Why our Amy’s heading
Amy LLOyD’S Christmas present came a little late this year — it arrived yesterday, to be precise, when her first novel, The Innocent Wife, was published.
A disturbing psychological thriller, the book won the Daily mail First Novel Competition last year.
Since then, Amy has polished her words to perfection and watched in delight as publishers around the world snapped them up. So far, 17 countries, including France, Italy, Germany and Russia, have bought rights and a film company has optioned it to make a feature film.
When we launched our search for an unpublished first-time novelist back in march 2016, we were overwhelmed by both the number — more than 5,000 — and the quality of the entries. We worked with major publisher Penguin Random House to discover a new talent and found that our would-be writers’ favourite genres were crime and thrillers: five out of the six titles on the shortlist involved dark stories of wrongdoing and murder.
What made Amy’s entry stand out was an opening paragraph that crackled with tension and a very contemporary twist on the theme of guilt and obsession.
‘The girl was found 76 hours after she was reported missing. The fingertips had been removed with cable-cutter pliers, a calculated attempt to hide DNA evidence, the flesh of her attacker gathering beneath the whites of her nails as they dragged over his skin.
‘Her body had been moved shortly after death; wherever she was killed had been private enough for a prolonged and violent attack, followed by the mutilation of her corpse. Holly michaels was dumped in the dark waters of the bayou, in the northernmost part of Red River County, Florida, ten miles from her home.’
The prize — a £ 20,000 publishing advance, the services of literary agent Luigi Bonomi, and a two-book deal with Penguin Random House — transformed life for Amy, who had left school in South Wales at 16 with just four GCSEs after being bullied badly as a teenager. Aged 20, she picked up her education again at Bridgend College and began a creative writing course after gaining A-levels.
Inspired by TV documentaries on shocking miscarriages of justice in America, where innocent people can be condemned to Death Row, Amy started her novel. Initially entitled Red River, it took her over two years. She saw the Daily Mail competition and sent in her manuscript. The judges voted unanimously for it.
‘I’m so excited to see the finished book on the shelves!’ she says. ‘I can’t wait for people to read it. Winning the competition and the £20,000 advance has bought me the choice of how to manage my time.
‘I’ve dropped the number of hours I work on reception at Cardiff University, so I go in only three days a week and devote the rest of my time to writing.
‘I love my job and it’s good to get out of the house and talk to people. Writing means long stretches of sitting alone and I turn a bit weird if I don’t get out. This is a thrilling time but I’m also aware that I have to produce another novel and I’m finding writing the second book incredibly tough. It was easier to write the first because no one was expecting anything. I felt like I had nothing to lose if it was rubbish.
‘This time I have people waiting to see it — my agent and publishers — so it’s a different kind of pressure.
‘But it’s hard not to be distracted by the exciting things that are happening with The Innocent Wife.
‘The book has already had a very positive response from readers. I really like to hear that it kept people up way too late because they couldn’t put it down!’
READ our crime reviewer Geoffrey Wansell’s verdict on The Innocent Wife, overleaf