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This episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features my interview with crime writer Lucy Clarke.
Among other things, we discuss her latest novel, One of the Girls.
Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.
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Download a copy of the PDF transcript of this episode here.
Debbi (01:46): Hi everyone. Our guest today is the author of seven psychological thrillers. One of them THE BLUE is currently being made into a seven-part TV series on Paramount+. Her latest novel is ONE OF THE GIRLS. I’m so pleased to have with me today. Lucy Clarke. Hi Lucy. Thanks for being here.
Lucy (02:09): Thank you for having me. It’s wonderful. And this is my publication day itself for ONE OF THE GIRLS. So it’s extra special to be talking to you today.
Debbi (02:19): It’s extra special to have you on. Thank you. I was just looking over your books and based on their descriptions, I had to think it’s a sub genre called things that can go way wrong on your vacation. <Laugh>
Lucy (02:33): <Laugh> I think that is about right. <Laugh>
Debbi (02:39): Yes. You focus a lot on travel. Do you travel a lot?
Lucy (02:44): I do. I love to travel. Before I had children, I spent the 10 winters abroad traveling all over the world in Australia and Canada and around Europe. Yeah, and I just find it really something that I loved on a personal level and I find it really brilliant for writing as well. And I set all of my books in typically sort of exotic locations or just somewhere, yeah. Somewhere where I take my characters outta their ordinary lives at home. And I am interested to, by displacing them somewhere else, how that new place affects them and whether they flourish or founder. And that’s one of the questions I, I like to explore and ask in, in my writing,
Debbi (03:38): That’s a great way of looking at the storytelling taking them out of their ordinary lives. And it’s the second time in two weeks that I’ve heard a person describe their writing as taking people, putting people in extraordinary circumstances.
Lucy (03:55): Great.
Debbi (03:55): So, right. So that’s kind of an interesting thread that kind of ran through both interviews that I just did anyway. <laugh>
Lucy (04:07): I feel like, you know, we all think we know our ourselves very well, but if you are tested, if you are put in those extraordinary circumstances, I’m really interested to see how people react and, and would you react in the way you might imagine? And I think that makes really interesting fiction as well as reality. And so I think using place as a tool for being instrumental in those extraordinary circumstances can be sort of a helpful way into exploring that.
Debbi (04:37): That’s a great insight. Thanks. Tell us a little about your latest book. What is it about and who is it about <laugh>?
Lucy (04:46): Okay, well, I have it here. ONE OF THE GIRLS.
Debbi (04:49): Beautiful cover.
Lucy (04:51): Thank you. I really love, I really love the cover. They’ve done a fabulous job at Putnam. So the premise in simple is six British women go to a beautiful Greek island for a long weekend to celebrate Lexi who is getting married and in England, we call it hen weekend. And I believe in the US, it’s bachelorette party and they arrive in Greece, six, very different women, all from facets of Lexi’s life that reflect different parts of who she is now. And some know each other. Some don’t. The stage is sort of set for this beautiful weekend away, except we know very early on that there’s going to be a death and we don’t know who is going to be, and we don’t know who is going to be the killer, except that is one of the women. So that is the premise. So it’s sun-soaked menace.
So the premise in simple is six British women go to a beautiful Greek island for a long weekend to celebrate Lexi who is getting married and in England, we call it hen weekend. … The stage is sort of set for this beautiful weekend away, except we know very early on that there’s going to be a death and we don’t know who is going to be, and we don’t know who is going to be the killer, except that is one of the women.
Debbi (05:55): I’ve started it. And I love it’s told from differing perspectives and it’s very intriguing and very compelling reading from the start.
Lucy (06:05): Thank you. I think having the multiple viewpoints of the six women is just a really good way to kind of dive deep, straight into their psychology and their inner worlds. So that you don’t know, it’s not that you don’t know who to trust because I think in a way the women are hopefully likable, but flawed and messy. And parts of them, of course, you don’t like, but I think the multiple viewpoints just gives that equal balance to the story. And so we’re kind of left questioning the whole time, you know, who, why, what happened? So as one question is answered, another is asked
Debbi (06:46): You must work a lot on the backstories of each of the characters before you start writing.
Lucy (06:52): I do typically in most books, I normally have character biographies. With ONE OF THE GIRLS, I had a really crazy writing experience, which I’ve never had before. Which I’ll tell you about, because it was been very unusual for me. I’m, I’m a plotter typically. So a novel would take me typically 18 months to write and I would plot it out and plan it for maybe three months and then start writing and layering in later drafts. With ONE OF THE GIRLS, I actually wrote this novel during our first lockdown in the UK. And I found what was going on globally, really overwhelming, like so many people. So I decided to come off social media and stop listening and watching the news cause I found it too much. And I thought, you know, in terms of like my writing, where do I, where do I want to be?
I normally have character biographies. With ONE OF THE GIRLS, I had a really crazy writing experience, which I’ve never had before. Which I’ll tell you about, because it was been very unusual for me.
Cuz this world is really scary. And I decided I wanted to be in Greece with six girlfriends, even though I’m locked down in my house, that’s where I’m gonna travel to in my head. So I planned the novel for two days. I decided Greece, six women, a hen weekend, four nights, let’s go. And I stepped into the first character’s voices knowing very little about the, that it was Lexi. She used to be a dancer and now she’s a yoga teacher. Let’s see what happens. And I began writing and I wrote a first draft of ONE OF THE GIRLS in 17 days and a normal novel would take me eight months to do a first draft of, and the words just came fast and fluid and without character biographies. And I felt like at the end of that draft, I knew those characters far better than I would know, characters a year in, in other novels I’ve written. It was just a really crazy experience for me and, and easily the most joyful writing experience I ever had.
Debbi (08:45): And isn’t it interesting that it took place when you were not paying attention to social media or the news?
Lucy (08:51): Exactly. Yeah. And I wasn’t on WhatsApp. I just closed everything out apart from just, like I have two young children and a husband and we are in our house together and I only had the mornings to write cuz then I was homeschooling in the afternoons, but just that light going inward closing out the noise and distractions was was amazing, amazing in terms of like my productivity. So, and I tried to recreate it since. I failed miserably. I thought like, this is it. I have like found the money ticket to writing a book. You know, this is the way tried to sort of recreate the conditions in a non pandemic sense, but by closing off social media and, and emails and stuff, but just couldn’t quite access it in the same way. So I don’t know if it was the story or if it was the pandemic or whatever it was, but something, something worked. <laugh>
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S. 8, Ep. 3: Interview with Crime Writer Lucy Clarke