Philippa East, author of 'Safe and Sound' - CWA New Blood Dagger nominee talks about being inspired by work, learning the craft, and the doubt demon
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2022
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Philippa East's debut, 'Little White Lies', was nominated for a CWA New Blood Dagger Award in 2020, one of the highest prizes in crime fiction.
She works as a clinical psychologist, using inspiration from her work to write thrillers. Her new one, 'Safe and Sound', was inspired by a documentary she saw. It tells the story of Sarah Jones - pretty, charismatic, and full of life, who is found dead in her home. The strange thing is... she's been lying there for 10 months.
We talk about what she did after having the first idea, how did she turn a true story from a documentary into her own novel, also how the names in the novel really matter, and how she finally knew the novel was done.
Philippa is big into learning the craft. She vociferously reads writing books, talks to other authors and listens to this show. We chat about how consciously she makes the improvements that she learns about along the way.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along. It's a brand new episode of writers' routine this week, |
| 0:12.6 | chatting to Philippa East. Philippa is a clinical psychologist as well as a writer, |
| 0:18.8 | and she uses inspiration from work to get down thrillers. |
| 0:23.5 | Now, we talk about the doubt demon and how she deals with it, also about her new novel, |
| 0:28.7 | Safe and Sound, and we chat about character names and why they can mean quite a lot. |
| 0:34.6 | In the very original version, she was called Sophie Starling, which is |
| 0:39.2 | sort of quite an intriguing name. But yeah, I think as I went on with the novel, I think not to |
| 0:44.7 | give any spoilers, but as part of the twists of the novel, there's a sense of kind of that people |
| 0:49.5 | didn't realize that they knew her. So if you heard a news story about someone called Sarah Jones, |
| 0:54.6 | where something pretty awful seemed to have happened, and you know someone called Sarah Jones |
| 0:59.9 | that you think that would never happen to, you're going to assume, well, Sarah Jones is a |
| 1:04.8 | really common name. Why would I assume it's mine? |
| 1:07.7 | There is more on the way with Philippe East in this week's writer's routine. |
| 1:19.2 | Yes, thank you. |
| 1:20.7 | Welcome along to the show. |
| 1:22.7 | It's writers routine where we take a look inside the daily lives of some of the best authors around. My name is |
| 1:28.6 | Dan Simpson. Thank you for being there. Thank you for finding, downloading, streaming us. |
| 1:33.0 | You can always get in touch with the show, by the way. Easiest is on the contact form at |
| 1:37.8 | writersroutine.com. So if you've learned a writing tip elsewhere that you'd like to share, |
| 1:42.8 | by all means, if you've got any questions or comments, that's where you need to head. Now, this week, we are with |
| 1:48.1 | Philippa East. Philippa's debut, Little White Lies, was nominated for a CWA New Blood Dagger Award back |
| 1:55.6 | in 2020 in the running for one of the highest prizes in crime fiction, and she's back with a brand new novel. |
... |
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