How much should you lie for the man you love? Can you really know your ex husband? And how can suicide look like murder?
Just
three of the questions which confront barrister Sarah Newby, as she
struggles to revive her legal career. Shaken by her second divorce and
the murder of her former lover, Sarah wonders if all her relationships
with men are doomed. Her admirer, Detective Terry Bateson, hopes not,
but what if he, too, has a secret he’d prefer to keep hidden?
And if Sarah’s client is innocent of murder, why has he told such obvious lies?
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
1.
If you could work with any other author, who would it be and why?
I've never thought of
working with another author, but if I did, I think it would be
someone whose skills complemented mine. Since I write a series
of legal thrillers called The Trials of Sarah Newby
about a British barrister (trial lawyer) who faces challenging
criminal cases in court, it would be great to work with someone who
has actually done that for a living. A British version of Marcia
Clark, perhaps. She was the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial
and now writes a series of her own crime novels. There are lots of
fascinating differences between the work of a British barrister and a
Californian District Attorney, but the bottom line is the search for
justice. I think my fictional barrister, Sarah Newby, would love to
meet Marcia.
2.
What would be a typical working day for you? When and where do you
write?
The hardest part of
writing by far, is getting the plot right. The plot is the bones
of the story, the skeleton if you like, and if that's not working
correctly, the tale just limps along. I try to plan it all out
beforehand, but it never completely works because bones, as a doctor
once told me, are living things which grow and develop like muscles
but more slowly. Time and again what seemed like a good idea at the
start either turns into a roadblock, or if I'm lucky, solves the
problem by setting off in a whole new fertile direction. For example
in my latest book, Broken Alibi, I was getting stuck halfway
through when I suddenly remembered that my lawyer Sarah Newby has a
student daughter, Emily, who came home from college and started to
play a major role. That wasn't in the original plans at all, and as
soon as she appeared the story gained a whole new energy.
3. What is the
hardest part of the writing for you?
A typical working day
for me is get up, take the dog for a walk, sit down and try to write
at least 1,000 words - 1,500 on a good day, snooze or read
after lunch and then go through what I have written to correct it,
and jot down a few notes about what's supposed to happen in the story
tomorrow. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a
brilliant idea, so I keep a notebook and pencil by the bed.
4. When and why
did you first start writing?
I've always wanted to
be a writer but although I had several novels published by reputable
publishers like Simon & Shuster they didn't make enough money to
live off so I became a schoolteacher and university lecturer instead
and wrote in the evenings when I had time. Then I got side-tracked
into writing school textbooks and graded readers for foreign learners
of English (which did earn a lot of money) but when ebooks and
self-publishing appeared I went back to fiction and had a new lease
of life.
5. How did you
come up with the idea for your book?
My latest book, Broken
Alibi, is the fourth legal thriller about barrister Sarah
Newby. Each book can be read alone but the main characters age and
develop throughout the series. Sarah became divorced in the third
book, Bold Counsel, so I had to decide where her life
was going - did she need a man, could she afford her new flat, would
she recover from the trauma of being nearly murdered in the previous
story, and so on. Her ex-husband is suddenly arrested on
suspicion of historic child abuse - something that allegedly happened
twenty five years ago. That's big strand in the book which was
prompted by many recent cases in this country. On the one hand many
horrific cases have been uncovered, for example serial abuse by the
TV presenter Jimmy Savile - but on the other hand several people,
mostly men have had their lives and careers ruined by totally false
allegations. I read a book called Love, My Year under the
Yewtree by Paul Gambuccini which made a big impression on
me, so I tried to put Sarah's fictional ex-husband through something
similar. Where is the right and wrong in all this? It's a difficult,
topical issue.
6. Are you a big
reader? If so, what are you reading now?
I am a big reader. My
house is full of books and so is my kindle. I am currently reading On
the Edge of the Abyss, the third volume of Ken Follett's huge
historical trilogy about the twentieth century. It's great - I should
be planning my new book but it's stopping me working! (See contrast
with advice below)
7. Do you have
any advice for other aspiring writers?
Advice for aspiring
writers? Just do it, every day if you can, even when you don't want
to. A novelist is a person who finishes a novel, and then writes
another.
