Writing to thrill

Local author Sandra Ireland delves into the past for her latest thriller, discovers Caroline Lindsay

Local author Sandra Ireland has just published a new thriller. We learn more about it, and her writerly life.

As a young child, Sandra Ireland would go to church with her parents and while away the time by writing and drawing. Yet it was to be many years before she was to put those creative skills into practice. Sandra moved to Scotland in 1995. “I came to Carnoustie to live in my grandmother’s house,” she says. “I’d always loved visiting her here and being so close to the sea.”

Over the next few years, Sandra was kept busy with a cafe business in the Angus town, working as an artist and running a smallholding. But when she was in her 40s she decided to enrol at Dundee University as a mature student to study for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in English literature and creative writing.

Her first novel Beneath the Skin – a psychological thriller – was published to critical acclaim in 2016 and in the same year she was awarded funding by Creative Scotland for a residency at Barry Mill in Carnoustie – a working water-powered mill.

“During my residency I was able to watch visitors’ reactions to the mill and its surroundings, and it was fascinating to discover how imagination can uncover the flip side of even the most tranquil setting,” reveals Sandra.

“I’m a real history buff,” she says. “I love old buildings and I think that stems from doing up old houses. It’s wonderful to chip off old plaster and find something like a beamed fireplace – I feel as if I’m peeling back the layers of history.”

These themes are at the heart of her second thriller, Bone Deep, which came out earlier this month. Inspired by The Cruel Sister, a Border ballad collected by Sir Walter Scott, the novel intertwines past and present as its central female characters, Mac and the mysterious Lucie, collect local folk stories for a book.

Sandra reveals that although she’s quite squeamish by nature ,she can step out of it when she’s writing.

“I read a lot and if people could see my reading list they’d think I was twisted!” she says with a laugh. “

I enjoy Julie Myerson’s ghost stories – she’s great at getting a sense of suspense – and ES Thomson’s Jem Flockhart mysteries, which are very dark and grisly.

“I’m not a history writer but when I found the book of border ballads by Sir Walter Scott, including The Cruel Sister, I knew I could do something with it,” she says.

The best advice I was given was to write what scares you

Sandra’s third novel, The Unmaking of Ellie Rook, published next year, tells the story of a young woman who has to abandon her travels to come home to face what she left in the first place.

Sandra is currently hard at work on her fourth thriller, as well as a nonfiction book about mill folklore.

“The best advice I was given was to write about what scares you. That sounds very dramatic but get into the depths and that’s what starts you writing,” she said with a smile.

Angus author Sandra Ireland, who had a residency as Barry Mill in Carnoustie, had her second thriller, Bone Deep, published this month.