‘WRITING TOGETHER IS AN ADVENTURE’ Nicci Gerrard and Sean French on their novel approach

Nicci Gerrard and her husband Sean French have written 21 bestsellers together under the pseudonym Nicci French. They talk to books editor Joanne Finney about being true partners in crime

At any Nicci French book event there are always two authors in the room: Nicci Gerrard and her husband Sean French. They have been writing together for 22 years and are best known for their Frieda Klein series, featuring a crime-solving psychotherapist.

The couple met in 1989 while working together at the New Statesman and married in 1990. Nicci, who has two children from a previous marriage, and Sean went on to have two children together. They’ve lived in Suffolk since 1999, but also have a tall townhouse in north London, where bright paintings adorn the walls and objects fill every surface. I had the pleasure of meeting them there as they were getting ready for their daughter Sandra’s wedding the next day.

It’s clear that they’re a devoted couple, talking over and playfully correcting each other as I interview them about their new book, The Lying Room, and how they work together.

What inspired The Lying Room?

Sean: We had this idea about a middle-aged woman finding her lover’s dead body and having to make that immediate decision about what to do and whether to tell the truth. Because once you start lying, it’s hard to stop.

Nicci: We wanted to write something completely different from our Frieda Klein series. Neve, the main character here, couldn’t be more different from Frieda, who is solitary and kind of lonely.

Will Frieda ever make a comeback?

Nicci: It was hard to say goodbye to Frieda but we’d always known there were only going to be eight books. We’ve talked about whether we would write another series but we haven’t said yet either way, because as soon as you say you are not going to do something then that’s when you find yourself doing it.

When did you start writing together?

Nicci: It started as a challenge; we had a conversation about whether it was possible for two people to write in one voice. We thought there would only be one book!

Sean: We read an article about this big controversy where people were recovering memories in therapy about horrendous abuse and just thought, in that terrible writers’ way, what a great idea it was for a thriller. That was the idea behind our first book, The Memory Game.

How do you come up with ideas?

Nicci: We think of the idea together and that can take weeks or months. We discard things and wait until we both love an idea equally. Every September, we go away on a walking holiday and that’s when we try to work out the next novel. It gives us the headspace to think.

Sean: Our novels most often come out of conversations that aren’t about work, they’re about life and culture; what it is like to feel grief or jealousy or to feel helpless and vulnerable and all these kinds of things that everyone feels.

What’s it like writing in a partnership?

Nicci: That’s a difficult question because it’s quite mysterious to us! When we write separately, we are very different writers and yet, when we write together, what we aim to do and what I think we do, is write as Nicci French.

Sean: Our books come out of dipping

We dip the bucket into the pool of our shared imagination

the bucket into the pool of our shared imagination. That’s what is so strange and slightly uncanny about it.

Nicci: We don’t write side by side; I’m in my attic room and Sean is in his shed in the garden. We take it in turns to write a section and then email it to the other person to edit. It’s quite time consuming! If Sean has taken away some beautiful piece of writing that I’ve done, I’m not allowed to argue that it should be put back in. It’s done.

Do you have the same work ethic?

Sean: We have very different temperaments. If Nicci was writing and a bomb went off outside she would get to the end of the chapter before going out to see what had happened. Whereas, with me, if a bird cheeps outside I will go and investigate.

Nicci: I like getting up, getting going and lots of structure. I find Sean’s methods quite disconcerting sometimes but, I have to say, Sean being available for distraction also means he’s more open to ideas, too. He’s a more lucid writer than me, and much funnier, too.

Do you try to keep your writing partnership and marriage separate?

Nicci: You can’t really because we don’t have a nine-to-five kind of job. And I wouldn’t want to, anyway, because what we do when we work together is explore the things that disturb us, obsess us or captivate us. It’s a way of seeing the world together.

Sean: It doesn’t mean that we are working all the time, but if there’s some problem with the book, we do sit down and really try to have it out.

Nicci: It’s a very intimate act because by writing you’re exposing secret bits of yourself; it makes you very vulnerable. We have to trust each other.

What has working together taught you?

Sean: I think one really important thing to remember is that winning an argument in a marriage isn’t really a win.

Nicci: Every day, you have to question things and not settle, and challenge each other for the good of yourself and your relationship.

What are you most proud of in your careers?

Nicci: The success of John’s Campaign, which came about because my father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when he was in his mid-70s, had a terrible experience in hospital. They stopped letting visitors in because of norovirus and he went off a cliff in terms of care. Since a friend and I launched the campaign in 2014, several hundred institutions have signed up and stated that they welcome carers whenever the patient needs them. I wrote my memoir, What Dementia Teaches Us About Love, as part of the process of apologising to Dad and letting him go. But, of course, I was also saying sorry to myself and trying to forgive myself.

Sean: I just feel really lucky that we have been able to do this together all these years and it has just been amazing. It was never planned, it was this thing that we just stumbled into and it’s been a constant adventure.

How do you switch off from writing?

Nicci: I love wild swimming. I swim in Hampstead ponds and in the Thames. You let yourself go into this cold, dark depth and it feels very free; it’s the closest you can get to flying, I think.

Sean: I go running and cycling. Every year, Nicci and I, plus whichever of the children are around, cycle from London to our house in Suffolk.

It’s about 85 miles so it’s a long day. We go a little bit slower every year!

 The Lying Room (Simon & Schuster) by Nicci French is out on 3 October