Tammy Cohen

Tammy Cohen was born in Ibadan, Nigeria and then attended school in both Sierra Leone and California before moving to London. After taking an American Studies degree at Manchester University she taught English in Madrid. While working as a secretary back in London, she started writing features and hand-delivering them to the magazine publishing house around the corner. Tammy’s first book ‘The Mistress’s Revenge’, was followed by three more contemporary fiction titles under the name Tamar Cohen,’ The War of the Wives’, ‘Someone Else’s Wedding’ and ‘The Broken’. In November 2014, her first crime novel, ‘Dying For Christmas’ was published under the name Tammy Cohen, followed by ‘First One Missing’ a year later, her latest book is ‘When She Was Bad’ and has just been optioned for television. Tammy has just revealed that she will be writing a new book in a new genre for her called ‘A Dangerous Crossing’ under a new name

1. To the readers of the blog, that may not be familiar with you or your writing, can tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing?
   I always wrote, even as a very young kid. My poor parents were used to being presented with home-made books tied together with string that they had to dutifully enthuse over and declare brilliant. After uni I did a few odd jobs then fell into journalism after getting a job as a secretary in a marketing magazine. So I wrote features for newspapers and magazines for over twenty years, until print journalism went into decline starting around 2008 and the work started drying up. By 2010 I was angsting so much about money that I stopped sleeping for a while. And it was during this bout of insomnia that I wrote ‘The Mistress’s Revenge’, which became my first published novel. When life gives you lemons and all that stuff…
2. Where do you get your ideas for your stories?
   It always surprises me when people ask that because the better question would be where don’t you get your ideas. Every situation you get into, every person you meet, every newspaper you read, could be the starting point for a story. As novelists, we just take reality that one step further. So, for example, when my partner and I found ourselves dragged into our friends’ messy divorce, that became the starting point for The Broken. I just added into that already toxic situation a character with psychopathic tendencies, and suddenly I had the basis of a thriller. Similarly my latest book ‘When She Was Bad’, which is a psychological thriller set in an office, was inspired by a job I had years ago in a magazine office where a new, very divisive boss, caused relationships among the staff to unravel spectacularly.
3. You have written both crime and women’s contemporary fictio novels. Is there one genre you prefer more than the other?
   I suspect you might call my first three books, which were very classed as dark women’s contemporary fiction, the antithesis of romance. In those books I explored the dark underbelly of marriage and relationships – a married woman driven crazy by the break up of her affair, who stalks her ex lover’s family, two women who discover at their husbands’ funeral that they’ve unwittingly been married to the same man. When I decided to start writing psychological crime, it actually wasn’t that big a leap from there.
4. Was there a book that you read that didn’t live up to the hype?
   I must be the only person in the world who couldn’t even glance at ’50 Shades of Grey’. Everything I heard about it made me feel like I’d need to have a jolly good wash if I picked it up – not because of the sex, but because of the unhealthy power dynamics.
5. What’s your favourite book of all time?
   I have so many favourite books – from childhood ‘Anne of Green Gables’, the first adult book that really engaged me ‘Catch 22’, but I think the book that’s had the most powerful effect on me is ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’, by Lionel Shriver which is all about the very darkest side of family life. That’s the book that made me think, I want to write like this.

[amazon_link id=”1784160199″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]

6. What do you think makes a good crime book?
   Strong, believable characters and, most of all, a motivation that feels convincing. There’s nothing more irritating than investing time and energy in reading a book only to discover the driving reason behind the crime, the thing that underpins the whole book, is flimsy and un-realistic.
7. From books and films, who has been your favourite bad guy?
   Voldemort is a great bad guy because even while he’s immensely powerful he’s also fallible. He has weaknesses and insecurities, and that’s what keeps us on our toes as readers throughout a very long drawn-out series.
8. If you were to start your own bookclub, what authors would you ask to join?
   All the brilliant crime writers I know like Amanda Jennings, Clare Mackintosh, Marnie Riches who are such good fun. Also, I’m in a group called Killer Women which consists of sixteen brilliant female crime writers including Alex Marwood, Paula Hawkins, Louise Millar, Erin Kelly, Colette McBeth and loads more, so they’d all definitely get an invite.
9. If you were stranded on a desert island, which three books would you bring with you to pass the time?
   ‘Apple Tree Yard’ by Louise Doughty, ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ by Lionel Shriver and ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ by John Kennedy Toole.
10. What area do you suggest a budding writer should concentrate on to further their abilities?
    Stamina, without a doubt. You can have all the writing advice and classes you want but they’re worth nothing if you haven’t got the discipline and stamina to sit down and actually write day after day after day until finally you’ve got a book.
11. When sitting down to write, what is the one item you need beside you?
    Coffee!
12. And finally Tammy do you have any projects or releases on the horizon which you would like to share with the readers of the website?
    I’ve just started writing a new psychological thriller set in a private psychiatric clinic. And there’s a secret project coming out next spring, which is a major departure for me. Watch this space!

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You can buy [amazon_link id=”1784160199″ target=”_blank” ]When She Was Bad from Amazon [/amazon_link] and is available to buy from good bookshops.