Who Wants To Be A Billionaire centers around a Brussels notary who presides over the strange inheritance case of a reclusive billionaire whose will reading turns into a pressure cooker of grief, greed, and accusation. Where did the idea behind this novel come from? 

I came across an article about how the BBC had used AI to bring Agatha Christie back to life for their masterclass online course platform. In other words they had permission from the estate to use her legacy to construct a sort of “digital prosthetics”. A real-life actress would then put these prosthetics on to look exactly like Agatha Christie and read an AI-“assisted” script. The script was of course based on Agatha’s personal letters that the estate had provided to the AI engineers to create a writing course promising to reveal to its students the Christie-murder-mystery-formula, whilst sounding authentically like something the belated Agatha would have written. Despite all of the self-identified groundbreaking innovations used by the BBC to make all of this possible, in the end they made a digital persona out of a historical figure, and making them say things they had never done in real life, just to sell an online course. I was so horrified by the whole thing and immediately thoughts started racing through my mind. Like any horror film I’m invested in, I need to see it through to the very end, so I enrolled. This book is the direct result of actually finishing the BBC Maestro Agatha Christie writing course.  

Were there any real-world inheritance disputes, legal cases, or family dynamics that influenced the novel?

You could say that I do know all of these characters very well. However, writing this novel I had challenged myself to create something completely fictional in the sense that I deliberately wanted it to be entirely unrelated to any specific person or event coming from my private life. I haven’t witnessed a dramatic reading of the will. None of my family members came into any sum of money that intrinsically changed the nature of our relationships with one another. I haven’t been under police investigation assisted by AI. Coming up with all of this and making the puzzle of the murder mystery work was of course the fun part. The ironic part is that I did end up accidentally creating characters that, to me, are so archetypical to the locale I have set my novel in, that I’m sure any reader who is Belgian or knows (about) Belgians, can immediately identify a “Céline” in their family, or a “Jochen” in their friend group, a “Layla” amongst their colleagues or perhaps even a entrepreneurial “Kenny” or a stubborn recluse type like “Johan”. This is to say I wanted to make a reading experience that is an authentic representation of what I know about being on the “inside” of a troubled Belgian family. I think the punching power of the novel comes from that to outsiders some of the character behaviors or choices may seem rather extreme or bizarre, but to insiders it feels like a finger had been pointed at them or at someone very close to them, because it hits so close to home. I’ve always been such a great fan of Sartre, and specifically the concept of the absurd as an intrinsic part of our daily lives. I also love surrealism a lot, Dalí and Magritte are my favorites and their imagery has influenced me a lot since I was very young.

Did you see any of the heirs as more sympathetic than the others while writing, or did your feelings shift over time?

I feel like every single character has their flaws and has their redemption, either in the beginning or the end, but they are all redeemed, or at least I tried to. I feel more than anything all of these characters are aspects of myself, and in that respect I do feel like I’m more sympathetic to some parts of myself than others, but unconsciously so, by unknowingly giving some aspects more attention than others, but never without seeing the shadow side looming. Some of the characters in the novel get more “screentime” so to say, than others. But I feel like I have laid out a puzzle in this murder mystery that makes understanding every single character necessary to solving it. The fun part of writing – not just murder mysteries – is that you can let that shadow side out, explore its weaknesses and strengths too and see how those interesting parts actually already drove a lot of the/your story without realizing it.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

I’ve had so much fun writing this novel and I didn’t expect that it would be so hard for me to let these characters go after publishing. That’s my own fault for getting so invested in writing characters for a MURDER mystery. So, I’ll just reveal that I’m always working on new material. Some of that new material may or may not include Benjamin de Walters. All I can say is stay tuned!

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