Articles, Interviews, & Short Stories
Articles
A bit more about me…
• Talking TV, Murder in the Family, and what’s coming next (2023)
• From music to mascara—five things I can’t live without (2022)
• Influences, ideas, and what I’d tell my younger self (2020)
• Doing the research: working with my ‘pro team’
+ The CSI
+ The Detective
+ The Lawyer
+ The Fire Scene Investigator
My writing process
• Letting the story and characters evolve (2023)
• Thinking inside the docs—the ‘signature style’ of the Fawley series (2021)
• Taking Fawley to TV—interview with Fremantle (2020)
• Talking to Daisy Coulam, the screenwriter for the Fawley series (2020)
• Whipping up a good plot—my recipe for great crime (2019)
• Writer’s block and how to unstick it (2019)
• Where do my ideas come from? (2018)
• Sequels, series, and ‘second novel syndrome’ (2018)
• Where it all began: how Close to Home was born on a beach (2018)
Working with true crime…
• Confessions of a true-crime addict (2023)
• A crime writer’s guide to using fact in fiction (2022)
• From whodunnit to whydunnit (2022)
• From truth to trope: how infamous real-life cases are changing the narrative (2021)
… and great crime fiction
• Not-so-perfect: Ten “Murder Mavericks” (2024)
• Classic Christie: Who doesn’t love a Closed Circle mystery? (2023)
Interviews
• J.S. Clerk (2020)
• BBC Ideas — Have you been fooled by forensics on TV? (2019)
• Beverley Harvey (2019)
• From First Page to Last (2018)
Podcasts and broadcasts
• Thoughts from a Page with Cindy Burnett (2024)
• First Chapter Fun with Hank Phillippi Ryan and Hannah McKinnon (2024)
• Dueling Detectives with the New York Public Library (2024)
• On The Sofa With Victoria (2023)
• Hank Phillippi Ryan (2023)
• Muck Rack (2023)
• Thoughts from a Page Podcast (2023)
• Suzi’s Book Bag (2023)
• On The Sofa With Victoria (2021)
• John Marrs (2021)
• Shelfie, Waterstones (2021)
• Charlie Lovett (2019)
Short stories
These stories were written for the Sunday Express S Magazine. When people ask me about getting started as a writer I always suggest they start with short stories. I didn’t do it that way myself, but looking back I think it would have been good advice. Short stories are so challenging to write! You need all the same skills as you do for a novel—a great plot idea, a sense of place, good characters, a satisfying ending—but you only have a short space to do it in. The point about the ending is especially important—you only get to practice those by finishing a piece of fiction, and you can finish a lot more short stories than you can novels!
I always suggest people read a fabulous book by George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo. He teaches a course on the Russian short story at Syracuse University, and all those insights are packed into A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. He takes a series of stories by masters like Tolstoy and Chekhov, unpacks them and shows you how they work. Just brilliant.
Photo credits (L-R): Richard Bell, Josh Wilburne, and Phoebe T on Unsplash