Swallow semen, identify penis: Helen Fitzgerald’s Writing Life interview

[Matt Rees]

It will be a long time before anyone thinks of a better way to open their first novel than this: “My best friend Sarah was asleep. Her husband was lying beside her, and I was swallowing his semen.” That’s paragraph two of “Dead Lovely” by Helen Fitzgerald, a fabulous crime novel which manages to amuse, titillate and disturb. Since she published Dead Lovely in 2008, Helen has released three more adult titles and a teen novel. Born in Australia, she lives in Glasgow, Scotland, where she’s married to a Scot of Italian origin. We shared the stage at a German crime fiction festival in Menden, near Dortmund, late this summer, bonding over writing and Tuscany. In person she’s as amusing as her books, and when she talks about writing it’s with a mix of unassuming practicality and deep insight, as you’ll see from this interview.

How long did it take you to get published?

My husband is a screenwriter and he made it look very easy – most of his films seemed to make it to the big or small screen, and the word count for a screenplay was enticingly small (lots of lovely white spaces on the page). So I thought “If he can do this, I can!” I spent five years writing screenplays before realising that it was hard, and that I was a spectacular failure at it. One of my screenplays came very close to being green-lit. I decided that if this wasn’t produced, I’d write a book (which was what I’d always wanted to do, really). It didn’t get made, so I sat down and turned the treatment into my first book, Dead Lovely. It took three months. And another three before Faber and Faber bought it. So, my first answer is that it took me years to get published. My second is that it took three months.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

The only books I’ve ever read on writing are screenwriting books. Initially, I read everything I could get my hands on, but the only one I remember is How to Write Screenplays That Sell by Michael Hague. This book helped a great deal with structure, plot and characterization. It’s probably because of my background in screenwriting, and the lessons I learned from this book, that my novels have three acts and are easy to adapt into screenplays.

What’s a typical writing day?

Mostly I work at home in an office in the attic. I get the kids off to school, answer emails and do admin for a while, then settle down to a few hours writing before they arrive home again. My husband works in the office next door to mine, so we often yell strange things to each other through the walls like “Can you dissolve a body?” If I have a deadline, or if I’m really motivated by an idea, I can work all day and all night. My husband and I are pretty flexible and work well as a team, giving each other time off from domestic duties if one is on a roll. About three days a week, I head into Glasgow City centre, where I’ve rented a desk space in a studio. I missed having colleagues and life around me, and I love being shamed into productivity by other hard working people.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?

Bloody Women is about a woman who’s about to get married to her Italian fiancé and leave Scotland to live with him in Tuscany. Before leaving her home, she decides to meet up with her ex-boyfriends to tie up loose ends and make sure she’s doing the right thing. Problem is, her exes all wind up dead, and she gets the blame. The book was fun to write and I believe it’s fun to read. It’s also pretty dark, looking at bi-polar disorder and a nasty-pasty serial killer.

How much of what you do is:

a) formula dictated by the genre within which you write?

My one aim has always been to avoid formula. When my agent suggested I write a sequel to Dead Lovely, I agreed but soon felt restricted by having the same setting and the same characters. I wrote the sequel – My Last Confession - and tried hard to write something very different from the first book, but I haven’t wanted to write another one. All the books I’ve written since – five in all – have been stand alone.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

[I. J. Parker]

Sorry, I don't buy that. That's a cheap shot at getting attention -- of the wrong kind.