‘I like to think I’d make a great detective’

Meet Abigail Dean, one of our 10 Women’s Prize For Fiction and Good Housekeeping Futures shortlisters, a lawyer whose debut novel Girl A is a Sunday Times bestseller

I’ve long been interested in true crime, but I’ve always wondered about the years after the headlines and the trial. How do people live with trauma amid public scrutiny? Is it ever possible to leave that behind? Those questions, combined with my love for big, fictional families produced Girl A.

Tell us about your journey to publication.

I first sent a manuscript to agents as a teenager, with a very serious covering letter! In 2018, I was working long hours at a law firm, approaching 30, and realised that I’d abandoned writing for something that wasn’t making me happy. I was in the privileged position of being able to take three months off to begin writing Girl A. It was a long, hot summer and I spent eight hours a day at the library, working on the first draft. I chipped away at it for the next year, when back at work, and submitted it to agents in 2019.

I refreshed my inbox at least 200 times a day in those first anxious weeks. But this time, agents were interested. I worked on Girl A for a further five months with my agent and we sent the book to publishers that autumn. When the first offer came, I was working in India, with a terrible phone signal, and could barely hear a word.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever been given?

In my 20s, I talked wistfully of wanting to be a writer, and my partner offered me the characteristically blunt advice that if you want to be a writer, you have to write. In a professional sense, Jessie Burton’s essay On Endurance For Writers on The Novelry blog and James Wood’s How Fiction Works have helped.

What do you think you would be if you weren’t a writer?

I like to think I’d make a great detective; I think all thriller writers like to think that!

Which female authors inspire you?

Judy Blume, for writing about topics that should never have been taboo but were. She was one of the writers who got me through my teens. For pure writing inspiration, I always have books by Sarah Hall and Hilary Mantel on my desk.

Do you have a set writing routine?

I used to have a very precious routine, requiring silence and long swathes of time. The outcome was that I never wrote a thing, so I’ve tried to abandon the idea of a routine in favour of writing whenever I have the chance – on my phone on the commute, for 20 minutes in the evening, or undisturbed on a Sunday afternoon.