Alex Marwood

Alex Marwood is the pseudonym of a journalist who has worked extensively across the British press. Her first book, ‘The Wicked Girls’, was a word-of-mouth sensation, won the prestigious Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original in 2014, and was nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award in 2013. Alex lives in south London.’The Killer Next Door’ is her latest book

1. To the readers of the website that may not be familiar with you or your writing. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing?
   I write psychological crime novels – or, as a reviewer on Amazon put it the other day, ‘books with too many words on the page’. My first novel, ‘The Wicked Girls’, came out in 2012, was praised by my writing hero Stephen King, no less, and has just won an Edgar award in America. My new book, ‘The Killer Next Door’, has been out as an ebook since Christmas, and becomes a paperback in June 2014.

   These are actually my fifth and sixth books, however, because I had another life before I became Alex. Working under my own name, Serena Mackesy, I started out as a journalist – I wrote features, travel, telly and first-person columns at a national newspaper for ten years – and then wrote three dark comedies, including ‘The Temp’, which was a bestseller in 1999. Unfortunately, I also fell into a bit of a packaging ghetto; ‘The Temp’ came out just as the fashion for putting shrugging girls and handbags on every book written by women hit the publishing world, and, as I became increasingly prone to putting my characters through the wringer, being half-heartedly packaged as romance was disastrous.

   So I wrote a supernatural thriller, ‘Hold My Hand’, that really couldn’t be associated with shoes. But the damage had been done by that point and my name was mud in UK retail.

   I parted company with agent and publisher, and spent a couple of years sunk deep in searing depression staring at the wall and wetting the cat’s head with my tears. Then two things happened. A film producer bought the rights to ‘Hold My Hand’ and it did really, really well in Germany, and my novel ‘Simply Heaven’ ended up doing really well there one the back of it, too. These two things gave me just enough last-gasp confidence to approach my wonderful agent, who agreed that a change of name was the way forward and took my drooping self on, and write ‘The Wicked Girls’, and here I am. I daresay it’s made me a better writer, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a career path. It’s bad for your health, if nothing else.

2. Where do you get your ideas for your stories?
   Everywhere. Downpage stories in the papers; stories people tell me; things I see in the street – but mostly, I guess, from the what-ifs that constantly dance through my warped mind…
3. Was there ever a book that you read, that didn’t live up to the hype that surrounded it and left you disappointed?
   Of course. Reading is such a terribly subjective thing, isn’t it? I thought Harry Potter was pretty average, I suppose. All those parents saying what a pleasure it had made bedtime, and I couldn’t see how. Most of the stuff I’ve found disappointing has been in the Literary genre, though. There’s just as high a proportion of bad writing – and of good – in Literary as in any other genre, but people who only read literary have very little to compare their reading against.
4. If you were starting your writing journey again, would you do anything differently?
   Yes. I’d be more confident and less grateful. Lots of writers fall into the trap of feeling that they should be grateful just to be published, but at the end of the day publishing is a business and so is your career, and you have a right to expect people to act professionally around you (as well as a duty to do so yourself). I’m still hugely grateful to lots of people, but at the moment I also feel as though I’m surrounded by people who are doing their jobs really well, so that’s not hard.
5. Why did you decide that you wanted to write crime?
   Honestly? I think crime found me. I’ve always been a dark soul under the cheery veneer. I don’t think anyone who knows me well was even slightly surprised.
6. What do you think makes a good crime book?
   Oh, lord. Again, that’s such a subjective question. One of the things I love about the Crime genre is the huge amount of wiggle room within it. Everything from Helen Smith’s gorgeous, funny and faintly surreal ‘Cosies’ to Mo Hayder’s knuckle-chewingly black view of the world still falls into the category, and I love that – especially because crime writers themselves really don’t seem to feel that there are any great hierarchies. Friendliest bunch of writers on the planet, honestly.

   On a personal level, as a reader, I don’t go big on police procedural and I’m not huge on series – but that doesn’t mean I’m right. And if I stuck rigidly to my own beliefs, I wouldn’t have discovered the joys of Sarah Hilary or Claire McGowan, for instance, or the wonders of Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter. But generally, I like books that explore the ramifications of crime, the effects and the drivers and the fallout. Crime writers I love include Laura Lippman, Sabine Durrant, Barbara Vine, Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, Val McDermid… oh, gosh, that’s a lot of women, isn’t it? Oh, good.

7. From books and films, who has been your favourite bad guy?
   Ooh – Gus Fring in ‘Breaking Bad’. He scared the absolute bejaysus out of me. So mild-mannered, so soft-spoken, so utterly, single-mindedly ruthless. A brilliant piece of writing – and his back story, as it was revealed, only made him more terrifying by making you feel intense sorrow for him – and one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.
8. With the recent news of ‘Wicked Girls’ being adapted for screen who would you like to see play the roles of Amber and Kirsty?
   You know what? I rather hope it would be people who aren’t already household names. Though Olivia Coleman can do no wrong, in my eyes. Nor anybody else’s, as far as I can see.
9. If you were stranded on a desert island, which three books would you bring with you to pass the time?
   Ouch! Okay. Um, Peter Ackroyd’s ‘London: the Biography’, because I’ve been reading it for ten years and still haven’t finished, because it would remind me of home and because it has at least one ‘blimey’ on every page, most of which I’ve already forgotten. Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘The Sirens of Titan’, because it manages to be gorgeous, and funny and moving while still being about Big Stuff. And perhaps a big meaty tome on Buddhism and its practice, because I should think a bit of resignation and rising above, and some meditation skills, might well come in useful when looking to overcome loneliness and hunger pangs.
10. What area do you suggest a budding writer should concentrate on to further their abilities?
    Grammar and punctuation. It’s hard enough trying to express what you’re trying to say without handicapping yourself by not having complete control of your sentences. They’re your basic tools. Writing a book without them is like trying to build a table without a saw. And yes, editors are there to improve your work, but if they don’t have the basics to work on then they’ll probably not see the virtue in it and buy it in the first place.

    Also, I know everyone says ‘read’, and they’re right, but actually, I think rereading is even more important. If something’s really affected you, it’s very much in your best interests to try to work out how the writer did that.

11. When sitting down to write, what is the one item you need beside you?
    Coffee. Or wine. Mostly coffee, though.
12. And finally Alex do you have any projects or releases on the horizon which you would like to share with the readers of the website?
    ‘The Killer Next Door’ is published on 19th June. It’s the story of 23 Beulah Grove, Northbourne, a once-grand suburban London villa long since run to seed and divided into bedsits. During a summer heatwave, a mixed bag of residents is thrown together in an uncomfortable alliance by a single horrific incident and the need to keep each of their own personal secrets intact. But one of them is harbouring a secret far greater than any of the rest of them could imagine…

Follow Alex on Twitter Alex Marwood for updates.