Author Laura Marshall tells us about her latest novel The Anniversary and her favourite TV shows she watched during the first lockdown.
Laura Marshall is the bestselling author of three psychological thrillers. Her first two novels, Friend Request and Three Little Lies have sold over half a million copies in the UK and been translated into twenty-five languages.
Her third novel, The Anniversary, will be published by Sphere on 5th August, and is available to reserve through the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
I think I always wanted to write, but it took me a long time to get here. My mum recently gave me my old exercise books from primary school and a lot of my stories involved knife-wielding men creeping into houses at night and similar, so it’s perhaps no surprise that I ended up writing crime fiction! As a teenager I discovered Agatha Christie and never looked back.
I learned a lot about structuring a story, and about how the publishing world works, but I think the main thing the course gave me was confidence. I’d been writing all my life but had never shown anyone my work before. It was the first time that somebody (somebody who knew what they were talking about) told me that I could do it, that I was good at it. That was huge for me.
Yes, entirely. I’d been working in conferences for twenty years, but I’d never really enjoyed it. Being lucky enough to be able to make a living from my writing has transformed my life for the better.
It’s about a Cassie, a single mother of a young baby, who returns to her home town to help care for her mother who has early onset dementia. Twenty-five years ago, the town was the scene of a mass shooting, in which Cassie’s father was the last person killed. There’s a journalist in town writing an article for the twenty-fifth anniversary about how towns move on from tragic events. She starts to uncover some shocking truths about what really happened that day, truths that put Cassie in danger. It’s a psychological thriller, but it also examines the emotional lives of the characters, in particular Cassie as she struggles to come to terms with her mother’s condition and the difficulties of raising a baby alone.
It’s been challenging to write. My husband was very ill when I began it, and subsequently died. I took a bit of a break, and then we had a global pandemic so I was homeschooling my two children. I got there in the end though, and I’m very proud of it.
I’m currently working on my fourth novel, which is about Liz, who goes on a weekend away to Italy with a group of her closest friends. When her husband goes missing and is later found to have drowned, secrets begin to emerge, and she realises that no one is what they seem.
My publishing-related social life. Starting a new career as a writer in my 40s has meant I’ve made lots of new friends and there’s always a festival or a book launch to go to. It was hard having that taken away and I’m really looking forward to its gradual return (fingers crossed!).
The Memory Game by Nicci French is my single biggest influence as a writer. It was the first book I ever read that that I’d describe as a psychological thriller, and I fell in love. It would take me twenty years from my first reading (and I’ve read it many times since) but I knew this was the kind of book I wanted to write.
During the first lockdown, me and my two sons (14 and 12) worked our way through every series of The Flash, and we’ve now moved on to DC Legends of Tomorrow. They’re not shows I would ever have watched on my own, but they’re great fun and I’ve loved the shared experience of watching it with the boys. Most nights the three of us get into our positions on the sofa (God forbid one of us try and sit in someone else’s spot) and settle down for an episode or two. I’m really glad they’d prefer to do that than lock themselves away in their rooms.
Joy by Tracey Thorn is not only my favourite Christmas song, but one of my favourite ever songs. Described by the singer as a “secular carol” it’s not your traditional Christmas song. It takes an unflinching look at the dark side of life, but concludes that “It’s because of the dark, we see the beauty in the spark.” Truly joyful.
When I was doing the Curtis Brown creative writing course, I had a meeting with the course director, which was part of the course. She had read my synopsis and initial chapters, and she said she thought agents would be interested in my book, but that I should try and write it quickly. I started getting up at 5am every day to write before work and by the end of the course, I had a first draft.
I HATE slugs.
