Frances White on her new novel, Voyage of the Damned – a murder mystery on a ship full of magical passengers
More about the book!

Author Frances White discusses her mind-blowing novel, Voyage of the Damned, what inspired the book, the setting and her irresistible lead character.

‘Nothing can compare to the isolation of a ship at sea.’

I was feeling a little creatively exhausted when I first approached this book, so I really wanted to write something that would excite and inspire me.

Voyage of the Damned was very much a product of me embracing all the things I love to write and combining them together.

For a start, I’ve always adored fantasy stories. Ever since I was little, I’ve read anything I could get my hands on that had any aspect of magic. But I also have a morbid curiosity in murder mysteries, both fictionalised and real-life ones. Adding magic to that felt like opening up a whole new realm of murderous possibilities and fiendish twists.

I wanted to lean in hard to the sort of classic set up that I love – a load of eccentric characters enclosed in a place with a ticking clock, dying off one by one. But also, the kind of fantasy I adore, political, emotional, with lots of human drama.

That immediately sparked a ton of ideas, and I was really excited to explore them. Thus, Voyage of the Damned was born!

The basic concept for Voyage of the Damned came first, the idea of these 12 people with secret magical abilities trapped in a location, who start dying off one by one. I went through various locations and iterations of this, at one point it was all taking place in a closed off city! But really nothing can compare to the isolation of a ship at sea, so that was an easy decision to choose that location.

Once I had the ship that gave me a bunch more threads to follow – why are they on this ship? Where are they headed? Why are there only 12 of them onboard? Seeking the answers to these questions helped flesh out the wider world.

It wasn’t until I had more of a grasp of the basic plot and setting that I started thinking about the characters who would inhabit it. This is unusual for me, but I think in this case, it helped. It means that the 12 main characters were ones who only really could have sprung from this world. It also tied them quite closely to the plot, which I think is quite important in a murder mystery.

Funnily enough, Dee wasn’t the original protagonist. He played the role of the ‘assistant’ to the lead detective, but he was just so irresistible and, to be honest, far more interesting than the protagonist at the time that I decided to experiment and put him centre stage. Once I did, his voice screamed out to me, and everything fell perfectly into place. Now I really can’t imagine this story existing without him!