Today we chat with the fantastic Ravena Guron, who is quickly becoming a powerhouse in the YA mystery space. Her work is perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder looking for more lovable, well-developed characters caught up in compelling mysteries. Ravena is a British-Indian biochemist turned lawyer turned author of the Middle-Grade fantasy series The Thief of Farrowfell and the twisty YA mysteries This Book Kills, Catch Your Death and now Mondays Are Murder.
Hi Ravena, thank you for joining us again today. Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your latest book Mondays Are Murder?
Hello! I’m the author of YA thrillers This Book Kills, Catch Your Death, and now Mondays are Murder! In Mondays, Kay returns to her old hometown to visit her cousin, and finds an anonymous note left for her that tells her there’s going to be a thrill on Tuesday, a wreckage on Wednesday, treachery on Thursday, a fire on Friday, sabotage on Saturday, a stabbing on Sunday – and her murder on Monday. Kay needs to figure out who left her the threat – to stop her own murder before it happens.
The last time we spoke was back in 2023 around the release of your debut YA mystery This Book Kills. How do you think your writing style has evolved through these mysteries?
Each new book I’ve written since This Book Kills has been a new challenge. Catch Your
Death played a lot with form, with a mixture of past, present and interview transcripts, and 3 POV characters. Mondays are Murder is structured around days of the week threats, with heightening tension as this game is played. Just like each book has been a new challenge for me, I hope they’re all a new challenge for readers.
Your characterisation is a great strength of your writing – they leap off the page and into your heart. Kay continues this trend fantastically. What was your process like for creating her?
Like all my characters, Kay formed over multiple drafts as I nailed down the plot. She was an interesting character to write – I knew from the start I wanted her to love the thought of investigating a crime, but I also wanted to dig deeper into that. What was motivating that love, and why. It took some time to bring that out, across a few drafts.
I always think your books have such compelling concepts and interesting twists on what you may expect from the genre. Where do you draw inspiration from for these mysteries?
I think about strange scenarios – things that seem puzzling at first – and then start asking myself questions about them as I try to solve the mystery first myself. For Mondays are Murder I knew I wanted it to be based around a game with daily threats, and I started questioning what those threats would be and most importantly why.
Similarly, your mysteries are so well constructed. What is the plotting process like for you?
My writing process has changed since I wrote my debut. I now do a high-level outline, that I expand from my one sentence hook. I don’t have all the twists nailed down at that point – sometimes I don’t even have all the characters! From there, I do a draft zero which is a mixture between a draft and a very extensive outline and I add in twists as they pop up in my head, or I jot down things to work on in the next draft. I then go back to my outline and expand it to make it more detailed, and from there I write a first draft. It’s a slightly longer process, but I think of each of my drafts as layering – adding in different elements into each layer so I’m not trying to do everything at once.
How do you decide which twists to use and when?
This mostly comes out when I do my draft zero. I can’t really see if a twist is going to work when I do my initial outline, or if it’s going to hit the way I want it to. When I’ve got my draft zero I can see exactly where a twist would naturally fall – where things seem like they’re settling, or where everything appears to be heading in one particular direction and needs to be shaken up.
I loved the depiction of grief in the book, as a key driver of certain characters and the way it can be warped into something that disguises the truth of the deceased. What’s a key message of the book you’d like to leave readers with?
This is a book about opening up to the people you love and not keeping your thoughts inside – how important it is to talk about things and not be ashamed of feelings.
What surprised you while writing this book?
A few of the twists weren’t planned – I surprised myself as I was writing them!
What songs would form the soundtrack to Mondays Are Murder for you?
Stay for Something by CMAT, Lacy and The Grudge by Olivia Rodgrio, Love and War by Jon Bryant, You’re Somebody Else by Flora Cash, If I Get High by Nothing But Thieves
What books are you excited for this year?
Circle of Liars by Kate Francis is a YA debut thriller coming out in July – I’ve read a proof of this and wow! It’s incredibly tense and pacey and I raced through it. Heartbreaker by Anika Hussain is coming out in May and it’s a swoony romcom that’s just really fun!
If possible, can you share a little about what you are currently working on or any upcoming projects you have?
I’m currently working on my fourth YA thriller – I can’t give too much away, but it started with the most high-concept idea I’ve tried to write so far and it’s definitely a new challenge!
Finally, if you could only use five words to describe Mondays Are Murder, what would they be?
Twisty, tense, dark, fun, cinematic
