We Chat to Author Nicola Monaghan to Discuss Her New Book 'Wish You Were Here'

Once upon a time you were on course for a career in finance. Was there a specific moment where you decided ‘right, that’s enough I’m going to be a writer’, or did it dawn on you slowly?
It was kind of both, in a weird way. I was just kind of plodding away. I went to the States and I was working in Chicago and New York. And I remember looking online at the different writing courses that were available and making lots of lists about where I'd apply. I'd narrowed it down three or four. And I thought, right, I'll do this maybe next year, maybe the year after…

And then - these were very strange times - the company I worked for had an office in the Twin Towers, which was obviously destroyed. We were very fortunate that nobody died. But at the same time, there was loads of political stuff going on in my company, and I asked to take voluntary redundancy. So all of these things happened at the same time. And I thought, what I need to do is get those applications in and get this going now. So I did it, I went back to England after all that had happened and took voluntary redundancy. I was living in London at the time and then I was offered a place at Nottingham Trent quite quickly. And then I was like, OK, yeah, I'll go home. Obviously, home's calling.

Locations that feature in the Wish You Were Here, like Mansfield Road and Forest Fields, will be familiar to LeftLion readers. Do you think that being from Notts informs Dr Sian Love’s character?
Yeah, I think so. She's a lot like me in many ways. She's a local girl, she's from a working class background, but actually, she's lived away, she went to university, she's done lots of different things and returned home. That really informs how I write her, the fact that that's a similar experience to mine.

Sian Love exists in a long tradition of detectives who have some vulnerability - but she seems particularly modern in that a big part of her story is addressing her demons through therapy. Is she a particularly modern crime protagonist?
I think she probably is particularly modern for all sorts of reasons; being a female working in the field that she works in, empowered enough to set up on her own - I think she's very independent. She's almost dysfunctionally independent, actually. But I do think that it would be difficult to imagine her twenty, thirty years ago.

Family and heritage are big parts of the novel - Dr Love uses the help of DNA to unravel some mysterious questions of parentage. Do you find it interesting to observe family dynamics and relationships?
It was a big theme in the first book in this series as well. I'm interested in family dynamics, I'm interested in family dysfunction - which is interesting in a sense because I came from a very kind of well-ordered, really quite a good family, had a really easy childhood, but I am interested in people who don't have that kind of childhood and especially those who feel doubt about who they are.

What does the average writing day look like for you?
I'm not sure there's such a thing as an average writing day…Once I'm deep into it, then typically I’d write say 1,000, maybe 2,000 words on a really good day, and then edit them the next. That tends to accelerate towards the end, when all of a sudden I'm writing chunks of 5,000 words in a day…

That must be an exciting part of the process, when you feel that momentum…
Oh, definitely. The beginning and the end are always the most exciting bits to write. Often the middle feels really sticky and really tricky and you're trying to puzzle things out that you haven't quite worked out yet… But the beginning is always really exciting because you're just starting something new and you've got that energy for it. And then the end is too, when you feel like you're going downhill towards that final moment that you've had in your head, you're rolling down towards the exciting ending, the twist or reveal. That's my favourite bit, I think.

And do you have a favourite place to write?
No, I have to move around…coffee shop, coffee shop, library, home for a bit, you know, take the dogs out for a walk and then I'll maybe go somewhere else again…I tend to be a bit nomadic, with my rucksack on my back!

Nicola, it’s been lovely to chat to you. Have you been reading anything recently that you’d recommend?
There’s one that I haven't finished yet, but I'm absolutely sure I'm going to, that I'm absolutely loving, called Strange Sally Diamond. It's by a writer called Liz Nugent, and it's amazing. The opening is the best opening I've ever come across in fiction! Basically this middle-aged woman’s father dies and he's always said ‘put me out with the bins’ and she's autistic so she takes it literally and just…puts him out with the bins. And that's how this book starts. I'm very optimistic about this one.

Wish You Were Here by Nicola Monaghan is out now

nicolamonaghan.com