by Sarah Erwin

This week we have a review of the first in a new series, and the debut novel, by Sam Lumley, along with an interesting interview with Sam. Even though we make an effort to cover LGBTQ+ authors all year long, during Pride month we make an extra effort–this book is one of several we are covering this month. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book and a link to purchase the book from Amazon.

How to Have a Killer Time in D.C.: Oliver Popp’s Travel Guides to Murder, Book One by Sam Lumley
Review by Sarah Erwin

How to Have a Killer Time in D.C. is book one in the new mystery series Oliver Popps’ Travel Guides to Murder by Sam Lumley, and I am here for it! This was just so much fun.

Oliver Popp is a 24-year-old gay autistic travel writer working for Offbeat Traveler magazine. Oliver likes his routine, and he is a little nervous about his first feature assignment taking him to Washington, D.C. He’s paired up with Ricky Warner, a gay flirty freelance photographer, who definitely lives life a bit more (ok, a lot more) impulsively than Oliver. It’s a delightful pairing.

On the flight to D.C., Oliver is seated next to an old acquaintance, Elise Perkins, who works for a company who designs and builds self-driving cars. She and her fellow employees are headed to D.C. for a congressional hearing. With Ricky’s encouragement, Oliver gets the go ahead to work on a story about the company and hearing. Little does Oliver know what he’s getting into – the hearing shakes up the Capitol in a big way. Not long after, Ricky and Oliver are out one evening and they witness a fatal accident involving these self-driving cars. Was it really an accident or possibly murder?

I grabbed this new mystery on audio and absolutely adored everything about it. Olivier is a kind soul, a main character I could (and did) easily root for. I loved his connections to his mom and friends. The odd couple-like pairing of Ricky and Oliver was so fun and I am still smiling thinking about them.

The mystery pulled me right in and it was especially fun to get an armchair tour of D.C. as Ricky and Oliver worked to uncover the truth. Cleverly plotted and expertly paced, I give this book all the heart eyes. The ending is wonderful, and I cannot wait for more featuring Oliver!

Sarah Erwin started her career as a children’s librarian, later becoming a public library director and now she’s a stay at home mom. While her career might have changed, her love of reading has been a constant since 4th grade and she reads over 200 books a year. Read along with her on her blog Sarah Can’t Stop Reading or on Instagram. Sarah lives in St. Louis, MO with her two kids, her husband and a family dog and cat.

Interview with Sam Lumley:

KRL: How long have you been writing?

Sam: I started writing fiction during COVID lockdowns, in 2021. How to Have a Killer Time in D.C. is actually the first thing I wrote!

KRL: Have you always written mysteries, and if not, what else have you written?

Sam: In terms of long-form or fiction writing, yes. I do have past professional experience as a writer, though, in a very different discipline: I wrote museum exhibitions. That’s a tough form, because you have to be very, very economical with language while knowing where to provide context for the objects in the exhibition and where to let them speak for themselves to create a meaningful, cohesive experience. In some ways writing a book is easier, even though it’s much longer and takes longer to do, because the experience you’re creating for the reader is entirely there on the page.

KRL: What brought you to choose the setting and characters in your book, and why did you decide to have your main character be autistic? Personally, I think good representation is so needed in this area.

Sam: In both cases, I drew from my own experiences. I made my main character, Oliver, a travel writer because, due to the lockdowns at the time, I hadn’t been able to really even leave my house for a long time, so it gave me an opportunity to travel somewhere with him. But, because we were still under lockdown, I had to take him somewhere I already knew well, which is why I chose Washington, DC—I lived there for a couple of years, a long time ago, and loved the city a lot. I wanted to show Washington, the city, not the idea, and to create a character in Oliver who was recognizably Autistic, but also recognizably human.

KRL: Do you write to entertain or is there something more you want the readers to experience from your work?

Sam: My hope is definitely to entertain, and to entertain myself while I’m writing. But, of course, I also hope readers come away with a better understanding of Autistic folks; our autism, yes, but also our humanity.

KRL: Do you have a schedule for your writing or just work whenever you can?

Sam: I try to make a schedule for myself, because I’m not always as disciplined as I’d like to be, but I’ve also found that I have to be in the right frame of mind. I can’t force myself to be creative. I usually try to leave my house to write, ideally going somewhere where I don’t have access to Wi-Fi so I’m less tempted by distractions. I wrote most of my last book in a park overlooking the San Francisco Bay!

KRL: What is your ideal time to write?

Sam: I periodically have insomnia and, honestly, while I don’t look forward to those nights (or the days afterward), they are a great opportunity to feel very alone with my thoughts and not have a lot else competing for my attention. So, maybe not ideal, but I often find myself at my most productive in the middle of the night.

KRL: Do you outline? If not, do you have some other interesting way that you keep track of what’s going on, or what needs to happen in your book when you are writing it?

Sam: I don’t outline by choice, but my editor requires me to submit an outline in advance, so it happens whether I want it to or not! When I was writing my first book, without that necessity, I found myself planning about three or four chapters at a time, writing those chapters, then plotting out the next chunk, which I guess is just a slightly more seat-of-the-pants form of outlining.

KRL: Did you find it difficult to get published in the beginning, and do you feel you faced any extra challenges as a queer author writing queer characters?

Sam: As I understand it, my path to publication was actually comparatively short, for which I should probably credit my agent, Kimberly Fernando. I think it also helped more than it hurt to be a queer author writing queer characters, as publishers like mine, Kensington, are looking to add more diverse voices to the mystery genre. I would also gently push back against anyone who sees that as somehow cynical or inauthentic, or that my book is “checking boxes” by centering a queer, Autistic protagonist, because it’s a simple reality (though nobody knows why) that Autistic adults identify as LGBTQIA+ at far higher rates than the wider population—as high as 30%—so the experience that Oliver and I share isn’t as uncommon as you might think.

KRL: Do you have a great rejection/critique or acceptance story you’d like to share?

Sam: Compared to the horror stories I’ve seen from other authors, I think I was relatively lucky in my path to getting an agent and a publisher, but it was still a challenging process. I had compiled a long list of agents to query, and was getting a very low response rate—and of course, you get no feedback that would help you figure out what to do better. I was nearly at the point of taking a break, but I decided to revise my query letter and my first few pages. I sent this new package out to exactly one agent—and she’s the one I signed with.

KRL: Most interesting book signing story-in a bookstore or other venue?

Sam: I’ve only done two events so far, and for both I was paired with cozy mystery author Daryl Wood Gerber, who was so wonderful and generous in leading me through my first outings. She was an especially great sport at our second event, when our entire audience turned out to be my family and friends!

KRL: What are your future writing goals?

Sam: Near-term, my second Oliver Popp book comes out in June 2026 and I’m working on the proposal for a third. Long-term, I’d love to someday try to write some kind of comic picaresque-type novel, an Autistic A Confederacy of Dunces, perhaps.

KRL: Who are your writing heroes?

Sam: I mentioned A Confederacy of Dunces, which is one of my favorite books, because I really admire how deftly John Kennedy Toole balanced his large cast of distinct characters and his multiple, interwoven storylines, and brought them all together at the climax with such a satisfyingly madcap bang. There’s an intricacy to how he pulled that off that I’d love to be able to figure out how to do.

KRL: What kind of research do you do?

Sam: Poor me—one of the main ways I research my books is by traveling! It’s a rough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Because Oliver is a travel writer, it’s important to me to be able to impart a real sense of the setting. And it’s a great impetus for me to get out and experience new things!

KRL: What do you like to read?

Sam: I try to read a variety of genres and a mix of current books and classics. I love books, regardless of genre, that mix in a healthy dose of humor, farce, or satire.

KRL: What are your favorite TV shows or movies?

Sam: Here, too, I’m a big comedy junkie. Two of my favorite movies when I was very young, which I still love today, were The Muppet Movie and Auntie Mame, which I guess goes to show that I was a very weird kid. I’m also a longtime fan of Murder, She Wrote and Columbo and I am enjoying the homage to that era in Poker Face.

KRL: Have you any advice for aspiring or beginning writers?

Sam: I think the best way to get started as a writer is to write for your own enjoyment, in the way that is most enjoyable for you, first and foremost. It’s tempting to put a lot of pressure on yourself, to do a lot of research or try to follow someone else’s idea of the “right way” to develop your ideas, and if that works, that’s great, but if it doesn’t, it’s also okay to be a little messier and just start with a good line or two and see where they take you! Sometimes a solid set of characters put into the right setting and situation are more important than knowing every beat of the story before you get started.

KRL: What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

Sam: I spend way too much of my time being an unpaid mechanic, repairing and maintaining my old cars. I am in the final stages right now of completely swapping the engine and transmission in my high-mileage BMW station wagon, and did all of the work in my tiny one-car garage and narrow driveway.

KRL: Do you have any pets?

Sam: I do, a 15-year-old cat with an insatiable need for attention!

KRL: Is there anything you would like to add?

Sam: I’m excited for readers to get to know Oliver and Ricky, and I hope to get to know Washington, DC in a new way as well. Ricky lives in a version of the basement apartment I lived in when I lived in Washington, and I’ll leave it to keen-eyed readers to discover the little bit of home decor that Ricky did outside his bedroom window that I always wished I’d done.

KRL: Where can our readers find you online?

Sam: Readers can find me at samlumley.com.

You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.

To enter to win a copy of How to Have a Killer Time in D.C., simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “killer time” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen June 21, 2025. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

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