Bookwild - Samantha Downing's Too Old For This: A Retired Serial Killer, A Nosy Journalist, And Tons of Mayhem

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

This week, I talk with Samantha Downing about her snarky new thriller Too Old for This. We dive into her inspiration for the story, her favorite parts about writing Lottie, and how she chooses memorable names for her characters.Too Old for This SynopsisLottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her.Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends.  When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that.But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her… Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week I got to talk with Samantha Downing about her newest thriller too old for this, but if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that we love Samantha Downing. So we have talked about her a lot on this podcast, so it was so exciting to get to interview her about this one, and this one is so fun. Here's what it's about. Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her. Decades earlier, she changed her identity and touched herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the week. bingo games of the local church and gossiping with her friends. When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie's past and specifically

her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can't have that. By getting away with murder is hard enough when you're young, and when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her. This one is so fun. It plays with, like, aging and identity in a really fun way, but also it's just very fun being in the mind of an 80-year-old serial killer. That being said, let's hear from Samantha. Well, I am so excited to talk about too old for this. I have been a fan of yours for years, so I was super excited to talk to you about this one. But I did want to get to know you a little bit first. So what was your kind of like journey to writing? Like, did you always know you wanted to be an author?

Did you have a book idea one day? How did that happen for you? I actually have been writing for many years before I was published. I did it more as a hobby. And I just did it because I loved it. That when I looked into what it took to get published, it just felt like this crazy labyrinth of hoops that you had to jump through. And I didn't have a degree in it.

I didn't have contacts. I didn't have a pedigree. I didn't work in anything that involved writing. So I just thought, okay, well, becoming an actual published working author is an impossibility. So I'll just do it because I like it. And I did and I wrote because it was my thing. And I ended up joining a writer's group. And it was someone in the group.

I was writing my lovely wife. And she loved it. And she really thought it was good. enough to be published. And she knew someone who knew someone who was a literary agent in New York, and she sent it to her friend. And it got to this literary agent who ended up being an agent that represented nonfiction books, actually. And he contacted me and referred me to someone else. So then I sent it to the woman Barbara Pauel, who became my agent. And that's how I got published. So it was 20 years of writing.

And then it all came together all in one fell swoop. I think it all over the course of a month, I had a book contract for my lovely wife. So that's how that's how it happened. That's crazy. Yeah. So it like happened quickly. It did. It happened quickly, but not.

I mean all of the time before. So it sounds like you wrote for fun for a while too. and now you're writing to be published. What is your writing process like now? And did you like kind of hold yourself to anything when you were writing for fun as well? Yeah, it was my whole process really had to change. I mean, when I was writing for fun, I could do whatever I wanted and throw out what I wanted and it didn't have to be any particular genre or anything.

So now, you know, I have a genre, the thriller genre. and the brand of writing sort of crazy stories a little more, you know, over-the-top stories. And I have to stick with that. Yeah. That's it. So the process has really narrowed for me in terms of time frame and terms of how long I have to write a book. There's freedom you have when it's a hobby is gone. Yeah.

Yeah. is there a genre you secretly wish you could write as well? Like another one? You know, I don't know. I like horror. I like some horror. So there could be something in there, maybe. There's a lot of crossover going on between thriller and horror these days. So there seems to be sort of a blending, a new subgenre, I guess, of thriller horror. And I've written a couple things. in Y.A. but nothing that's, um, that I really like or feel strongly about. So I've experimented with a few things. But for now, I guess I'm still just here in the in the one job, in the one or in the one age group. Yes. Well, we love the unhinged thrillers. Um, and this one definitely is. So what was your

inspiration for this book or kind of like what idea started it? Yeah, I actually was writing a book about a much younger protagonist and I had some health problems and I was laid up for a while waiting for surgery and my whole life sort of my whole lifestyle sort of changed because I didn't have a lot of mobility at the time and I couldn't work out. I couldn't exercise and so while I was sitting there waiting, I changed the character to an older character who also was going through a process of sort of adjusting and adapting to her new reality of both the aging and the new world of science and technology that she had to deal with as a serial killer. So I sort of channeled all my frustration was channeled into her. And I gave it all to Lottie.

So that's kind of how it happened was just the place that I was in in life. Yeah, that's fascinating. It makes a lot of sense too now since I've read it. But that is kind of cool that that was, she's a very frustrated character. So it's cool that you're able to kind of channel it through that is what I'm trying to say. She's this really fun blend. We have like, she's kind of like a sweet old lady who goes to like bingo nights and has, has friends in the neighborhood. And then she also has this wild past and is just like if anyone gets in her way, like, I think in my review, I was like, moral of the story, do not knock on Lottie's doors. Leave her alone.

So she's also that person too. So how did you kind of like balance those elements? I really just gave Lottie a full life. She has a family. She has a social circle. She has activities that she does. She's not sitting in a cabin like the Unabomber. She has. this complete life. And that's what she's trying to protect. She's trying to protect herself from being exposed. It's not like she suddenly decided one day to go back and try to work again. She feels it was put upon her and that she had no choice.

So I think a lot of the humanity in her comes out in the rest of her life and how she sort of compartmentalizes. You know, this is family. This is something else. and now I have to go protect my family from finding out all this stuff that's gone on with me in the past. And, you know, she has a jaded, been there, done that kind of a thing, but also a real frustration with technology and all of these things she has to deal with now. It's very hard to get away with it these days.

I mean, the old serial killers, all the famous ones we know the names of, they would be caught immediately today if they were trying to do things in the same. same way so she is trying to deal with that and so she she ends up just being kind of funny i guess yeah it is it is funny and it's like something yeah i think we're kind of talking about it more what you're saying like it's a lot easier to catch people now than it used to be so it is funny having her like her mentality that's like oh these phones tracking me every where I go. Like, she's just so frustrated with it all. And you're like, oh, it would be a lot harder to, like, keep your streak up nowadays. Yeah, it definitely would be between the cameras

and the tracking, the tracking devices on your car, tracking devices on your phone. If you, if you do something bad or, God forbid, kill somebody unplanned, you're already caught because you didn't plan. You know, you're already there at the scene of the crime and you're you'll be tracked there and what have you. So that sort of crime of passion thing especially is extremely difficult to get away with if you if you do something in the heat of the moment. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. You kind of talked about how kind of like aging and identity and also like reinvention is kind of a part of Lottie's whole story.

it sounds like a lot of that was coming from what you were going through as well but there was there like anything else that kind of drew you to those themes well i was thinking about what it would be like to be alone at that age the way she is and the type of planning that she has to do because there she she has a son yes but she's thinking of being alone in the house living alone and what if something happens to her who's going to find her and how long we're and take. And so these are very real things people have to think about, especially when you're a woman alone, and she's thinking of what she's going to leave behind and what kind of legacy she will have and what kind of legacy she wants. So I think these are all thoughts that someone, her age,

may have or may decide they're not going to think about at all. Maybe some people don't even want to consider any of those possibilities. And she's a little more head-on about it as she realizes once she goes back, when she's forced to kill someone and then try to get away with it, she sees that she doesn't remember things as well as she used to. And she gets tired more easily. And this is a lot more difficult. And maybe she does, and that sort of spurs her to think,

maybe I shouldn't be living alone. maybe I need to consider some other options. Yeah. Yeah. It really did explore all of that while also being funny. And it sounds like some of that you were saying is from the facts that like just having her in this situation where she hasn't kind of killed in the modern world before almost just makes it funny itself because it's kind of, I don't know if a juxtaposition is a right

word but like the tension there is is kind of humorous but did you also did you do anything like intentionally to balance the like humor in the darkness or is this just kind of like who lottie was to you yeah that's kind of just the way i write i'm a pretty sarcastic person so a lot of the one-liners and type of things sort of just come out um and i see like the funny side of something or the ironic side of something and sort of just add that in to keep it you know this this written a different way or by a different writer this could be a very bleak book and yeah very serious bleak book and i don't write that kind of stuff that's just not my it's not my voice so um the i would have to have been intentionally trying to make it that way and i don't really like to read to read

week stuff so it's not really my favorite i mean so it's just not this is just more my thing a blend of the the the humor and you know and i'm i'm a huge fan of dark humor in general whether it's in books or movies and when it's done right it's just brilliant when it's done right when you get the balance right and it's not too over the top but it's also not too serious dark humor can can be so off putting and yet so funny at the same time. Yeah, I agree. When you were starting it, did you know where Lottie was going to end up? Or did you know, like, where the story was headed?

Or were you kind of finding out as you wrote it? Mostly finding out as I wrote it. I don't plot my stories. So I do sort of just wing it and let the story come to me and go and follow it where it go so I didn't know how to end. Yeah. You know, I start to get a real feel for it at some point halfway in or something and maybe see where it's going.

But it's all subject to change because there's no outline. There's no like I don't have a specific plot that I'm working my way through to an end point. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was I also, it was kind of fun because we get the like documentarians or like podcasters. trying to do a show like that shows up a little bit more in thrillers um but this was like definitely a different route to go with that character to keep it completely vague um but was that were you

always going to want to have like a journalist kind of coming in as the like inciting incident for her yeah there was always going to be this threat that she was going to be exposed that's what i wanted to start with was that she was retired she had this quiet little life and someone threatened to blow it all up and that was always going to be the start of it and it and it happened immediately yes um you mentioned how you gave her a full life she has her son and this like new uh she's a fiancee at the time that she's not too excited about um were there any like variations with the the family or did you kind of always want her to also have this like kind of strained relationship

with her son um there there were some i wanted him to be a good son that really cared about his mom but also very he has his own full life along with teenage kids and the ex-wife and what have you so and he has built a life as a lawyer down in california so he's not not coming back to Oregon anytime soon. And so it was a balance, I think, of trying to portray him as somebody that wants to do the best for his mom, but not willing to pick up his whole life and move back to where she is. So he's sort of on that fence between how much do I really want to do and how much do I want to sacrifice.

And she's the same way. She thinks about moving down to California, but also doesn't really want to. to give up her life in Oregon because she has built a life there. So they're sort of on the same page about that. Yeah. Yeah, her friends are so fun. They're all unique. I love them all, like chatting together. And then she's like, of course, one of the things I loved about it, like she is just snarky. So like even like when her friends are saying things, she's like getting so frustrated with them, but like she also still wants to have them in her life too, which is kind of making me think like to your point about the full life. In some ways, this is this was like,

why can't she have it all? Like, why can't she do it into her 80s? Why can't she be a serial killer and like have these friends that she goes to bingo with? I just, it was really fun to kind to kind of have all of those elements together because you're not normally getting all of those together and it's like you almost have like it's not a cozy mystery but you have like some of those vibes with like her her extracurricular activities but then she's still doing super dark stuff so was it fun kind of just like writing both parts of that yeah i thought it was because it made her more complete to me um that she um to fill in all the aspects of her life and i really wanted her friendships to feel real and when you have long time friends

Sometimes you get snarky with them and you get annoyed with them. And I didn't want them always to be like all nicey nice to each other the way you do with an acquaintance as opposed to a friend. Like they were actually friends. But even then, her friends don't know who she really is. They don't know if she lives under an assumed name. They don't know what she was accused of in the past and certainly don't know what she's done or is doing. So she has to really keep it all separate. and has to come up with methods to be able to keep it all straight because she's got she tells a lot of

stories too so she has to keep track of what what she's saying so it you know it's murder is one thing getting away with murder is a whole other thing yes it really is um i just lost my question there's something you said that i wanted to oh no that's what i was going to say I also really loved the names in this book. Like I loved Lottie for her name too, but like Plum Dixon is such a like, I was like, I don't know if I've ever read someone with the first name Plum, but even the names were just like kind of cool in their own way. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about names or do they just kind of come to you?

Oh, I spend a significant amount of time thinking about it. Okay, cool. I'm constantly looking up like, records I figure out what their birth year is and I look up popular names from that birth year and then I also I don't like having names that start with the same letter that are going to be talked about together and because I don't want to do anything that will confuse the reader or make them I don't ever want a reader to think who is that character again like I want you to be able to keep it

straight the same way I want to keep it straight as a reader so I don't like names that start the end the same like Lottie and Plum so I'm completely different and that's the way I design I design it that way they don't they don't both end with like an EY or an an IE or a Y or or both end with the letter A or something so I try to pick really unusual names like the name plum so that you when you when you read that name again you will automatically remember that was the reporter plum who came to the door and so I I really am very specific about names and how they sound together when I'm reading reading their names that's a really your point like laity the name doesn't actually get said that much because it's written in first

person in third person I would be saying the name over and over and over you know that's just how it is but for the rest of the names I just want them to be distinct and be able to trigger your if you've put the book down for two days you won't be confused when you pick it up or whatever you know that kind of thing yeah that's a really good point that is the hard part with and it's not like we were in multiple POVs but especially when it's multiple POVs like it does get hard to keep track especially like you're saying if you have to put it down for a little bit and then pick it back up. That makes a lot of sense.

That's pretty cool. And I will probably always remember Lottie and Plum. And I forget character names so fast after I read a book. Did you do any research about how to get away with murder in modern times? Or did you kind of already know since you've written so many thrillers? Yes, actually. What's really funny is we have a writers conference. here at a local bookstore every year and I go and I'm usually on, you know, on a panel or whatever.

And last year when I was in editing for this book, they have experts there who are also on panels. And I, they had a cyber expert that they have every year and they had a forensic pathologist. So I went with a list of questions and I asked both about her methods of body disposal. shall we say, I literally walked through that process with a forensic pathologist. That is so cool. Then also the cybercrime expert, I had a ton of questions about the tracking of phones and blah, blah, blah. And it came down to, you know, if you really wanted to erase any trace of yourself, you would have to leave your phone at home, drive an old car that doesn't have tracking, cover your license. play and wear a mask because there are cameras everywhere.

And so if you truly wanted to, you know, now Lottie can't do all, you can't have somebody really do all of those things, or at least Lottie doesn't. But she wears a hat to cover, try to cover her face. And so the, because it is to the point where everything can be tracked. And as the expert told me, it just depends who's looking for you. So you can turn off your phone and you can turn. turn off your location, sharing, and you can turn off all of that. And for the local police, they probably can't go beyond that.

But if the federal government is looking for you, that device can still be tracked. No matter what you turn off, if you're carrying it with you, somebody can get hold of it. It just depends on how high up it goes and how much they really want to catch you. So. Yeah. That's so cool that you got to talk to. It's a really, really very cool thing to be able to do. because I would have a harder time if I were just trying to cold call some cyber expert and saying,

can I ask you some questions from my fictional book? So that there are some, yeah, there are legal experts that are there, judges. And so for any writers out there, I would highly recommend seeking out conferences that are specifically for writers. Because this is a conference that really focuses on the craft of writing. Yeah, I know they, I went to Thriller Fest this year, and I know they kind of do that at the very beginning, too. They had like a police dog there on one of the days, and you could just, and a police officer, obviously, with the dog. So you could ask a bunch of questions, too. It is cool that, like, it's almost like real life people being consultants, essentially, for fiction.

Exactly, because people can, you can say something in a book, but, in. And it's fiction, and it's a fictional book. But if you get anywhere near science or technology, people will Google and see if you're right or see if the scientific information you're giving is correct or incorrect or what happened. And they will correct you, even for a fictional book. I've had emails before people saying, you got this part wrong. Sure. And so it's, you know, I want to make sure it's believable enough that it would, that's why I consult on it.

Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. Well, I loved it. I had so much fun with it. It's very perfect for summer. I see why it's a summer release. So if anyone's looking for their summer thriller, this is definitely one to pick up. But at the end, I do also ask if you have read anything that you've loved recently.

Oh, I loved. I had an advanced copy of the upcoming Stacey Willingham book. Forget me not. And I think she's such a great writer. And I love that sort of, what did you? So, okay, sorry. I had a little. Oh, now you're moving.

Okay. I had a little thing. Yeah, I didn't hear what you were saying. Forget Me Not by Stacey Willingham, which is also a great summer book and that southern gothic feel, which is great. And I read Wild Dark Shore, which is fantastic. I've seen a lot of people loving that. Yeah. And next up I have actually one that's like a year or too old, I think, at this point.

I never had a chance to read Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, but it's been on my list. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Can't wait. It's really good. Yeah, it's been on my list for too long. So trying to get some of the older TBR thing. I know.

I have those. Yeah. Yes, same. That's been my goal this year too. Where can people follow you to stay up to date? My website is samantha downing.com and those links there to social media. I'm mostly on Instagram and Facebook and those links to all that there. Awesome. I will put that in the show notes and thank you so much for talking with me about too old for this. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun to talk to you.