Lucy Foley, author of 'The Midnight Feast' - Mystery bestseller reveals her quick first drafts, keeping in close contact with the story, and how her routine has changed
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lucy Foley is a mystery behemoth. She's sold 5 million copies of her novels which have been translated in over 40 countries. All of them are currently being made for film and TV right now. Following the success of 'The Hunting Party', 'The Guest List', and 'The Paris Apartment', 'The Midnight Feast' is out now in paperback, and focuses on the opening weekend of a luxury countryside retreat. Only, under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. When a body is found, old friends and enemies are trapped in the countryside, trying to discover whodunnit.
It's the second time Lucy has been on the show, and she's our first ever returning guest. She originally talked us through her writing day in February 2020, and I was keen to figure out what had changed in the last 5 years, what with 2 children and a global pandemic chucked in to stir up her routine.
Lucy is currently writing a new Miss Marple novel, after being asked by the Agatha Christie Estate.
You can hear how success has brought the changes, along with some imposter syndrome, also about her quick first draft, why she focuses on quantity over quality, and how she's discovering her very own Miss Marple.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine, where this week we're chatting |
| 0:13.5 | to multi-million bestseller Lucy Foley, dubbed this generation's Agatha Christie. Lucy's got a new book out called The Midnight |
| 0:23.0 | Feast. We talk about the changes that she's had with success. Also, why she likes to keep in |
| 0:29.0 | close contact with the story. And I try to write a little bit every day, even if that's only |
| 0:33.7 | 100 words, but I found that that just keeps me in really close contact with the |
| 0:39.7 | book. It means that I don't come back to my desk after kind of two weeks away in a totally |
| 0:45.0 | different mode because you are when you're on book tour and you're talking about the previous |
| 0:48.0 | book, all of that. I would find that I would have to sort of almost like brush a film of dust |
| 0:53.7 | off the kind of current book and really like try and remember where I would have to sort of almost like brush a film of dust of the kind of current book. |
| 0:55.8 | I'm really like, try and remember where I was, sort of reintroduce myself to my characters, pick up the thread. |
| 1:01.8 | That took a while. |
| 1:03.8 | And this way, it just keeps it really alive for me. |
| 1:06.5 | And why she keeps the first draft quick. |
| 1:08.9 | Basically, that first draft is all about just getting the story down. And so I write fast. It's kind of fast and dirty. I can't even do that thing that I know some authors do, which is the next morning kind of coming back to the work you've done the previous day and sort of editing that before you start. I can't do that. Like that would slow me down too much. I just have to get it all out there. |
| 1:28.5 | And then, you know, when I come to do the edit, that's actually when I do sit down at my desk |
| 1:33.1 | and I need the big screen because, you know, things are messy. |
| 1:37.0 | And that's where kind of, I guess it feels like the real work takes place. |
| 1:41.4 | It's all on the way in a brand new writer's routine with Lucy Foley. |
| 1:52.3 | Yes, welcome along to the show. This is writer's routine. My name's Dan Simpson. Thank you for being |
| 1:57.7 | there. We take a look through an author's working day. We see what, |
| 2:01.1 | when and how they do it, how do they take an idea, plan their day to get it published. |
| 2:06.8 | And it's a big deal for us this week. It's a first, our very first, returning guest. Lucy Foley is |
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