introducing julia crouch

Julia Crouch is the author of ten internationally published novels. She coined the term Domestic Noir to describe her own particular sub-genre of psychological thriller. She’s joining the Creative Writing Programme tutor group from October, teaching on the Tuesday evening course in Kemptown Bookshop. Here she talks about her writing journey.

When do you first remember wanting to be a writer? I always had it in the back of my mind, right from when I constructed worlds and characters as a child. But I didn’t know any writers, and I thought it was something only other people did. After school, it took me until my mid-forties to write my first piece of prose.

Your first novel Cuckoo was published in 2011. It is a dark and unsettling story about a dysfunctional friendship. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind the story and your journey to publication? There were several inspirations for Cuckoo. There was Nick Cave’s album, The Boatman’s Call, written mostly about his obsessive relationship with PJ Harvey. I thought what it would be like if someone inspired that passion in your husband, and that person was your best friend. That part was down to a character at school, supposedly my good friend, who always seemed to end up with my boyfriends – a pattern it took me a while to recognise! Incidentally, Polly is PJ Harvey’s stage persona brought to life (not the real Polly Harvey).

 I stole the house – which is almost a character in the novel – from my friends who spent two years hands on renovating a wreck while having babies. It nearly finished them (but it didn’t – they’re still going strong twenty-five years later)

 You coined the term ‘Domestic Noir’ with this book, to describe your own particular sub-genre of psychological thrillers. Could you tell us more about how and why you created this sub-genre? I needed a phrase that did more to describe my slow burn, relationship-based twisty dark stories than psychological thriller. Thriller brings the wrong connotations: car chases, massive dramas, guns, massive tension etc. My writing is more about the terrible things (fairly) ordinary people do to one another in the name of love.

 You’ve since been hugely prolific and written nine more books. Can you tell us about your writing process and how it has changed over the course of ten books? After Her Husband’s Lover, I decided to start plotting my novels. Before that, I was a dedicated pantser, but it’s a really inefficient way to write. I now realise that plotting is just as creative as the actual typing. It’s a lovely way to work more collaboratively with an editor, who I let in on the process at the story beat stage. Although I leave it loose enough to allow for more discovery in the writing – you have to allow your characters and situations to surprise you as you write.

Tell us about your most recent novel The Surprise Party. A couple of years ago, I took my mother to visit my cousin in Crete and went off alone to walk a stretch of the E4 hiking path on the south coast. I slogged it over a mountain to a place called Loutró, which you can only otherwise get to by boat. I thought it would be a great spot for an Agatha Christie/White Lotus locked room murder mystery. So while I walked, I came up with the story.

Eve sees this 50th birthday trip with her husband as an opportunity to mend her stale marriage. The day after they arrive thought, her whole family and her best friend turn up for a surprise party arranged by her husband. The day after the party, one of the party is found dead on a sunbed. With the village doubly locked down by a general strike and the police investigation, tensions simmer. And who is the strange girl who arrived with them and befriends them so quickly?

You started your career as a playwright and theatre director. How does writing for the theatre differ from writing novels? And do you think your experience in the theatre has affected the way you write novels? Writing a novel is like devising a play. The only difference is you don’t have the actors in the room with you. This is not necessarily a bad thing. My theatre experience has been incredibly useful for me. I understand dialogue from having written, performed and studied it. I understand subtext and gesture. Although I am an avid reader of novels, my literary grounding is in plays – texts where dialogue, character and action are at the fore.

 What’s the most challenging aspect of writing? The bit where you sit down to start at the beginning of the day.

 And the most enjoyable? The bit after that, when time and the outside world disappear.

 You’ve been a literary fellow for both East Anglia and Brighton universities and have taught Creative Writing at various establishments for a number of years. How does teaching impact your own creative process? The negative impact is that my inner critics now have more authority as they nag at me when I write. The positives are manifold, though. I love connecting with other writers at various stages of their journeys and watching as they grow. I learn as much from student writers as I do from all of my other reading, and honing their process with them helps me hone mine, makes me realise what I need to change in my own work as well as what to celebrate.

 What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given about writing? ‘The first draft of anything is shit’ Hemingway. No words are more liberating.  Except perhaps Thurber’s ‘Don’t get it right, just get it written.’

What’s your go-to book about the craft of writing? I have two: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I go back to these two whenever I am feeling a bit drained.

You’re marooned on a desert island with the complete works of Shakespeare and a religious text of your choice. What fiction book do you want to have with you? And would you prefer a notebook and pen, or laptop to write with? I guess it would be Ulysses by James Joyce as I think being on a desert island would give me the time and space to tackle it. And laptop as I have arthritic thumbs and writing by hand really hurts these days.

What’s on your reading list right now? I’ve just finished a proof of the brilliant Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant, one of my favourite writers – if you haven’t read her, you absolutely must (and this is one of her best). I’ve now started Butter by Asako Yuziki, chosen for my book group, but one I would have read anyway. I’m also reading Being a Beast by Charles A. Foster, the author’s account of living in a sett like a badger, swimming as an otter and foraging in bins as a city fox . It’s research for….

 What are you working on at the moment? Wild, my twelfth novel. It’s about a woman, Grace, who fears she is losing her teenage boy to urban gang/manosphere monsters. She takes him to live on a rural estate where the aristocratic owner practices an extreme form of rewilding. But in what should be this idyll she loses him yet again to an altogether different type of beast. And this time it might be forever. With this and The Witch House, my most recent novel (not yet published), I’m branching out into folk horror.

If you’re interested in learning from Julia, she’ll be teaching on Tuesday evenings in Kemptown Bookshop from October. Why not sign up now?