I’m a serial house mover. Since I met my partner in 2006, we’ve bought and sold seven properties between us. That’s a lot of stamp duty! We currently live in Chichester, but I’d be lying if I said we’d settled, so watch this space.
The Perfect Liar
I write about locations I know. Whether it’s somewhere I’ve lived (I knew all that moving would be useful!) or somewhere memorable I’ve visited, if it’s in one of my novels, you’ll know I’ve been there. In The Perfect Liar, three friends escape to Tuscany for a month. The location is dreamy, but their holiday soon becomes a nightmare.
I enjoy writing from a male perspective. An early reviewer wrote, ‘Harvey is equally comfortable writing as a male or female’. It’s one of my favourite comments. We live in an age of gender fluidity: long may it continue.
I read my reviews. Yes, all of them – although that could change as I garner more over time. I’m always thrilled by the four and five star ones and grateful that readers have taken the time. I already have a one-star review and I know there’ll be others. But it’s like rubber necking at a traffic accident; I know I should look away, but I can’t.
Some books stay with me. The Secret History by Donna Tartt is one. I read it when it first launched in 1992 and again recently. It took much longer this time because I read slowly these days. Other books that lingered include most of Fay Weldon and Anita Brookner’s novels, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. Sadly, the more I write, the less I read.
Dogs mean everything to me. I’m not a mother in the traditional sense, but my nurturing side goes into caring for my canine family. My ten-year-old terrier is my son and I felt exactly the same way about another dog I lost to old age whom I still miss terribly.
You could say I’m a late bloomer. I drifted when I was younger, blowing with the wind from one career to the next, sincere about all of them at the time. My ambition to write was a dirty secret, then I got into my fifties and thought, ‘why the hell not?’ The Perfect Liar is my third novel, but my first psychological thriller so I’ve got that debut feeling all over again!
My goal is to complete five novels by my sixtieth birthday. I’m working on it… stranger things have happened.
My dreams fuel my writing. I keep a notebook by my bed because sometimes it’s a busy night, with all sorts of characters, plots and locations forming while I’m asleep. I dream a lot of nonsense, too. But isn’t that the point of them? A massive overnight brain dump that’s meant to jettison some of the rubbish we store?
I am close to my siblings. There’s nobody I would rather socialise with. The Covid crisis has been hard on everyone and I count myself luckier than most. But I’ve missed the company of my brother and sister so much and since I moved to Sussex, we don’t live close enough for cups of tea in the garden and so on. Which is the main reason I’ll probably move again. I think this is where we came in.
RELATED: 10 Things I'd like my readers to know about me by Ellyn Oaksmith
I'd rather be reading. Few things, besides my family, interest me more than a good book. I read a book once about a lifelong reader who said he took books to his kids soccer games, to church, to parties. I'm not that bad (or good) but nothing makes me happier than an early bedtime and plenty of time to read... to read more click HERE
