Rosaria Giorgi, author of 'The Less Unkind' - Thriller writer discusses working with The Umbrella Assassin, plotting non-linearly, and writing what you know
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we chat to Rosaria Girorgi, a mystery writer whose life has been as busy as one of her plots. Whilst studying in Denmark, she got a job working for who she thought was an antique dealer. He turned out to be 'The Umbrella Assassin', a cold war legend, who assassinated the Bulgarian dissident journalist Georgi Markov, with a poison pellet discharged from an umbrella.
It's inspired her novel,'The Less Unkind', which tells the story of Pico, a young woman making her way in the world and forging new friendships, when she takes a job with a strange antique dealer... who turns out to be something different than he first seemed.
Rosaria has lived all over, after being born in Tuscany, moving to Denmark, she founded a fashion start-up in Ireland, and is now living in Canada. We discuss how much where you live inspires what you write and how you write it. You can hear why she writes non-linearly and without a plot, which leads to a tricky edit smoothing the gaps of where chapters should join seemlessly.
Also we chat about how to start your second novel when the first mines so much of your life, why a plot is like a flock of birds, and all about her day.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. The show that takes a look |
| 0:14.0 | inside an author's working day to see how they get everything done. This week, we chat to |
| 0:19.0 | Rosaria Georgi. Her new novel is The Less Unkind, |
| 0:24.2 | and the story behind the story is utterly compelling. It starts when Rosaria began working a |
| 0:32.9 | part-time job for someone that she thought was an antique dealer. He was a famous hitman and one of the legends of the Cold War. |
| 0:43.6 | The umbrella assassin has gained his moniker because of his weapon of choice, |
| 0:50.9 | which was a poison-tip umbrella. |
| 0:55.0 | And in 1978, the most infamous case was in London. |
| 1:03.1 | A Bulgarian dissident writer Georgie Markov was on Waterloo Bridge, |
| 1:10.2 | waiting to take a bus to his job at the BBC. |
| 1:14.0 | And while he was waiting, a stranger bumped into him. |
| 1:18.3 | He felt a pain in his leg. |
| 1:20.7 | And Markov described it later to some colleagues as if a bee had stung him. |
| 1:26.5 | Also, you can hear why, for her, trying to wrestle down a plot is like some majestic |
| 1:32.7 | creature doing whatever it wants. |
| 1:35.5 | I would compare my plot to those flocks of birds in the sky and they suddenly swarm, move somewhere else, and that's how my story |
| 1:47.8 | evolves. It suddenly shifts and takes all the players, the characters, the plot, me with it |
| 1:56.8 | in a different direction. It's all on the way with Rosaria Georgi in a brand new episode of |
| 2:02.2 | writer's routine. Yes, welcome along to the show. My name's Dan Simpson. This is |
| 2:11.7 | writer's routine. If you're just joining us, this is a podcast. We take a look inside the |
| 2:16.7 | North's Working Day. We see how, |
| 2:18.6 | where, and when they get the work done. What do they do for their day to give them the best |
... |
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