The Selfies questions for 2024 fiction winner Julia Boggio

Where did you find inspiration for Shooters?

I worked as a professional photographer for 15 years and knew it was a world I wanted to explore in my writing. I had plenty of stories! When I was out for coffee with a fellow photography friend, I told her of my plan to write romances about photographers, and she said, 'Oh! You want to be the Jilly Cooper of photography!' In that moment, a title, characters, and plot came to me and that was it.

Can you tell us about your writing process?

First, I let the idea percolate at the back of my brain. Then I'll scribble down a loose plot, so I have a blueprint of where the story is heading. After that, I like to do a more detailed, chapter-by-chapter summary, pulling out the three things I want that chapter to achieve. Finally, I start writing... and realise most of the planning and plotting I did was wrong and the characters have other ideas.