Clare also shows how friendships with people younger and older can be life enhancing and the importance of finding your own community. She does this in a light, never preachy, often funny way that leaves readers, or at least this reader, feeling a bit better about the world. My Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can listen to the full interview here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author.

Can you briefly tell us about the path that led you to become a novelist at age 50?

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a novelist. From the moment I discovered stories, I wanted to be able to write them. That was my great dream. But life gets in the way. I worked in advertising for 20 years.

I wrote nothing apart from PowerPoint presentations and emails and shopping lists. And then in 2015 I got to the point where I realized that my life was going seriously off track because I had picked up a rather major dependency on alcohol and my wine o’clock habit was completely out of control.

I was drinking about 10 bottles of wine a week, which is way too much. I mean, that’s way over the government guidelines and it was having all sorts of impacts on my life. So, I knew I had to quit drinking, but I was too embarrassed and ashamed about the situation I found myself in to talk to anybody about it.

I didn’t talk to my doctor. I didn’t talk to my husband. I didn’t talk to my friends. What I did do because I needed some form of therapy was I started an anonymous blog, and I called it Mummy was a Secret Drinker. I wrote in that blog every day. I wrote about what I was going through and all the research I’d been doing and how I was feeling. That blog went viral and then became a memoir called The Sober Diaries, which was published at the beginning of 2018.

And by this stage, my new addiction was writing, and I really didn’t want to stop writing. I absolutely loved it. But I didn’t want to carry on writing about my own life, so I thought I’d try writing about imaginary people instead. And that became my whole new career.

You wrote a wonderful blog about how author Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, motivated you to keep writing your first book. In a nutshell, for those who haven’t read Anne’s book, can you explain how it applies to so many of life’s challenges?

I love that book. And funny enough, Anne Lamott doesn’t drink either. She quit drinking many years ago. She writes that the expression ‘bird by bird’ comes from a story from her childhood where her little brother had a complete meltdown one evening because he suddenly realized that he had a school project due the next day and he hadn’t done any of it.

He was supposed to have spent the previous semester working on this project about birds. He was supposed to cover I don’t know, 20, 30 different birds. And he was completely beside himself in floods of tears.

He said to his father, ‘I can’t do it. This is the end of my school career. I’m going to be in such trouble.’ And his father sat him down. He said, ‘Now don’t panic. We’ll just take it bird by bird, buddy.’ And they did. They took it bird by bird. And by the end of the night, they had a whole project on birds to hand in.

Anne talks about how writing a novel is very much like that. If you worry about having to produce 100,000 words, the whole thing can seem overwhelming. But if you just think about each page, each chapter, or even each paragraph, you just take it bird by bird, within a relatively short period of time, you find that you’ve got a whole novel.

And giving up alcohol is absolutely about bird by bird. The Alcoholics Anonymous expression of one day at a time, is absolutely what gets you through addiction. If you worry about, can I stop drinking forever? You’ll never even take the first step. If you think, can I stop drinking just for today? The answer to that is always yes. Can I just write about one bird? Yes, of course you can. If you write about one bird enough times, you’ve got a whole project. If you write one chapter enough times, you’ve got a whole novel. If you have one day without drinking enough times, you’ve been sober for a decade.

It’s a really good lesson. Breaking things down to just one little task at a time rather than thinking of something as a humongous project. I have a Post-it taped to my desktop that says, Bird by bird buddy.

Oh, brilliant. It’s good for teenagers as well. If you have young people in your life who are struggling, just saying to them, ‘Look, can you make it through until the end of tomorrow? And if you can do that, you can make it through to the end of the following day and the end of the day after that.’ It helps the whole world stop feeling overwhelming.

Do you know anyone like Daphne, your principal character who at age 70, is sharp, chic, feisty, opinionated, and as witty as they come, an original with a fabulous, checkered past? I want to be Daphne when I grow up. But are there people you modelled her after?

 She’s modelled after the sort of woman I want to be when I’m 70. She isn’t modelled after any one particular person, but she’s modelled after an amalgamation of characteristics that I found aspirational.

At the beginning of the book, Daphne’s not really a very nice person. She’s very spiky. She doesn’t like other people. She’s very critical of everybody around her. And she doesn’t have any friends. She thinks she’s slightly better than everyone else. In many ways, you wouldn’t want to know somebody like Daphne.

I wanted to explore how even the most unlikable people in the right circumstances can be magnificent. And by the end, I think everybody is rooting for Daphne and she’s great, but it’s not where she starts off. She’s certainly not perfect, But I think the most interesting people aren’t perfect.

 I liked that even at the beginning when Daphne was unpleasant and snooty, she was always funny. And had a plan. I never felt sorry for her.

I’m really pleased about that because that was exactly what I wanted to avoid. With older characters in novels, you are encouraged to feel pity for them, and I didn’t want anyone to pity my characters. They’re often in quite precarious situations, and they’re not always the nicest people, but they’ve all got agency.

Daphne does yoga and Pilates every day. And she’s very strong for her age and she carries a walking stick, not because she needs a walking stick to walk with, but because she uses it as a weapon, and she uses it to clear people out of her way if necessary.

The rest of the Q&A can be found here on 26, a UK site to promote the joy of words.

Happy Summer

July 2024

The post Q&A with Clare Pooley – How to Age Disgracefully appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Let’s start at the beginning. What inspired you to write crime novels?

Ever since I was a small child I wanted to be a writer and to make films. I wanted to entertain people but at the same time, I wanted to examine the world and society in which we live through these media. My first break was when I was 17. I won a national BBC short story competition and had to read my story out on air. I loved doing that and it made me realise that much though the printed book is the bedrock of novels, there are all kinds of other media where the written and spoken word can be used to wonderful effect. After all, long before printing, stories were told and passed on orally. In my work today, I find the crime novel is the best genre through which I can explore the world in which we live.

Your recently published Need You Dead is your thirteenth featuring the loveable Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. I couldn’t put it down, testing whether it’s possible to read while walking my dogs. (It’s not). What ingredients make for a page-turning thriller?

I believe what lies at the heart of most page-turning books is a character the reader cares about put into mortal peril. The story has to be underpinned by good research, because if the reader doesn’t believe that the author knows his or her subject inside out you will lose them. The other essential elements are not cheating the reader, and not patronising either… so just a small job!

Do you ever get scared writing your own books?

Yes, quite often.  Sometimes it’s because I find I’m in a dangerous situation – accompanying officers on a rooftop chase, or standing with them as they put in the door of a violent and possibly armed suspect or, for an earlier novel, being submerged in Shoreham Harbour in a van.

My worst moment was researching my first Roy Grace novel, Dead Simple.  My central character is left buried alive in a coffin in remote woodlands after a stag night prank has gone badly wrong. I needed to feel what it was like to be utterly trapped like this so I asked a local funeral director I knew if he could put me in a coffin, screw the lid down and leave me for 30 minutes.

When I arrived there a few days later, I was greeted by a frail elderly man who informed me he was the funeral director’s grandfather.  Everyone else in the family business was out, attending funerals or collecting bodies.  “You’ve come to be put in the coffin, right?”  he croaked.

I’m deeply claustrophobic, and remember lying there, in this cramped little space as the lid closed, putting me in total darkness, then hearing the screech of the screws being tightened.  I had asked a coroner friend how long the air would last in a coffin.  “In a well-made one about three to four hours – but if you hyperventilate you could bring that down to 40 minutes or so,” he replied, cheerfully.

Suddenly, I had visions of this frail man suddenly dropping dead and I began to panic.  It was the longest and most horrific 30 minutes of my life!

Need You Dead is the first whodunit of the Roy Grace series. How did you like writing a whodunit, and do you think you’ll continue?

Need You Dead is very much a modern take on the traditional idea of the whodunit with a number of suspects and a very dark twist, but written as a thriller rather than a police procedural. I will definitely write more whodunits because it is a really great challenge, and huge fun to know that I will be keeping my readers guessing, and hopefully constantly wrong-footed, (without cheating them).

I read that Detective Grace closely resembles David Gaylor of Sussex CID. How did you meet Detective Gaylor and decide that he was the man for the task ahead?

Over 15 years ago I was introduced to a young Detective Inspector David Gaylor – a rising star in Sussex CID. I went into his office and found it full of plastic crates bulging with manila folders. I asked him if he was moving offices and he replied with a sardonic smile: “No, these are my dead friends.”

I thought I had met a total weirdo! Then he explained that, in addition to his current homicide investigation work, he had been tasked with reopening cold cases and applying new forensic developments to them. He said something that really touched me: “Each of these crates contains the principal case files of an unsolved murder. I am the last chance each of the victims has for justice, and I am the last chance each of their families have for closure.”

I loved the deeply human aspects of this man. During his work he saw the most terrible sights imaginable (and unimaginable), yet he retained a calm, gentle humanity – and this aspect is one of the key characteristics of almost every homicide detective I have met: they are calm, kind and very caring people. In very many cases they develop a close relationship with the victim’s loved ones, and solving the crime becomes personal to them. It is the reason why so often, even years after they have left the force, many detectives continue to work on cases they could not solve during their career.

At this first encounter with David, he asked me about the novel I was then working on, and immediately started coming up with creative suggestions involving the policing aspects – and other aspects too. I realized that to be a good homicide investigator you had to have not only a very analytical mind, but also a very creative one. This is because solving of every major crime is a massive puzzle, usually with a key bit missing. From that day onwards, I would discuss the plots of my next novels in advance with him.

At the time my publishers, Macmillan, approached me to create a fictional detective, David had risen to become Detective Chief Superintendent in Sussex Police, in charge of Major Crime Reviews.  I asked him how he would feel about becoming a fictional character – and he loved the idea! He now reads every hundred pages as I am writing, and gives me his view on how a real detective in Roy Grace’s position would think.  It helps to give my novels the authenticity I strive so hard for.

You’re a stickler for research, talking to the police, as well as victims and criminals. Is it tricky getting criminals to trust you?

I frequently give talks in prisons. Partly in my ambassadorial role for The Reading Agency, trying to improve literacy in UK prisons, where the average reading age for 50% of the inmates is below 11 years old, and partly to get the chance to meet and talk to the prisoners. One of my tricks, at the start of each talk, told me by a detective, is to ask all of them to turn off their mobile phones – which always gets a laugh, as it is common knowledge these are forbidden!

Who is the most intriguing baddie that you’ve met?

The most intriguing baddie I met inspired my novel Love You Dead.  She was a very intelligent woman in her mid-50s in a Midlands prison. When I asked her how much longer she had to go (I never ask directly what they are in for, not etiquette!) she replied: “Nine and a half more years and it’s just not fair, there’s a woman in here who has only six more years to go and she did exactly what I did.”  When I then asked her what had brought her in here she replied, ‘Well, I poisoned my mother-in-law, the old bag!”  She then explained that her mother-in-law had gone into hospital to die, so she had embezzled her bank account. “But the bloody woman didn’t die she came home. I realised she would find out what I had done, so I poisoned her. Then I realised my husband would find out, so I had to poison him, too!  And it’s just not fair.  A woman did exactly what I did, in London, and she’s only got six more years!”  I asked the officer escorting me out if this was for real.  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ he replied. “Her husband was three months on life support and he has permanent brain damage – and she’s just angry about the length of her sentence…”

What inspired you to write about “a domestic” in Need You Dead?

Something that left a lasting impression on me, and still chills me to this day, was listening to the taped replay of an emergency call made to the police by a woman utterly terrified that her estranged husband was going to kill her.

The call started quietly, the woman clearly afraid, saying she had locked herself in her bedroom and her husband was trying to break into her house. Before the call handler had despatched a police car to the scene, she began screaming that the man was now in the house. Then we could hear hammering sounds, and the woman now crying, stammering that he was trying to break the door down. Her voice turned to utter stark terror as he succeeded. We then heard five gunshots. He had shot her dead.

A recurring thread of the Roy Grace series is the detective’s missing wife, Sandy. Can you tell us why you created Sandy in the first place and why you bid her adieu in Need You Dead?

When Pan Macmillan asked me if I wanted to create a new fictional detective, I was given a two-book contract. I didn’t know if the books would be successful or not, so in Dead Simple I planned to set up the mystery of Roy Grace’s missing wife Sandy, and then solve it in the second book Looking Good Dead.  I was completely taken by surprise with the enthusiastic response by my readers to the Sandy mystery and was deluged with speculations as to what might have happened to her.  Once my publishers asked me to continue the series within weeks of Dead Simple being published, I thought it would be fun to keep the missing wife back story ongoing. While it had to come to a conclusion at some point, I hope to have given my readers a satisfying continuation.

Your writing routine begins at 6pm with a large vodka martini. Can you expand on this enviable working routine?

I like my writing process to be routine but all writers are different. The time that I write best is from 6pm-10pm at night so at 6pm, I typically sit down with a vodka martini I’ve mixed myself, put on music, turn off the phones, ignore emails and get myself into a “zone”. I love this period of “me time” and the martini is a treat I look forward to throughout the day! I do this six days a week during the seven months I am working on a novel.

Can you tell us about your next book Absolute Proof coming out next year which is a total break from the past?

I’m just editing ‘Absolute Proof’ which is my latest standalone away from the crime genre. The book centres on what might happen if someone credible claimed to have absolute proof of the existence of God. It is a subject that has long intrigued me, and I have been working on the research planning of this book for nearly two decades. It will be published October 2018 and of all my books, it is the one I am most excited about!

September, 2017

The post Whodunit Writer Tells Us How He Dun It appeared first on Elena Bowes.

The unconventional, never married, ninety-nine-year old writer and editor Diana Athill  dispenses love advice: Write, never marry, be more pragmatic.

Accessories queen Anya Hindmarch talks about creativity and how she ‘feeds her brain’ by always looking and seeing and traveling.

“Plum Sykes Loves Dead Party Girls” is a headline I couldn’t ignore. British-born, New York living author  talks about her new mystery series Party Girls Die in Pearls, how she loves a bit of horror, and how Anna Wintour helped her career.

And having just seen the terrific and sadly sold out play Consent at the National, the Lenny interview “Rape is not a Dirty Word” resonated. Author Alice Sebold  was raped at the end of her freshman year in college 18 years ago, an experience she wrote about in Lucky and touches on in the interview. The memoir is now being reissued by Scribner with a new afterward from Sewold, who also wrote the disturbing bestseller The Lovely Bones.

May, 2017

The post Interviews I Like – The Lenny Interview appeared first on Elena Bowes.