6 posts tagged “thriller”
Here's an interview I did recently for a website/cable TV thing. I'm talking about Can't Let Go.
(I've taken the interview clip out until I can work out how to embed it without it starting automatically every time the page is opened).
My second novel The Murder Ballad is published by Arrow paperback on Thursday, price £6.99 (although you'll probably find it cheaper in certain shops, the internet etc). If you have friends or family who love thrillers, this is the perfect gift.
More details on Facebook or check it out on Amazon.
Meanwhile the third book, Can't Let Go, is out in March. And as I sit here at my computer, I'm also just starting the fourth book as well. If I can think of a plot.
It's not out until March 2008 but I got to see the cover of my third book Can't Let Go today. It's coming out in hardback, and my publishers keep telling me it's going to be my breakthrough book. I certainly hope so.
Meanwhile my second book, The Murder Ballad, will be stocked by Asda when it's published in paperback in early December. And it's going to be a BOGOF deal! ("Buy one, get one free"). Apparently if you buy the book, you'll be able to send off to the publisher and get a free copy of the first book, Grievous Angel. Because, you know, there are so many thousands of unsold copies out there. The offer is a good thing, I think: it's going to hit Asda in time for the Christmas market. (For my American friends, Asda is a downmarket but hugely popular supermarket that's owned by Walmart.)
At one o'clock this morning I emailed 92,041 words to my editor. I'm still not happy with the final chapter, but I expect I'll get it sorted eventually. But the big news is that after a year of writing, I have completed a version of my third novel that I am, mostly, happy with. There will be more rewrites, I'm sure. But for now, Can't Let Go is complete and I can start thinking about:
- the show at the Edinburgh Fringe
- the plot of the next novel
- how I'm going to continue to earn enough money to live on
Today I re-killed someone who I first killed a few months ago, because I wanted to make it much more chilling and scary. My rule of thumb when writing (for of course I am talking about fiction here...) is that if it sends chills up my spine when I read it back to myself then it's probably going to chill my readers too.
Anyway, today I have managed to chill and unsettle myself, so I'm feeling fairly pleased with my output. I am so nearly there with this book (Can't Let Go). I am doing final, final revisions this week to try to make it genuinely thrilling and involving, and it's quite emotional work.
Also, I have discovered there's a limit to what you can say about blood, besides the facts that it's sticky, it's red, it gets everywhere and it has a vaguely metallic smell.
My second novel The Murder Ballad was published in August 2006 in the UK. It's a psychological thriller set partly in London but mostly in the mountains of North Carolina. You could almost call it a gothic thriller, because it includes a creepy old house, long-hidden secrets and a heroine determined to find out the truth about her new husband.
I have loved gothic thrillers since I first saw the Alfred Hitchcock film of Rebecca as a young child (I was terrified) and then later read the novel. I also enjoyed reading the classic gothic stories from the late 18th century such as The Mysteries of Udolpho - the sort of books satirised by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey. The heroines are forever fainting or being terrified by creaking noises. I wondered what would happen if I put a strong, down-to-earth, no-nonsense modern woman at the heart of a gothic thriller - the kind of woman who resolutely does not believe in ghosts.
The other inspiration for The Murder Ballad is my love of traditional music, and particularly American roots music. I got fascinated by murder ballads - those folk songs from the old country that have survived and been relocated, with their terrible tales of love and murder. One particularly fine example is "Pretty Polly", and here's an excellent version by the legendary Jean Ritchie, recorded live at Folk City in New York. How scary is that song?
So my ideas came together. Maeve O'Mara, a strong-willed London woman, marries American musician Trey Ferguson and moves to his tiny home town in the Appalachian Mountains - only to discover that his past is more complicated and shocking than she imagined. A creaky old house, ghosts (literal or otherwise?), an old scary song, love, death, obsession and a fast-flowing river. What more could you possibly ask for?
I was thrilled when Cosmo described it as "a chilling whitewater ride of a thriller." I loved writing it, I loved listening to lots of old-time and bluegrass music while I was writing it, and I particularly enjoyed my research trip to the lovely city of Asheville, North Carolina, which was my base for exploring the mountains.
And I nearly forgot the vital part of self-pimping. You can buy it!
