SHELF LIFE

The murder mystery thriller author sets out five books that stick in her crime-writer’s mind

My current book is The Midnight Feast. I was inspired by the opening of a new countryside hotel not a million miles away from where I live and the vitriolic local campaign to prevent it from happening. It seemed to bring to the surface much that I’m interested in: the tension between a local community and wealthy ‘blow-ins’ from the city, a modern upstairs dynamic, a conversation about who the countryside really ‘belongs’ to. I also wanted to bring in an element of folk horror as I felt that was something I hadn’t seen much of in the whodunit genre (though naturally Christie arguably got there first — of course she did! — with The Pale Horse).

My writing routine really is sitting in one of the several coffee shops I know I write well in and getting writing! For me if it feels too much like work I can’t write – I don’t really write at my desk at home (though I can only edit there, because I then switch to a bigger screen) or in libraries for that reason. I used to focus on word count, trying to get down a certain number of words a day, then I realised that was putting emphasis on the wrong thing, that it’s definitely about quality over quantity. The most useful advice I was ever given is write every day, or as often as you can. Make it a habit because if you do, like anything – be it exercise, meditating, playing an instrument — it becomes easier and you miss it if you don’t. It also keeps the current work ‘alive’ for me, as if I leave it for too long it becomes cold and takes me too much time to get back into it.