Forward Slash
Louise: Forward Slash is a cautionary tale about the darker side of internet dating and the enormous potential for exploitation that exists. People often misrepresent themselves in their profiles - although hopefully not to the extent that our serial killer does – and we hope that it will serve as a reminder to people who are engaged in online dating to proceed with great caution! It’s an edge-of-your-seat page-turning race against time, as our main protagonist Amy tries to find out what has happened to her sister Becky, who has been dabbling in a world online that turns out to be far scarier and seedier than it initially appears...
Mark please tell us about your solo project The Magpies.
Mark: The Magpies is a psychological thriller about neighbours from hell. A young couple move in to their dream first home and plan to get married, start a family and have a normal, happy life. But somebody who lives in their building has other ideas and sets about destroying their lives. It’s based on real experiences I had of crazy neighbours, but taken to a chilling extreme.
Readers can download a collection of short stories for the website, so please give us some insight into these.
Mark: There are three stories in the collection: Kissing Games, a very dark story about two young boys who spend a night in an abandoned asylum; Best Served Cold, a lighter tale of revenge; and Rock Hard at the Emporium Galactica, about a heist in an amusement arcade. Each of them has a twist and were great fun to write.
Louise, please tell us about your previous publications.
Louise: I had four novels published by Transworld/Black Swan from 2000-2005, women’s contemporary fiction, very different to my thrillers with Mark. Happily, I was able to claim back the rights to these novels – TO BE SOMEONE, ARE YOU MY MOTHER?, LIFESAVER and GAMES PEOPLE PLAY – and have now reissued them on Amazon Kindle. The artwork designer, Henry Steadman, even very kindly allowed me to use my original covers.
Mark and I have become part of a new breed of so-called ‘hybrid’ authors, in that we are both traditionally published by a conventional publisher, and self-publish using Kindle Direct Publishing. Best of both worlds!
What is the best piece of feedback you have had from a reader?
Mark: We are lucky to have a dedicated band of readers who follow us on Twitter and Facebook so we get a pretty constant stream of positive comments! One woman recently told us that she was so addicted to our books that she had read all four of them in four days, staying up all night, unable to sleep till she’d finished them. Apart from that, the best praise you can get is when someone tells you they have told all their friends and relatives to read our books. Word of mouth is by far the best way to build a loyal audience.
What is the hardest thing about writing together?
Louise: It’s hard that we live so far apart, and often go for weeks without actually speaking (although we text and email all the time). Whenever we do manage to meet up for a planning session, the plot of our current work-in-progress always progresses in leaps and bounds. If we shared an office we’d probably be ten times more prolific. Either that, or we’d kill each other! Perhaps the secret to our creative success is the fact that we hardly ever meet up!
Why did you want to hone in the focus on internet dating for this book?
Mark: After Killing Cupid, we wanted to write another book about twisted love, because it’s a theme that really interests us. Most of the bad guys (and girls) in our books are motivated by twisted desire and internet dating seemed like a great topic for us to look at. The book also looks at social networking and how easy it is to be stalked and hunted online if you’re not careful. Some early readers have told us they’ve changed their Facebook privacy settings after reading it!
Have either of you ever had a bad episode on the internet?
Louise: Well, Mark hasn’t ever done internet dating. I did it a few years ago, with mixed success. The worst experience I had was meeting a very charismatic guy who I became good friends with and saw all the time (thankfully just as a friend), who turned out to be married with a child - still living with them - had a prison record, and was a total liar and cheat. He had previously, I later discovered, conned several women out of large sums of money. I was very lucky that I hadn’t got more romantically involved with him and escaped with no more than a feeling of betrayal and foolishness at falling for all those lies. It really made me think about how simple it is for a dishonest person to exploit someone else’s trust, and how devastating it can be to those who have been exploited. Especially where love and attraction are concerned. That was the basis for the plot of FORWARD SLASH, taken to extremes.
What is a normal day like in each of your worlds?
Louise: We both have really hectic lives, juggling children – not literally, they’re too heavy - jobs, our writing and associated promotion and admin…it’s a miracle we ever get a book finished, to be honest!
Mark: I have two small children plus a newborn baby at home so my life is chaotic, and writing sessions are often interrupted by dirty nappies, spilt yoghurts or my son insisting that I read him his dinosaur book for the zillionth time. I write whenever I get a spare moment, but thankfully the success of The Magpies means I can spend less time doing my day job and more writing.
What is next for you both?
Louise: Mark and I are 2/3 through a new novel that we’re very excited about, featuring a new detective (an ex-Goth with a painful secret in his past), so we hope this will be the first of a series. Time permitting; we are also going to work on solo projects. I’m writing a play, which is something new and different for me!
Mark: As Louise says, we are writing our new crime novel and when that’s done I am going to write another solo novel, a psychological thriller about sexual jealousy (yes, twisted love again).
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