Oyinkan Braithwaite

So I say it's noir now.

And then I had to sort of Google noir to be sure that's what it was.

But, you know, I didn't really think about genre.

I was more... I was interested, again, just in how...

society engages with beauty and how we as women, how we look defines who we are and how we're treated.

So the fact that they were sisters came a little bit later.

Initially, when I started writing it, they were going to be friends.

And then I thought I wanted their bond to be almost...

not by choice you know because you choose who your friends are but you can't choose who your family is and you know they're in many ways stuck together but they've also been through a lot together so their bond is very strong

Yeah.

I mean, I don't... Description isn't my strong point.

So I don't think I did as much justice to Lagos as I could have done.

But...

For me, it was really important.

I'm still getting used to writing stories set in Lagos.

And it was really important to me that this book be set there because I'm not accustomed to seeing these kind of stories in that kind of environment.

And part of me wasn't even sure it would work out.

But fortunately for me...

Sending it in Lagos meant I didn't have to do too much crime scene investigation research because you can get away with pretty much anything there.

So that made it a little bit funny and it made it a little bit more believable also that they would get away with certain things.