Lucy Roth, author of 'When Sally Killed Harry' - Feminist thriller author discusses arts council funding, going easy on yourself and what readers don't want to know
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Lucy Roth's new novel has one of the best names going. 'When Sally Killed Harry', is a feminist serial-killer thriller. When Sally discovers she's not the only one to have been jilted by dreamy con-man Harry, she takes matters into her own hands, and becomes his worst nightmare.
It's Lucy's first thriller, but she has published novels and non-fiction books as Lucy Nichol. 'Parklife' talks about friendship, music and recovery in the 90s. There's also 'The Twenty Seven Club', which is a dark comedy around mental health and fandom. Also, 'Snowflake', 'No Worries If Not', and 'A Series of Unfortunate Stereotypes'. As a journalist, Lucy has written for The Independent, The Guardian, The I, NME and lots more.
We talk about the Arts Council Funding Lucy acquired to write the novel, what it helped her do, and who it helped her talk to. It's a thoroughly researched book, with Lucy interviewing a criminologist, a detective, an expert in psychopathy, and the former CEO of Rape Crisis. You can hear why that was so vital for her writing.
We discuss how her disorganised filing system keeps her organised, what thriller readers don't want to see and how her perspective on characters change through time.
This week's episode is supported by Faber Academy. Their flagship, 'Writing a Novel' course is back. Find out more at faberacademy.com/writing-a-novel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine where we're chatting to Lucy Roth. |
| 0:14.1 | Her new one is a serial killer thriller, which is very fun to say. |
| 0:18.9 | It's called When Sally Killed Harry, which is a very fun title. |
| 0:22.6 | We talk about the Arts Council funding she received to dedicate time to thoroughly research everything. |
| 0:29.3 | Also, why she's learned to be easy on herself and her targets. |
| 0:33.3 | Because I think the worst thing to do is force yourself to write when you're not feeling it and fall |
| 0:38.3 | out of love with the project. So yeah, I do give myself that freedom and that flexibility. |
| 0:45.4 | As long as I have that overall destination of, you know, 85,000 words by this date, well, thereabouts, |
| 0:53.0 | I give myself a little bit of flexibility, |
| 0:55.5 | but having that target and having that kind of that roundabout daily target |
| 1:00.2 | helps to keep me on track when I do it. |
| 1:02.8 | And you can hear how her perspective changes on who the characters could be. |
| 1:08.6 | I was writing books thinking to make them, I need to make them true to life. |
| 1:12.6 | And I need to write characters who not only kind of might reflect personalities of yourself, |
| 1:20.1 | your friends, your family. |
| 1:22.8 | But I was writing stories where they need to actually do the things that you |
| 1:28.5 | might see happening in your real life. Whereas actually, you know, when you look at even the things |
| 1:34.5 | I love, you know, I love Breaking Bad. That could actually happen. But it's highly unlikely, |
| 1:40.2 | isn't it, that your science teacher is going to become a meth cook. So it made me think |
| 1:46.9 | I need to kind of free myself up and step out of the, this has got to be totally realistic |
| 1:53.1 | zone and actually have that freedom to create serial killer characters, for example. |
| 1:58.4 | It's all on the way in a brand new episode of writer's routine. |
... |
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