Writing helps me deal with my anxieties. I’m accessing my deepest fears
Bestselling British author C.L. Taylor tells how an abusive ex, toxic friendships and her own deep-seated fears have all inspired her thrilling novels relationship with very high esteem Her novel, The Fear, sees wrote after work and at weekends. and confidence and by the end of 14-year-old Lou run away to France She found herself an agent and it, I was walking on eggshells,” with her 31-year-old teacher, who her first two books, written under Cally, 44, recalls. “He was very has clearly groomed her. When he the name of Cally Taylor, were both jealous, controlling and paranoid.” begins to show his more aggressive rom-coms. They did well in China
She tried to leave many times, side, she finally contacts the police. and Hungary, but not in the UK. but he talked her back and made Fast-forward and Lou is now 32, “It was towards the end of the excuses for his behaviour, she says. her life in tatters, when she resolves Bridget Jones boom. I’d just had “When I finally did decide to leave to return home to confront the man my son, Seth, (now six) and my him, he turned up on my doorstep for the damage he has caused. editor said the age of chick lit was in Brighton and just continually Discovering that he is now focusing over and we needed deeper reads. I rang the bell for about 15 minutes. his attention on a 13-year-old girl, felt a bit lost, really. I almost felt It was horrible. she must do something about it. like my career had ended before it
“I was worried that he could “Although Lou is originally had begun.” turn. You often hear that people go his victim, she ends up locking him But having seen Before I Go To from being emotionally abusive to in a cage, so it’s more about Sleep, the hugely successful debut physically abusive. I was genuinely empowering a female heroine,” novel by SJ Watson which was worried about what he might do.” says Cally. made into a film starring Colin
In the end, it took a stern phone Born in Worcester, Cally has been Firth and Nicole Kidman, she felt call from her father to warn him off, writing since she was eight, when the industry was on the verge of a threatening to call the police if he she sent a little manuscript to big boom in psychological thrillers. didn’t stop harassing her. Ladybird publishers and duly Her first, The Accident, became
“It was really scary. It fuelled my received her first rejection. the 10th bestselling debut novel of first book.” “I wrote terrible poetry in my 2014, selling five times as many
She has now changed tack, teens and then dabbled with short copies as her second rom-com. choosing real news stories on stories in my 20s. Then, when I was Cally had found her niche. which to base her fictional crime, 33, one of my best friends from Her next book, The Lie, became having rid herself of her own school had a brain aneurysm and her first Sunday Times bestseller demons. died. It was a huge wake-up call for and topped the Amazon charts for
Her fifth psychological thriller, me and made me realise you don’t three months. Subsequent novels The Fear, was sparked by the case necessarily have all the time in the have followed suit. of teacher Jeremy Forrest, who world, and if you’ve got something Her literary success has changed triggered an international manhunt you want to her life, she reflects, albeit when he went on the run to pursue, you’ve got fairly modestly; she lives in France with a 15-year-old pupil in to do it. I wrote a three-bedroom terraced 2012. like a woman house in Bristol and still has
“It wasn’t so much about how he possessed after a mortgage. groomed her but what her life that.” “I was able to give up the would be like afterwards. I’m really At the time, she day job. I’d always dreamed interested in how crime affects was single, living in of working from home with ordinary people,” Cally notes of a one-bedroom flat a dog at my feet, and now how the story informed her novel. in Brighton, with a I’ve got the dog as well.” “That would have been her first full-time job in IT experience of love, in a twisted way. working as a web When she meets other men, how is developer in an she going to respond to them? Is it e-Learning going to feel less exciting ?” company. She