Episode 38: Nancy G. West

Not every city has a river running through it. And not many women plan a rendezvous at a San Antonio River Walk hotel during Fiesta Week after years of self-imposed celibacy. I was about to make history.

-- Nancy G. West, River City Dead

Nancy G. West's heroine, Aggie Mundeen, burst onto the scene as a secondary character in Nancy's first novel, Nine Days to Evil, and demanded that Nancy write Aggie her own story.

Lucky for us, Nancy obliged with not one, but four Aggie Mundeen mysteries, and counting. Check out her website, NancyGWest.com. 

Her latest mystery, River City Dead, takes place during Fiesta Week in San Antonio, which Nancy calls a "fabulous, distinctive place and time." What more could one ask for? Well, perhaps a dead body in the penthouse suite...

We also talked about Dorothy Sayers (I gave a shout-out to her translation of Dante's Inferno, which is a personal favorite) and Nancy's essay, which taught me things I never even suspected about the wonderful Ms. Sayers -- including the inspiration for Strong Poison. I would be remiss not to link to the Dorothy L. Sayers Facebook Page, and you can read Nancy's essay here. 

Here are the Aggie Mundeen books in order:

* Fit to be Dead

* Dang Near Dead

* Smart, But Dead

* River City Dead

And Nancy's first novel, Nine Days to Evil.

Below is the transcript, if you'd rather read than listen. Enjoy!

-- Laura

Transcript of Interview with Nancy G. West

Laura Brennan: My guest today is Nancy G. West, author of Nine Days To Evil and the Aggie Mundeen mystery series. Her first Aggie Mundeen mystery received a Lefty Award nomination for best humorous mystery, and she has won numerous awards, including the Chanticleer competition in the Mystery and Mayhem category -- an appropriate win for her heroine, Aggie, whose itchy feet presage dead bodies and danger.

Nancy, thank you for joining me.

Nancy G. West: Oh, I'm delighted to be here, Laura. Thank you.

LB: Now, before you started writing professionally, you had a career in business.

NGW: I did. Well, I majored in general business administration, and I took a lot of marketing courses and management and accounting courses. And I found out that that wasn’t really to my liking. So, after we married and I had two daughters, I decided that what I really wanted to do was write fiction. So I went back to school, to graduate school, to study English Lit. And I loved it, but they didn’t teach me how to write fiction either. So I read a bazillion books on the craft of writing fiction. And that’s really what got me started.