Author Interviews

2017 INTERVIEW WITH TINA PUGH

Tina Pugh: Was writing a sequel easier or harder than your first book?

Neil: It was difficult at first and I wrote plenty of different opening chapters before I got Claire’s voice right in my head again. Once I had that though the writing flowed relatively easily. I had received plenty of reader feedback on what they had enjoyed in When She Was Bad and that was a great motivation for the second book.

The tricky thing was to find a story that could play with the familiar characters but would not feel like a straight repeat of the first one and added some depth. I hope it resolves many of the unanswered questions from the original story and that the two books make a satisfying whole.

Tina: We learn more about certain characters in this book, Barclay and TNT in particular.  Did you always know their back story or did you have to create this whilst writing book two?

I had almost all of Barclay’s back story mapped out when I was writing When She Was Bad. For example, I’d worked out the whole ‘ransomware’ scam he attempts and knew that its failure would almost bankrupt the family and be the reason for the breakdown of his relationship with his father. He’s not the same Barclay now that we had met at the start of book one – Claire has changed him – and the back story (as told by Green) is a flashback to the pre-Claire, self-obsessed Barclay.

Conversely, I had no back story for TNT whatsoever – he was just intended as a one-dimensional joke character, but he was fun to write and subsequently proved to be one of the most popular characters in the book. I was going to have him fall in love with Claire but that felt clichéd and went in the bin. I wrote three or four different versions of his back story before I was happy with it. The puppy was the clincher.

Tina: Did publishing your first book change your process of writing?

With the second book I was writing for an audience, which is more challenging that writing just for yourself. I had to be more professional; if people are good enough to give me several hours of their time I mustn’t let them down with an ill-conceived story or lazy writing. Rule number one: never let the readers down. They trust you, don’t disappoint.

Tina: What was your hardest scene to write?

Without a doubt, TNT’s back story. I needed it to be amusing rather than comedic, sad but not tragic, and I really wanted the readers to feel a little like Claire, a bit guilty about how they’ve judged him on his appearance alone. It was rewritten completely dozens of times before I was happy with it.

Tina: You seem to have a lot of knowledge of what happens when a bullet enters a person.  Did you go on your own Willoughby firearms training course?

Originally this book was going to be about Barclay quitting the blackmail game and exploiting Claire’s shooting skills by hiring her out as a ‘hitman’. I’m not into guns in the slightest but wanted to get things right and spent many hours on a gun range in Bisley with my friend Alan Ward, who is an incredible marksman and top bloke to boot, albeit a little scary at times. Some of things he told me as I fired round after round into the rain made my blood run cold and changed the story I had for this book completely. I realised that Claire would never willingly fire a gun if she knew the real damage a bullet does and that Barclay’s plan to ‘aim to maim’ was a fantasy. She’d never agree to be a hitman, but her reluctance to fire a gun could ultimately prove to be her downfall.

Tina: You broke your ankle last year and were on crutches for months. Did this impede your research and progress on the book?

Most of the research was completed before my accident, but I did plan to spend some time on a Bonneville. Sadly, that never happened. Maybe next time.

Tina: What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?

I find it easy, to be truthful. Readers were very complimentary about the female characters in book one so I hope they’re convincing this time around, too. My ‘early readers’ are all women so that acts as a safety net before it goes into print.

Writing young characters is actually more of a challenge, as I often make references a 26-year-old wouldn’t know, let alone the teenager Dawn. Fortunately, the editors on both books spot these and they don’t make the final draft.

Tina: Are some of the characters based on people you know?

Not really, but I do lift certain characteristics or speech patterns. TNT’s physical appearance is an exaggeration of someone I know in New York and Anderson Andersonn is a combination of several people I used to work with. My mum say’s ‘whatnot’ a lot, and Claire says that a fair bit. I do know a ‘Wardy’ but he’s absolutely nothing like the Owen Ward here. Oh, and there’s a jogger with a schnauzer who’s all too real.

Tina: How do you feel now you have published two books? And does writing energise or exhaust you?

There’s a sense of achievement but I know I can write better. I think the second is better than the first and the third will top them both. The best feeling is when I write something, have no idea where it has come from and it makes me smile. That’s energising.

The re-drafting and editing processes are necessary but tiring.

A few general questions now so we can find out about you:

Tina: What authors give you inspiration to write?

Believe it or not, bad ones. Great writers intimidate me with their skill and imagination but a badly-written best seller is massively inspiring!

Tina: What’s your favourite under-appreciated novel?

Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove is my absolute favourite novel of all time and has characters who will live in my heart until the day I die. It won the Pulitzer Prize so it’s hardly under-appreciated but it is almost unknown in the UK.

Tina: What authors did you dislike at first but grew into?

I wasn’t clever enough to appreciate John le Carre and found his novels deliberately obtuse but now I’m in total awe of his writing. I’m slowly re-reading them. J K Rowling’s Harry Potter books left me stone cold but her Cormoran Strike novels are beautifully written.

Tina: Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad ones?

I do read them, and the good ones help me through the dark times when I have serious doubts that I can write. With a poor one I’ll take it really, really badly and sulk for weeks.

Tina: Do you believe in writer’s block?

Writing can be hugely frustrating but if you accept that somedays the words come far easier than others then stumbling into a ‘block’ is easier to live with.

Finally, will you go for the trilogy?  You left a lot of cliffhangers and I’m sure readers would like to know what happened to Wardy, TNT and Barclay himself.

It’s Claire I’m most worried about…

2016 INTERVIEW WITH KAREN MYERS

Karen Myers: What came first, the plot or the characters and why?

Neil: The character of Barclay came first. I was on the Random House Creative Writing course and the opening exercise was to create a character and introduced them through an object. I chose a bag, and that was the start of Barclay. That’s still the opening of the first chapter, although I had no idea it would become a novel at that stage. I needed someone to find the bag but had no idea who. I decided it would open more possibilities if it was a woman and so I came up with Claire and it sort of snowballed from there.

It was an interesting way to start a book but I think in future I’ll start with the story. I didn’t have the details of the plot worked out fully until I finished my second draft – the first draft wandered all over the place as I explored the characters more than the story.

Did you set out to write something with a twist or did it develop that way?

Neil: It just developed that way. I do like a story with a good twist so I was hoping I could squeeze one in somehow but wasn’t going to force it. In earlier drafts the twist was revealed much earlier but in the later versions I thought it would be fun to have it exposed at the story’s climax. Some readers say they saw it coming, others were taken by surprise. The end of the story is told at quite a pace and it just seemed to fit and didn’t feel too contrived.

It’s clear that some aspects of the plot come from experience, i.e. there’s local colour. But how much research did you have to do for locations, journeys, cars etc?

Neil: ‘Don’t let your research show,’ my course editor Barbara Henderson told me so I did that by doing as little research as possible!

I live in Greenwich and know Deptford and the Docklands well, but I wanted to steer clear of the famous landmarks in the area. One issue was ensuring I used locations without CCTV cameras – modern technology can be a nightmare when you’re writing a crime thriller – but I found that even in Docklands it was pretty easy to find areas with no cameras and poor lighting at night.

The only car I knew personally was the Karmann Ghia, which is owned by my neighbour, Graeme. I haven’t been in an Uno or Multipla for years and you don’t actually see many Unos around these days. I based Claire’s experiences on some posts and comments on Fiat drivers’ forums. I did do all the journeys described, but in my less-interesting VW Golf, and at 3pm rather than 3am!

You’re a 50-something man, the main protagonist is a 20-something woman. You found her voice, so how?

Neil: It came naturally. I surprised myself to be truthful – I think she’s my favourite character in the book and that old cliché about stories writing themselves is certainly true in Claire’s case. There were a few times in the editing process when I had to change some of Claire’s references as they were not what a 25-year-old would be familiar with, but her actual ‘voice’ came easily.

I was left wanting more of some of the characters, and to know more of their back-story. Were you writing them with book two in mind, in terms of who would live or be free to see another day?

Neil: I always wanted to leave things open at the end but resisted the temptation to leave it on a cliffhanger – I had toyed with the idea of Claire finding herself pregnant (by Tom) at the end but decided against it as it felt a bit cheap and it would mean any future stories would involve a baby, which I really didn't want.

I have plenty of background and supporting material on file I will use in the second book. There’s a lot more to Barclay than discovered by Claire in When She Was Bad and it’ll be fun exploring that in the next one (and beyond).

The style is very visual with lots of popular culture and product references. Do those come from your own preferences or did you use them as you thought Claire would see the world?

Neil: I’ve never owned anything by Prada or Fiat but I do love Apple products even if I do sometimes think life would be simpler with an old Nokia phone that just does calls and texts. I think the dominance of brands and mass culture is just the time we live in and that’s how kids in their twenties view things now.

It’s also quite cinematic, given the dialogue, the pace and the way it paints pictures. Do you see yourself as a screenwriter?

Neil: I’m just getting used to describing myself as a ‘writer’, and I’m happy trying my hand at novels and short stories for now. My dialogue and action scenes are quite cinematic but there’s no ulterior motive in writing that way except that it’s an effective way of making the reader turn the pages faster.

If so, who would you cast in the film or TV version?

Neil: I wrote Barclay with Benedict Cumberbatch (as Sherlock) in mind. Claire I pictured as Claire Foy but she can be whoever the reader wants her to be and I deliberately didn’t describe her appearance. My wife has suggested that Tom is Jude Law and I quite like that but I had a (young) Tom Hollander in mind as I wrote it. TNT would be the guy who plays The Mountain in Game of Thrones.

As a first-time author, how did you approach the task of writing? Computer or longhand? Storyboard? Short bursts or long days?

Neil: I’m new at this game so I’ve been making it up as I go along. This book started with the RH course I mentioned, which resulted in around two dozen short pieces which I then used as the basis for the first part of the initial draft. As the story developed though most were dropped as they didn’t fit in the story or its evolving style. A few survive: the prologue, the opening chapters, the visits to both families at Christmas.

I type faster than I can handwrite, so I tend to only pick up the pen when I’m sketching out rough ideas. I edit drafts by hand though.

I did try using the authoring software Scrivener for the planning, but found it too complicated for what I was attempting to do. In the end I covered my office’s wall with hand-written postcard outlines before finalising them with PowerPoint (a slide per chapter). I wrote it in Microsoft Word – I tried other writing tools but Word is still the best for writing and editing. The print edition was finished using InDesign.

I understand you started your career as a journalist. Do you have non-fiction in you too?
Neil: Possibly, but it’s not something I’m interested in at the moment.