Adele: I think it’s a really important thing in life, admitting to yourself that you do things that are not up to scratch and that’s okay. And I think that’s obviously the whole point of your podcast. You know, there are things that we didn’t, that didn’t reach its full potential, and maybe that’s fine because we’re just learning from them.

And learning is all part of life. Everything can’t be perfect straight away.

Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Shavin and this is the Offcuts Drawer, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life here, the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity paved the way to subsequent success.

My guest on today’s episode is Adele Parks, MBE, born in North Yorkshire. Adele is the author of 24 novels, including several Sunday Times Bestsellers and her 25th novel. Our Beautiful Mess is published this summer. Her books have sold over 5 million copies in English and been translated into a further 31 languages.

She’s also written for national newspapers and magazines and served as executive producer on a feature film, an adaptation of her novel, the image of you. And added to that, Adele is also an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust and the Reading Agency, and in 2022 she was awarded an MBE for services to literature.

Adele Parks, welcome to the Offcuts Drawer. Hello. 25 novels in 25 years. That is so impressive and must be very organized. Do you have an end plan though? Do you have like a magic number you are aiming for? Do you know?

Adele: I don’t, which I, I, I’ve struggled a bit this year ’cause this year is 25 and 25 and I have been very focused on 25 in 25, and now I’m going, oh.

So now I’m doing 26. And then I suppose 27th, what come, you know, when is the end game? But I suppose at some point there will be an end game. But um, but I feel 25 and 25 years I should be quite happy with. I shouldn’t overanalyze.

Laura: It’s like the wedding anniversaries, isn’t it? So this would be your silver novel?

Yes. And if you make it to 50, it’ll be your golden novel. I’m not very clear about the ones in between things like, well

Adele: hilariously, the proof for this 25th one was this beautiful golden cover and I sort of said, oh, don’t you think it should be a silver cover? ’cause it’s 25. And then we all looked at each and thought.

There’s no way I’m gonna get to 50. So we were, yeah. No, gold’s good. Gold’s great.

Laura: Right. Well, let’s kick off with your first off cut. Can you tell us, please, what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Adele: This is an outtake from my 2020 novel called Both of You.

Actor 1: At the bar. Everyone had been so shiny and groomed, way more groomed than she remembered.

People being in her day, men in her day smelt their clothes were awful. Checked shirts, red trousers. Still, she had fancy to fair few attracted to their wiffy pheromones. Despite the challenge, sartorial sense, she really resented getting old because amongst other things it meant she fancied no one and was fancied by fewer Still.

Women weren’t as well groomed back in her day then neither her day. Oh my God. But then she thought, and she hoped, this wasn’t just wishful thinking. She thought maybe they talked about bigger things and they had more fun. They were more sincere. Jesus. If that thought ever drifted onto paper out of her head into God forbid her voice box, they’d make mince meat out of her.

The careful emotionally vulnerable. Millennials and Zeds were so easily upset. But they had, it was true. They had more fun and they spoke about bigger stuff. They were their authentic selves, although the wanky phrase hadn’t been thought up, the only time the word authentic was used was in conjunction with antiques.

That’s how authentic they were. This station Waterloo had witnessed some of her most drunken dreadful moments. Some, not all. It would be hard to prioritize and categorize her drunken moments. There had been a few, but then again, too few to mention, sorry, outdated reference. Frank Sin er, if you’re interested.

Hell of a voice. She didn’t believe that talent had stopped. She’d never say they don’t make ’em like they used to because they did. There were numerous incredible singer songwriters, young enough for her to have given birth to. They could hold a candle up to Sinatra if they’d been given years and years of support.

But no one was Nowadays, they weren’t even given 15 minutes of fame, just three or four. It was reflecting on it impossible, probably to find your true, authentic self in three or four minutes. When she was 21, she’d been at no fixed abode. Now they’d call her homeless. They’d say she was sofa surfing at the time.

She just knew she was okay. If she could sleep on the sofa of a friend with more money or experience, it wasn’t great. It did affect her mental health, but again, that’s not how they described it. Then she was just seen as weird, bonkers, highly strung, maybe on a good day, creative.

Laura: This reads very scatterbrained to me. The, the character’s always digressing. Is that the character in the book or was it the way you put down all your thoughts as they occur to you and then you tidy up later? I mean, whose voice is it? Is that yours or is it the character’s voice? Do you

Adele: know this character and the reason this isn’t off cut.

She never appeared. It never happened. No. Um, yeah, she didn’t, this isn’t the character that ends up in the book, but she was my starting point. So yeah, there was so much, so much in that. It’s really interesting to listen to it because. Pretty much none of that gets in. First of all, she sounds as though she’s in her fifties.

That character, both of you. Character is in her forties, so she’s a good decade younger, so a lot of that is irrelevant ’cause she is a millennial. But it was the first. I quite often start writing or think of my book whilst I’m still coming to the end of the book before. And I remember being in Waterloo Station and watching a whole bunch of.

Mostly women. I mean, men were there, but I tend to focus on what women are up to. Uh, saying goodbye to their friends, saying goodbye to their lovers, getting on trains, saying hello to all those people coming off trains. So there was a sort of stream of consciousness going on and I was definitely looking at it, but I.

Was already trying to feel a way into a character who did have some kind of emotional instability and physical instability. You heard straight away that she sofa surfed. In the end, the character and both of you, and I’m really talking around this ’cause I’m really trying not to give a spoiler, but. She’s as mad as a box of frogs in some ways.

Sorry, very terrible thing to say, but I don’t think I’m offending any books as frogs yet. But she has a very deep rooted problem, uh, she goes missing in this book. And there are two women that go missing in this book and, and both of them are very deep rooted problem. I was feeling my way into that.

Laura: So you didn’t have an equivalent of her then?

You didn’t go, well, I’m gonna make her 10 years younger and have a different name. But it’s

Adele: No. Do you know, in fact, she didn’t become Art. She was a management consultant, one of them. And the other one was a sort of woman who’d married well about married a younger man. So didn’t work at all. But both of them were incredibly organized.

The only thing they had. In common with this character is they had, as I say, some emotional instability in their early part of their lives. So they were still reacting to that, and I would say that was the only thing they had in common really.

Laura: So are you not tempted to maybe sort of put her aside and then drop her into another?

Adele: Do you know? Many, many of my characters in my books are. Slightly bonkers. And I think that was, Hmm. Uh, well, you know, it makes a good psychological thriller to have a, a unstable narrator. I mean, it does. And I, I think at the time with both of you, I wanted to move away from that. But I have written a woman since that I think could be this woman.

I don’t think she is to be abandoned. I think there’s a lot of ideas and a lot of people in my head that may or may not come out in the future. And, and I like her. I like that stream of consciousness. She’s like a, a sort of slightly mad, low down at heel Mrs. Dalloway, isn’t she just out there saying her thing?

Laura: Well, I was reading it going, this is like everyone I know Yeah. People, people of a certain age. Um, just go, yeah, that’s basically, that could be me. Well, time for another off cut. Now. Tell us about this one, please.

Adele: Well, this one it’s called the warning and it’s a short story I wrote when I was 12 in 1981.

Actor 2: Don’t be daft. Chris, you don’t want to go in there. Yes, I do. Why? I wanted to read my cards. You know, tell me if I meet a tall, dark stranger. They began to giggle. Then as Chris was so headstrong, she went along in inside the stage green caravan. It was dark. In the center of the room, there was a round table with a green and white spotted tablecloth.

At the back of the table, a woman with jet black hair sat. She frightened. Chris, sit down child. Don’t be scared. The fortune teller spoke in a clear voice. I’m not scared. Chris tried to be as confident as she sounded. The fortune teller chuckled. Chris, how’d you know my name? Chris asked. Again. The fortune teller chuckled, but did not reply.

Child, the fortune teller continued child. I cannot answer your question because all I see on the cards is one thing. What is it? Death Chris let out a whimper despite herself. Your death where when? I can’t say exactly, but child, be careful of the number. 8 0 1 and the color red. This is my warning. Chris didn’t listen to anymore.

She ran. Ran out of the caravan. Straight into Sue. Hey, what’s the hurry? I’ve just been on the eggs with You’ll never guess who? Steve Carter Sue walked briskly in the night air. Hey, is there anything wrong? What did the fortune teller say? Oh, nothing much. Just that I’d meet some guy. It’s probably Steve.

He’s asked us around his house tomorrow to play some records. That’s nice. Hey, I thought you’d be thrilled, ecstatic, or at least pleased. I’m said Chris, and normally she would’ve been. The next day was Saturday. Chris woke up and looked at our clock, nine 20. Heck, she’d have to hurry. She was meeting Sue at 10.

Chris dashed out of our house, bang, splat into Sue. Hi. Hi. I’m sorry I’m late, but don’t worry you’re not. They walked and talked as they set off towards Steve’s. This is, it said Sue with a grin. Chris looked up the steps at the red door with a brass. 8 0 1 hung above the letter box. The fortune teller’s warning came back to her.

Beware of the number 8 0 1 and the color red. Chris began to run. Chris, come back, Sue, yelled, frantically, look out. But Sue’s yelling could not be heard above the noise of the traffic. The young girl had no chance. The driver of the red bus number 8 0 1 couldn’t stop

Adele: laughing so hard right now.

Laura: Um,

Adele: yes. I didn’t really get the brief on this. I really, that’s not showcasing my best work is it? That is just giving everybody a big giggle. But

Laura: this is really important ’cause this is what you were writing at. 12, there’s not many 12 year olds that will be able to write something quite as coherent and complete and, um, with a twist at the end, or two twists as it turns out.

Very, I impressive that double twist. Double twist. I’m always,

Adele: I still do a double twist. Uh, maybe Do you think I read it squirming because I’ve always thought. I was a good writer and always thought it was my thing at school, and I found this in an excise book, and I just thought it was really funny because I didn’t think it was very good.

When I look back, I think my 12-year-old son probably wrote better. He’s not 12 now, he’s 24 now, but I think when he was 12 he was writing way better than that, but I might inflated ego with the distance of past. I thought I was great and looking back at it, no, not that great. Average.

Laura: Oh, I dunno. Well, I think you’re probably comparing your 12-year-old self.

Thank you. And what you know today to be good writing and, and you can pick out points that are maybe false with a, a weakness maybe. I mean, my only issue is it with, it was possibly that you’ve never been to a fortune teller before, because that’s not generally how they operate. Sense. They don’t tend to say things like, I see one word death and can you imagine?

Adele: So adorable. Dramatic, isn’t it? You know, it’s got everything in there. There’s a romance, there’s a bus, there’s a fortune tell of everything’s going on. I mean, that could be, that could be several short stories, really, couldn’t it? Yeah.

Laura: I was impressed with that. I thought you, you sent it to me to go Look, look, see how clever I was when I was young.

Adele: Oh gosh. No. But I suppose it did point out that I always wanted to be a writer. Yes. Well, I was gonna ask you. I really always did. Yeah.

Laura: What were you like at school? Were you really good at English, et cetera?

Adele: I was. I was good at. I tried. Yeah. And

Laura: were you good at everything or just was English clearly the way forward?

Uh, well

Adele: even English wasn’t clearly the way forward ’cause I’m dyslexic. Oh. So I think I had lots of imagination and I had a fair amount of confidence and I liked school and I liked my friends and we had a good giggle, but I think it came back over and over again ’cause I hid it very, very well. You know, I was clever enough to be able to hide it, so I did hide my dyslexia.

I didn’t even know I had dyslexia. I just thought I was really, really rubbish at spelling out. My di dyslexia wasn’t um, diagnosed until I was 21, about a month after I’d graduated. Oh, right. So I just. Spent a long time thinking, why doesn’t it stick with me the way it does with other people? And I just put it down to my northernness that people would say, spell it, how you say it?

And I thought, well, I have, I just have said it. But it said, uh, how I speak was different to a lot of other people. I was then meeting who had sort of queen received English, and I absolutely didn’t because there was all of that going on. And actually, the other thing about dyslexia, people think, oh, it’s about bad spelling.

And it, it’s that it’s not, it’s not just about that. It’s so complicated and so confusing, and you don’t know why you’re not like anyone else. And you don’t understand why you might have known something the minute it was being taught to you. You really got in, you really understand it. And then when you try and write it down or explain it back to someone, you can’t.

Laura: Mm.

Adele: And that was all part of it. Um, and my left and right was very bad and lots of things were confusing for me. But on the other hand, I do to this day now believe that my dyslexia. Helped me think around things more creatively and made me who I am. So I’m actually very grateful that I had it. But going back to the question of how did I do at school, I would say I was a mixed bag.

’cause I could go. To one exam and get the highest mark in the class quite comfortably, and I could go again to another exam and get the lowest mark in the class quite comfortably, depending on how stressed I was and Oh, really? Okay. How the dyslexia was kicking in and Yeah, so I wasn’t. Particularly consistent, but I tried so hard that it tended to get me quite far, you know, the kid in the class that underlined everything and put borders around everything and drew little pictures and um, you know, and I did that with all my English story.

I really liked art as well. So I did that with all my English, uh, homework assignments. It was illustrated. I tried so hard. I actually am quite good at. Mass. Mm-hmm. Um, sport was a real letdown for me. I hated sport and I was really bad at that. But you know, I was at a local comp where sport was sort of two hours a week and nobody cared.

So you could get away with not being good at sport in my school.

Laura: Well, listen, 25 books in 25 years, we are not worried about whether you’re good at netball. Exactly. That’s not an issue. Right. Well, moving on now. Let’s have your next off cut, please.

Adele: Uh, this is from 1988 when I was at university, and it is a clip from my second year dissertation.

Actor 3: Seduction is a theme which recurs in literature. Psychoanalytic and feminist critics argue that in literature, whether the woman is the seducer or seduced, she’s portrayed as more sinful than the male protagonists. Critics suggest Adam and Eve precipitated a literary tradition, which mistrusts women. The female seducer Seducable is condemned as unnaturally, aggressive, and simultaneously ruined.

Where did these stereotypes originate from? What is their purpose? I have decided to carefully examine four female literary characters who were subjected to the temptation of seduction. The characters are Middleton’s Beatrice from the Changeling. 1622 Milton’s Eve from Paradise Lost 1667 and Richardson’s Pamela 1740 And Hardee’s Tess from Tess of the Villes 1895.

The genres play epic poem. Epistolary novel and novel are unified by the aspects of the archetype seduction, which they have in common. Seduction is physical and spiritual. To seduce is to lead astray, tempt into sin or a crime. Corrupt persuade a person into abandonment of principles, especially chastity or allegiance, persuaded by tempting ness or attractiveness.

All the women are seduced either physically or spiritually. They are all part of a triangular relationship of one female, two males. All texts depict several seductions. The texts are written by males primarily considering a female point of view. I wish to consider if surface similarities justify the claim that the Biblical Eve as archetypal seducer is perceptible in all sexually subverting females, and why these common elements reoccur in the fallen woman myth I.

Laura: Fun stuff there.

Adele: Yet again, I’m cringing. As I say, I didn’t realize the brief was to put me in a good light. This is definitely not doing that.

Laura: No, no. This is, again, it shows that you have a serious academic background. You gave it some serious thought. Were you doing English at university? It sounds like you were.

I was, but English was your degree. Where were you? Where did Le you go? Lester? And how did you find university? Were you very social or were you sort of cloistered away being academic? What kind of teenager were you?

Adele: Uh, I was very social. I was very, very social. Yeah, I was very, very social until the final year really, when I thought I better do some work.

But I’m laughing a lot at the ambition of that, you know, four genres, three centuries, all the great works. Oh, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna do them all. I’m gonna do them all. I think, um, what that shows is I didn’t know how much. I didn’t know. And I think that was quite interesting about me ’cause I, you know, first generation university and all of that.

So I really didn’t know what to expect And um, I actually, and this is, I’m just telling you all my failures all at once, but I had applied to university the way everybody does through uh, you know, through in those days cca. Mm-hmm. And I’d have five rejections which nobody could understand because I was, you know, I dunno, I’d done gold dv You predicted to

Laura: get AS and stuff I imagine?

Yeah, and I’d done

Adele: gold DV. You know, done, um, a student, sorry, gold Duke of Edinburgh. Yeah. Who did the gold Duke. Oh. Oh goodness. And I did student governor and I was, I was as swaty as they got in our, in our little comp, you know, and you

Laura: got five rejections. How did that that happen? And I got five rejections.

Adele: Well, how it happened, well, first of all, if you remember back, you, in those days, you hand wrote your replication and I’m dyslexic, and they didn’t know. So it will have been littered with mistakes. Mm-hmm. You know, we didn’t pick up on. Mm-hmm. But secondly, because I had no idea how university worked, I thought she went there to learn things.

Now I understand that’s not necessarily always the case. So I knew I wanted to do English, but I thought, gosh, this would be a great opportunity to learn something new as well. So maybe if I went to York, they’re really good at music, I could do English and music, and if I went to Warwick for example, I could do.

English and acting. And if I went to East Anglia, I could do English and art. And so I applied for five very different courses, which obviously we all know shows a lack of focus, which actually I do have, um, lack of focus. So, you know, fair, fair that I was pulled out on that one. Um, and so they just said, God, this kid doesn’t know what she wants.

Or, or you know, maybe it was the spelling, how

Laura: wrong they turned out to be. How wrong? 25 books in 25 years. Hilarious. They, they have no idea. I

Adele: mean, I think it’s quite fun. I mean, it wasn’t fun at the time. It was heartbreaking at the time. Everybody else was getting offers and my headmaster and to his credit said, well, you’ll get the grades and then you’ll be able to have your pick.

You’ll go through clearing and you’ll have your pick. And there were two places. In clearing available Royal Holloway and New uh, and New Bedford. And this one, uh, Leicester. And I went to Leicester ’cause it wasn’t as far away. And I went to uni and I met amazing people there who are still my best friends.

Now I’ve got, you know, great people from Leicester University and I’m so. Prior to the friendships I made there, but I think I was very, very, very unprepared for what that experience would be.

Laura: Who were you at 18, 19, 20. What were your, ’cause obviously you’re in between living at your parents’ house and then getting a job and settling down into the rat race.

Who were you at that age? Who did you want to be? Who are you dreaming of being at that point? I was

Adele: definitely dreaming of being a writer. I was quite artsy. I had this. My hair’s actually supernaturally curly, even though I now always blow dry it to a smoother version. But I had this sort of big pre ruffle light hair going on.

I was always in my dunes and my dms. I was quite this sort of. Screaming feminist slash I’m a pre ruff light muse. I mean, what is that? If not a split personality? I didn’t, you know, I was trying everything out, which I think excellent is. Yeah, it is excellent. It’s exactly what young people should do when they go to university.

I was trying out lots of different versions of me. I think I’d like, I mean, you’d have to ask the other people I went to uni with, but I didn’t take myself particularly. Seriously. I don’t think, you know, I tried lots of, I dunno, clubs and things and I, you know, I had

Laura: a gigle. I had Gigle Yes. As we all did.

Yeah,

Adele: exactly. And um, and I had a giggle and it was fun.

Laura: But you dreamed of being a novelist specifically or just. You didn’t know exactly. Maybe you’d be a journalist, maybe you’d be a novelist, A researcher. A novelist. A novelist. You already knew that. Never,

Adele: yeah. Never crossed my mind to, in fact, funny story.

I thought I had kept it a massive secret though, because everybody, there’s 40 people on that English course back then, and I think everybody probably wanted to be a novelist, so I felt slightly embarra. Because, you know, it’s a, it’s a relatively vain thing to think you want to be, that you think you have something to say that other people should read.

And I was self-conscious of it and, and didn’t want to say it. And then many, many years later, ’cause I wasn’t published until I was 30, but when I did get my book deal and I rang up all my friends and told them, I went, you could be so surprised ’cause such a secret. No one ever knew this about me until the last person they said.

No, every time you got drunk you would say a funny in office. Every single time you would bang on about it and you were so boring and you’d tell us your parts and they were really boring and we didn’t wanna know. But you’d do it. And the funny thing is, obviously I blanked that out. The next day I get up smiling, thinking my little secret was still mine, Kar.

Uh, so yeah, funny old days. Yes.

Laura: And you never worry about running out of ideas. Kind of after 25 books that you’ve written, are you still as hopeful and positive about it as you were at 1819? Do you still think Yep. I’ve still got loads to say.

Adele: Uh, well, interestingly, no. Interestingly, I think I’m. I’m in a better place now than I was then, I think 18 or 19.

I desperately wanted to be a writer, but nothing had ever happened to me or nothing I was prepared to talk about. Um, and even if I was prepared to talk about it, I didn’t really have the skillset to, to do that. Um, but the skillset being. Uh, genuine empathy for other people’s points of view. Um, so, which I think is a really important skill for a novelist.

Laura: Yeah,

Adele: so I think now I have more to say. I’ve, I’ve been a mother, I’ve been a, a wife twice. I’ve, um, had friendships come and go. I, I’ve had. Great successes and huge disappointments. I’ve had gains and losses. I’ve more to say now than I did then. So I don’t worry about running out of ideas. I think I’m in a particular situation now where I’m writing psychological thrillers and I am very much known for my twists and my twists and my twist.

So I think people read me waiting for a twist and I keep saying there may not be one. That might be the twist. That’s the twist. Yes. Yes. That might be the twist. I might give you a book that isn’t twisty, turny, because I might decide that’s what I want to write next because not all my ideas are necessarily psychological thrillers.

I know the one that comes out in 2025. It’s a psychological thriller. I know the one that is in 2026 is ’cause I’m two thirds of the way through writing that one. I don’t know. Beyond that, I don’t know if I will keep always writing psychological thrillers. I always say, I think I’ll run outta time before I run out of ideas.

I often have three or four ideas in a in a year, and I have to sort of drill down on them and make sure they’re not just short stories and they’re really genuinely and novel. And sometimes this year, 2020 book was one of those times where I really wanted to do. Two books I couldn’t choose and I, I started one and then I changed my mind and then I went back to it and then I changed my mind.

I could have done either one

Laura: and could the second book be 20, 27 or it might be, yeah, let’s

Adele: face it, that might, it’s sitting there, isn’t it? It’s asking for me to give it its attention, but there was also a reason I left it alone. And actually I’m quite brutal. If there is a reason, if there’s something and even a tiny thing that is a reason I abandon something.

Then it probably needs to stay abandoned. I’m quite the ruthless editor.

Laura: Okay, let’s move on now. Your next off cut, please. What’s this one?

Adele: This is my second off cut called the warning, but this one is a poem and I wrote it in 2002

Actor 3: to disallow the possibility of too much happiness. I married to protect myself from unadulterated pleasure.

I settled to safeguard from unreasonable horror. I paired. To avoid being alone on a dance floor at 40, you’ll marry like a diamond as big as the Ritz. You came along to fill up my tits. I was always so careful and sensible. Licentious behavior was indefensible paid my taxes crossed at the green man. Now I fuck you.

Whenever I can. My lips are sore, my thoughts are raw. Whenever we say goodbye, I just want more. I’m perpetually wet between the thighs. What we are doing isn’t, especially wise, it’s sticky and tricky, but I don’t want it to stop. If ever you ask my knickers, I’ll drop. I love you.

Laura: Goodness me.

Adele: You’re allowed to laugh. I do.

Laura: Yes. Yes. We, we all went, crikey. That was, um, well, I dunno, I’m,

Adele: I, I mean, it’s hilarious that I put it out there for you to have it. First of all, can I just say that there’s this fact that I’ve got two called the warning. I obviously spend my entire life worrying about stuff, don’t I?

Oh, don’t do that. Don’t

Laura: do that. From the age of 12 to the age of whatever that was, 20 something. Yeah. Yes. You’re busy warning people about different things. Yeah. But, um, this poem is surprising content aside. To me. It reads like two poems joined together. It’s like you’d written the first. Poem fairly sort of hardened and cynical and, and, you know, realistic about relationships.

And then like somebody called you out and you’d gone off for a drink or something, or possibly something else, I don’t know. But you come back maybe two or three drinks, uh, worse for wear. Yeah. And you’ve completely forgotten about your basic theme and you’ve been distracted by a lovely man.

Adele: I think that’s very possible.

Laura: You don’t remember? I mean,

Adele: I feel that’s my life. No, well, I do. I know exactly when this is written. So I think what happened is it was two parts of my divorce process, so I think it may not have been a quick couple of drinks and straight back to it, but, um. The poem. I mean, oh yeah. It was, uh, it was more that I would’ve written the bitter sad stuff.

And then the very first night I went out after my divorce, I met my now husband, which is unusual. I, I understand that.

Laura: The very first night you went out,

Adele: I had, oh, I had one night being single. Hilarious. Technically single. You are

Laura: kidding.

Adele: I know, I know. Weird. So I, I mentioned that I was, you know. It was a surprise that to me, that I was a single mom and I had a 10 month old baby.

And then when the baby was, I dunno, 13 months, so not much in it, three months. Um, my friend had a birthday party. She said, you’ve got to come out. You can’t still stay in the house. You know you can’t stay in the house forever. And I was like, literally have nothing to wear than maternity clothes. And she said, oh no, you we’ll go out.

We’ll go out, we’ll go shopping. And I remember buying these. Brown leather trousers from whistles. Oh, I still own them. Very lovely. And I had every objection here. I was like, oh, I can’t, because you know I haven’t got a babysitter. She said, oh, I’ve got a babysitter. And uh, so her babysitter sat for both our babies and we all went out.

Six women that had all had babies a year ago, and. All of the others announced their pregnancy and they were all there with the husbands. And I announced my divorce and said, you know, well he left me, you know, a while back and um, and I feel like rubbish. And then I turned around and there was this. Guy across the crowded room and I just thought, no, he’s hot.

Yeah. Oh, word. And I thought he’s hot. I think that will help tonight. And yeah, and everyone And then the romance for want a better term that sort of. Followed. The very intense were months that followed. Everybody kept saying to me, you do know that this is your rebound shag. You do know this isn’t gonna make it, and this isn’t gonna be a big deal.

Don’t lose your head, don’t lose your heart. Don’t fall for him. And I just thought, no, I have fallen for him. This is it. He’s amazing. I, and now we’ve been married 21 years.

Laura: Wow. That’s a story and a half. That one, isn’t it?

Adele: Fantastic. So I suspect there were two poems shoved together. I’ve, funnily enough, never tried to get my poems published and I think No.

Having heard that one broadcast live, yeah. I never should.

Laura: Well, well, you know, I would say don’t, don’t give up the day job. Your day job is doing so well. You so well you. Exactly. Yeah. Don’t really need to. Fun. It’s,

Adele: it’s fun that, um, it’s out there. And, and you know, the, the fact that I obviously was looking for a different way to express myself.

’cause obviously I could have, I could have done prose and actually did go on to write a, a book about mine and Jim’s relationship.

Laura: Oh, which one is that?

Adele: I, so. Oh, it’s called the other women’s shoes. Yeah, the other women’s shoes. It’s almost a word for word account. Yeah. I mean, you will now recognize the night that I’ve just described is, is in that book.

Oh, wow. Um, the only thing I do is split my character into two different women and I give myself two children. I only had one. But other than that, it’s pretty much the same thing.

Laura: Right.

Adele: Um, anyway, that aside, I do think that’s hilarious that that poem has now had an earring and I felt I’ve always wanted it to have an earring to read secretly.

Secretly I have because I was so right about him and everyone told me I was wrong and I was, you know, obviously to start with just a lot of pent up passion. Let’s go with passion. But, um, but it quickly moved on to something very deep and very important to me. So I think it’s quite fun that that’s now had its little moment, even though I accept that it’s, it’s never gonna make it into an anthology.

Laura: Did you write a lot of poetry then?

Adele: Mm. I think I’ve done 12 in my life.

Laura: Oh, I see.

Adele: Yeah. Not a lot. I think he can see that, that it needs some practice. I think I could work on that skill before we, uh, we, we rush out to try and publish them. And I think also I do write them. It’s hilarious that you said you probably went out for a drink and came back.

’cause that is. When I write them, so well done. Good spot. Yes, Ralph.

Laura: Oh, how satisfying that is. Oh, excellent. Okay. Well, right. Let’s move on to your next off cut. Now what’s this one?

Adele: Well, this is an earlier poem, so this is one of the 12. Really getting them out. Yeah, but can I say, in my defense, I think everything else I’ve ever written other than my poems has been published.

If I’ve tried for it to be published, it’s been published, so that’s why the poems are getting an airing. But this one was written in 1989 and it’s called The Ruse. I was at university at the time.

Actor 2: Would I want you if I were first? I would not. The savage satire that you are pulls me in pounding. You are appalling at articulating, expressing.

I deliberately try to confuse. But this is just a ruse as we both long to be understood, and yet it is this coldness, this icy fjord that you are impenetrable aquamarine. So beautiful, so terrible. It is all of these things that I need and want you deliberately try to confuse, but this is just a ruse. As we both long to be good.

Laura: This one’s slightly less shocking. Um, but you wrote to me, uh, when, well, it was, the note I received with this poem was when you were dating an unknowable, posh boy. This was at university, was it?

Adele: Yes. Yes. I didn’t confess far too much.

Laura: Yes. Does the Un Noble posh boy know that he was a subject of a poem?

Adele: I very much doubt it.

I don’t think the un noble, posh boy would even still know my name. Um, oh, well he must now, I suppose he may now, he might have got, yes, I think you rings bell. Uh, but I don’t think I was very important to him at all. I think I had a phase, definite phase sort of thinking, oh, I’ve gotta get out there and.

Meet posh boys. ’cause I never had, I’d obviously, you know, as I’ve mentioned, I went to a comp and all my boyfriends had went from there. And I found them fascinating for a while. And then I literally found them unknowable. Couldn’t get through to them. They wouldn’t talk to me and they, they wouldn’t tell me how they were feeling.

And, but at first, I think there was a stage where I found that. Fascinating. It’s probably a thing to do with self-confidence and lack of when you’re quite young. ’cause I think as you get older you should be able to say, gosh, if you can’t tell me what you’re thinking and feeling, perhaps this isn’t for us.

Mm. But uh, uh, in 1989, I did not have that in my vocabulary.

Laura: You’ve sort of gone on, haven’t you? The unknowability of others seems to be something you write about a lot in your novels regarding sort of truth and fidelity that seems to come up. I do quite a lot. I think

Adele: there’s, I think all of these. Um, off cuts.

They’ve got something of that. Even that crazy, terrible dissertation, which can I say, I’ve got a two one in all my life. I’ve always been shocked at that two. One thinking I should have been a first. I’ve now listened to that dissertation. What can I say? I’ve noticed that dissertation. I was like, look, it wasn’t a third girl, uh, because it was shocking.

Uh, so all of this, this sort of recapping it. Very good for me. But yes, I think I am interested in fidelity and infidelity. I think it’s one of the few things that we have. That we select as a moral code for no other reason than we select to do it. There isn’t really anymore, there isn’t really a sort of evolutionary path that tells us that this is what we should do.

I can see where there would’ve been in the past, but I think most of us would still opt for it if we can.

Laura: Yes, of course we would

Adele: still opt to know and to be known and to remain faithful. And yet nearly all of my books are about people. The struggle with that.

Laura: Oh, I suppose that’s the interesting part of conflict, isn’t it, the Unknowability.

Mm-hmm. Of others, but that was the subject of a lot of your books, but your 17th novel, the Image of You where one woman tries to discover the truth about the man that her twin sister’s fallen in love with. Mm-hmm. That definitely seems to be on that subject. That particular novel has been made into a film.

Adele: Yes.

Laura: Yeah, tell me about that. You didn’t write the screenplay for this one, did you? But No, I

Adele: didn’t, but I worked on it. I worked with, um, Christopher, who was fantastic and we worked on it through, uh, lockdown, which was great to have a project. And I worked very hard on. On the exec producing. So getting it made, uh, exec producer can be anything, as I’m sure loads of your listeners know, it can be anything from, you know, you throw in money.

I didn’t do that. You throw in time. I absolutely did do that. Mm-hmm. Because the producer that had opted the book in the first place, I remember sort of talking to him through lockdown saying, oh, every. You know, nobody’s doing anything and everybody’s locked down and it’s gonna disappear. And he said to me, well the thing is, Adele, nobody will ever care about this as much as you, everybody’s got lots of projects on, you are the one that can make this happen or not.

And I found that really empowering.

Laura: Mm-hmm.

Adele: And it had never crossed my mind that I could be the one that could make that happen or not. Which is odd. ’cause actually, if you think about being a novelist, all you do is make something from nothing. Exactly.

Laura: Yeah.

Adele: Um. But I really enjoyed the process and, uh, and I’m proud of the film.

It’s a, it’s, uh, a fun popcorny version of a. Psychological thriller. It isn’t a dark, nasty, psychological thriller, although arguably really nasty things happen. But they happen in a relatively tongue in cheek way, which is, is the vibe of the book and trying to get that. So sort of

Laura: romcom as far as films are concerned, would you say?

Uh, well,

Adele: interestingly, you see, this is interesting because the image of you was. Uh, the crossover book from romcom to psychological thrillers in terms of the genre, when I was writing and I had written quite a dark ending, and at the time, my publisher at the time said, oh, we feel that’s a big jump from where you are at now.

Can you soften your ending? And I did. And then when it, the book was. Being turned into a film, I said, oh, don’t read the book. Here is the ending, and, and pitch the ending that I’d I’d originally wanted, which is much darker because you need to have a genre. If you’re going to go into film, you can’t say, oh, it’s a bit of a hybrid.

You can do that in reading and writing because. People give you their time, their undivided, 15 hours, 20 hours, however long it might take them to read a book. They’re giving you the undivided time. But in a film, you’ve got, you know, an hour and a half. So you need to be able to say to the producers, it’s in this genre.

So I, I shoved it quite firmly into psychological thriller, but with a bit of fun. Twists and tongue and cheek and, and I think, I think it’s successful. I like it.

Laura: Why was that novel, the one that you chose? ’cause you’d written 17 up to that point. So what was the particular draw of turning that one into a film?

I

Adele: think it was a relatively commercial decision, actually, that I knew psychological thrillers were being bought up by producers. And at that time that was me going into psychological thrillers. I had a couple that were very new, still one read, written one that. Just come out the week I was approached. So this one had a little bit more of the sales behind it, and I was able to say, look, it’s sold x amount of books already.

Um, it, it’s, it’s this idea. Off we go. And actually, it’s a really strong idea, isn’t it? I think everybody loves the idea of our identical twins and we’re fascinated by them because, you know, they can. You know, spoiler boat, not spoiler. Uh, they can play each other and they can, uh, they have things in common.

They have differences that are, you know, this whole going back to the knowability and not knowability of a person. And if you, if your twin doesn’t know you, who does, you know? So I thought there’s a lot of mileage in it. And actually it took. Three years from, from being sold as an option to getting it made.

So, you know, there’s always that. By then I was three years done. Maybe I would’ve chosen something different by then. ’cause I had other books out with other sales records. But at the time it was just a sensible choice.

Laura: Okay. Right. We’ve come to your final off cut. Tell us about this one please.

Adele: This is an off cut from my 25th and most recent novel, our Beautiful Mess, which is published in 2025.

Actor 4: At first he’d been scared of it. Yes. Actually fucking scared of the money because they called it a reward. They said it was a thank you for not calling the police. That was bad enough. He didn’t spend it, at least not at first, but the second time they found him, they said it was a loan. He tried to hand it back then it was still in the envelope.

They laughed and said there was interest on the loan. But I never borrowed anything off you. You have our money. You’ve had it a month, now you’ve given it back. What do you call that if not a loan? I never asked for it. They just shrugged. You owe 800 pounds. What? That’s stupid. Where am I gonna get 800 pounds?

What’s the interest rate you are charging? But the question was idiotic. He knew that they said he could clear things if he delivered something for them. Started talking about interest rates. If only he’d done that in the first place. Taken out a credit card to think. He used to think 24% was too much interest to pay.

They said he owed them more than 10 times the original sum. Now it kept going up. No matter what he did, he had no idea how they calculated the interest. He doubted there was an exact rate, a hundred percent fucked 30 times over. Wasn’t a processable mathematical formula. He wasn’t a fucking idiot. He knew that he wasn’t going to be delivering pizza for the sort of money they’d loaned him.

But the first job was a message, something that can’t be sent in a text. The second job was a document. Papers. He decided not to open the envelope even though it wasn’t sealed. He thought it was a test. Could he be trusted also, he didn’t wanna look. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Right. He’d assumed it might be dodgy accounts or something.

The next package he was instructed to pick up was different. No instructions as to where it should be delivered. Were texted. The package had the words open me, scratched on with a blue biro, all in capitals, uneven letters that looked like they were scratched out by someone uncomfortable holding a pen at school, but happy to carve their name on the desktop with a pen knife.

He didn’t open the envelope, not straight away. He dipped into a coffee chain, went into the Scuzzy Lu that was supposed to be for customer’s use only when the door was securely locked behind him. He looked inside the packet. The notes were dirty, used. He counted them 2000 pounds, A lot of money. His instructions were to take this and bring another package back.

If he did, as he was told he was buying drugs, he was a dealer.

Laura: I thought we’d add some, uh, testosterone to the reading team there. Just, uh, excellent. There’s too much estrogen flowing through this particular episode, but this passage, was it just this passage that was cut out or the whole idea of this character becoming a drug dealer? What, what’s the story behind this offcut?

Adele: Well, this is an off cut that I did myself. I quite often, um, I mentioned I, I self-edit a lot. I think by the time I. Give my book a I’m, I’m pretty much hoping it’s, it’s done deal. So at the beginning I sort of overwrite and I might have ideas and I quite often get as far as sort of 50, 60, 70,000 words and then could reduce it by as much as a half, which does horrify some people.

But for me it’s just the way I get into it. So this is a character called Zach. Zach is still in my book. He is really important. And it’s funny though, you’re right, we are talking, um. From a female point of view a lot in this, uh, podcast, but in fact I actually often write from a male point of view, and I often have male characters, but he’s a, he’s quite a young one.

He’s only 20 and. He in the actual finished book Our Beautiful Mess. He is a character that has a secret that is life-threatening. Uh, he has got himself involved in something way above anything he can deal with, and it is to do with drugs, but it’s nothing to do with alone. I decided that was all too complicated and I just even hearing it then I was like, oh, thank God I cut this.

So, yeah, so, so it was just, there’s, there’s some nice bits in there. You know, I can’t remember the numbers, but he, he talks about the mathematical formula that he can’t do, which is how fucked he is. Yeah. And I think that’s a nice concept and that, that carries through with Zach. He is out of his depth and he’s struggling, but it isn’t a sort of small turn loan.

He. Gets in something much more vicious. And actually I can’t tell you what, but he gets into something much more vicious, much faster into the novel where this all seemed a bit slow burn. And I thought like, I don’t really care. If I don’t care, nobody else cares. Um, so yeah. So that’s the only reason that this was taken out.

Laura: Now this is a belated sequel. The book Our Beautiful Mess. ’cause if I’ve got this right, um, this is the sequel to the first book you ever wrote. Is that right?

Adele: It is in a way, I suppose. So the very first book I ever wrote was, um, about a woman called Connie. And at the time she was nearly 30. And all my audiences, as you can imagine, were women of about that age, or some men, but mostly women, and the book’s called Playing Away, and it’s about a woman who.

Uh, falls madly in love with somebody who shouldn’t. And it, um, it wrecks her, her marriage, a very, very new marriage. And it’s about her struggling back from that. And it was, it came out in the year 2000. It was a huge hit. It was the, uh, biggest selling debut of that year. Um, and Connie set me up without Connie.

I probably wouldn’t be sat here talking to you. You know, she was amazing for me. And in the book at the time, in playing Away, she had four best friends who were really good fun and they were in the background. They all had their own problems and they own their own backstories in one thing, in another.

And I always resented that really quietly, that it eventually got put in this sort of Chiclet banner. Mm-hmm. Because when it was published, it was originally published at Penguin and the the editor at the time, and I. I swear this is true. This is an absolute true story. He said to me, would you like this published as a commercial book or a literary book?

And I said, what’s the difference? She said, A literary book will probably sell about 8,000 copies, and a commercial book will probably sell about 80,000 copies. And I thought, I’ll have that then. But it’s um, but it’s interesting, isn’t it, because it was a matter of how they were going to publish it, not the content of the book, which by that time was signed, sealed, and delivered.

Laura: So how they package it and what the cover would look like and that sort of thing.

Adele: Yes. And who they would reach out to and you know, and all that sort of thing. Interesting. Wow. Isn’t it fascinating? So it could have

Laura: been either, you could, you could could’ve been a literary author or a bestselling novelist at

Adele: that time.

I don’t think that would happen now, because I think I would’ve been edited slightly differently to be distinctly one thing or another, Uhhuh. But at that time there was a little bit more flexibility in everybody’s world and, and we weren’t quite as. Welded to genres as we are now. Anyway, at the time I wrote that book and I had all these characters and.

Over the years, I’ve sometimes gone back to pick out the best friends that were sort of the subplots and brought them forward and given them their front story. So there was a book called, uh, young Wives Tales, and that had two of the characters, Lucy and Rose in it. And then many years later, I think my 19th book, there was a book called Lies, lies, lies, which was a full on psychological thriller.

You know, prisons, murders a lot. Very, very different to my initial playing away, and yet it had those characters. I just moved them with me. I thought you can come. You are fantastic. You are complex, interesting humans, you can come with me And lives, lives, lives was actually my first number one. And so it was 19 years before I got my number one.

I was a 19 year overnight success, which I like to, you know, point out. Uh, so it was really, those characters have always been so exciting for me ’cause they were my debut and then they were my first number one. And going back to that story of. Originally, you know, she was in her thirties. I wanted to look at Connie.

Now, where is she in her midlife? Did she mature? Did she hang on to that relationship? Did they go off and you know, have a family. So I sort of wanted all of that, but I really wanted a psychological thriller. So I put. Lovely Connie’s poor family in huge jeopardy. This poor woman there, she was bouncing along in a romantic comedy.

Here she is like fighting for her life and fighting for the life of her family.

Laura: Right. And this is book number 25? Yes. Which is. Our beautiful mess. Yes. That is due out any minute now. If you happen to be listening to this podcast at the time of its initial broadcast. Yay. Well, we have come to the end of the show.

How was it for you?

Adele: I loved it. Lots of fun. I feel I haven’t really talked about my books. I just think everything I’ve told you about my like off cuts, there’s so random. Who talks about the 12-year-old writings? But it’s been so much fun to do that.

Laura: I’m very glad. I’m very glad you enjoyed. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously.

I suppose I should ask you one more question. Let’s think. Are there any offcuts that you’ve still got that you haven’t shared with us today that you think you might should have done? I actually

Adele: have a process when I write every single book I mentioned that I quite often can cut anything up to, well, my worst ever is cutting 80,000 words once.

Oh wow. But I can cut. Anything up to, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20,000 words. Uh, when I’m writing a book and what I do is I take them outta the manuscript that I’m writing and I stick them in a file that’s very creatively named bits. Um, and I just pop them in there thinking, oh gosh, if I really panic and I want them back, they’re just there.

And you know what? Over 25 years, I’ve never gone back. Pulled anything out of the bits file you never do. If it needs to be cut, it needs to be cut. Mm. So I suppose I have 25 bits files if ever you really want to dig through them. Um, but yeah, I can’t think there’s anything really great in there. So

Laura: it sounds like almost an idea that you should put them all together and see if you can make a book out of them.

Just see

Adele: what happens. You’re gonna be a really average book, wouldn’t it? Because there were all the things that didn’t make the grade. And I think it’s, I think it’s a really important thing in life. Admitting to yourself that you do things that are not up to scratch, and that’s okay. And I think that’s obviously the whole point of your podcast.

You know, there are things that, that we didn’t, that, that didn’t reach its full potential. And maybe that’s fine because we’re just learning from them and, and learning is all part of life. Everything can’t be up. Yeah.

Laura: It’s all part of the process. Yeah.

Adele: Everything can’t be perfect. Straight off. Yeah.

Laura: Yeah.

Well, it has been wonderful talking to you, Adele Parks. Thank you for sharing the contents of your Offcuts Drawer with us.

Adele: Thank you so much, Laura. I’ve loved every minute

Laura: the Offcuts Drawer was devised and presented by me, Laura Shaven with special thanks to this week’s guest, Adele Parks, MBE. The off cuts were performed by Emma Clarke, Beth Chalmers, Helen Goldwyn, and Chris Pavlo. And the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit Offcuts Drawer.com and please do subscribe, rate and review us.

Thanks for listening.

Louise: When I think about poor Miss Marriott, who was my English teacher, she used to get sort of 12, 15 page stories from me. And you know, and I, I’m never considered for a moment that, you know, it was gonna take her time to, to read them, that she must have seen my little green exercise. Sick and thought, oh no.

Laura: Hello, I’m Laura Shaven, and this is the Offcut Straw, the show that looks inside a writer’s bottom drawer to find the bits of work they never finished, had rejected, or couldn’t quite find a home for. We bring them to life, hear the stories behind them, and learn how these random pieces of creativity pave the way to subsequent success,

my guest for this episode is novelist Louise Candlish. She’s the author of 17 novels including Our House, the Other Passenger, and The Only Suspect With Her 18th. A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder published this month. Her 2018 novel, our House won the British Book Award for Crime and Thriller book of the year in 2019, and was adapted into a four-part ITV drama, which aired in 2022, starring Tuppens Middleton and Martin Compton.

And since then, she has written across genres including domestic suspense, psychological thrillers, and earlier in her career, romantic fiction. Several of her novels have been Sunday Times bestsellers, and her work has been translated into more than 20 languages. Louise, welcome to the Offcut Straw.

Louise: Thank you for having me.

And may I say straight away that I wouldn’t describe any of my books as romantic fiction? Oh my God, I’m the anti-romantic author, if anything. Really? Not even the first one. No. Well that was, it was, you are right. It was, it was marketed as a rom-com. But it was, it was actually a stalking story. It was a sort of, I would just.

Describe it as a sort of stalking comedy. So there were a couple of comedies in the early days, and then there were, there were sort of family dramas. I would describe my sort of middle section.

Mm-hmm.

Louise: Um, and then they segue very, very naturally into darker suspense stories. Because I had never been writing, um, stories of hope and, um,

Laura: nobody could accuse you of being too positive.

Louise: Sadly not. So it was all too easy to get darker and darker and darker. But I think I’ve always retained that, um, that satirical element, you know, that sort of comic element. And I think. That’s the kind of counterpoint to it, because actually if an academic sat down and analyzed my message, they would say that I was extremely pessimistic about society.

To, to, I mean, I kind of do it naturally. I’m making it sound as if it’s all deliberate, but I quite naturally do include some comedy in my, in my tone and my voice to, um, you know, to counteract, you know, that sort of slightly more pragmatic message. Do, do you know why you lean towards bleakness? I dunno. I, I guess I always have, and I think it’s, you know, it, maybe it’s to do with my background.

I mean my, my parents and um, family are Geordie, so, you know, you’ve got that kind of very modern sense of humor that Geordies have, and I think that’s in there. I grew up in the Midlands, which has another kind of, you know, characteristic that has the certain kind of understatement and pessimism. Now I live in South London, so you’ve got this kind of trio of influences, but it’s really hard to know.

I mean, it could be, um, you know, all the books I’ve read and all of the, the TV drama and comedy that I’ve watched over the years, just being Gen X. Yes. You know, I, I feel like I’m very typical of my generation. You know, we are. Um, sarcastic and sardonic and, you know, I think all of that comes through and, you know, we’re very much a sort of bantering generation as well.

You know, all of the things that you are sort of, you know, in inverted commas not allowed to say anymore. Gen X will say when the, you know, when we’re all together. And I think all of that comes through in, um, the voice of my characters.

Laura: Okay, well let’s get started with your first off cut. Can you tell us please, what it’s called, what genre it was written for and when it was written?

Louise: So this is a prologue I wrote in around 2022 for an as yet untitled thriller.

Beth (Actor): We have an excellent view of the scene from up here. Our faces are turned as one to the monstrous Atlantic to the figures gathered on the shore, shrunken by the high tide plen. The search and rescue boat has departed, but Isaac says it’s too dangerous to launch the helicopter.

To be honest, the bad weather is preferable to the grinding heat of previous days, but I do worry about my plane taking off safely into that horrible churning sky. I hope my flight won’t be delayed. I say, I are so egocentric. Isaac says laughing. What about the poor bastard lost out there? I hope his flight won’t be delayed either.

I say. And I flare my eyes at him. Playful. Flirtatious in a different context. We might have hooked up Isaac and me, but I’ve had bigger fish to fry, to catch and kill. First it was a hostile manager, Teo, who tipped us off about the crisis, letting us know one by one as we trooped through reception and we’d scurried up to the roof to watch like good little rubberneckers.

The alarm had been raised an hour ago by some rich Honeymooner at the Pale Hotel whose new husband was missing. No one was too bothered until his board washed ashore, but by then it was surely too late. The wife’s in a right old state. Apparently Isaac said you would be. I said agreeing. He should never have gone out alone.

He’d only had a few lessons apparently. Apparently this, apparently that. This is what happens when you run before you can walk. He added, yeah, you drown before you can swim. You are completely outrageous. Taxi for Viv, someone yells from the stairwell, and that’s me. I call back, I smile at Isaac and the others as I depart a proper goodbye gift of a smile.

I’ll never see them again. I’ll never think of them again. Serves me right that their heads turn back to the action even before my beam fades. Beyond the swell rises and grows. It’s a beautiful place. Spirits a savage place. Strange, but I felt a profound sense of belonging while I’ve been here.

Laura: That’s a very satisfying, apposite way to start a podcast about writing with an offcut called prologue.

I want some extra points for that. So we were just talking about generation X and it seems very much like that character is exactly as you described, a Gen X lady. Where was this story going to go?

Louise: Hmm. Well that was actually, um, the prologue was in fact quite a long way into the story. So it’s one of those structures where you sort of see a catastrophic moment and then you go back and discover how the character, who’s called Viv Uhhuh, um, why she’s in Bears.

And, um, you know, what havoc has she. Wrought there before she makes her a rather blithe departure. I love the, um, the reading of it sounds so clipped in 1930s and it’s actually making me think and making me remember one of the reasons why I didn’t take it on and I did something else instead. And it’s because it was very much a sort of old fashioned kind of vibe.

Ah. And the plotting alone would’ve worked a lot better before mobile phones and, you know, all of the, the various sort of apps and things we have now to track everyone. And so, you know, I was thinking, actually, this is gonna be quite tricky because I, I need to make this historical, I need to set this in the sixties maybe, or the very latest, the eighties.

And so I abandoned it. But yes, she’s quite a typical. Sort of Noirish character of mine. There’ve been a few of these 20 something girls who are on the Make.

Mm-hmm.

Louise: Who, you know, come from nothing and, um, need to find a way to better their circumstances. And this book, which I seem to remember, I was going to call the Sun Trap or something like that.

I had a few titles. This was inspired by Henry James is the Wings of the Dove, where a couple. Target a wealthy sort of res type in the hopes that the male will be able to marry her and she’s ill. And it’s a kind of, um, you know, pre prenup era. So all of these kind of elements did lead me to abandon it, but I actually hit the voice very quickly, loved the character, and also could see how easily it could be structured as well.

So, you know, maybe I’ll go back to it one day, but I think it does need to be set. Pre phones, pre-mobile phones,

Laura: do you not write novels that are set in a different time period to the present? Not

Louise: really. The only one I’ve done is the only suspect, which is partly set in the nineties. And again, that was chosen.

I went back, I kept it as close to the present days, I could, but before mobile phones would’ve had an impact on the plot. Mm. And, and the only suspect has occasionally been described as historical, which really makes me laugh. Because I think of that as extremely recent. So do I, but of course, it was 25, 30 years ago.

1995 was the year that I set part of the action. There was a heat wave that summer. I remember it very clearly and you know, it proved to be a really successful novel and is in fact going to be the next one on the, on the screen. So, Ooh, I know that you can do it. I know it’s okay. But I think the further back you go.

The more research you need and the harder it will be ultimately, if it’s ever adapted for the screen as well, which is, you know, sort of always on my mind, you know, in a hopeful way.

Right.

Louise: Um, so no, I haven’t, but maybe I

Laura: will. How much of it did you actually write? ’cause you said this prologue is not actually at the beginning of the book.

So presumably you didn’t just start in the middle or, or do you do that? Oh

Louise: no, I did. Yeah, I did. I did do that, but I had plotted out loosely what was going to happen. And then I thought, what’s an interesting way to, to enter the story? And I love entering a story at the end or in the middle. And then, you know, seeing, you know, something often fatal, um, but certainly catastrophic in some way.

And then going straight back to show. The character before it all went horribly wrong.

Laura: Have you planned it in advance? Do you plan it and then go, I’m gonna start in the middle and then go back and forward or whatever? Or do you go, I’ll start in the middle. I’m guessing it’s the middle. Who knows? We’ll see.

I dunno what’s happened before. I dunno what’s gonna happen afterwards. ’cause that seems extremely confident.

Louise: Yeah, I think I’m, yeah, I think I’m quite confident I just plunge in. Um, because for me the most important thing by far is voice. Mm-hmm. I even really fundamental important things that other authors will cite as the most important thing, like plot, character and setting.

To me, voice comes before those, obviously, voice and character are very strongly linked and they, I guess they’re the same thing actually. Um, now I’m talking about it. Mm-hmm. And generally I will, I’ll be writing from the point of view of a character or several characters. I won’t be a kind of overarching narrator.

Mm-hmm. I don’t tend to adopt. That puppeteer mode ever. Mm-hmm. So you get straight in the head under the skin of the character. So with this one, I honestly can’t remember. I certainly knew that it was going to start in London and that Viv, the character, was going to work in a department store, and that probably will be the next scene that I would’ve written, but I only ever wrote the prologue, which is after she’s done tremendous harm.

To the other two characters in the Love Triangle, and she’s making her her exit from the hostel where she’s been staying. Sounds intriguing. Do write it. Please, please, please.

Laura: Anyway, time for another off cut Now. So tell us about this one.

Louise: So this was written in 2018 and it’s a deleted scene from my novel, which at the time was called the Victim and later became our house.

Emma (Actor): Allison and I were the last to go to bed, clearing up the party debris, stacking the dishwasher, draining the ends of the Prosecco. At the top of the house. The kids were asleep, or at least resisting in relative peace and quiet. She put on the soundtrack to Betty Blue, and I lost my thoughts to the mournful sacks, the pleasurable mood of doom.

I remember seeing this at the cinema. I said we were well under age. I dunno how we got in. I’d never seen a French film before. Wonder what she looks like now. That actress. Oh, I expect she’s a middle aged crawl like us Allison said, pouring the ends of blood colored drinks down the sink. Canna, just say how well you’ve done this weekend, darling.

It’s been a tough time for you this whole year. It certainly has. I picked it a pat of green icing that had hardened on the floor tile like concrete. A suburban life goes on, doesn’t it? The Trinity Avenue hole is greater than the sum of its parts. Aristotle, she said, though, I don’t think he knew about Trinity Avenue.

The street was a true home. I thought with a gust of sentimentality. I wasn’t prepared for. Weekends like this might begin as an escape from older eyes, but they tended to end as a reinforcement of its gravitational pull, the unalterable correctness of our place at its center. Did you, oh, you made me jump Kirsty.

She stood in the doorway in spotted pajamas. I just remembered. She said the clocks go back tonight. So it’s not one, it’s only midnight. Me’s gone to bed. She says goodnight. One for the road. Alison offered pouring, cursing a drink without waiting for an answer. You know, I’ve always thought that this will be a great time to commit a crime.

When everyone’s confused about the actual hour, it’d mess up a bys. Witnesses had forget whether the time had gone forwards or backwards. An autopsy is pretty accurate regarding time of death. I said, I love how you assume someone’s gonna die. Allison laughed. It was an odd thing because we were only doing what we’d done for years, a nightcap after the Halloween party, the finale of the holiday.

But the scene had an end of an era mood about it, as if tomorrow we had to surrender ourselves for a witness protection program or less. Melodramatically. Allison had announced plans to sell the cottage to next year. I raised my half empty glass, and when Allison looked up, her agreement was too simple, too immediate to be sincere, and I thought with complete clarity, we won’t do this again.

The sense of loss was briefly unbearable.

Laura: So why was this cut?

Louise: Oh my God. Well, I don’t know. I, well, I kind of know and um, I’m now thinking it sounds so familiar to me because deleted scenes are just as familiar as the ones that stay in the book. So I’m now thinking, have I got this wrong? And was that cut? Because it feels like it’s almost. The profound sort of center of the novel.

And for those who’ve read it, they’ll immediately know who all the characters are. I certainly know that I, I had to do some cutting because the book was quite long and, you know, that was very much establishing the mood and the character. So this is from the early part of the book, is it? It’s got, it’s actually from, it’s the middle section, which again is, you know, it’s hard and you know, sometimes.

Can can be thought to drag by editors. So I’d imagine there was that element, you know, let’s move on. Because while they are basically on a mom’s holiday during half term, and they do it every year and it’s Halloween and they have a Halloween party, but while this is happening, something criminals going on in fees.

In London. And so it is a really, really important time. And so maybe I thought that that conversation about a crime being committed when the clocks change, maybe I felt like that was being too obvious about telling us what was happening. The other thing I remember is that, um, and this happens a lot with me, is I’m really bad with timelines.

And this came out in the edit and I remember thinking, oh, no. Again, this is me putting myself into the book because I remember Betty Blue and I remember going to the cinema to see Betty Blue, and then I had to remind myself that I was older than the characters I was writing, and that they would’ve been just far too young to have gone to see Betty Blue.

They would never have got in. They would’ve been under 10. And so, um, so rather than changing the movie, I obviously, um, just deleted the whole scene, but, but to me it’s really special to hear it because the Betty Blue soundtrack was. The music I listened to when I wrote our House. Oh. So, um, you know, it really set the, the mood for the book, which is full of melancholy.

You know, it was, as you mentioned in your intro, won prizes for Thriller of the Year and crime and Thriller book awards. But for me it was a tragedy. It was a love story, gone horribly wrong, wrapped in a, in a crime novel.

Mm.

Laura: Uh, but do you have one particular, like the Betty Blue, uh, music was what you listened through throughout the writing of that book, and maybe you have another piece of music or another selection of music, there’s a mood background to the writing of a particular book, or do you just generally listen to music and it could be jazz one day or classical next day or whatever.

This isn’t the Betty Blue Book.

Louise: No. No, and I, and actually I don’t really listen to music when I’m writing. It’s. More when I’m thinking or in, you know, the off hours with the, the new book, A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. That’s probably my first book where music isn’t incredibly important. Normally, you know, the kind of music, the characters, like the only suspect, which I mentioned, um, set in the nineties, you know, that’s got a, a playlist.

Mm-hmm.

Louise: That’s very easy to follow. Of the nineties classics and

Laura: But you don’t listen to them yourself as you are writing. They don’t, they don’t inform the mood or they do. Yeah, they

Louise: do. They do. I might do. Yeah. Absolutely. And, um, thinking about Our House, I think that there’s one scene where Bram is listening to Portishead Sour Times, and I would’ve ly listened to that.

And it, it does inform the mood, absolutely. But it’s not every book and it’s, I don’t really have a process that I follow with every book. And as I say, my most. Recent book, I’m not associating with music at all. Mm-hmm. I did have a whole subplot where the narrator Gwen, who’s a 70-year-old retired woman, had a Rod Stewart obsession.

And so, you know, I had a whole scene planned where she goes to the O2 to see him with her 20 something friend Pixie as the book’s about an age gap relationship, an age gap. Friendship. Mm-hmm. Among other things. But in the end, I just thought, well, actually, I think this is for my own amusement. I’m not really sure what that’s going to add to the reader’s understanding of Gwen.

So, you know, it begins a self-indulgence and sometimes it does pervade the whole mood of the book, and sometimes it’s just for me, and then I’ll just, I’ll just ditch it. Interesting. Let’s move on now and what’s your next soft cut? Oh my goodness. So this one is an excerpt from a story I wrote in 1981 when I was at school called Murder in the Alps.

Beth (Actor): Marella smiled happily to herself. She loved life in the Alps. The sky was blue, the snow glistening in the sunlight, and everything seemed perfect. Everything except Livy. That was. Glanced at her sister and felt worried Livy was sitting on a ledge, readymade from the rock looking the picture of misery.

Marella had had enough look, she shouted, making Livy jump. I dunno what’s got into you this week, and frankly I don’t care, but I wish you wouldn’t try and ruin mine. And Dan’s holiday as well as your own. Livy looked up at her with pure hatred. I’m so sorry. She replied sarcastically. Am I upsetting you? I had no idea.

You are jealous, aren’t you? More shouted. You can’t bear me to love Dane and him to love me. You are pathetic. Really pathetic. Livy unkempt her skis from her boots and said defiantly. Well, since I’m so pathetic, you can go on your stupid walk on your own. Morela sighed an exasperation. They were getting nowhere standing on the top of a mountain shouting at each other.

She too sat down and gazed at the snowy slopes below her back to Livy. Livy looked up seething with jealousy. Her sister was only about five meters away, sitting still and silent. Livy knew this was the moment. There would never be another as good as this. She picked up a ski and stood up without making a sound.

This is it. Then, Marella, she thought, gritting her teeth. You’ll never see your darling Dane again. She crept up behind her sister and lifted the ski over her shoulder. Suddenly more turned and gasped with surprise and horror. No, Livy, please know you’re crazy. The ski came down and hit her on the head with a terrific force.

She gave a pathetic groan, then fell slowly into the snow. She was without doubt dead for a moment. Livy felt no emotion. She just stood like a robot, staring at more’s limp, lifeless body. Then she thought of Dane and felt happy. Now she could have Dane and Marella couldn’t again. She looked at the dead body, lying in the snow you’ve had all you deserve.

Dear Marella, she said aloud. Suddenly the sound of an approaching cable car caught her attention quickly. She came to her senses and began kicking snow over Marla’s body. She then attached her skis to her boots and set off down the mountain. She didn’t feel in the least bit guilty. Just terribly pleased and satisfied.

Leah (Actor): Grade a teacher’s comment, very well written, but avoid melodrama.

Laura: Um, do you have a sister by any chance?

Louise: Oh my God, I’m crying with laughter at that. That is absolutely hilarious. Um, I do, yes. My sister Jane and, um, yes, she’s not,

Laura: she’s not your, uh, your muse for this in any way. Your inspiration.

Louise: I dunno. I mean, maybe she was, I don’t think either of us had boyfriends ’cause I was 12 at that age when she’s only 18 months older than me.

But um, yeah, for those who haven’t gathered the motive for this, this grizzly murder is just that one. One sister’s got a boyfriend that the other one wants. Oh my God. That is just hilarious. And also, I should tell you that I’ve got the book in front of me, that exercise book, and it comes with an illustration of You did an illustration.

Yes. Oh my word. I did an illustration of mountains and then there’s a cable car. That runs between these two peaks in my little illustration and the ca, the cable card does, um, come up later in the story when there’s another death.

Laura: Oh my God. That was quite a long story. It was almost self-contained.

You’re telling me It’s sort of

Louise: so it’s a little novella. Oh, that’s, yeah, that’s an excerpt. This was about 10 pages long. I mean, when I think about Poor Miss Marriott, who was my English teacher, she used to get sort of 12, 15 page stories. From me and you know, and I, I never considered for a moment that, you know, it was gonna take her time to, to read them, but she must have seen my little green exercise book and thought, oh no.

Oh, I bet she was thrilled.

Laura: It sounds like you were an amazing child to have in class looking under a novelist there. And then, although I had say my favorite line there, she was without doubt dead. That is, I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard, like in any of the off cuts we’ve ever done.

Louise: It’s just so funny, isn’t it?

And the fact that she’s. She’s only pleased and satisfied. Yes. Not guilty, not ashamed or in any way traumatized. Just immensely pleased and satisfied.

Laura: Yes. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s obviously it is a very simplistic, you know, it’s a 12-year-old view and there are obviously things that are stated that, that are obvious and wouldn’t be stated by you as a novelist, but still it’s very much got the bones of a thriller novel.

Louise: Totally. And what’s really, really funny and fascinating for me is. Seeing the influences because my influences at that time would’ve been Agatha Christi. So you can see the kind of death on the Nile mm-hmm. Type melodrama, yeah. In there. But also, um, you know, the glamor of shows like Dallas and Dynasty.

Right. ’cause yeah, because I lived in North Hampton, which, um, you know, isn’t a terribly glamor. Place, and it may be more glamorous now, but certainly in the early eighties it was a Midlands industrial town and I don’t think we even had any restaurants at that time. I’m sure it’s very different now. And so all of my access to glamor was through books and tv.

And so even their names, there’s no way I would’ve had a more in my school or a, or a Livy. You know, they’re all kind of American sounding names. Ah, yes, yes. So, yeah. And Dane. I mean, there would not have been a Dane that is very American in my circle. Yeah. It’s so for me, I can see, I can really see the, um, the influences and, you know, and also I hadn’t traveled at all.

I don’t think I’d left the country at that point. Mm-hmm. Um, so the Alps would’ve been to me impossibly glamorous. Oh,

Laura: so this isn’t based on any kind of memory of having gone skiing? No.

Louise: It’s not a school trip. No. No. Gosh, no. I mean, I, I don’t ski now. I mean, I have been skiing, but No, not until my twenties.

You know, I had a very, um, small town upbringing where I didn’t really leave the, the area even to, to go to London until I went to university. So, yeah, it’s really fun to imagine 12-year-old me watching Dallas and then, you know, turning to my English homework. Do you know what the prompt was

Laura: for the homework?

Did they give you the title? What I did on my holidays? For example?

Louise: No, no. Any prompt that I was given, I would turn it into a story of murder and melodrama.

Laura: How brilliant were you actually? Did you become a goth or an when you were Oh, a teenager. Oh my god, this

Louise: is so hilarious. No, the um, my aforementioned sister Jane, was the queen goth of Northampton.

She was a goth, but I was a tennis nut, so we used to walk to school together and I would wear tennis. Kit and she would wear a wedding dress dyed black. We were quite a famous pair of sisters.

Laura: Goodness, that sounds like the beginning of a novel in its own right. That’s incredible. So your sister looked like she had the dark side, but you all dressed in tennis whites and bouncing around with no doubt.

Your hair in a ponytail. Yeah. You were the one that was secretly planning murders. Yes. Underneath it all. Isn’t

Louise: that interesting? Because I actually think that that is true. I think I’m a much darker person, but she looked very dark. She, you know, she had all the appearances of being, you know, sort of returned from the dead and you know, was in a big gang of goths.

And I seem to remember her boyfriend, who wasn’t called Dane, had a coffin. He had a coffin in his, in his flat.

Laura: That’s just brilliant. No, that’s very funny. Oh my word. What an interesting family you have. Louise. Oh my goodness. Um, right then. Well, let’s move on. Next off Cut please. What’s this one?

Louise: So this is called the Gurs, and it’s from 2022 and it’s a pilot for a TV drama,

Leah (Actor): Mitchell Flat Day Saturday.

And Mitchell, middle aged, low key, casually dressed. Rings Sarah’s doorbell, tradesman’s van at the curb. He glances about him. Obviously not familiar with the street. The door is opened by Sarah in jeans and a t-shirt. Makeup free

Emma (Actor): Ewen. Hi. Come in.

Marcus (Actor): I’m sorry I’m late. Traffic was horrendous on the ring road.

Emma (Actor): Oh, you should try

Marcus (Actor): not having

Emma (Actor): a

Marcus (Actor): car.

Emma (Actor): The morning bus I sway. You could walk on your hands faster.

Leah (Actor): She wraps on Evie’s door as they pass calls out with classic divorced parent cheer

Emma (Actor): Dad’s here. Sorry. It’s a bit of a mess. We’re still getting sorted.

Leah (Actor): They enter the tiny dim living room and Sarah opens the curtains to reveal a cozy, colorful space.

Only one or two unpacked boxes remaining. She sits but you and stands,

Marcus (Actor): how did she get on

Leah (Actor): this

Marcus (Actor): week? She hasn’t answered my messages

Emma (Actor): really well. Already slaving over the textbooks every night.

Marcus (Actor): Sounds like a laugh a minute.

Emma (Actor): Ah, she’s off to a party tonight though. The cool crowd. Since When’s

Marcus (Actor): Evie been in the cool crowd?

Emma (Actor): Well, this is the whole point of moving to a new town. You can reinvent yourself. Okay, so maybe I know the mum of the cool kids.

Marcus (Actor): There it is. In like Flynn. What’s that supposed to mean? It’s just you’re on a mission, aren’t you? You won’t stop till she’s at Oxford or wherever.

Emma (Actor): I don’t think going to a party gets you into Oxford.

Come on. You know how clever she is. Why shouldn’t she aim high?

Marcus (Actor): Of course she should. I just don’t get why you want this over what you had, what we had.

Leah (Actor): Is that school really worth it? They look accusingly at each other. The civilized veneer has well and truly cracked. Don’t do this ewen. What

Emma (Actor): make out like the school is why we split up.

It’s not fair on Evie and it’s also not true.

Marcus (Actor): Look, if she’s happy, I’m happy

Emma (Actor): she is. You know this other mom, we were friends at school. It’s a bit of a shock seeing her again. What’s she called? Nikki, the American

Marcus (Actor): girl. Isn’t that a bit awkward?

Leah (Actor): Well, I’m hoping it won’t have to be. No. I’d be careful if I are you.

Hi dad. Evie enters and Yuen wraps his arms around her sensing how much his daughter needs this hug. Yuen catches Sarah’s eye, quizzical exterior, more cliff common and interior. Uber night, Saturday as night darkens. The common empty and unsettling a taxi crawls along the west side. Sarah and Evie both dressed up.

Peer out in search of the Walden residence.

Emma (Actor): 35. This is it. Bloody hell. Evie. Look at it. It’s like selling sunset

Leah (Actor): as the cab pulls up a security light flicks on illuminating a grand electric gate to the side of the house. A pair of Gulliver students are tapping at the entry pad.

Beth (Actor): Oh, that’s my entrance.

I’ve got the Cobra. Martha, want me to come in with you?

Emma (Actor): Make sure it works. No, you mad

Leah (Actor): fine.

Emma (Actor): Go Have a great time.

Leah (Actor): Evie scrambles out and Sarah watches her head up the drive before the cat falls away.

Emma (Actor): You too, mom.

Leah (Actor): You too.

Laura: So this is interesting. Tell us about the premise. Is this a thriller as well?

Louise: Um, yes. It’s, it’s a drama. So this was, um, a TV project that I worked on for a long time with a TV company called Red who are No More. Um, and it was inspired by the, everyone’s invited. Sex scandal in the schools that blew up around that time and led to a, you know, extremely shocking Ofsted report.

It was a huge story where it was discovered that boys in quite young boys, but certainly sort of senior school had been. Treating girls in a sexually inappropriate way, sometimes assaulting them, asking for nude pictures, and basically just making the atmosphere extremely uncomfortable and at times criminal.

And so there were a number of investigations in the schools, some of them quite high profile schools. And, um, and the government got involved and like so many other things it, it didn’t really go away because it’s all linked to porn. And, you know, the age at which. Boys start watching it. And the nature of porn now, which is very different from back in the day, uh, much more violent.

Um, and so, you know, I was really shocked. And also just sort of, you know, I, I, I felt unusually interested in a current affairs story. And so when, um, my agent suggested that I built a drama around it, an original drama, it just. Felt completely right. And so I did, and it came together very quickly. All of the characters.

I planned eight parts. I worked very closely with a development executive who was absolutely brilliant because I was so lucky I’d never written a, a script before and I had a kind of one-on-one tutor.

Hmm.

Louise: And it was really, really good fun to do and such a fantastic learning experience. But like so many.

Other TV projects, nothing happened and it hasn’t been made. So, you know, so it’s a, that was a lesson in itself with a, when you are writing a book, you know, when I write a book, I have a contract. I know there is going to be a project at the end of it and, you know, it might be a bestseller or it might not, but the story is shared and it’s there for people to access.

But with a TV project, it’s speculative. You know, I put in easily as much work into the gulls, um, as it was called. As I would’ve done a novel during that period, and yet, you know, there’s nothing. This is all, there is your lovely recording, which is so interesting to, to see which scene you’ve picked from the, the pilot, um, between the two estranged parents rather than the kids.

Part of the issue with selling it was that I had a 50 50 mix between the parents’ lives and the teenager’s lives, which kind of placed it a little bit too much in a gray area. So, you know, some broadcasters would say we love it, but can it be more kids, more like euphoria? Mm-hmm. And then others would say, Ooh, you know, can we minimize the teens and focus on the adults?

Like big little eyes. So it kind of fell between two camps, but I’m still very proud of it and I’m hoping actually to, if, um. We can get past the legalities of it. I’m hoping to be able to take it back and transform it into a novel.

Laura: I was about to say, surely that’s the obvious next step, isn’t it? Yes,

Louise: I think so.

The, but I think that the problem with being inspired by something very current and zeitgeisty, which everyone’s invited, you know, this campaign for, you know, school survivors of peer abuse. That’s old news now. You know, five years old now. And so I think what I would probably do is structure the community.

I’d keep the community in the characters, and I’d probably structure it around a different crime and possibly relegate the peer on peer crime to a subplot. I have to have a think about it, but it does. As someone who could only previously. Written things that had then been published. I’ve never had any novels sort of sitting in a drawer that haven’t been published.

Mm. It’s, it was actually quite hard for me to find off cuts because everything I’ve written has been published. So this is the first time I’ve done a huge project that hasn’t seen the light of day. And so, you know, it was really character building. I was very disappointed. Mm. And, um, you know, and had to sort of try and bounce back from that.

So it’s been, it’s, it’s a good one to include because it’s a re it really does show you that, you know, it doesn’t matter how successful you are, um, you, you get rejections all the time. And also writing this script came very easily and I now think, well, you know, had this been in the hands of an experience, screenwriter, you know, maybe it felt easy because it.

It wasn’t quite good enough. I just don’t know because I think the idea was very sound. Mm-hmm. But it was really lovely to try another format, another form of writing. And I always love writing dialogue and I always believe in, you know, showing through dialogue rather than telling what’s going on. And so, you know, TV is the perfect way of doing that.

Laura: Or you could break yourself in gently and do radio.

Louise: Yes. Yeah. Oh, I’d love to write a, a radio play. I love radio. Dramatizations of novels is one of my favorite forms. Um, I absolutely Could the Gallers be

Laura: a five part or I, I dunno, I dunno what the format are these days.

Louise: Yes. Or

Laura: an afternoon play.

Louise: Yes. Maybe. I mean, I only wrote the, it’s an eight episode.

Um. A series and, and I only wrote the pilot. I only wrote episode one. And you only write the rest if it’s commissioned and it wasn’t commissioned. Yeah. But all of the planning is there, all of the plotting. If this was a novel or anything else, I wouldn’t have to do any relotting. It was. Really interesting compared to my novel process.

My thriller writing process is very much kind of loosely plan it, know what the crime is, who’s done it, all the mechanisms sort of in my head, and then I just get going to find the voice. But with this, every single minute of every single episode was plotted. Well, hopefully, hopefully it’ll be

Laura: resurrected in one or multiple formats going forward.

I hope

Louise: so. I hope so. It’s an important story and you know, it hasn’t yet been told in, you know, any, any depth I don’t think. Well time for another off cut. Now what have we got? So this is a book idea I called the residents and I wrote it in around 2020.

Leah (Actor): The residence is an aspirational collection of Riverside apartments where city meets suburb.

Where domestic bliss has been curated to the last detail where you can’t fail to live your best life, they say nothing when you sign up about the threat of murder in a cafe across the road from a West London coroner’s court, three witnesses share a table. They are linked by their association with the residents, the development that promised dream living, but delivered a nightmare.

Just three months after the first renters moved in, a woman named Marina met her death in one of the apartments, and the police have been asking questions ever since. Lois is the neighbor whose husband’s erratic behavior derailed her hopes for a new start, for their young family, and placed her at the scene of the tragedy.

Bridget is the building manager. A former police victim advocate whose attachment to her work and interest in Marina was starting to blur lines even before the fatal event. And Tom is the accidental player, all his worldly possessions in the bag at his feet. He’d moved into the unit next door to Marina only two weeks before her death, and was the last person to see her alive.

Just hours later, the coroner delivers a verdict of accidental death and the police investigation is closed. Life for the residence resumes, but Bridget won’t let go. It’s her job to pay attention to detail and the details in Marina’s death. Don’t add up. Instinct tells her the answers lie with those fellow witnesses, Lois and Tom.

But no sooner does she try to reconnect with them, then they’re gone. It soon becomes clear that whoever warned them off intends the same disappearing act for her because something’s going on at the residence so monstrous that it makes people like them expendable. It makes murder look like child’s play.

Laura: Ooh, this is a document that book I did. Who is this for? Is this to inspire you or was it as a treatment to sell

Louise: to a publisher? Yeah, this was for me, so I am before all else an ideas person, so you know, I would love to spend my day just generating ideas. And not actually completing the projects. And so I’ve got, over the years, there’ve been lots of these to the extent that when I was looking for them, I’ve thrown lots away.

Some of them it was like I’d never seen them before. I couldn’t remember them. It’s um, I always start a new novel with a blurb and I think it’s the former copywriter in me that I just like to crystallize. The main plot theme, you know, the mood, just how is it gonna be, the elevator pitch, you know, just a couple of paragraphs.

And so I’ll often start that way and then just abandon the idea. And this one is really interesting and the reason I chose it because it’s a classic case of it just being all style and no substance. I didn’t know what the monstrous crime was, um, going on behind the scenes and obviously you dumping.

Yeah. Yeah. Or Cass under ING one of the two. Yes. Yeah. Well,

Laura: it’s called the residence.

Louise: Yeah, it was, it was just an empty shell of an idea and it wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t ignite that kind of feeling that gets ignited when I know something’s got legs. It just didn’t have legs. But having said that. I did know what it was going to be built around, and it was going to be built around a particular Hitchcockian trick that I had wanted to try for a while, and I didn’t give up on that element.

I actually used that in my novel, the Only Suspect. So I think that this must have been around the time that I was thinking about the only suspect, because I used the trick that I’d planned for the residents and I also. Took the character name of Marina. So it must have been how my mind was working before I decided to write the Only Suspect.

So it’s actually quite, you know, for any writers listening to this or creative writing students it, you know, it just shows you that it’s well worth putting those early ideas down because they lead you to the right idea. And I’ve always found getting it on paper and trying to crystallize it in a blurb or a short synopsis is very helpful.

Even if I then go straight onto something else, somehow it just kind of solidifies the idea a bit. So yeah, I mean, it sounds great, but there was nothing behind it. I think. I love the idea of a kind of Ballard style, you know, sinister apartment block and a way of drawing the characters together, but ultimately it wasn’t going anywhere.

Mm.

Laura: That’s an interesting idea that you write the pitch for it before you actually have the substance. It’s normally the other way around.

Louise: Yes, it is. And it does help you kind of see if it’s a strong enough idea. Mm. Because you know, in publishing and, and tv, the hook is everything. You know, sometimes book order will, will take place on the basis of the hook because not every retail buyer is going to be able to read every book before deciding which ones they’re going to stock.

Mm-hmm. You know, book sellers need to be intrigued and they know as well that. They’re gonna be hand selling books and they need to be able to say in a couple of lines what it’s about. And so that’s how I approach it. And then I sort of build around it. You get the first, yeah. Yeah.

Laura: Property is quite a theme in your books.

I noticed that when I read our holiday. And then the other passenger. Yes. Um, I thought as a middle class, middle-aged woman, I was going, she’s speaking to me. Property prices, property values, people being priced out or not. And then of course, the residents comes up. Property seems to well people’s home. I suppose it makes sense.

But your latest book that is out, I believe any day now, is called A Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. So that also has a kind of property implication there if you’re talking about someone who lives next door to you. Yes, absolutely. Does it have

Louise: a property element too? It does, yes. And in fact, um, how interesting that we’ve, that you’ve just said straight from the residents, because this is an apartment block.

So obviously it was, it’s been sitting there in my mind, but this is a Mansion block in a Neighbor’s Guide to Murder. It’s one of those swanky, you know, Edwardian mansion blocks, um, full of people who care deeply about rules and restrictions and service charges, et cetera. And this is where, where the, with 70-year-old narrator Gwen.

Lives and meets the, um, young girl Pixie who’s renting a room from her neighbor, Alec. So this is, again, it has a property theme and this is the first time I think I’ve tackled the rental crisis. I mean, I’m doing so through the eyes of someone who does own their own property, but Gwen has in her circle, pixie, who falls into an extremely.

Unpleasant rental arrangement with Alec. Mm-hmm. And she also has her son who is in his thirties and he’s boomeranged back. So he’s living with her rent-free and has a right old pain and she doesn’t know when he’s going to leave. She’s also got a daughter who has abandoned her. Sort of former activist instincts to become a trad wife.

So she’s sort of, you know, living off this rich banker boyfriend. And then there’s also in the building, the Nepo baby daughter of Gwen’s friend Dee, to whom everything has come easy through connections. And you know, she’s the only one of the young people featured who doesn’t need to worry about where her rent’s coming from.

Emma (Actor): Right.

Louise: So yeah, this was the first time I wanted to, to think about how it feels to be in your twenties and, you know, ’cause I love, I love generational conflict stories and I love those kind of age gap relationships and friendships. And so regular readers of mine will see some of my pet. Peeves and my pet subjects cropping up, but in I think quite a different tone for me, this book has got a real sort of notes on a scandal vibe to it with this sort of slightly odd narrator who has got some murky stuff in her past that she’s atoning for and you know, her interference in this 20 something neighbors.

Life is, you know, deeply inappropriate. And she, you know, she puts two and two together and makes 25 and scandal erupts in the building. And eventually as the, as the title suggests, a murder takes place. So, yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff going on in this book, but there you’ve only got one narrator. So, you know, let me just warn readers that, you know, there, there could be other sides to the story that you are not hearing.

Ah.

Laura: Right. Well, we’ve come to your final off cut. Tell us about this one, please.

Louise: So this is another excerpt from a story I wrote at school. It’s called A Long Walk, and was written in 1982

Beth (Actor): when the Ress roughly awakened me. At first, I didn’t remember for my thoughts were in drowsy disorder. Then it dawned upon me today was the day, the last day.

The day when after 19 years and four months, my whole existence would come to a slow, painful, and merciless halt. I felt a strange, calm flood my body as I stretched my filthy limbs clad in the once beautiful white gown, which had now become indecently torn and stained and ugly. Brown. All good things must come to an end.

Mocked the ress, watching me with a crooked grin. My eyes were focusing on that hideously disproportionately large head with its wild eyes, but my thoughts were elsewhere remembering, almost understanding why Celia had done it, but not quite. My face didn’t betray a flicker of the emotion, which the twisted mind of the ress would’ve gleefully, pounced upon, but my mind lost its calm and suddenly became desperate.

Surely, surely Celia would never be able to live with such intense guilt with the knowledge of having murdered one and convicted another. Surely she would never live as a free, happy human being again. The hours passed cruelly slow, and throughout the same thoughts occupied my mind. Celia, standing with a pistol in her gloved hand, her eyes flashing and her face contorted with jealousy as she regarded the glittering ring on my finger.

Then Roderick drawn and white falling to the floor as the blood steeped into his sandy hair. Celia screaming, hurling the pistol into my hands and sobbing an endless stream of tears onto roderick’s lifeless face.

Leah (Actor): Grade A minus. Teacher’s comment. Avoid allowing your style to become as melodramatic as your subject matter.

Laura: Well, this is positively, uh, Barack. I, I feel like I need to know what led up to this imprisonment and why is her dress presumably a, a white wedding dress stained brown, or do I not want to know? I don’t.

Louise: Why use one adjective when you can use two, three, or four? Is, is my takeaway from this. I can’t remember, um, whether it’s a wedding dress or not, but she has been framed for the murder of Roderick

Laura: Roderick.

Great

Louise: name. Yes. Another great, great name and another jealous act. From a sort of pubescent child who had never met a boy, probably let alone had a, had a romantic encounter. Very funny. Her, her rival wasn’t a sister again, was it? No. No, it wasn’t a sister. Just checking. No, but I’m now seeing in this. Um, this is a whole other anecdote, but very briefly, when I was 12, I got in trouble with the police.

I was in this sort of little crime ring. Exciting. Yeah. And my parents found out the, the police came to the house actually to caution me, and I was grounded for a whole summer. And, um, the, you know, the whole school summer holiday, which is six weeks, I wasn’t allowed out except to go to the library with the goth sister.

I don’t think she was a goth yet then, but she had to accompany me and supervise me, right? And so that summer I read the complete works of Aha Christi and. Maybe not the complete works, but certainly at least 40 Barbara Cartland. Oh my word. And so, yeah, so I think that there’s some Barbara Cartland in this one, don’t you?

I’ve

Laura: not read a lot of Barbara Cartland, I’m afraid. I hope my hands up there. No, but I was thinking more Duchess of mouthy, to be honest.

Louise: I probably was studying the Bronte’s. Maybe at school by then I might have been doing Jane ey or something. So there is a sort of gothic feel to it,

Laura: right? I mean, I dunno how violent Barbara Cartland gets.

If she gets violent, then possibly,

Louise: yes. Well, they’re historical romances. So Roderick sounds like a Barbara Cartland sort of name.

Ah.

Louise: To me. And then you’ve got the death on the Nile type influence in there as well. You know, the glittering ring and the gloved hand. And you know, I loved all those sort of costume details.

And as you mentioned, the filthy brown dress

Laura: stained, the stained brown dress st. It was white stained brown. That’s the specificity of that. Maybe my eyebrows hit the top of my head when I read that. And the drowsy

Louise: disorder. And nice phrase, the disproportionately, disproportionately large head.

Oh my God. Was there a

Laura: happy ending? I mean, I dread to ask, but there have been a happy ending for this. Of course. Yes. Because

Louise: again, this is only a small fragment of a 12 page story for Miss Marriot. Mm-hmm. And, um, yes, she’s freed. She has a last minute pardon,

Laura: changes her dress, I hope. Yeah,

Louise: I think they might bring her a, a new dress and say, come, you can take those filthy rags off now.

Laura: Wow. And what I really liked about this, and the other one was the teacher’s note. Yes. Miss Marriott, I presume again, is it? Yes.

Louise: Miss Marriot? Yes.

Laura: Would you say Miss Marriott had any particular influence on your writing style? I mean, she, she feels like she’s a constant throughout this program. If nothing else, she’s my English

Louise: teacher for years and years and, you know, we haven’t been in touch since my writing career began, and I have tried to google her, but it’s very hard with misses because they tend to marry and then change their name.

So I haven’t been able to track her down. For whatever reason, she’s not felt that she’s wanted to contact me. She probably fears I’ll start sending her stories that she asking, asking for an A.

Laura: I’d like to read her notes in the margins. It,

Louise: yeah, I think she was an amazing influence because, not in terms of, you know, I didn’t read any of her work, or she didn’t really, I mean, she tried to reign in the melodrama, but she wasn’t successful.

I continued to, you know, get more and more melodramatic, but she was just. Very encouraging and obviously allowing me to do these ridiculously long stories for when she probably only asked for a couple of pages to get people to use adjectives. And you know, she never said, look, this is too long, or this isn’t what, what I wanted, wanted.

Well, I imagine she

Laura: would’ve been delighted. Delighted to have a child that is that interested and is that imaginative and is that committed to, to creativity? I imagine there weren’t many kids in your class

Louise: doing that. No. Oh, there definitely weren’t. I mean, this is. Just the tip of the iceberg. There’s loads more.

There’s one called The Mirror of the Future, which we, which I, what’s a

Laura: great title?

Louise: Oh, my word. And again, there’s an illustration for the title and the two Rs in mirror are back to back, like ab, like the bees in Abba.

Laura: Very clever. Yeah. It’s all there. Oh yes. 12-year-old Louise. She was a, a bestselling novelist waiting to happen there.

She was. Fantastic. Right. Well, we’ve come to the end of the show. How was it for you?

Louise: Oh, it was so much fun. I mean, I’ve literally cried with laughter, so you know, it doesn’t get better than that. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Laura: Well, it has been fabulous talking to you, Louise Kish. Thank you for sharing the contents of your Offcut straw with us.

Louise: Thank you for asking me to.

Laura: The Offcut straw was devised and presented by me, Laura Shaven. With special thanks to this week’s guest, Louise Kish. The offcuts were performed by Leah Marks, Emma Clark, Beth Chalmers, and Marcus Hutton. And the music was by me. For more details about this episode, visit offcut straw Do com and please do subscribe, rate and review us.

Thanks, listen.