Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine this week.

We're chatting to Claire Douglas about her newest novel, The New Neighbors.

It's 11 novels in 10 years, if I've done my sons right. We talk about the rules

of the genre, also what she's asking to get to know her character. And I was thinking,

why is she so bothered about what's going on next door? Like, what is her motivation for

poking and nosing, basically, to what she overhears. So it was about, then I started to build up about the fact that she, her son was back to leave to go to university, she's split with her husband, she was a bit bald, she's quite nosy, but also that she had like a past of her own where she didn't get involved in something that she should have, like, she should have like whistleblung on something that happened when she was working and she didn't and something bad

happened and so it was almost like she doesn't want that to happen again and she feels responsible

because she'd overheard something and why she finishes one day thinking about the next I will write

like at least even if it's just like a paragraph of the next chapter and then write in brackets

underneath what I want that chapter to sort of roughly be about so that I don't come in the next day and think, oh God, I've got a new chapter to write and I don't know what it's going to be about. And even if I might delete it, I just like to know what I sort of want to say in that chapter. Because I can sort of see with my books a few chapters ahead. I just can't see the whole book. It's all on the way with

Claire Douglas in a brand new episode of Writers' Routine. Yes, welcome along to the show. It's

writer's routine. My name is Dan Simpson. It's where we take a look inside an author's working day.

We see what, where, and how they get stuff done. How do they plan their day to give them the best

chance of getting an idea? A tiny seed of an idea. What do they do to give them the best chance

of getting that down into a full-on

novel? This week, we are with Claire Douglas, first published back in 2015 with The Sisters,

then has had success with many other books. The couple at number nine, the woman who lied,

the wrong sister, to name just a few. She's been published in many,

many countries becoming a bestseller across the world. Her novels have been selected as Richard

and Judy Book Club picks, and her newest one is The New Neighbors. It's all about Lena,

who overhears a conversation between her next-door neighbours that she thinks she must have

misheard. It's the Morgans who are a kind, retired couple. They're on a street where nothing

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