It’s quite a rush when that happens for a writer. I often felt as though Molly, the protagonist of The Maid, channeled herself through me. PROSE: The fun parts of writing are the discoveries that happen as you write. “The fun parts of writing are the discoveries that happen as you write “

I didn’t know it then, but I’d just begun my debut novel.ĪUTHORLINK: How did you develop Molly’s character and her characteristics? But what did I know about her?Ī few days later, I was on the plane home when it came to me: Molly’s voice-clear, clean, precise-”polished to perfection.” I grabbed the napkin from under my drink and I wrote the prologue in a single burst. Simply by cleaning my room day after day, she knew so much about me. It occurred to me in that moment what an intimate and invisible job it is to be a room maid. This maid was holding up my sweat pants that I’d foolishly left in a tangled mess on the bed. I remember her gasping and taking a step back into a shadowy corner. I was staying at a hotel, and one day, after a breakfast meeting, I returned to my room and completely surprised the maid who had come to clean it. PROSE: The idea for The Maid came to me during a business trip to London in 2019. Now it is up to Molly and her friends who appreciate her for who she is to solve the mystery.ĪUTHORLINK: What was the first idea for this story that came to you? When the police question Molly, her unusual way of responding makes her the prime suspect.

To make matters worse, the relatively easy-to-navigate chores of cleaning rooms to perfection is interrupted when Molly finds one of the hotel’s most well-known guests murdered in his bed. But then gran died and Molly was on her own. Molly always struggled with social skills, and her grandmother taught her ways to cope. Molly Gray lived with her grandmother and worked as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel.

Maid author