Hi everyone!
This week’s #SJsTwitterBookClub featured author Julia Crouch (@thatjuliacrouch), and we chatted about her brilliant, twisty debut Cuckoo.
I always ask my guest what we ought to listen to as we chat, but Julia went one better than a mere recommendation and provided a playlist.
I asked Julia to summarise the book for us. “Rose invites her newly-widowed best friend Polly to come and stay in the perfect home she has built with her husband’ Gareth. Big mistake, Rose.”
Talk again turned to “the twist”. Sam Anthony asked “How do you lay the groundwork for a twist without giving too much away?” and Julia replied, “Great question! The difficult bit is holding back information without making the reader angry! And then there’s a lot of work in the second and subsequent drafts laying threads down – things that seem inconsequential, but which, on a second read are obvious clues.”
I asked Julia “What's the worst question you've ever been asked at a literary event or in an interview? Or, what question have you never been asked that you'd like to answer?” and she confessed that she likes being asked where she gets her ideas from (weird, right?). So I did.
It was a fascinating discussion about a great book. Click on the above tweet to be taken to the thread, and you can catch up from there… And if you haven’t read Cuckoo, it’s highly recommended!
Next week, #SJsTwitterBookClub welcomes author Martyn Waites, who’ll tell us all about his book, The Old Religion.
Happy reading!