only creative roadblock was when I discovered that I’d made Margaret a little too grumpy in my first chapters and had to go back and make her more likeable. When I figured out her backstory, I could make her funnier and feisty instead of grumpy. Luckily, the roadblock was short-lived.
Happy book launch day! When’s your event at your local bookshop? I’ve never been to a book launch party, what’s it entail?
This is your fourth novel. What made you decide to dedicate yourself to writing the first one, See Her Run?
How has your writing or your process changed since See Her Run was published?