Q&A: KILLING EVE creator Luke Jennings on revisiting Villanelle for the “sheer joy” of it
Find out about the book series Killing Eve—plus the author talks to us about returning with a new book!
“I hope readers enjoy being part of the Killing Eve community and world.”
Jennings talks about the espionage fiction that influenced him, the interesting way that he returned to the Killing Eve characters, and how he’s exploring the author platform Substack.
As I’m still getting to know the Substack platform, it’s been fun to find other authors also working with Substack. And while fiction authors are relative newcomers here, this looks to be a great place to begin sharing my own fiction in the days to come!
It was also fun connecting with a fellow Substacker, the creator of Killing Eve! Check out my interview with him…
British author
writes in a variety of styles—from fiction (including creating the spy series Killing Eve) to being a journalist and a dance critic. For his nonfiction, he has written for the likes of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Observer, and Time.His novels include the thriller Panic (where a group of friends suddenly find themselves on the run from the cops, the Russian mafia, and a cult); Breach Candy (about a recently retired ballerina and a wounded TV director researching a documentary); Beauty Story (about a young actress vanishing from a 16th-century castle where she was filming a fragrance commercial), and the Booker Prize-nominated Atlantic (set on a cruise ship in the post-war years).
Between 2014-2016, Jennings published a series of novellas that were later collected into the book Codename Villanelle. That collection inspired the BBC America TV show Killing Eve, which got a lot of attention and won awards.
Interestingly, the Killing Eve book series and the show soon went in different directions. The book’s sequel, Killing Eve: No Tomorrow, took the characters one way and the TV show took them somewhere else.
The book series continued with Killing Eve: Die For Me. The TV show ended with its fourth season.
Continuing with the Killing Eve books, Jennings is now serializing the book Killing Eve: Resurrection online at his Substack account.
He said on his author website:
“Villanelle lives! In the wake of the Killing Eve TV show, I promised to write a new adventure for our heroines. The novel is being serialized on Substack, and it's free. Catch up now!”
You can read the new novel HERE!
Below, I talk with author Luke Jennings about his wide range as an author, the espionage fiction that inspires him (including some of my own favorites), and his goals with the Killing Eve books. Below, you can also find out more about the earlier volumes in the series.
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Q: As I look at your author list, you’ve written different kinds of stuff in different places. How do you define yourself as an author?
I’ve been an author and journalist for three decades, and I guess I have an eclectic eye and ear. Fishing, ballet, espionage, murder... Is there a link? Something to do with symbolic activities and the secret life perhaps? I’m not sure.
It would probably have been more profitable to mine a single seam, but that’s not how it’s worked out. Perhaps it’s for others to say what sort of writer I am.
Q: Your Killing Eve series began as a set of novellas that were collected into the first book in the series. What inspired you to write these espionage stories?
I’ve always been fascinated by spying, while knowing that I would be terrible at it. I'm hopeless at lying convincingly and can’t act to save my life.
I’ve met and interviewed quite a few agent runners, intelligence officers and undercover operatives in the course of my journalism and research, and they make extraordinary subjects. But I wouldn’t want to be one.
Q: What were your goals with the main characters? How do you define or explain the Killing Eve book series?
In Killing Eve I wanted to ask the question the Devil asks of Faust: If I give you everything you ever dreamed of, will you give me your soul?
Q: What are your favorite examples of espionage or even spy-fi? How did they impact how you write?
As a teenager I read and re-read Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and a comic strip and fantasy thriller series by Peter O’Donnell called Modesty Blaise. Later, Len Deighton and John Le Carré.
Films I loved included The Ipcress File, Torn Curtain, Le Samouraï, and all the Hammer Horrors (most of which I snuck in to see underage). As a writer I want to give readers the same fun I had with these books and movies.
Q: How did your novellas lead to them making a TV show with your characters? How involved (if at all) were you with that process of making the show?
The first Villanelle story was published on Amazon, and read by an actors’ and writers’ agent who passed it on to Killing Eve’s eventual producers. It was one of those amazing, against-the-odds events.
I was involved at an early stage when Phoebe Waller-Bridge was adapting Codename Villanelle for the first series. She and I used to meet and talk.
There was a period—two months, three, I can’t remember—when Phoebe, myself, and the producers were hammering out the first series storyline. Thereafter, I wasn’t around much, although I did share my thoughts with each successive writing team.
Q: What’s interesting is that there’s a fork in the road where your fiction went one way and the show went another way. If I understand the timeline... both sides were still making stories and just went different ways. Did that affect your choices at all when you were writing your fiction?
The TV writers went off-canon from the second series onward. Novels can dwell with equal ease on characters’ interior and exterior states, but a TV series needs to sustain its momentum through image and incident, and in consequence has to manufacture plot at a much faster rate.
Each team of writers on Killing Eve (they changed with each season) had to play the hand dealt by its predecessors. None of this affected me. I knew where the books were going, and I took them there.
Q: Although the TV show has ended, you are currently sharing the new book KILLING EVE: RESURRECTION through your Substack platform. What are your goals with this story?
I’m currently serializing Killing Eve: Resurrection on Substack. It’s a new Villanelle adventure I’ve created in the wake of the TV series finale.
I’m writing it because I promised I would, but also for the sheer joy of being back with these characters. I hope readers share that feeling, and enjoy being part of the Killing Eve community and world.
You can read the new novel HERE!
Q: How were you introduced to Substack? What are your hopes for this platform to do for you as an author?
I’m new to Substack, and only checked in a couple of months ago. I like it here. Let’s see where it leads.
Q: Given your range of stuff you can write about... is your Substack profile just a platform for your spy fiction or do you use it for more than that? What are your hopes for this place?
I’ve got other projects on the go but Substack will continue to be the home of Eve and Villanelle, and of my parallel project: How to Write Killer Prose. I’m already planning a sequel to Resurrection.
Q: What are the best ways for readers to connect with you and keep track of news and updates from you?
Readers can find me at killingeve.substack.com See you there!
Find Luke Jennings Online
Complete Killing Eve books
Codename Villanelle (Killing Eve #1)
The breakneck thriller that inspired TV sensation Killing Eve, starring Sandra Oh, “unlike any other spy drama you’ve seen” (Daily Beast).
Villanelle (a codename, of course) is one of the world’s most skilled assassins. A catlike psychopath whose love for the creature comforts of her luxurious lifestyle is second only to her love of the game, she specializes in murdering the world’s richest and most powerful. But when she murders an influential Russian politician, she draws a relentless foe to her tail.
Eve Polastri (not a codename) is a former MI6 operative hired by the national security services for a singular task: to find and capture or kill the assassin responsible, and those who have aided her. Eve, whose quiet and otherwise unextraordinary life belies her quick wit and keen intellect, accepts the mission.
The ensuing chase will lead them on a trail around the world, intersecting with corrupt governments and powerful criminal organizations, all leading towards a final confrontation from which neither will emerge unscathed. Codename Villanelle is a sleek, fast-paced international thriller from an exciting new voice in fiction.
Find Codename Villanelle on Amazon
Eve and Villanelle plan for a high-stakes showdown in this sophisticated follow-up to the spy thriller that inspired the hit TV series Killing Eve.
“If you want us to remain silent—if you want to retain your freedom, your job, and your reputation—you need to tell us everything, and I mean everything…”
We last saw Eve and Villanelle in a spy vs. spy race around the world, crossing powerful criminal organizations and dangerous governments, each trying to come out on top. But they aren’t finished yet.
In this sequel to Killing Eve: Codename Villanelle, former M16 operative Eve reveals a new side to her strengths, while coming ever closer to a confrontation with Villanelle, the evasive and skilled assassin…
Following the wildly popular BBC America adaption of Codename Villanelle, a high-stakes, addictive installment of Jennings's acclaimed Killing Eve series.
Though the cat and mouse chase between these two lethal adversaries has seemingly ended, the sophisticated, deadly thrill of Eve and Villanelle's relationship is far from over. Told in Jennings’s stylish prose, Killing Eve: Endgame is another page-turning chapter in the espionage exploits of Eve and Villanelle.
“When my transgressive heroine came to a sticky end on screen, many Killing Eve fans felt cheated,” author Jennings explained in the pages of The Guardian. “Now they can pick up her story again—this time for free.”
Deciding that steering a new Villanelle adventure through conventional publishing would take too long, he chose to instead share Resurrection though Substack. “I knew very little about Substack, but a couple of hours’ research was enough to tell me that the online publishing platform was the right home for my own book. Vitally, I could offer it for free, which I felt I owed readers in return for their loyalty.”
You can read the new novel HERE!
Still To Come: Killing Eve #5
As Jennings said in our interview above, he is already planning the fifth book! Details to come! (Keep track of his updates here.)
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Zombie Q&A—Isaac Marion: “George Romero tried to touch on the humanity of the zombies.”
Great interview, questions/answers 👏👏👏 Luke is already planning a sequel 💯 so excited