Dervla McTiernan: On writing bestselling crime novels with guest host Rae Cairns

Episode Summary

Rae Cairns hosts a compelling interview with bestselling crime author Dervla McTiernan, who shares insights on her latest book WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?. The conversation delves into McTiernan's writing process, the evolution of her craft from her first book to her ninth, and the thematic exploration of toxic relationships and the weaponization of media in her novel. McTiernan's personal journey, including her remarkable path to publication and her battle with a brain tumour, is also highlighted, offering an inspiring look at resilience and dedication to storytelling.

Episode Chapters

(01:19 - 02:41) Women's Writing Circle and Retreat Information

(07:30 - 09:00) Recognizing the Reality of Domestic Violence

(15:43 - 16:48) Character vs. Story in Writing

(18:52 - 19:45) Writing Process and Inner Voices

(27:42 - 28:43) Leveraging Social Media for Writers

(30:38 - 31:43) Contrasting Books and Building Empathy

(44:28 - 45:27) Escape Through Engaging Fiction

(52:21 - 53:37) Discovering Crime as a Genre

(56:15 - 57:19) Collaboration Between Author and Narrator

(01:02:18 - 01:03:41) Navigating Writing With Kindness and Authenticity

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dervla: I think it's key when you're launching a book is to have as much confusion as possible.

[00:00:04] That is the voice of Dervla McTiernan bestselling crime. Author who has a brand new book out today? What happened to Nina and who is the guests this week on rights for women along with the amazing guest host Ray Cairns. And I kept that little snippet in at the beginning. Just to give you a little flavor of how this interview goes.

[00:00:25] There is so much writing golden here, but there is also so much fun happening between Ray and Dervla. Very quickly at the beginning of this fantastic interview between Ray Cairns amazing thriller crime author. Of the good mother and dying to know. And dove the mic tin and who pretty much needs no introduction, but Ray gives. So one, so I'm going to leave that to, right.

[00:00:50] This is an absolutely amazing conversation. Particularly for writers on so much to do with the writing process, but also for readers and of course, writers or readers to on. new book out today. What happened to Nina? So you are in for an absolute treat. I absolutely love listening to and watching this interview as I edited it.

[00:01:14] And there really wasn't too much to edit because there is so much gold in here. So I really hope you enjoy it. Before we get into that couple of things. I just wanted to tell you about. One is that I have my wild woods. Women's writing circle, starting via zoom on March 13. It's going to be the third, Wednesday of every month, couple of hours where we get together as a group. Right.

[00:01:37] Doing some writing prompts, I'll be doing a little tutorial on an aspect of writing craft, there's opportunities for feedback. And it's going to be an amazing two hours every month where a group of women writers get together. Right together. Talk about writing and share our writing experiences. So if you're interested in that, go to my website under courses@pamelacook.com.edu. And you can sign up for that. The other thing is that there are still a few, very few places left on my retreat, which is happening from may 16 to 19 at beautiful curl winter house, encourage young in the blue mountains and. It's an absolutely amazing group of women who have signed up already for this retreat.

[00:02:19] If you'd like to be one of them. Again, have a look on the coursesPage@pamelacook.com.edu. And I would love to see you there. That's it from me for this week. I'm not going to bother with any writing tips because durva has so many to share with you as does Ray in this amazing interview. So sit back, grab a cup of, go for a walk, whatever you do while you're listening to rights for women. And enjoy.

[00:02:41] Rae: Hi, and welcome to this episode of Rights for Women.

[00:02:44] Rae: My name is Ray Cans and I write crime fiction, and I'm one of Pam's guest hosts for 2024. It's my absolute pleasure to be speaking with BLA mct and today about her ninth publication and fifth full length novel. What happened to Nina? And we'll also be chatting about her writing process and how it may have changed since Book one.

[00:03:05] Rae: Durva McKinnon is the author of the internationally bestselling cor Mc Reilly series, as well as the standalone novel, the Murder Rule, and four Audible first novellas.

[00:03:16] Rae: Her Works have won numerous awards worldwide, including two Barry Awards, a Davit Award and Ned Kelly Award, and an international thriller writer Award. dla, welcome to the Convo

[00:03:27] Dervla: Couch. Thank you so much, Ray. Thanks for having me.

[00:03:30] Rae: You're welcome. The huge congratulations on what happened to Nina. It is the kind of crime fiction I love most clever, topical, and really thought provoking.

[00:03:42] Rae: Can you tell us a bit

[00:03:43] Dervla: about the story? Oh, thank, first of all. Thank you very much. The story starts with Simon and Nina. They're a young couple. They're, they're good looking. They're fun. They're very much in love. They're Instagram perfect. They've been together since they were middle school age, and they go away on a short vacation together.

[00:03:59] Dervla: Only Simon comes home. He has an explanation. For what happened. He said, we broke up and Nina stayed in the house and I left. She was getting a ride home the next day with friends. But once you look a little bit closer at his story, it doesn't really make sense. There are holes all over the place.

[00:04:14] Dervla: So Nina's parents are terrified, their daughter's missing. They go to the police. Police start investigating. Nina's parents point them straight at Simon. And Simon's parents are terrified for him because they are absolutely certain that their boy, their kind boy would never have hurt. Nina mean he was in love with her.

[00:04:31] Dervla: But they're equally convinced that his innocence isn't gonna protect him in a world that likes to rush to judgment very quickly. And in a world where reputations can be made and destroyed in seconds on the internet, and things follow you forever. So they don't just hire a defense lawyer for him. They also hire a.

[00:04:46] Dervla: Reputation management firm, a kind of a PR company that goes into overdrive and launches this vicious no limits online campaign, spraying blame in every direction, but at Simon to muddy the waters. And Nina's parents are a big target of that campaign. So they're under siege. This whole thing goes viral.

[00:05:04] Dervla: Journalists to send on the small town, but not just journalists, fans, people who are absolutely convinced that only they know the truth of what happened to Nina. And everything just goes a little crazy. Nina's parents are on the brink of losing everything. Their daughter is missing. They're about to lose their small business.

[00:05:19] Dervla: They're losing friends, and they begin to realize that they're completely outgunned. And if they keep playing by the rules, they're never gonna get answers. So the question is, are they gonna break them?

[00:05:30] Rae: It's such a great premise and so captivating, and I can't wait to dig into all of that. But first of all, I wanna know what sparked the idea for this story for you.

[00:05:43] Dervla: It's a tricky one. It's like every other book, there's never one idea. It's always a kind of clash of a few different things, and I think it started, this one started for me with a conversation with a good friend of mine. We were sitting down over coffee, as we do every now and again. Always committed to just a half hour this time and three hours later.

[00:05:58] Dervla: But I have two kids. My kids are still quite young. They're 14 and 12, but my friend had an older boy and when we were talking he was about to head off to college and she was talking about the worries that she and her friends of older boys had for their kids. In a world where the social rules have changed very quickly in the world where our expectations of young men have changed very quickly, and we want those changes.

[00:06:21] Dervla: Let's be very clear. Yeah. We're women, we're delighted, but worry about how they navigate this world when they're young. They've had a few drinks, they say something stupid to the wrong person, or they misinterpret a situation, they make an un unwelcome move, or they stick up for a friend on social media when they shouldn't.

[00:06:38] Dervla: And as something, a mistake or something that might be considered slightly boorish. A few years ago that might give rise to an argument, but ultimately be forgotten, can now be turned into a drama online that continues forever and that can turn into absolute poison. And so she was just talking about the general worries about that sort of thing, about being a parent of a young man or an older boy.

[00:07:01] Dervla: It really struck me because my oldest is a girl, my youngest is a boy. I haven't really gotten to that stage yet, but I've always been worried about, aware of the risk to young women because we're worried for them just walking down the street. Hadn't really thought about it from the other side or from the flip side of the same coin, we're a good young guy. We're not talking now about criminal behavior or somebody who would do something that we would, really condemn, but murky, messy stuff that happens after a few beers. That's the kind of thing we talked about. So that was stuck in my mind for quite a while. And then at the same time, I was very conscious of the conversation we've been having in Australia about coercive control over the last couple of years.

[00:07:37] Dervla: A very necessary overdue conversation. And so conscious of the horrifying statistics. A woman is murdered once a week in this country by an intimate part. It's just unbelievable. When I, even when I say that, I wants to double fact check myself because it seems so unrealistic, but it's true.

[00:07:55] Dervla: And so often when these horrible crimes are reported and a guy has murdered his wife or his girlfriend and his children. Somebody will be door stopped and they'll say something like, he's such a good man. This was a moment of madness. It was totally outta character. And I have sympathy for people who give those quotes because they're traumatized.

[00:08:14] Dervla: They knew and love this person and they've committed a horrific act of violence. They usually haven't had time to process it. And they say these things because it's this kind of thing you say, but it is utterly wrong. And I think what that fails to recognize is two things. First of all, good men don't murder their wives and children, good men don't beat their wives and children, good men cannot be provoked or, risen to that.

[00:08:35] Dervla: It's just not possible. It doesn't happen. Yeah. These guys are not good men. What they are people who were able to fake it for a while and I, oh, who haven't been tested. Who haven't been tested or who just show a face to the people who aren't vulnerable in their lives and a very different face to the people who are, yeah.

[00:08:53] Dervla: And so that was very much on my mind as well. And I think those two thoughts coming together. Gave me the, what I needed to get started on this story. Okay.

[00:09:02] Dervla: So you've got this idea. How does the next step go for you? Do you jump into research? Do you jump into planning? Do you jump straight into

[00:09:11] Dervla: writing?

[00:09:13] Dervla: Usually? I've been thinking about it for a while, so it'll be bouncing around in my head while I'm writing another book. But I don't really like to go into a lot of research upfront because I think it can be quite misdirecting for me when I'm writing a first draft. That's really about finding the story.

[00:09:29] Dervla: I think I know what the good stuff is gonna be going in, and very often I'm wrong. I've got a first draft of maybe 80 or 90,000 words, and I'll read over it and I'll go, Ooh. That's actually the interesting bit. That's where there's story juice, not where I thought it was gonna be. I'm gonna cut all that and I'm gonna work on this.

[00:09:46] Dervla: And so if I've researched, there's a temptation then to write towards the research as opposed to writing towards the story. So research for me comes later when I want to add detail that makes it a bit richer. And I often square bracket things as I'm writing. So I will say, come back to this, or I need more here.

[00:10:05] Dervla: Or, I'll just write something that I know is wooly but needs work. And then I can isolate what I need to research for a research trip or research period later.

[00:10:15] Rae: This book is set in Vermont. And you are not living in Vermont, you're in Australia. But do you Yeah.

[00:10:20] Rae: Do you have a sense of the place or do you just put it in there that you've gotta put the setting kind of detail in later? Because place has such a, plays such

[00:10:29] Dervla: a big part. Yeah, for setting, I do a little bit of research for sure before I get into it, just so I have, if I don't already have a clear picture of somewhere, I need to have a general idea, geography and climate and history and culture to some degree.

[00:10:43] Dervla: But with this story, I had the book written before I went to Vermont. So I went to Vermont with a list of places I needed to confirm. I can write, I can run my little Google man down the street and look around Google's the best tool, isn't it the best? What did we do before at Google?

[00:11:02] Dervla: But it's not the same as being there. So I'd go there and I'd be like, these are the four locations I absolutely need to visit. Here are my 12 questions that I have. Here are the hikes I want to do. And then some things would just take you completely by surprise. I really did have an idea of Vermont that was not accurate.

[00:11:18] Dervla: I think. For me, the fact that it was so close to Boston that it's physically so beautiful that there's skiing and that, there are some beautiful homes. I had this picture of it as a kind of a weak ender community, for like more like Connecticut, which it isn't.

[00:11:32] Dervla: There are people who, who are live in Boston or New York and have homes, second homes there for sure. But there's a real there. There are also a lot of people who live in Vermont because they don't want to live in the Bostons or the New Yorks and they want to be away and they wanna live a very different kind of lifestyle.

[00:11:46] Dervla: So I got to meet some of those people while I was there and I had a guide who brought us hiking, but also drove us around and listened to my end endless questions. And then I bring all of that back for the next draft. How did you find the guide? Oh, I was looking for someone to go backwards camping with, 'cause I was gonna be very ambitious about my camping because he's camping and hiking and climbing and this, I backtracked on that.

[00:12:08] Dervla: But Peter did backwards camping, so he was gonna take me out for a few nights and then my health got a bit shaky, so we didn't do that. But he did bring me hiking on the trails and some of the trails that actually appear in the book. And we also sat down over lunch and spread out the maps.

[00:12:21] Dervla: And I had questions like, will this work for this? Will this work for this? And he suggested different locations for me. And then really actually what we ended up doing a bit was driving around and talking and having long lunches and all that was as useful as anything else, perfect. So it's about grabbing

[00:12:37] Rae: those opportunities when they're there and connecting with people.

[00:12:42] Rae: Because a lot of people will ask me how do you get, how do you find resources? How do you talk to a

[00:12:47] Dervla: police officer? How do you Oh, I find it really difficult. I don't know about you, Ray, but I find it really hard because the right people are hard to find. It's not just the expertise, it's people who know how to talk about it, who really are enthusiastic to talk about it.

[00:13:01] Dervla: Yes. And they'll be happy to talk about their job for four hours because they're really interested themselves

[00:13:06] Rae: and listen to you ask about the most minute detail.

[00:13:08] Dervla: Yeah, exactly. And not, but, and but also not be coming with a 'cause. The problem is sometimes people are enthusiastic want to tell you what you should write.

[00:13:17] Dervla: And that doesn't work because the story can go anywhere and you're really just looking for, and to try to get a deeper understanding of what their world is like. And then you bring that to the story rather than the other way around. So finding the right people is tough. And you just sometimes a matter of luck, I think.

[00:13:31] Rae: Yeah, I would ag thoroughly agree. Okay, so back to the writing process. You have this idea, you've got a bit of idea of the setting. You sit down, are you diving straight into the writing or do you

[00:13:43] Dervla: do some plotting? It's all, it's changed. Every single book has been different. I've had some very involved outlining processes at stages, and I would've talked before about, using Elizabeth George's method and which I definitely leaned heavily into for a couple of books.

[00:13:57] Dervla: I, over the years I've become a lot more organic with the storytelling, and I think that's confidence, a bit more sort of feeling steadier on my feet about, I know when it's right and wanting to enjoy the process a bit more too. As you get further in outlining heavily and then writing the book. I don't know.

[00:14:15] Dervla: I'm beginning to be a bit more convinced by the writers who say it can kill the fun a little bit, knowing everything in advance. And look, I've used both. I won't say that I would stand over one over the other 'cause I could just as easily go back to outlining on the next one. But with Nina it was quite organic.

[00:14:31] Dervla: With things I'm working on right now, it's quite organic. So I am generally have a pretty good idea of the ending because I feel like writing to no ending is, I've done that before too and led me down. Okay,

[00:14:42] Rae: so you do

[00:14:42] Dervla: know where you're headed Generally it, it can shift though, and I will take the journey wherever it's gonna bring me to a degree.

[00:14:49] Dervla: But I, like I say that, sorry I'm bouncing around a bit and probably frustrating your listeners, but. I think that the only reason I can do that is because I have a pretty good idea of the narrative in my head. So I'm saying it's very organic. I think I'm just better able to hold the story in my head now and better able to see when I'm going down a blind alley or a tangent that isn't gonna bring me anywhere and pull it back faster.

[00:15:13] Dervla: I think that's happened over time and before I needed outlining to help me do that, written outlines. Whereas now I almost to

[00:15:21] Rae: buffer you back into the space.

[00:15:23] Dervla: Yeah. And to just, and know that I was going somewhere and have something directional to sit down to every day. If I've got a word target, I've got something to write.

[00:15:31] Dervla: I think more of that is happening in my head now than on paper, but it's still happening. Does that make sense? Yeah,

[00:15:36] Rae: totally. Totally makes sense. So do you start when you sit down to write now, so you're going organically, is it the character or the story that drives you? Like the majority

[00:15:48] Dervla: of it.

[00:15:49] Dervla: Yeah. It depends on the book. Again oh, I would've always said for the early books, it was always character that I had to find a character. I felt really strong emotional response to them, their personality and their circumstance, because that emotional connection carries you through the writing of the book.

[00:16:05] Dervla: And, it wasn't so much like that with Nina. I had a situation I wanted to explore more. We have these two sets of parents. One of them has lost a daughter, the other one has a son accused, and they are engaged in a sort of a path of mutual destruction. And I wanted to really write that with energy.

[00:16:24] Dervla: And that's where my head was at with that more than Nina. Although Nina, to me, is so central to the story, and actually I, like I could have written chapters about her because I know so much about who she is and how she interacts with the people around her. But I. The key, the important part of Nina was to have her voice really strong upfront and then feed her absence through the rest of the book.

[00:16:46] Dervla: That was key, yeah. For that story. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. I think it's wider now. I'm coming to a book with a wider lens than I did in my first weeks,

[00:16:56] Rae: which comes with experience and I think so, yeah. Do you write in

[00:17:01] Dervla: chronological order? Yes, almost always.

[00:17:05] Dervla: Yeah. Unless I've really hit a dry patch and then I'll skip to a chapter that I'm just really looking forward to reading. And, but Right. To be honest, if you're, if that's happening to you, you're writing, does something gone wrong with the book? If you're writing a chapter and you're bored outta your head, you gonna be bored too.

[00:17:21] Dervla: So occasionally I will skip, but I know if I am. It's a problem. And now I definitely try to write chronologically because I'm trying to write the story almost like I'd read it. So I'm writing two and a half, 3000 words a day. And the rhythm of that story, that pace is lovely. It feels like the story's unfolding nicely, quickly.

[00:17:39] Dervla: It doesn't get stale. And so yeah, chronological always. How about you?

[00:17:43] Rae: Yeah. I write chronologically. Absolutely. Occasionally there'll be something that I just go, oh, I think I wanna have that somewhere, but I will come back and write that later. Yeah. A bit the same, I and the pacing, I do think perhaps with a crime novel, it does help with the pacing Yeah.

[00:17:59] Rae: To write chronologically. Yeah. Just in my experience,

[00:18:01] Rae: so you sit down to write each day. Do you work in scenes when you're doing your first draft or is it, I've got a 2000 word count and I stop on that 2000th

[00:18:10] Dervla: word. I pretty much I'm, I used to write in Scrivener and then I tried different things. I've gone back to just word and a basic, schedule of contents and I'm just writing it.

[00:18:20] Dervla: I have a big, my screen is, you would laugh, it's so cheesy. It's a big old tv. I've seen it on

[00:18:25] Rae: social media. It's huge. I want one.

[00:18:30] Dervla: So ridiculous. Honestly, it's an old high definition TV that we didn't use anymore and I was like, I'm not gonna go buy like a super duper apple screen. I'm just gonna stick this thing up and see how it works.

[00:18:39] Dervla: So I can see six pages of the manuscript comfortably at once and it's amazing. And I just. Write it like I'm reading it. So I guess it is scene work, but I'm structuring it with a chapter in mind, yeah.

[00:18:52] Rae: Okay. So you're not actually setting yourself, you've got an idea of the target of your words, but you're doing it in a

[00:18:58] Dervla: Yeah, I'll do, I'll write whatever.

[00:18:59] Dervla: I would like to hit at least two and a half a day, but I'm trying to be gentler about that and say, okay, if it's two, it's fine. Because I want to continue that organic feeling that this story is just telling itself and I'm not forcing it along. And I will rarely go under two and a half anyway, but I, something about just mentally telling myself it's fine if it's two, just relieves that sort of.

[00:19:21] Dervla: I have to push this feeling, which I, that

[00:19:23] Rae: half of writing, like just getting those voices, shushing them down so they can get on with the job at hand.

[00:19:30] Dervla: Exactly. Oh, imagine if you could control your mental space and just make a can. No one gave your shoulder we would write so many books, Ray.

[00:19:37] Dervla: We would write so many books. If you could just quiet those voices, just mute

[00:19:40] Rae: them. I just wanna mute them for a bit. So you write the book, you've done your first draft, then you move into editing. Do you prefer first draft or editing, or you like both for different reasons.

[00:19:54] Dervla: I think they're so different.

[00:19:55] Dervla: I like both for different reasons. I have to say the first draft is a romp it's fun. There's no one looking over your shoulder. You're, you're a long way off final deadline, so you're just writing the story and you're having fun with it. And then second draft, I don't mind either, because I'm looking for the good stuff and I'm still feeling reasonably enthusiastic about the book.

[00:20:14] Dervla: Around draft three, I start thinking, oh my God, what is this heap of crap? Nobody has ever written a worse book. And then once I get into editing with my editors. I don't hate it. I used to really love it and I was always very eager to get the editorial notes and very open to the critique. I think I've gotten a bit more delicate.

[00:20:32] Dervla: Like I, I absolutely recognize the value and I'm eager to be edited. I will never want to be one of those writers who thinks their writing shouldn't be edited. I absolutely, desperately need my editors, and they have made Nina what I think is a good book, and without them it would be very different. But I do find it hard now because I put so much into the book and that there is a couple of days where it's just a little tough and you just have to put on your big girl pants and deal with it,

[00:21:00] Rae: if you can recognize that, that it's hard when you get that feedback. But that's ultimately, that feedback's about building a better novel. But I think you also do need to give yourself that space of a little bit of a wallow, and then you put your big girl pants on. Yeah,

[00:21:14] Dervla: okay. Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:16] Dervla: I think you just need to remind yourself that you're human and that you've put your heart and soul into this thing and you've cried tears into these characters and they mean something to you and they feel real. I remember listening to a podcast where two screenwriters were talking about their work, and one of them very accomplished screenwriter was talking about the process of taking notes.

[00:21:33] Dervla: And he was like, for a writer, actually it was a recording where he'd been speaking to movie executives and he was trying to explain to them what it was like to get notes. And he was like, when you say to us I've gotta think of something ridiculous now, but that character Ray should have a cat instead of a dog, but she has a dog. Yeah. That's who she is. That's how it's, that's the world. It's not like these are not interchangeable things, yeah. She should be in love with Sam and not Blake, but don't you understand the relationship with Blake? You're changing something that to us feels real and that takes us a moment.

[00:22:07] Dervla: Not to say we don't, we shouldn't do it. Not to say we shouldn't be open to all critiques and like that are valuable and really put in the work to make the book and whatever it takes. Like I'll cut 40,000 words, whatever it takes to make the book work, I'll do it. Yeah. But you just need to give yourself 24 to 48 hours to feel the pain and breathe and then get on with

[00:22:26] Rae: it.

[00:22:26] Rae: And I suppose also face that this is no longer, that's the step where it no longer becomes just your book. Yeah. Isn't it? Like it becomes a, you are working in a team then and you're creating a very different. Piece of work. Whereas until that happens, it's all yours.

[00:22:44] Dervla: It's all yours. Yeah. And there are things you don't see clearly because you remember what went into the writing of them.

[00:22:50] Dervla: People say Kill your darlings. And it's about the, that, that win you had on that really tough day when you pulled off that end of that chapter or that really sharp line of dialogue you gave to someone, you thought, oh my God, that's the best bit of dialogue I've ever written. And maybe it is, but maybe it doesn't work in that chapter in this book.

[00:23:06] Dervla: And sometimes it takes an editor to see that and say it to you, and then it takes you a minute to recognize the truth of what they're saying, yeah,

[00:23:13] Rae: absolutely. Absolutely. How long did the first draft for what happened to Nina take

[00:23:21] Dervla: Ish? I can't remember. First drafts tend to be pretty quick for me.

[00:23:23] Dervla: I would say three to four months for a first draft. But that's the first draft. And I don't mean it's completely raw, like it's readable. It'll be a story that hangs together, but it's, for me that's really. Beginning, and I'm not saying I throw it out and start again. I don't, and some books hold together more than others, but I'm willing to go back to the beginning at that point.

[00:23:43] Dervla: So I don't know if that's equivalent to everybody's first draft. I probably am ready to share it with an editor after maybe seven months, eight months, something like that. Yeah. So

[00:23:54] Rae: you've done, you've what? Done another few? It's changed with each book. First book, I had five years to write it.

[00:24:00] Dervla: Yeah. Lots of stuff

[00:24:02] Rae: going on. Second book, I had a year from beginning writing it to getting it, out on the shelves. And then this next one, I'm taking a little bit more time, but I wrote the first draft quite quickly. Like it was, yeah, I think I did about 60,000 in a month and then I wow.

[00:24:18] Dervla: Did that feel good?

[00:24:19] Rae: It did because the story was coming. I think if the story wasn't coming, I'd have been stressed out of my mind trying to get that done. So now I'm in that draft of really learning what the story is, like really nailing that down. Yeah. And I wouldn't dare share it with anybody yet.

[00:24:36] Rae: Yeah. But probably another, yeah. Beginning of April I'll share it with my, yeah. My editor

[00:24:42] Dervla: And go from there. Isn't that the key though? Isn't that the, that's the gap I often find when I meet newer writers. They've broken their hearts to write a full manuscript, which is so hard to do. So many people start and don't finish.

[00:24:53] Dervla: So that is a massive achievement. And maybe they've done a second draft and they're tired. Yeah. And they want to move forward, which is very understandable. But like the further you get into writing, the more drafts you do. I sometimes think, or at least the more you recognize now I've got a story and it's good.

[00:25:09] Dervla: How do I make it better than good? And that's, yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:13] Rae: I'm very much in that place at the moment. Not sure I'm happy about being there, but

[00:25:17] Dervla: I'm there. It's the hard grasp, but it's so worth it.

[00:25:21] Rae: It is. And it is. And it really is. And the only way to get there is redrafting, redrafting, isn't it?

[00:25:27] Rae: Yeah. Yeah. So have you got any tips for writers about just getting that first draft on the

[00:25:31] Dervla: page? Jeep it's tricky because it depends on what kind of writer you are. We're, we all do it differently. I would say my first thing is try not to, do what works for you and what that will be will change.

[00:25:43] Dervla: By all means, read craft books. I still do take the inspiration that works for you, leave behind what doesn't be willing to change. My main bit of advice is not to get too distracted by the social media world and the pressure that's on new writers that a lot of new writers feel to have a presence and market their book before it's even written.

[00:26:04] Dervla: And the confusion about that, I just think it's a massive distraction. When I was starting, I had no social media accounts at all, and the pressure wasn't as big then as it is now. But it was there and I really did debate. Should I. Should I start Facebook again or should I, I hadn't had Facebook since I was in college and should I be doing this or that and the other.

[00:26:22] Dervla: And I just thought I've got two young children have a job I'm writing at night. I only have a couple of hours. I can either try and learn to be a decent writer or I can build social media and it was one or the other and I chose to write. I think that we see these people who are so talented at making video or just really good at connecting with people and they blow up on social media so fast and we think, oh man, that's what I should be doing.

[00:26:45] Dervla: Yeah, that's my job. I need to do that to get a deal. But these are the unicorns. Very few people have that natural ability or timing or luck that makes that happen, and we shouldn't look to those people and say, that's what we all need to do. If you're a writer, your job is to write, focus on your writing, be kind to yourself.

[00:27:04] Dervla: Don't put unrealistic expectations on yourself. And the thing I will say to you is. There is no better ambassador for your writing than your book. If you work your ass off and you write a really good manuscript and you send out to literary agents, you will get offers because they want clients.

[00:27:22] Dervla: And when that book goes out in sub, you will get offers from editors because publishers want good books. And when that book goes into the world, it will find people who love it. Not everybody's gonna love your books. If a hundred people read your book, maybe 40 will like it, but two people might fall in love with it.

[00:27:38] Dervla: Yeah. And those two people who want to tell everybody, and they're your ambassadors, so you, your book can reach so many more people than you ever could on social media. So put your heart and soul there is what I would say.

[00:27:52] Dervla: That's

[00:27:52] Rae: interesting. I would say that's not just for, aspiring writers, I would

[00:27:57] Dervla: say across board.

[00:27:57] Dervla: Yeah. I think it's, I'll be honest, that's what I'm telling myself these days, because there's pressure on all of us. It doesn't matter where you are in your career, social is a huge part of it, and I'm certainly active on social media, but I want to be the best writer I can be, and I have to recognize that it's just a distraction in a world, I don't know.

[00:28:17] Dervla: Roundabout of change. And the trends change every week and you can just run yourself ragged. Yeah. And there are also on

[00:28:24] Rae: only so many hours in a day. If you are using them on socials, although I'm going to say, I was gonna say it later, but I'm gonna say it now. Your social media is probably one of the best resources I've seen for writers, really.

[00:28:38] Rae: And any, honestly, if you're an aspiring writer, go to ER's Instagram page at dla. It is like just these ama a plethora of advice and tips both in her stories and her posts. And it definitely is worth a look. I've learned a lot from it. And just I think you had one today that said, write what is coming from you rather than having that voice over your shoulder.

[00:29:01] Rae: It was a really valuable quote. At any time in the process of just stop trying to write for what you think other people want. Tell the story you wanna tell.

[00:29:11] Rae: Yeah. Get the message across that you wanna tell. And that's what makes a powerful novel. I just thought so. There's tips like that all the time on a social

[00:29:17] Dervla: media. So it's, thank you. I look I love writing and I love to learn about writing and I love to read other writers and learn from them. And then I just wanna talk about it, so that part of it just comes very naturally because it's just endlessly interesting to me. Yeah. And I think that piece of advice, which I heard years ago, that write, I know we look, we've all heard it, write what, like it's such an old knot, but it's not about writing what you know, in the sense of oh, I was a lawyer, I'm gonna write about lawyers.

[00:29:40] Dervla: It's more only you. If we go to it's a natural thing as a starting writer to go to a bookshop and say, what's selling? I wanna be successful, so I'm gonna look at what's selling and I'm gonna try and write a book like that. It's never gonna work because what selling when you were in the bookshop will not be what selling in two years, first of all.

[00:29:58] Dervla: And secondly, it's gonna be a pale limitation because it didn't come from you. Only you can write the story that you care about. Your voice will come through. Like when publishers and editors talk about voice and starting writers go, what the fuck are they talking about? That's what they're talking about point of view that you care and your feelings and thoughts and ideas are like permeating every word of that book.

[00:30:21] Dervla: And you have a unique view of the world. Exactly. And you might write the, like we could, you and I could start with the exact same starting point someone could say to us. Okay. There is a retired detective walking down a country road in the UK and he finds a teddy bear missing an eye and there's bloodstain on the foot.

[00:30:37] Dervla: That's the starting point. Yeah. You and I would write completely different books, not just plot wise, but everything would be totally different.

[00:30:42] Rae: It's so funny 'cause this you, what happened to Nina is about a missing woman. My last book Dying to Know is about a missing woman, but they're totally books totally different.

[00:30:51] Rae: Yeah. And they're both exploring kind of the family reaction, but again, they're totally different

[00:30:56] Dervla: books. Different books. So feeling everything yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:00] Rae: Okay, let's move to back to what happened to Nina. There is so much to love in this book, but what ties it together? What kept me absolutely engaged was the fly in the wall style in which you wrote.

[00:31:14] Rae: I had insight into the experience and pain of. Each point of view character. And honestly, I felt like it was a masterclass in building empathy for unlikeable characters. Now, I mean that these are potential villains and through the course of the book, you built empathy for them and that, that's, I'm really interested in how you did that and how you develop the characters.

[00:31:38] Rae: Were they fully formed when you started writing, or did have to work

[00:31:42] Dervla: really hard on ease. It does a bit of there was a lot of hard work later on with voice because there's this, when you're writing, we've got two couples, and they're of a similar age though, very different socioeconomic background, very different personalities.

[00:31:55] Dervla: They're living in the same places. The risk that they're gonna sound alike. And they need to sound very distinctive. So even though they might be fully formed in my head, there's that technical challenge of getting them on the page that they sound and feel different to the reader. So

[00:32:06] Rae: is that something you did in editing, like in, in terms of the case,

[00:32:09] Dervla: their stage, some of the language?

[00:32:11] Dervla: Yeah. I had to work on a little bit just to, to make it very, a little bit sier. But the characters for me were very different from the beginning. I knew who Jamie was and I like Jamie, even though I fully recognize many people, won't I, like I did too

[00:32:26] Rae: by the end. And she, so she is Simon's mother and she goes all in on protecting her son who.

[00:32:34] Rae: Is questionable. Yeah. About, his behavior and yet she, there's no, holds Barr

[00:32:39] Dervla: there. And she's no shrinking Violet. And she's this young she's younger than her husband. Very attractive. But my God, she works at it. Fully anticipates that her husband's gonna leave for any day because he is a wealthy man.

[00:32:50] Dervla: And that's what they do in her circle. And she's taking steps to protect herself from that in her mind. Inevitable future. And that's I admire her hustle. Yeah. While recognizing her deep flaws, everyone is flawed,

[00:33:02] Rae: but I guess in the way in which we got to go into her head and see her image of what her life was, in many ways, crumble in a, as things started to go a different direction to what she was hoping.

[00:33:16] Rae: And each of the characters had that, like we learnt. We learn the flaws of the characters that we would usually align ourselves with. Who do things that you just like, wanna get them and shake them and go stop it. And yet they're in trauma. That's one of the things of dealing in the book, is how do you deal with trauma?

[00:33:35] Rae: How do you process it? How do you get on with day-to-day life? Yeah. Suppose I'm interested in, in, with the characters. So you ex you've got multiple points of view in the novel. Nina's parents, her sister Simon's parents, Nina herself, and they're all written in first person, but then you've added in the police detective and he's written in third person.

[00:33:59] Rae: Yeah. Was it that way from the very beginning?

[00:34:02] Dervla: Pretty much point of view. Yeah. Yeah. I had this sort of idea that. Both sets of parents, so almost slip into this alternate universe very quickly. Everything's unfolding over the course of a week. And the first steps that they take are not like, they're not necessarily, if you were in absolutely relaxed and chilled out and your time to consider your decisions, you may or may not take the steps they take, but in the circumstances in which they find themselves, it's reasonable to do what they do the first step on the path.

[00:34:35] Dervla: And then they each take, provoke by the other, take a second and third and fourth. And I think by the end of the week, they would not recognize the people that they've become. But we've been there with them on that journey. But they're living in this sort of. Parallel universe that is very close to reality, but not quite there.

[00:34:51] Dervla: I feel like it's almost like this sort of nightmare scape, and I wanted the p the police investigation is proceeding. The police just aren't sharing a whole lot with either family, and so the parents of Nina feel like nothing's happening. Parents of Simon feel this sense of doom over their heads and they're taking action accordingly.

[00:35:07] Dervla: And the police chapters to me are like a ticking clock of reality. Punctuating that as we go along and yeah, he was totally

[00:35:14] Rae: human as well as was his sidekick, who we don't hear from, but I wanted to hear from her

[00:35:19] Dervla: almost. But yeah, I like, I do I did write more with her, but she ended up in the coding room.

[00:35:23] Rae: Interesting. Because he still has that. Sometimes police get written or police procedures get written where you don't connect so much with their emotional journey on a case that is very disturbing. And you have that in there in him, even though it's in third person. But it was an interesting way of, I really liked the way that you brought us in very close in first person to the people whose lives were crumbling and you had the third person detective.

[00:35:49] Dervla: That's very cool. Thanks Ray. That's lovely to hear. Thank you. That's okay.

[00:35:51] Rae: So there were numerous themes in the novel, toxic relationships, victim blaming how far a parent will go to protect their child. But one that really stayed with me was your exploration of the weaponization of media. And.

[00:36:07] Rae: Both sides do it. And even the police, and they will use the media. But it was the weaponization that I just found shocking. And it wasn't that I didn't know that people get PR companies or whatever, but it really made me think about everything. I see.

[00:36:27] Dervla: Oh, I'm glad.

[00:36:28] Rae: That's great. And the presentation.

[00:36:30] Rae: So did you have that idea at the very beginning of the novel that you were gonna highlight that, or is that something that grew as

[00:36:35] Dervla: you wrote? I think it probably grew as I wrote. I was obviously looking at true crime as I wrote this book because it very relevant, Nina's case becomes one of these sort of viral cases that everybody's talking about.

[00:36:47] Dervla: And. And everyone has an opinion on, oh, everybody has an opinion on, and it's, I get it. But it feels like a reality TV show, we watch a reality TV show and the fun of it is the talking about it, the fun of it is being outraged at the stupid stuff people do and oh my God, did you see what you did?

[00:37:03] Dervla: But people who sign up for reality TV show, TV shows now largely know that's what they're getting and they're semi scripted and we know that, and we're all part of the game together. Yeah, we just suspend reality and we just go for it and it's fun. But we're now talking about true crime cases in the same way, like their light entertainment.

[00:37:20] Dervla: Oh. Like the victims and their families are characters in a story. Yeah. Like we get to accuse somebody one week and somebody else the next week and go, oh my bad. Maybe it wasn't the brother, maybe it was the uncle. And these are real humans.

[00:37:31] Rae: You've got a quote in there that they didn't see Nina or any of us as human beings, just as characters in a story they could use to sell.

[00:37:39] Rae: And oh my God, that was just nailed it for me. That, that, that idea that we put these people who are living probably the most traumatic time of their lives and they become characters not real. We, and we judge them and we, but assume we know things that we, I just, it was. A very strong part of the reading for me and it's stayed with me since I finished

[00:38:06] Dervla: it.

[00:38:06] Dervla: Thanks very much, Ray.

[00:38:07] Rae: Another thing you explored and often arises in your books is the power imbalances that are created through economic and class differences. Why do you think this is something that

[00:38:19] Dervla: you dig into? Because I'm Irish,

[00:38:22] Rae: I.

[00:38:25] Dervla: I think it is. I grew up, I was born in 1976 in Ireland, so I grew up in the eighties and early nineties when Ireland was still a very poor country. I grew up in Limerick for a few years when all the main streets were, most of the shops were boarded up and, it was very much a classless society.

[00:38:41] Dervla: Like it we all were the same. Everybody was the same. And that was just the way it was. And we like nobody, people had more than others for sure, obviously, but there wasn't this sense of class that there would've been in other. Countries, and people talk a lot about the American dream and social mobility, but in Ireland, that was real.

[00:39:02] Dervla: We all went to the same schools. There are very few private schools in Ireland. Everybody went to a public school. Everybody went to uni. If you wanted to go to university fees were very inexpensive by international standards. By the time I was in third year in university, college fees were for now free.

[00:39:16] Dervla: So you didn't have to pay at all. They weren't means tested, it was just free. It was that kind of society. But by the time my younger sisters were co going through university, things had already changed. The gaps were ri were widening rapidly. In an Irish culture.

[00:39:31] Dervla: And as the country got richer, the gaps got wider. And it's just always I guess maybe the age I am and having seen it happen firsthand and having seen the boom economy followed by the bust and everything, and the pain that certain people suffered, that other people did not have to suffer.

[00:39:46] Dervla: It's just on my mind, I guess it's something I think about. Look, honestly, I think money is the root of everything. Like in Ireland, we grew up with the troubles. There were reports every single night on the news when I was a kid, another bombing, another knee capping another something.

[00:39:59] Dervla: And I think that we finally were able to bring it to the peace process, in part because the Republic of Ireland got wealthier and people were less afraid of what they might lose. As we moved a little bit closer to peace, I think that, the, a lot of the problems we're seeing politically are due to people just not having enough.

[00:40:15] Dervla: And the gaps between the rich and poor getting ridiculous and unsustainable. And we just need a fair deal for everybody. And I think that's,

[00:40:23] Rae: I'm with you on that one. I'm with you on that one. I wanna touch on the prologue because prologues often get a bad rap. Yeah. And this prologue is a lesson in what makes a great prologue.

[00:40:35] Rae: It throws you straight into the action, delivers a really strong character who, like you said, we learn, we meet Nina in that very in the prologue, and then she's missing the rest of the novel. And you, I wanted, I wanted more from her, which is great. That's, and I think perhaps it also helped me really connect immediately or made me invest in a story that, that prologue.

[00:41:00] Rae: Good. So did that, did you start with writing that prologue? Yeah.

[00:41:05] Dervla: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Prologue has always been really important to me from the ruin. And I heard the same advice that you have no prologues ever. Yeah. But for me, it, with my first novel, the prologue was the heart of the story, and it was the beginning of everything and it felt.

[00:41:20] Dervla: Totally wrong to try to omit it and everybody liked it. And then I wrote the scholar and the first thing my editor said is, I think we need a prologue. I was like, okay. I guess I'm prologue girl. But there's something about that sort of exercise of just what's the heart of this story? What's the re what's it all about?

[00:41:39] Dervla: And just setting it all up and getting every bit you've got on the page in those, like I put everything I have into those first few pages. Yeah. I'm not holding back anything for later. Every single thing I've got in terms of heart and soul is going in there.

[00:41:52] Rae: You nailed it because you've said that it's about the heart of the story.

[00:41:56] Rae: It's not about. A backstory dump. No. Which I think is what happens with a lot of prologues. People think it's, oh, it's setting up the beginning of the story.

[00:42:06] Dervla: Yeah. No, it's, but it's

[00:42:07] Rae: setting up the heart of the story. Yeah. From reading that you know exactly where we are. Yeah. And it places you in that comfort place as a reader.

[00:42:15] Rae: Okay. I'm in good hands and I know where we're going. I don't know where we're going, but I

[00:42:19] Dervla: Have a feel for it if you feel confident. I thank you. I like what I'd say to other writers is people who are starting out with writing write your prologue. That's the info dump if you need to. Yeah.

[00:42:28] Dervla: Write whatever you need to write to get started. But you're gonna be cutting 40 pages and that's okay because you had to write those 40 pages to get where you're going. Absolutely. You need to start where the story is

[00:42:39] Rae: and look at that before you send it out to anybody. Oh yeah. Or have somebody else tell you, get a beat of reader and get them, say, actually took me 40 pages to get into it.

[00:42:47] Rae: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's, so I'm also interested in that prologue that you reveal much of what happened between Nina and Simon. Like of their relationship, the build in their relationship to the night where she went missing. And I think it, it's unusual in that, 'cause quite often writers will drip feed that bit of, those bits of information throughout keep you, I think they think it keeps you engaged in the mystery of the relationship.

[00:43:15] Rae: Yeah. And the what happened. But you chose not to do that. You chose to give us it, that information. Yeah. Right up front why

[00:43:23] Dervla: I'm interested, I think there were a lot of different ways I could have gone with it. And I think ultimately I wanted you to know Nina. And there was no way for you to know Nina without me telling you the truth.

[00:43:36] Dervla: You would've always wondered who she was if you hadn't seen the reality. And I didn't want you to have that wondering. The question isn't really about what happened to Nina or who Simon is. You're not sure about that after the prologue, but you're pretty close to shore. Like you're, you've got a theory and you're not far off.

[00:43:54] Dervla: It was more, the story after that is more about what happens with the parents and what are they gonna do and what's gonna happen when they do that thing. And it should, the pace should pull you along. But I, but the heart is Nina and I needed, I really just felt for so many women that, that these things happen to, we never get to hear their side.

[00:44:12] Dervla: We never get to hear from them. Sometimes we don't even get to hear their name. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted her voice to be heard. I wanted her to get a chance to speak and there was no way to do that. And without being honest, I think about what was their. Yeah. Okay.

[00:44:28] Rae: What do you want readers to take away from

[00:44:30] Dervla: the book?

[00:44:31] Dervla: Oh God. Do you know? Honestly, a bit of a be The truth always is I want you to have a good time, which sounds ridiculous when you're talking about a novel like this, about the description, read and murder. Yeah. But I really just want you to have a good time. If someone said to me, listen, I bought your book and I went home and I made a cup of tea and I curled up on the couch and I forgot where I was for four hours.

[00:44:51] Dervla: I'm ecstatic. That's what I want more than anything else, because that's all that books have ever been for me since I was a little kid. Nobody knew what I was reading or particularly cared because they didn't in those days, people didn't curate their kids' bookshelves. I just fell in love with books for the story and I still fall in love with books for the story.

[00:45:09] Dervla: And of course, you want something meaty to think about and chew on. 'cause that's part of the joy of the read. But mostly I want you to. Escape. And obviously there are things I really care about in this book as we've talked about the themes, but I'm not here to tell you how to feel about them. I'm just here to get you thinking about them, that's all.

[00:45:26] Rae: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'd like to move a bit into a bit more generally about your writing. I've really brief thing about your path to publication 'cause a lot of people will know it, but some won't. Particularly your first draft of the ruin and what you did, but.

[00:45:45] Dervla: Okay. So I wrote through, and gosh, I started writing seriously in 2014 when I made a commitment, a mental commitment that I was gonna start writing. You were a lawyer Previous, I was working in a kind of quasi-legal role. 'cause I was never qualified to practice here. I'd practiced in Ireland. I was working for the mental health commission at the time, and I started writing at night.

[00:46:03] Dervla: Every night, six nights a week, seven Thursday, we would take off and open a bottle of wine and then look, the book wasn't ready. I knew it wasn't really ready, but Manny writers who are oh, I wanted to be, I was looking around and I jumped on a Twitter competition, one of these Twitter pitch competitions where you had 120 carriages to pitch your book and the agents would go through the feed.

[00:46:23] Dervla: So I pitched the ru and one of the agents liked the tweet, so that meant I was invited to submit to them. It didn't really mean anything. I still went into the slush pile, but whatever. I sent off my 50 pages in my query letter and kind of forgot about it. Got on with life. But. Then in July of 2016, I was diagnosed with the brain tumor and it happened very much outta the blue.

[00:46:42] Dervla: I had no expectation that was gonna be the result of the test. I went in early on a Friday morning into the gp and she just gave me the news. I wasn't with her for very long. I think she might've been nervous too, looking back because it was a very quick consultation. But she ultimately said, look, this is something that is very dangerous and it needs, you need immediate surgery.

[00:47:01] Dervla: And she gave me the names of three neurosurgeons written on a yellow post-it note, I'll never forget it, and gave it to me and said, look, ring all of these surgeons and see whoever will see you first is who you need to see. So I was like, okay. So I went back out to the car. I was sitting in the car park in Osborne Park in Perth, and, i, my parents my parents-in-Law were staying with us. My, my husband's parents were visiting. The children were very little. I was like, I can't make these calls at home. The kids will be hanging off me. People be around. I need to start doing it here. So I started googling, looking up the numbers, and as I was Googling my phone buzzed with an email from that literary agent asking to see the rest of the novel.

[00:47:35] Dervla: And I'll never, it was, that's surreal. It really felt like a Truman show moment. This is just nuts. So I went home and I told Kenny, I took him upstairs, closed the room to our bedroom into a dressing room, closed the room. Okay. Good news and bad news. No, it's very cheaper. But there's also literary agent.

[00:47:53] Dervla: And it was a really weird few weeks because the first surgeon we saw, I saw an endocrinologist, I saw everybody was like, there's no option. This sur this tumor must come out. And then the first surgeon I said it was inoperable. And then it was another week before we could see the next surgeon.

[00:48:07] Dervla: And then we were set, scheduled for surgery and there were three, we had three weeks, so I had to get stuff organized at work and everything else. But honestly, I spent those three weeks on my laptop sending my book out to literary agents and preparing my husband for what might happen if he got responses.

[00:48:23] Dervla: While I was not in great shape, it was the best distraction and kind of positive forward looking thing I could do. It made me think about the future in brighter terms. I knew what the potential side effects of the surgery could be and I knew that I might not be in great shape, but I was like, maybe I will be.

[00:48:42] Dervla: And I was in hospital for about 11 days. Surgery was successful. I was in at home for about 10 or 11 weeks, recuperating, and it's a long slow. Slog getting better from that kind of surgery. But the first offer of representation came in about week six-ish, I think. And I was back at work when the book went out in Sub and I was with my lovely work colleagues when the offers started coming in.

[00:49:05] Dervla: And I had that moment that you dream about, as a writer where you're at work and publishers want to publish your book and you're talking to your agent. And my friend, my work colleagues were just as excited as I was and it was just, it's amazing. That's

[00:49:20] Rae: incredible. Deborah. I, yeah, I'm so sorry you went through that.

[00:49:24] Dervla: Oh, thank you.

[00:49:25] Rae: What a amazing time.

[00:49:29] Dervla: Incredible.

[00:49:30] Rae: It was a very weird time. Best and worst of

[00:49:32] Dervla: life, isn't it? All at the same time? It was, it, I think maybe that's why the whole early part of my publication journey always felt so surreal because it was surreal. I went to Melbourne and Sydney to meet the last two publishers, who were both wanted to publish. There were five or six who wanted to publish, but it came down to two and I got to go meet them. I was very nervous and I had no idea what happened in meetings like this or how I was supposed to behave. And I'm sitting there meeting editors and they're pitching themselves to me, and I'm like, what the fuck is happening here?

[00:50:04] Dervla: This is just, this is not real life. This isn't how this wor, I know how this works and it's not like this. And I'm sitting there going, did I am I still in hospital on morphine, fantasizing about all of this is really good. Morphine. Yes. Really good stuff because I, and I just don't think I said a word in those meetings.

[00:50:21] Dervla: I don't know how the offers survived them. And the whole first year, which went really well for me with the ruin. The first couple of years I think I just kept thinking, someday this is gonna begin to make sense. And I will, I'll sit down with a glass of wine and I'll celebrate it.

[00:50:34] Dervla: In the meantime, I'm just gonna keep doing whatever's asked of me. Next step. And it took a long time for reality to research itself. Wow.

[00:50:41] Rae: Wow. Okay. I'm going to, I'm gonna change direction. Why do you write crime

[00:50:48] Dervla: in particular? 'cause it's the best bit. It's everything. Like I, I remember we were living in this really shitty little rental house when I started writing.

[00:50:57] Dervla: And it was like this house, if you turned on the oven, the air conditioning switched off because the whole thing would trick. This is what it was like. And the kids were very little and I was working and, life was good, but busy and not always easy, but good. And I started writing and even though I was terrible, I would spend two hours to get 500 words and they would all have to be deleted.

[00:51:17] Dervla: They were just so bad. It took me a long time to start getting better. Oh God, it felt so good. Like it felt so good. And I remember going to the Margaret River Riders Festival at some point. It was the first time I'd been away for the kids, probably ever for a night by myself. And then Kenny came down the next night so we could be together and we had a babysitter.

[00:51:34] Dervla: And I remember meeting him, crossing the road and just being so filled up and just say, I don't care if I'm never published. 'cause if I get to do this, like I get to write stories and hang out with book people like. Jackpot. Oh, jackpot. And it still feels like that. There's nothing, like the feeling of writing when it's going well, like publishing, being published is amazing.

[00:51:59] Dervla: And I know how lucky I am. I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't matter. It's amazing to get to go on tour and do great events and stuff like, oh my God, it is amazing and it's great fun. But in terms of happiness and contentedness, all of that comes from the writing. And if I never was published again, I would still be writing.

[00:52:16] Dervla: I'll be writing when I'm 90 because it's where happiness comes from.

[00:52:19] Rae: Fantastic. Why crime?

[00:52:23] Dervla: What is it about that? It's what I was reading. Like I grew up reading fantasy right up until my twenties. Fantasy was my thing. And then at a certain point, I dunno if we just had a slow down in fantasy or new fantasy writers coming out, but I struggled to find new writers that I can fall in love with the same way.

[00:52:38] Dervla: I think Robin Hobb was probably the last for me for a while. And then I just found that what I was bringing home from the bookshop was crime. And I think it was because it offered me similar things to fantasy in that you had stakes that really mattered, that really impacted, and you had plots that moved along and story and God, crime can be everything and anything.

[00:52:58] Dervla: It's delivering on every level. And this is such a wide scope. And then the story I had to tell, like I had a fantasy novel in my head for a long time that it just didn't really know how to. Get started with it. And then the story of Modern Jack came to me and it was what it was. And I know this is gonna sound stupid, I didn't know it was a police procedural until my editor went, it's a police procedure and obviously it is.

[00:53:20] Rae: I had no idea I was writing crime with my first book, wrote what I wanted to write. Oh, it's crime novel. There you go.

[00:53:25] Dervla: That's it. I'm so glad that you're the same. I just think we write, we have to write and then people decide what it is and that's fine.

[00:53:30] Dervla: I'm fine with that. Yeah. Yeah. It needs a category for the bookshop, but I think we just need to write the best stories we can. Yeah,

[00:53:37] Rae: absolutely. You've moved from writing series to standalones how much have you had to adjust your writing process in that? I'll get to the audio books in a second but that 'cause the Cormack Riley series.

[00:53:49] Rae: And then you've moved to the murder rule and now what happened to Nina? Very different.

[00:53:54] Dervla: Yeah, very different. And I think really forced me to stretch myself as a writer because they're very different structurally and, tonally and all sorts. So to make those work, I really had to push myself hard.

[00:54:06] Dervla: And I really like that. I think it's made me, I hope it's made me a better writer. It's not that I don't wanna write series books again. I do. It's not that I don't wanna write another corm writing, I do. But it's just that I needed to go wherever the story was going to go and wherever the story juice was, and yeah.

[00:54:21] Dervla: And I feel that's what I did. So yeah, it was very different. But a fun challenge.

[00:54:25] Rae: Okay. All right. And then you've then written four audio First Audible, first novellas. How are there important differences or conventions that you've gotta do with that? Is it a different style of writing

[00:54:39] Dervla: to do audio first?

[00:54:40] Dervla: I think it a little bit in that I always, I just write the story first and then I do a pass where I'm thinking about it from an audio point of view. I've always read my books out loud, very late in the editorial process anyway. I think it's important for the rhythm to just feel where it's landing. But the audio books, I put extra effort into that.

[00:54:57] Dervla: And then I caught a lot of dialogue attributions and some work that you would go to give a tone to something. So I feel like we don't need as many. He, she, he said she sets when something's being read, narrated. And sometimes, particularly if you've got a really strong narrator, they can bring a lot to a story that you don't then need to, that you're putting belt and braces on if you're adding the text to explain.

[00:55:22] Dervla: So sometimes what I'll do is I'll remove something where. I'm not talking about he said angrily. I hope I'm not doing that much, but I might find a more indirect way of letting you know that he's, he is saying it angrily, whereas I don't need to do that if I have a someone who's going to effectively narrate it.

[00:55:37] Dervla: So I might put in square brackets. Like usually the story should, it should be implicit enough that the narrator will pick up what you're trying to do and run with it. But occasionally, if I think it's going to land better on the ear, I'll cut some text and I'll put in a little bit for the narrator to let them know what I was thinking in that moment.

[00:55:54] Dervla: And I always write a letter to the narrator beforehand, before I send it in explaining how I see the book and how I see the characters so that I don't know how useful, I'm told they find it useful, but maybe people are just being nice to me. Who knows? I just feel like that's interesting. I want them to have all that when they're going to it, because narrator makes or breaks an audiobook, oh, a hundred percent. I, I.

[00:56:15] Rae: Couldn't be more happy with the narrator of my books. And I guess in a sense I wrote a brief, but not at that level. 'cause I wasn't adjusting the novel to specifically to audio. Yeah, it just gets recorded as the book

[00:56:29] Dervla: and yeah. And that with the main novels, that's the same.

[00:56:31] Dervla: And I don't change anything. It's only for the novellas. 'cause like they're audible originals. They're for Audible. Yeah. How long were they in word count? Sorry? How long,

[00:56:39] Rae: sorry? How long

[00:56:40] Dervla: in word count are they? It depends. So the 30,000, 70,000, depending which one you look at. Okay. The story just sometimes just takes me where it wants to go.

[00:56:51] Dervla: But the, I don't wanna overplay it. Like I don't go bananas with the cutting and the editing and the narrator instruction. I wouldn't want to drive a narrator mad with over directing on the page sort of thing, but just where I feel like I. I'm over egging it with text and it would be better delivered through tone of voice.

[00:57:07] Dervla: Then I might pull back there

[00:57:09] Rae: because it's interesting 'cause it's a different kind of collaboration, isn't it? Yeah. Like we were talking about the editors earlier, and then this is another way that your story grows and changes. Yeah. With an editor a narrator's interpretation. Okay. So you're going on the publicity trail very soon.

[00:57:25] Rae: Do you write when you are on the publicity trail? Can you balance that or do

[00:57:29] Dervla: you Yeah, I often do. Do you because you are very busy all day. Okay. Part of it was probably, I probably feel less pressure to do it now because publicity is very intense now, but also my kids are older and I get more time at home that I can dedicate to writing.

[00:57:43] Dervla: When the children were littler, like they're 14 and 12 now when they were six and four. It is just hard. And if I'm a week away from my family, that puts pressure on my husband. It makes. Things harder for him. So I'm like, every hour that I'm away in a quiet hotel room is precious real estate.

[00:57:57] Dervla: Now I better make sure I use it. Yeah. So I wrote always on tour in the early days. Did you find

[00:58:02] Rae: a hard switching between the two? Like they're two different brains, aren't

[00:58:05] Dervla: they? Or you don't, they're very different brains, but I was very productivity minded. I've gotta hit that word count and I think I had to be in those days when the kids were little and I was trying to hold down a day job and it was just get it done.

[00:58:17] Dervla: And maybe I'm a bit too easy on myself now. I think sometimes, I give myself a bit too much leeway. But then again, publicity is very intense. Like I will probably land in a city. We might get to check into the hotel. We might not, we'll do eight or nine bookshop visits, then I'll do a day event, then I might do, get back to the hotel to eat and then do an evening event.

[00:58:33] Dervla: Then we'll fly the next morning. It doesn't leave a whole lot of time for recovery. I'm not gonna put pressure myself to write if it's that intense, okay.

[00:58:41] Rae: All right. I'm gonna do some rapid

[00:58:42] Dervla: fire. Okay. Oh God, no. These are good. So writing, do you write in silence or with music? A bit of both.

[00:58:49] Dervla: Okay. Do

[00:58:50] Rae: you the music, does it have words in it or is it,

[00:58:52] Dervla: oh, it's usually classical. Yeah. I'm the

[00:58:55] Rae: same. Clean desk or messy desk Clean. Do you have a thinking place? 'cause writing a book is a lot about process.

[00:59:04] Dervla: Walking probably Walking, yeah,

[00:59:07] Rae: walking. Have you got two dogs?

[00:59:09] Dervla: Three Yes.

[00:59:09] Dervla: Two dogs, yeah. Two.

[00:59:12] Rae: What are you reading now?

[00:59:15] Dervla: Oh, I have been judging, I've been judging a competition this year, so I have been reading endless competition. Fair enough. And I've just finished, so actually I am reading something already, which is a Chuck Wendi book on writing. And the tagline is How to Write without Destroying Yourself.

[00:59:32] Dervla: Gentle Writing Advice. And it's. Fabulous so far. I'll send you a, I'll send you a link. It's

[00:59:37] Rae: really good. I'd love that. That'd be amazing. Is there a book you recommend to everybody?

[00:59:43] Dervla: Gosh, yeah. There are books I recommend that don't always land, but the audience I'm recommending them to, but I do recommend them.

[00:59:49] Dervla: There's some amazing novels. One of my favorites is, two of my favorites actually are both Stephen King books. One is Lacey's story, which I adore. And I think of it as this beautiful story of a marriage, but I recommended it to my book club friends and they were horrified with the violence.

[01:00:04] Dervla: So it depends what you're into. Again, as a crime novel and if you're into crime, I think this book is an absolute masterclass. It's the Outsider by Stephen King, but. It is horrifically violent. There's a scene with a little boy in the beginning, and you don't want to be someone going in there raw because it's very hard, but it is exceptional writing.

[01:00:24] Dervla: That's amazing. Anything by Karen Slaughter. I will find me first at the bookshop to grab those things. There are so many. So many. Okay.

[01:00:31] Rae: All right. Biggest influences on your writing?

[01:00:36] Dervla: It was everything. Everything I could get my hands on. Every book I've ever read that has, I've just inhaled, the, just the lifeblood. What's the

[01:00:43] Rae: best of writing

[01:00:44] Dervla: life? Just that cup of tea in the morning when the house is quiet and your hands are on the keyboard and you're either smiling or crying, but you're feeling everything and it feels alive, and that's pretty amazing.

[01:01:00] Rae: What about the most challenging part of writing

[01:01:02] life?

[01:01:04] Dervla: That editorial letter Day one.

[01:01:06] Rae: Yeah,

[01:01:09] Dervla: day one of the edits. But by, by day 10, it's amazing and it's come to life again and it feels so exciting. 'cause you're seeing the book in a whole new way and you're collaborating and it's awesome. I don't want to make editing sound awful as well.

[01:01:21] Dervla: Oh yeah. There's amazing

[01:01:22] Rae: moments where they've said something to you and you go, there's no way I can do that. And then you find the solution and you're running around the house. Exactly.

[01:01:32] Dervla: It's the best. And you're sharing it with other people and it's amazing. It's just the first 48 hours that are hard.

[01:01:38] Dervla: Yeah. Give yourself

[01:01:39] Rae: that. Be kind to yourself for that. Yeah. Yeah. Best bit of advice you were given that you've never forgotten and has helped you achieve your writing Dreams.

[01:01:47] Dervla: Oh gosh. I don't know. That's really tricky. So much advice I've picked up over the years has come from books, reading Stephen King's on writing and other writers talking about their love of story and why they do it and how they do it.

[01:01:59] Dervla: But I don't know if that if that advice really landed with me when I read it. I read on writing and I remember Stephen King going, I can't remember what advice he was giving, but it was really good advice. But at the time I remember rolling my eyes going, that's easy for you to say Steven.

[01:02:11] Dervla: It didn't mean much to me until later and I got a bit further along and it all started to slot together. So it came, the best advice has come from lots of different people, but people have been very kind to me over the years. I think of Louise Penny. I did an event with Louise at Adelaide Writers Festival, my very first, timeout.

[01:02:29] Dervla: And we were sitting on a stage with 300 people in the audience. 'cause it's Adelaide and 'cause it's Louise and I'm there like this chirpy little dingdong here. What's happening? Why am I here? And she was so kind to me and so supportive and generous and I'll never forget that. And I remember she said to me, this is the best piece of advice I ever got to have that.

[01:02:50] Dervla: But she said, actually, I didn't get this advice. I overheard it being given to someone else, but I took it with me. And she said, it's don't ever try to sell your book to people. Just be yourself. If they like you, they'll like your book. And in a way that took a lot of pressure off because it meant there is no one way, there's no right way.

[01:03:09] Dervla: There's no song and dance you're supposed to do. Just be who you are, live your life. Write the best books you can and hope that, and trust that it will work out from there. You seem to follow

[01:03:18] Rae: that. It sounds very poll. No, you seem to follow that through your whole process though.

[01:03:22] Dervla: Just be you and writing.

[01:03:23] Dervla: I'm getting there. This has been a journey, right? Yeah. Wrong. A lot. A lot of times along the way. But I hope I'm getting there now.

[01:03:29] Rae: Can you talk at all about what you're writing next? Or would you rather not do

[01:03:32] Dervla: that or. It might be a little early. That's cool. I have a few different things that's, but it's something that's progressing very well, but it's probably a little early to talk about that one.

[01:03:40] Dervla: No

[01:03:40] Rae: problem at all. I get in trouble. Finally, it would be remiss of me not to ask Pam's favorite question for writers. What is at the heart of your writing, what ties your nine novels together? Oh, wow.

[01:03:54] Dervla: I don't know the answer to that question. People talk about themes of brothers and sisters a lot appear in my books, and as you've mentioned, class differences and power appear in my books.

[01:04:04] Dervla: So I think if I was to say there's any theme, it's possibly the latter, the imbalance and the destruction of wealth and how it impacts our societies possibly.

[01:04:16] Rae: But on a personal level. You personalize it in humanize for me. Yeah. No, I mean for your characters

[01:04:23] Dervla: it'd be, yeah. Yes. For, exactly. It's not, they're not, it's not nonfiction and it's not at a distance.

[01:04:29] Dervla: It's really up close and personal. I just think that's what, that's the role fiction plays. It allows us to feel things for people that we might dismiss because they're different from us. Yeah. We walk a bit closer in their shoes.

[01:04:42] Rae: I've so enjoyed chatting with you, dla. I too. Thank you for sharing so much.

[01:04:48] Rae: Huge congratulations on what happened to Nina and I can't wait for your next book. No

[01:04:53] Dervla: pressure. Thank you. Thanks, Ray. It's been a joy to speak to you today. Thanks so much for your time.