novel

One Year Later – Bethany

| Sanjida Kay

I recently saw a set of three mugs in one of my favourite shops. They read:

I’m the oldest child – I make the rules.

I’m the middle child – I’m the reason we have rules.

I’m the youngest child – the rules don’t apply to me.

I had great fun creating Bethany’s character. She’s the middle child in the Flowers family in my psychological thriller, One Year Later. She’s a TV presenter – which was also my former career (this is a picture of me at the start of my TV career as a wildlife presenter for the BBC).

One of the producers I worked with was talking about another presenter and said, ‘He’d stab his grandmother to get ahead.’ I had to put that quote in my novel!

Bethany is feisty, fiery, independent, driven and ambitious. She’s also a victim of  TV culture where women have to look young and sexy no matter what show they’re presenting, whereas men are allowed to be on our screens at any age, looking, frankly, a bit dishevelled. Bethany is also a victim of the casual sexual discrimination and abuse against women that still exists in this industry.

He said, “Bethany, your problem is you’re smart without being intelligent,  good looking without being pretty, and approachable in a girl-next-door-way, but no one in their right fucking mind would want to be your neighbour.”

Bethany talking to Nick about her TV producer in One Year Later.

Labyrinth – the setting

| Sanjida Kay

Setting is so important to me. It’s almost like another character, setting the tone and the mood as well, as obviously, the location. My last four psychological thrillers, Bone by Bone, The Stolen Child, My Mother’s Secret and One Year Later, are all, or partially set in Bristol, where I lived for many years. 

The novel I’m currently writing, Labyrinth, is set in London. I wanted a bigger, better-known backdrop, grittier and more urban. But, what I’m obsessed with (as anyone who’s read anything I’ve written will know!) is nature. I’m interested in the interstices between the suburbs and ghettoised wildlife; how nature creeps in, even to the grimiest, grittiest streets, and how we carry a love and fear of the wild within us all.

So what better place to set Labyrinth than Hackney! It’s pretty darn urban, but encompasses Hackney Marsh, Walthamstow Nature Reserve, the Lee Valley, and pockets of reed beds in the recently completely Olympic Park. Parakeets fly through the ash trees bordering the River Lee and coots stride across the tow path. 

Cue a number of research trips! The latest one was this week – I sneaked a quick walk along the Lee with my mum before I met up with my publishers.

New book – Labyrinth!

| Sanjida Kay

My exciting news is that I’m working on a new book. Provisionally called Labyrinth, it’s a re-imagining of Vertigo, the movie directed by Hitchcock. It’s a slight departure for me, as it’s less psychological thriller / family drama and more of a crime thriller. It’s set in Hackney in London, and as you’d imagine, from a re-take of Vertigo, there’s a lot about heights…

My story is about ex-cop, Maddison Jones, who suffers from vertigo. She fails to save a young woman from committing suicide, The girl falls to her death from the twelfth floor of a block of flats. The stress pushes Maddison’s vertigo to Meniere’s Disease, which is vertigo combined with tinnitus and she ends up on sick leave, struggling to leave the house.

(The picture of the double rainbow over an apartment block in Hackney Wick is by my talented sister, Emma O’Connell.)

More soon!

 

Coming soon – The Priest and the Lily

| Sanjida O'Connell

 

I’m really excited to announce that my novel, The Priest and the Lily, will be published soon as an ebook, and then in paperback. This is an epic, historical tale, for fans of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

Set in 1865, it’s about Joseph, a young Jesuit priest and plant-hunter, who sets out on a dangerous journey through Outer Mongolia, a land virtually unknown to the Western world. Charles Darwin’s radical theory of evolution has just been published, and Joseph is driven by his passion for science and his love of God. As he crosses the Mongolia Steppes with a Buddhist monk and a local horseman, he hears rumours of a rare and beautiful white lily. He believes that if he finds this flower, his fame and fortune will be assured. 

You will journey far beyond the boundaries of your imagination. You will meet and seize your heart’s desire. It will be the death of your soul.

But then Joseph meets Namuunaa, a shaman and the chief of her tribe. 

And it is Namuunaa who will teach him the true meaning of his desire… 

This novel was originally published in 2009 as The Naked Name of Love, by John Murray, who also published Darwin’s The Origin of Species! It was such an honour to be published by the same publisher!

The rights have now reverted back to me, so I’m publishing it on KPD, with my original title. I’m looking forward to sharing the new cover with you and seeing what you think…

 

 

One Year Later – Italy

| Sanjida Kay

I’ve always loved Italy, so when I needed a seemingly idyllic holiday for my family in One Year Later, my current psychological thriller, it made sense to choose Italy. I’ve certainly enjoyed remembering the delicious Italian food I’ve eaten on all those trips, the sandy beaches and the slower pace of life…but as the Flower family discover, their remote idyll is a lot more dangerous than it seemed at first…

‘From the air, when I checked on Google Earth before we came, the island is shaped like an embryo, curled around the scoop of an inlet, its backbone a reptilian hump, Maregiglio tucked on the inside of its tail. We’re driving along its spine: the land is dusky green and scrubby, with none of the features that would normally say Italy to me – no sunflowers or olive groves, Tuscan villas or vineyards – only the sea, glittering as sharp as flint, on either side of the island. When we finally see the town, it looks like an ice- cream cone, a swirl of houses in apricot and peach, with the castle, the colour of drying sand, at its peak. There’s a harbour and a spit of beach, packed with plastic sun-loungers and parasols, a wide sweep of promenade edged with date palms.’

Nick. One Year Later

Sadly I didn’t get to go back to Italy to ‘research’ my novel, but had to rely on my imagination, Italian friends and Google Earth.

I made up the Little Lily Island that the Flowers stay on though…

 

How I write

| Sanjida Kay

The Royal Literary Fund has recorded a mini -podcast with me on how I write – with a black coffee, and some dark chocolate and then I begin!

‘Writing a novel feels like being an ultra-marathon runner, it’s going to be a gruelling slog to reach 90,000 words and I will be unable to pause, to breathe properly, to take in the view until then.’

You can listen here:

Sanjida O’Connell

 

What do you think? Let me know how you write.