Brandi Bradley is an indie author and educator who lives in the great city of Atlanta, Georgia. She writes short stories and novels about crime, family drama, flea markets, cowboys, rowdy girls, and gossip. She has had short stories and essays published in Juked, Louisiana Literature, Carve, and Nashville Review. She teaches writing at Kennesaw State University. Mothers of the Missing Mermaid (2023) is her debut novel of secrets by the sea in Destin. Bradley’s second book, Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is being released today.
About the book: When a young entrepreneur is killed, everyone in town points fingers at his picture-perfect fitness influencer ex-girlfriend, Gabbi – including the victim's best friend, Jenna. As detective Lindy D'Arnaud and her partner Boggs search for a motive, they begin to wonder if this is a case of jealous violence or something much deeper. In Lindy's personal life, things aren't much clearer. When Lindy's wife's ex-boyfriend–and sperm donor to their baby–decides to move back to town, she finds herself competing for her wife's affection. Told through the shifting perspectives of Lindy, Gabbi, and Jenna, "Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder" is a page-turner brimming with quick wit and juicy gossip.
Brandy stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:
Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is about the murder of an up-and-coming small town entrepreneur, Ethan Moll, but it’s really about the women he surrounded himself with before he died, and the woman who solves the case.
When working on this novel, I kept recalling how a writing instructor once told me to make sure I include something in my books that’s just for me, something that makes me smile. Because writers get so much feedback on what works, what doesn’t work, what people want, what readers want, what agents want, and after a while it’s like your book is no longer your own, because you are trying to make everyone else like it. She suggested that I always keep something in it just for me.
For Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder, because so much of it is about a drive to reinvent oneself, I allowed one of my characters to live their glow-up journey out in the open. I thought it would be fun to show someone under the influence of a self-help personality.
I read lots of self-help books: self-help for creativity, self-help for writers, self-help for spirituality, self-help for productivity, self-help for finances. I enjoy hearing tips and tricks and figuring out whether it works for my life. But some of the fun of self-help is the personalities of these people who write books designed to tell absolute strangers how that person should live their life. These are people who say they have all the answers.
And that takes such chutzpah.
One of my characters – and one of the more fun chapters to write – stumbles upon a lecture led by a self-help personality and she gets recruited into this person’s orbit. It was so fun to develop this hybrid character of different self-help personalities– these people who are charismatic and exacting, but also clearly making money. While my character waits for her book to be signed she is surrounded by tables full of not only books, but affirmation decks, journals, workbooks, bookmarks, flyers for additional events. She’s singled out by a member of the staff and is invited to an “intensive” retreat. It’s all very love-bombing, but also empowering for this character. I mean, who doesn’t like to be told they are smart and can do anything they set their mind to? Even if it comes with an undertone of “all of this for $19.95.”
I also wanted to show how parts of the self-help guidance worked for her. As the story progressed, I could pepper in how the character returns to this self-help personality’s products when she needs answers – she’s got audio books, she’s got physical books flagged and annotated, she quotes this person. She was able to change some negative patterns in her life. And it was fun having other characters eye-roll at her new self-satisfied attitude where she thinks she has all the answers, too.
When writing that scene, or actually just while writing this novel, I revisited a lot of old self-help audio books and listened to them while commuting around town. Which had a double benefit, because the person on the audio is telling me I’m pretty and smart and can crush all my goals, but then I would hear an affirmation or interesting quotable line and think, “Oh, that would be so good for the book!”
When I think of research, I flashback to my school days looking up academic articles on JStor and Academic Search Complete, but the truth is everything around me is research. The self-help books, the true crime podcasts I listen to, the stories my best friend tells me when we have one of our three-hour conferences, the crime story long reads my husband sends me with the comment, “relevant to your interests.” All of it goes through my brain, churns around, and comes out as new stories. And this kind of “research” is far more fun than googling answers.
You can learn more about Brandi Bradley via her website and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok. Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder is now available via all major booksellers.
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