Hello.
Welcome to another edition of Hertford's literary podcast, I'm Emma Smith,
I'm the fellow librarian and I teach English, and I'm absolutely delighted to be talking with Claire McGowan.
Not least because I was up until about one o'clock in the morning reading one of her latest novels,
The Push, which is a really extraordinary page turner and I was doing it actually for prep, but I couldn't put it down,
so I'm looking forward to talking to her about that and about the other crime novels and her other literary writing.
But Claire, thanks so much for being with us. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for the kind words about the book.
Well, there's going to be plenty more I can tell you.
Tell us first about you and Hertford, and when you know when you're here and what you have done since then.
So I turned up to Hertford in 2000, about this time of year, I guess, it was into October, I think because of the late terms.
And the first time I'd ever been to Oxford was a year before that for interviews.
So I had never been to the university before I applied.
And I remember arriving for my interview quite late and it was dark and kind of walking around the corner into
Radcliffe Square and seeing the Radcliffe Camera and just being kind of overwhelmed by it and deciding at that point,
well, I need to try and come here, but I didn't think I would get in.
So it was quitem I think you actually interviewed me, didn't you? I did. Yeah.
So you read English and Modern Languages? Yeah. And what about, we're going to come back to some sort of Hertford memories,
but what are some of the highlights or even lowlights of what you've done since you left Hertford?
So I just had a normal job for a few years. I worked in the charity sector,
but I was always wanting to write a book and I'd sort of been writing on and off for years and had
lots of notebooks full of scribbles and kind of convinced myself I wouldn't be able to do it,
even though I was only 25 at this point. So I don't know what I was thinking.
I just hadn't really tried or shared my work to anyone. So I, umm,
When I was about 25, I decided I need to try to finish a book because I worked on that for a couple of years,
and when I did finally finish it, it was such a wonderful moment.
I think it was one of the best moments still in my writing life, even though I actually have so far not published that book.
And then I wrote something else quite quickly, and then I got a publishing deal.
From that, I was probably twenty nine at that point. So when my book came out, I was 30, which is, I think, still pretty young actually for a writer.
Yeah, absolutely. And so did you....How did you come to
crime fiction or psychological thrillers or,
Well, first I'd like to know how you would, how would you define that aspect of your writing? I would say crime fiction
as an umbrella term for it. Yeah. And was that always what you were going to write?
Or did you come to that? Not at all. No, I was very clueless about what I was doing.
The book I spent years writing was literary fiction. I think most people often go straight to literary fiction when they begin writing.
And then the second book that I write was sort of accidentally a thriller I didn't actually know it was a thriller is just how it came out.
So I was quite surprised when they it was acquired by an editor who said, Oh, this is obviously crime, and I was quite taken aback by that.
But I know now that that's actually a really good thing because there's such a fantastic market for crime fiction.
And actually, I've always really enjoyed reading it. So it kind of makes sense.
I suppose I would write it. I've written other things too, but it's probably still my favourite genre.
What do you think? I mean, this is such a huge question, but it's so fascinating.
Not least because I guess it's one of the things people have read a lot during lockdown has been crime.
I've had a lot of people talking about reading a golden age crime fiction and going back to the world of Agatha Christie or something,
which in some ways is so disrupted and so full of wickedness and awful things happening.
But it's also so orderly because in narrative terms, it all gets, it all gets sorted out.
I don't find that your books. I mean, there are things in your books.
I was thinking about the books you've written about, about Northern Ireland and about the sort of consequences,
long term consequences of the troubles and that seems to be about, quite well,
if I might say a very sort of grown up sense of crime fiction that there are some things that can't,
you know, can't just be discovered and put right under. Yeah, well, there's a lot more grey in the world than sort of black and white.
Yeah, that's interesting. I often go back to Agatha Christie myself for a comfort read.
I often read them around Christmas, and I find they actually stand up quite well to be reading because I can never remember what happened.
It's sort of like an enjoyable but not a memorable experience.
And I suppose one thing I really enjoy about crime fiction is that you can use it as a way to explore
some very difficult issues about our current society in the past while still being entertaining.
So hopefully people will sort of enjoy the story, but there's an important message in there as well as I've been to write my first book,
the one that didn't get published actually was a lot about, it was also set in Northern Ireland and it was about family and religion and history
And I think just with crime fiction, just looking at all of those same issues with a new, slightly more gripping format.
Yes, tell us, tell us about your sort of detective figure in that series of books set in Northern Ireland. Yeah it's a
forensic psychologist and really the some of the things I have for doing a forensic psychologist wouldn't really do that.
I took a bit of leeway and I sort of invented a kind of special unit that she was working in, and I'm very interested in missing persons.
So the books are a lot about missing persons rather than murder.
And sometimes there is murder, but not always, just sort of quite interested by the endless possibilities when someone is missing,
but they could still be alive or they could have gone voluntarily. So she sort of it just made it the same age as me.
So when the books start, she's about 30, which seems quite young to me now.
Classic kind of good at her job, but extremely chaotic personal life kind of carrying around all over the place, getting into trouble.
But the books are actually in development for TV.
So you know, nothing, nothing definite yet, but it is kind of moving along and there is a script being written, so that's really exciting.
Well, how much input will you have? I mean, obviously a huge impact.
Do you read the books? But how much input into the TV adaptation will you? So far, nothing, actually.
I've not even met the company, probably because of COVID, but I would hope that if it got off the ground,
I would have more inputs than maybe be able to do an episode at some point because I do write scripts as well.
That will be amazing. I was thinking that she's gone back, she's gone back to Northern Ireland hasn't she.
That's part of what the deal is with her and her. That's a symptom and partly a kind of cause of the chaos in her life.
And as well as wondering about how that fits with with you, have you ever thought that you would go back to live there?
You know, do you spend much time there? I thought about it briefly about maybe about 10 years ago, but I think I'm very settled here,
and I obviously haven't been able to go back very much over the last year or so. I've only been back twice in the last year and a half, I'd say,
but my parents still live there, so I think I feel like I've quite a strong connection still.
And it's been since I left, so I left in 2000, which was just two years after the end of the Troubles.
So things are really not great still in terms of investment and there was still a fair amount of violence.
So in the time that I've been away, you know, Northern Ireland has really transformed and it seems to have become quite a cool place almost, like I am always
A little bit shocked when people go to Belfast for a mini break because when I was growing up, Belfast had nothing and it was full of soldiers.
It was terrifying. I find that really strange.
The Push is set in London and I was just start by saying that you go about talking to Christy because obviously what
Christy, to me, does brilliantly is and that sort of weirdly is these sort of strange plots and the execution of the crime is often,
you know, extremely elaborate and has to be picked in these elaborate ways by Poirot or whoever.
But she's not good at character, whereas I think you are really good at character, and I think The Push is a really good example of that.
It's a good example of what you also mentioned about, you know, not dealing with, that's the wrong phrase,
but approaching issues or raising issues, which is about infertility.
Infertility, treatment and stuff. But in some ways the crime in The Push, which I'm not going into.
It's a really great page, so I'm not going to spoil it, but it's not.
That's not really the main focus, almost. It's it's more that it's about a very disparate group of women and their partners who have come together.
Yeah, because they're all, they're all having babies. Yeah.
So I'm very interested in the group dynamics. I'm very interested in sort of the dark side of middle class aspirations.
So I really enjoy kind of poking fun at that side of things.
And I'm also very interested in the same event seen from different standpoints.
So the first thriller I did as a stand alone is called What You Did.
That's actually partly set at Oxford.
So that is the same kind of thing, it is about something that happens with this sort of group of friends at a university
reunion and all the different viewpoints of everyone that was there that gradually builds up to what might be the truth.
Yeah, that's really on display in this novel.
that I have just read, does that require you to be sort of sympathetic?
I was interested that you write scripts because I feel as if scripts in in my sort of professional critical well,
that what I always say about drama is it has to make all these characters equally plausible.
You can't, you're not seeing it from all from one person's point of view.
You're trying to animate these different consciousnesses and how they see the world.
Huge amount of suspense in crime fiction often comes down to point of view.
Like who's point of view are we hearing from? who knows what? I think like structure really comes into it.
so that's something I think about quite carefully when I'm writing the book is how how am I going to structure this?
And every book is different. So I've just written another one that is
all told by the same character, but in the first person but it's two different timelines,
so you don't even necessarily know to begin with that that is the same person, you can probably guess, but it is at two very different points in their life.
That's such an interesting sort of structural device in crime fiction, isn't it?
The sort of, in part, the job of the reader, the detective work the reader has to do is to understand how all these different
bits of narration fit together and whether they are the same person or whether...
Yeah. And hopefully that creates suspense because you're wondering, Well, how how do these connect up?
Yes. Yeah, that's absolutely true. You know that they must connect.
Yeah. That's so interesting. Hearing, hearing you talk about how you sort of plot and structure because one one other thing I
want to ask you about was sort of teaching writing because I know you do a lot of that.
Mm-Hmm. And I suppose that's one of the old chestnuts, isn't it?
Can you teach creative writing La la la? You know, Oxford has been very resistant to teaching creative writing as part of English literature teaching,
which most of the universities now do absolutely routinely.
Tell me about, you know, your take on on what is you're teaching when you are doing those workshops with less experienced writers?
Well, one thing I don't know is if you, I've never known whether you can teach people how to have ideas because I've always had loads of ideas,
like since I was a child, I was, I probably had a new idea for something every couple of weeks, probably.
And I got great notebooks full of just loads and loads and loads of ideas that never got off the ground.
And I'm just talking about fiction here obviously. So if you don't have those kind of ideas, I don't know if you can teach that,
but I think you can definitely teach the techniques, say things like, I've just been talking about things like structure or viewpoint.
You can certainly improve your prose as well. So a lot of my teaching, I think, was partly those techniques of to think about how to structure a book,
and sometimes it's just about seeing what other people do,
which is why I always tried to get my students to read as much as possible, particularly current crime fiction,
because there's not really a huge amount of point in reading loads of Agatha Christie.
It'll be very enjoyable, but it won't teach you very much about the current market.
And that's that striking that it's both the market and the thing, you know,
the work itself that you're not sort of precious about, in some way, that the kind of, Oh, well, how do I put this?
Because you are you're a really great writer.
I think you regret prose stylist, and I want to know how you help people improve their prose because I think let's let's start with that.
How do you help people improve their prose? I think it's a relentless criticism.
I have certain things I get really hung up about. So things like the dangling modifiers and punctuation, I have a huge thing about punctuation.
I think people think it doesn't matter, but I really think it hugely matters, actually, if the way that you even if you're not reading it aloud,
the way you punctuate it to yourself, the way you pause and stop to breathe, I think can hugely change the feel of a piece, so.
I think partly it's instinctive. So when I'm editing my own work, I'm just constantly trying to improve the sentence.
But I don't know if I have any rules for that, but I have things like, for example, I wouldn't.
I would try not to use the same word too many times in quick succession.
Yeah, yeah. I'm always alert to that in my prose, too.
And having a voice, I think, as well as I like trying to encourage people to write with voice rather than just write,
sort of clear but slightly dull prose. Yeah, because this a lot of your work seems to me not in the first person,
but nevertheless with aspects of what technically we would call free and direct discourse.
Yes, I use that. Yeah. And that's another thing I was always trying to get people to figure out was the difference
between direct thoughts and indirect thoughts and how you can use the characters on their own.
For example, just thinking about things,
I would always encourage them to use a little bit of direct thoughts because it's like a dialogue with yourself.
And what's your take on sort of writing in the present tense? I'm not a huge fan, actually.
I'm sure I have done it, but I find it a little bit off-putting now when I read a book and can become very sort of static,
I think, very kind of moment by moment. Yeah, I think I agree there other crime writers, you would you would alert us to?
Who are the crime writers', crime writers? Oh this is when my mind will go blank.
So there's a very strong community of crime fiction, which is another great reason to do it.
Everyone is extremely friendly and everyone knows each other because there's a lot of events and so on.
I was a big fan of Aaron Kelly, who is a friend of mine, and she is just, I think, really,
really brilliant, brilliant, brilliant prose writer, but also really brilliant at structure and twists.
And I particularly she wrote a book called, 'He said,
She said' a couple of years ago that I just think is a real, modern masterpiece, and I've read it about three or four times,
even though obviously I know what happens because the characters are amazing and the prose is amazing.
So that that's my favourite type of book is a sort of gripping thriller that's also well written,
so people like Susie Steiner, she wrote a kind of short series of detective fiction but beautifully done, Sabine Durrant is
someone I really like, I think she's published four or five books, and they've all been fantastic,
same thing, great characters, great writing, extremely gripping and suspenseful.
And then you've got this like a lot of big, heavy hitters of procedural fiction so people like Val Mcdermid,
Mark Billingham, I not such a huge fan of procedural fiction myself.
I do tend to enjoy the thrillers a bit more. That's a great list. Thanks.
That's really I think anybody who's listening to this, who wants to sense what to read next, will find find something there.
I wanted to stick with the idea of the of being aware of your readership, being aware of the market.
How have you developed that awareness? How does that actually work for you in your process?
I think of you were very, very smart and I know writers that do do this, who are constantly trying to think like, what's the next big idea?
What's the next big thing? And they will try to come up with an idea that is based on that.
So people might be like, well, so say, for example, somebody, a writer I know, Clare Mackintosh who just brought out a book called Hostage about a girl sat on a plane
And it's a brilliant idea. But there have also been like two or three other plane set thrillers have come out weirdly at the same time.
so there's something in the zeitgeist that I think that people often end up with the same
thing, I've been saying for years that I thought serial killer fiction was coming back,
and that does seem to be the case, actually. So things that are a bit darker.
a bit gorier, perhaps. And so the markets, I really don't think people should chase the market because it's just so random and no one really knows.
But there are trends. So I suppose it's more like, maybe it's not so much like
We're chasing the market, but we're all trying to come up with like, what is the next big thing?
What is the big concept? What is the big twist?
And I think, we all push each other as a community, harder and harder to to find what those are. And what's the role of your editor in that?
A lot of people on this podcast have talked interestingly about the editing process and their relationship with their editor.
So one thing I realised recently is that people don't understand what editing is outside of the industry.
So people will say like, Oh, but you're, so if I complain that I'm going to have to do editing.
People will often say like, Oh yeah, but doesn't your editor do that? No, they do not.
I wish they did. They just will tell me what needs fixing.
But I have to figure out how to fix it and do it all myself.
So if you find a great editor, beware because every published by Amazon now for a while, by their own publishing house and I've worked with,
they have a sort of freelance development editor which is not the same person as the commissioning editor.
That's unusual.
And the development editor that I've just worked there has been really fantastic and really helped me to see how the book could be better.
But in a way that I always feel, I never feel kind of like I've done a bad job.
So it was very inspiring, and I always think, Oh yeah, that's the perfect solution.
Why didn't I think of that? And are there other people who would read for you or who you would always share drafts with?
My agent is really great, so my agent used to be an editor, so she's very good on that.
And the amount of notes she'll give me kind of depends on whether the book is
under contract already or whether it's something new that we're trying to sell.
But sometimes if it's a new thing, we'll go through sort of five, six seven drafts, just like that.
Yeah, that's that's really interesting. Yeah, because it's related to that then that I wanted to ask you about writing under under two names.
So we've talked about the Claire McGowan, some of the Claire McGowan works but
tell us about the the other bit of your writing persona and writing career.
I've always enjoyed reading different things. And like I said, it wasn't,
I didn't have my heart set on writing crime fiction, and I found myself to be about eight years ago now,
I just got divorced and I was in a kind of a bad place.
It was kind of quite broke at the time, and I just found myself writing a rom com kind of to cheer myself up,
and it just really, really enjoyed writing it. So much it is actually still my favourite of all my books, this book, it's called 'The thirty List'
So just by kind of writing that on spec by myself, I was able to go into a new genre, and it's actually very common for writers to have pseudonyms
So I noticed two writers that have like four or five pseudonyms for different things that they write and people,
I think people sometimes get confused as to why you use a different name, but it's just kind of branding thing.
So people wanted to read one of my books and they were expecting crime,
and then they get a kind of frothy rom com, that's probably annoying and probably vice versa.
Does it make a difference to you? Do you feel today I'm Claire McGowan or today?
Uuum, I've always been very open. I think some writers are encouraged to hide the fact that there they are
They're their pseudonym, and I've always just been completely open about it and I think I do.
I do gravitate more naturally to crime.
So even when I've been writing some of my women's fiction, it always ends up with quite a strong mystery in it.
Just because having a mystery is, I think such a great way to structure a book and keep it gripping.
Publishing does like to put you in a box to say, like you write this,
but I've always read loads of different things and really enjoy a good rom com.
So it didn't seem that strange to me to write both.
And I've actually got, I've got a literary novel now that is in submission, so I'm hoping that might get published as well.
That would be a whole new thing for me. Be much more mainstream. That would be amazing, it's not related to the one that you first.
That is isn't published. No, it's not actually if it if it took off.
Perhaps they could publish that one. It's something I've been working on for 10 years, actually.
I remember starting it 10 years ago and just thinking to myself, I don't, I don't know how to write this book yet.
I don't have the skills.
So I just put it aside and look down and was really good, sometimes really good for like looking up and digging up old projects and finishing them for me.
That's that's quite that's quite inspiring. You write, you publish a lot, don't you?
That's that must be a lot of discipline and a lot of, you know, good, good work habits and all of that.
Yeah, I've got four books coming out this year, so I have actually slightly struggling to finish the book and working out at the minute.
And I think that's why I am a little bit burnt out. And like I was saying earlier about, I used to get I get loads of ideas.
I actually don't at the minute. I'm not getting that many ideas, so I probably just need like a very long rest.
Unfortunately, I don't have any time for that because I've got loads of things that need to be done in the next two months.
And are you more or less your full time writer? Yeah. So I used to teach I used to read one of the MAs at City University,
which was great and I really enjoyed it, but I gave that up about three years ago.
Actually, I'm going to do a little bit of teaching this term because, I don't know if you find this Emma,
but I really enjoy being at a university in the autumn with some kind of lovely energy about it.
I think, yeah, we're really excited about it. As you said at the beginning, we were recording this at the end of September.
So yeah, we're just about it's all just about to come. We're a bit nervous about it this year, but very much,
I mean, my whole life has been about, you know, the year turning in September, much more than ever in January.
Yeah. And I really enjoy everything.
There's a great energy this time of year and loads of things get done and things happen and people come back from holidays in August.
And that's partly why I have so much work now is because everyone's come back. But yeah, I really enjoy it.
So I think it'll be quite nice to be back.
And I am going on campus to do hybrid teaching, so I will be in the room and some people will be video conferencing in.
Yeah, I think we're all sort of preparing, preparing for that, for that mode.
But yeah, it's great. It's great to hear you remind us about this sort of excitement of the year
starting because we can go back then to your memories of Hertford
because listeners to this literary podcast will know that one of the prompts for connecting with our writing
community and Hertfordians in print was thinking about bookish Hertford in in the context of the new library project.
So we're working hard to redevelop the library,
set this more study space and better accessibility and good storage for the archives
and rare books and that so they'll be able to be used more as living part of the collection
But it's it's been really interesting hearing whether people were sort of,
you know, library mice or not, whether they worked elsewhere in Oxford.
What was your working, preferred working environment when you were here?
I used to work in bed a lot actually, which is a really, really bad habit and I now hear
new writers talk about it's so great, I write in bad. I'm always like, No, you must not do that, it's so bad for your back!
I'm glad to hear you say that it's bad for your
back rather than in some moral sense! No I always banging on about this, there are a few things I always bang on about to new writers,
one is data storage and backing up your work. And one is looking after your neck and your wrists.
So use a laptop with a keypad, with the trackpad rather, and then get a proper desk.
Get a proper chair. That would be great. After this, I'm just going to speak to our new freshers.
And in fact, they were just two really good pieces of advice for them! Yeah data storage!
Date storage and look after your spine. Yeah, OK, I'll steal that! I usually tell them lots of horror stories in the first
week so that I hopefully scare them a lot into using Dropbox or something. So I used to work in the English library quite a bit.
But there's something about that building, which is so incredibly soporific. I used to fall asleep quite often there.
Yeah, and then, yeah, you sort of work in the library in Hertford too but that was this too kind of a fun place.
I think it was very peaceful but you'd always sort of see people you knew and you could leave each other notes, I don't know if it is still a 24 hour library,
but it used to be you could just let yourself in at any point. So that was great.
I always just loved libraries anyway, and I just always loved the atmosphere of going in there and people would be having various essay crises.
And there were some people that, around finals, never really left the library.
So you would see them kind of with all their Diet Cokes and everything and their Red Bulls.
So that was never really me. But I did certainly love going to the library like I would sometimes go to the Radcliffe Camera as well sometimes.
It's one thing about Hertford is that, actually, we are really well, really well placed.
And one of the design points about the new library, which I think is really exciting,
is a reading room which looks over, has these amazing views over Radcliffe Square,
which will be views actually that no one's seen before, looking down.
I think, yeah, it will be really, really inspiring.
And I suppose I got a membership to the British Library, before COVID and I had sort of grand ideas of going there to work,
but I thought I seem to just need like a constant supply of cups of tea.
They're very strict in the reading rooms of the BL about what you're allowed to take in, and it is very quiet.
So I think one of the hazards of modern life is it's quite hard to find a very, very quiet place where no one's on their phone.
So it is extremely quiet for that. But I sort of seem to need a little bit of life around the place.
We have allowed Keep Cups in the library rather to the librarian's dismay.
But your mention of Diet Cokes and Red Bull, I should say these are not actually permitted in the library.
I think maybe I am misremembering, but I seem to recall people stocking up on...no, no
Sometimes I see Alice Roques, our wonderful librarian, on a Monday, and she says that they'd ordered pizza again over the weekend!
This is 20 years ago, I should say as well! No I'm teasing you!
I think, yeah, obviously people do do that, still in the library. It is very interesting to have a 24 hour library
and I think it does get abused, sadly. Yeah, that's that's probably that's probably true.
But I suppose having been away from college for so, having us been away from college for so many months,
it's actually really nice thinking about those, those ways in which people just get together.
Not necessarily, you know, in the rules of what was expected, but just, you know, find ways to
Yeah, to be together. And we're looking forward to that. Yeah, I just always love being around campus,
being around the quad and just sort of seeing people walking around and going to lunch and dinner and the hall.
I think because it's such a small college, it was very nice in that way. You'd always run into people.
Yeah. Well, I'm really looking forward to getting that sense back over the coming over the coming weeks.
Claire, it's been fantastic to talk to you for our literary podcast.
I recommend The Push, as I've been saying. Tell us about, tell us the name of the novel that's coming out next month.
It's called 'I know you'. Excellent. Excellent. So look out. Look out for that.
And there's a great back catalogue of Claire McGowan's work if you're interested to follow that up.
Join us again for the next Hertford Literary podcast.
Thanks to our guest, Claire McGowan, and to Hannah Bironzo, who has been producing this podcast on behalf of the Development Office.