CREATIVE CLI-FI

I have been writing since I was 17 and when you churn out news articles all day every day, it stifles any creative inspiration, writes subscriber Lucy Ghose.

However, when I was made redundant it spurred me on to join a local writing club.

I entered a short story competition in 2013 which they were running, on the theme of ‘autumn’ and I used to spend my lunch breaks writing in a churchyard. I was looking at a brown leaf which had holes in it, and I thought, ‘What if autumn happened early? What if it wasn’t Autumn, but all the trees were dying?’ I had the start of an eco-thriller right there.

All of the science in The Poison Balance is based on fact – acid rain can affect the brain and damage it. As a disaster novel, the effect is to the extreme, making the world potentially not survivable. I wrote most of the first version when I was pregnant with my first, which made getting behind the wheel with my laptop (and my bump) interesting, when it was too wet or cold for the churchyard.

The real-life story of forest monkeys who attacked locals, which was ‘out of character’, formed my prologue. I imagined something was poisoning them and invented the idea of the water cycle becoming damaged beyond repair.

Ten years ago, I started writing it and, in that time, I’ve taken several years away while having babies and coming out the other side of ‘baby brain’, returning to it in lockdown. I found an online writing course, editing and pitching directly to agents and publishers.

I spent most of 2022 getting rejected/ignored by agents. I was working in the property sector when I saw former work colleague Joanna Quinn’s Whalebone Theatre hit the bookshelves and it spurred me on. I decided to approach publishers myself and indie publishers Cranthorpe Millner were one of the first to reply. I signed just after Christmas and quit my job just a few months later.

Life continued while I wrote the novel – trying to keep the house sort of clean-ish, and the fridge full of food.

Publication day in January this year was on my eldest daughter’s birthday. Only fitting really, as I created both of them at the same time.