The Dead Ground - Claire McGowan - Author Guest Post - Blog Tour

Today I'm delighted to share a guest post with you from author Claire McGowan. Claire's third novel is The Dead Ground, and is published by Headline on April 10th 2014. 

It's the second in a series featuring Paula Maguire. You can read my review of the first in the series, The Lost, here, and my review of Claire's first book, The Fall, here.

My writing process by Claire McGowan

There are a couple of questions that always come up when I’m being interviewed, and which I really should have worked out better answers to. One is: are you disciplined with your writing? And the other is: how much research do you do?

At the moment I write at least one book a year, and I always have other work to do as well, like most writers nowadays. So I don’t sit down at my desk all day every day and write – for one thing, it’s hard to crank out words eight hours a day. For another, life’s little jobs always get in the way, whether it’s proof-reading a different book, or promoting the one you have out, or going to the dentist or dry-cleaners. Part of this is procrastination, of course. When you don’t want to write a particular scene or you don’t know what happens next in your book, it’s amazing how much time you can fill up cleaning the taps, emailing, and watching YouTube videos of cats running into walls.

My process of writing a book spans around a year. This is probably because I have a year. If I had more or less time, I’m sure the work would expand or contract. First I’ll get the idea. I get ideas all the time, but not all of these will be workable as novels. It helps that I’m writing a series, so I know roughly what has to happen to the cast of characters in that one. Then I start scribbling down bits of the book, gathering ideas as I go. At this stage I don’t know much about the plot but rather than panic I just try to enjoy the adventure of finding out what’s going on. I use a notebook for this part, which is a sort of fetish – I can kid myself it’s like sketching, just playing about, and it also stops me being distracted by the aforementioned cat videos. Then, I will usually get to thirty thousand words and stop, stumped as to what happens next. I might stop for quite a while, procrastinating and telling myself I’m thinking it over. At some point I drag myself between thirty and sixty thousand words – the hardest part. Then I will stop again to think about what is really going on? What’s the book about? You might think I would know at this point, but….

Then, the research question. I wish I had a good answer for this, like ‘I embedded myself with the police for a year’ or ‘I got myself arrested so I could experience prison’, but it’s nowhere near as exciting as that. I will usually read around the subject I want to write on when I’m in the early musing stages, then try to get the story down, and then check the facts after. I’ll do this either by reading, going online, or talking to people about specific questions. Again, I’m a firm believer that too much research can weigh a book down, and that story is much more important than being totally accurate at all times. I want to write stories, not be an expert in the police force or forensic pathology or something. It’s surprising how often you get things right anyway. The mind is very powerful.

Hopefully this rather haphazard approach will show any aspiring writers that you don’t have to have all the answers when you start a book. However, you absolutely do have to keep going. I’m a big believer in doing 1,000 words a day in the writing stage– this very quickly adds up to a book and is why I wrote my first in three months. If you do this, and keep going without reading back over it, even when you’re convinced it’s no good, at least you have something to work with and fix. The only perfect books are the ones that stay in your head, unwritten. Give it a try!

About the novel...

BOOK TWO IN THE NEW CRIME SERIES FEATURING FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST PAULA MAGUIRE WORKING IN THE MISSING PERSONS UNIT IN NORTHERN IRELAND, IN A NAIL BITING STORY THAT WILL KEEP YOU UP ALL NIGHT

A stolen baby. A murdered woman. A decades-old atrocity. Something connects them all...

A month before Christmas, and Ballyterrin on the Irish border lies under a thick pall of snow. When a newborn baby goes missing from hospital, it's all too close to home for forensic psychologist Paula Maguire, who's wrestling with the hardest decision of her life.

Then a woman is found in a stone circle with her stomach cut open and it's clear a brutal killer is on the loose.

As another child is taken and a pregnant woman goes missing, Paula is caught up in the hunt for a killer no one can trace, who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

The Dead Ground will leave you gasping for breath as Paula discovers every decision she makes really is a matter of life and death...

About the author... 

Claire McGowan grew up in a small village in Northern Ireland. After a degree in English and French from Oxford University, and time spent living in China and France, she moved to London and works in the charity sector and also teaches creative writing. THE DEAD GROUND is her third novel and the second in the Paula Maguire series.

Author links: twitter @inkstainsclaire | website

The Lost - Claire McGowan

This novel is the first in what will be a series featuring forensic psychologist Paula Maguire. Paula has been living in London for over ten years, having left behind her life in Ballyterrin, Northern Ireland, wanting to escape the people and places that remind of her of sad times in the past. However she is unwillingly drawn back by a case involving two missing girls close to the Irish border, tasked with looking at potential links between these girls and the many missing girls from the past whose cases remain unsolved, their disappearances still a mystery.

I loved this novel and found it hard to put down. The pace is quick throughout; it's an exciting, enthralling and tense read with a well-balanced mix of psychological insight, action and investigation. Claire McGowan has depicted a setting tingling with nerves, a town with a dark and secretive atmosphere where everyone seems to be hiding something but nobody is willing to come forward and reveal what they know, making it a difficult job for Paula, seconded Met detective Guy Brooking and the rest of the team, as they try to prise open the tightly closed secrets of this community. 

The characters are engaging and author has done a skillful job weaving together a compelling storyline with links between the present and the past, incorporating aspects of recent history and dealing with politics and religion well; no mean feat. I was gripped, eager to read on and discover the whereabouts of the missing girls, to find out more about why they had gone, and why some who are lost might indeed not want to be found; the theme of the missing is a fascinating and tragic one.

Paula is a great lead character; I was rooting for her throughout as she often has to fight to be taken seriously amongst her new colleagues; she does what she believes is right but this antagonises others at times. Having been away so long, it's a great shock for her to be plunged back in to life in her old hometown, and dealing with those she left behind so suddenly is by no means easy. I found her believable and well rounded, and there is so much more that I'd like to know about her; the sadness that haunts her troubled past, the mystery surrounding her mother's disappearance, the future of the investigation team, her relationship with Aidan. This bodes well for future books in the series; I'm eager to read the next one already.

Published by Headline

Reviewed for We Love This Book

Thanks to We Love This Book and the publisher for providing a proof copy of this novel to read and review. 

The Fall - Claire McGowan

‘Everything could crumble. Everything could fall apart. She knew that now.’

An intriguing, short prologue already has us wondering, who is this, what has happened, and why? Then we meet the two main female protagonists, Keisha and Charlotte; two very different women drawn together by a crime. Charlotte seems to have a very happy life, she has a successful career in PR, and is deeply in love and very soon going to marry Dan, her partner, who is a wealthy banker. They have a gorgeous flat and all the good things in life that money can buy. Keisha has a miserable life by comparison; dead-end jobs, a young daughter who has been taken away from her due to Keisha's violent boyfriend Chris, and she has little to look forward to. These backgrounds have contributed to their different characters, which are revealed as the story progresses; whereas Keisha has developed a tough, hard exterior and is prepared to take people on, Charlotte is more subdued, less used to confrontation, and is hit hard by what happens when Dan is arrested for the murder of a nightclub owner. A little later we meet the other main character, DC Matthew Hegarty, the detective investigating the murder; he is thrilled to have made the arrest of Dan, but has a suspicion that everything isn't quite as cut and dried as it might have seemed, and he also feels an inconvenient but undeniable growing attraction for Charlotte. 

The author has written a gripping story, and at it's heart for me is the compelling portrayal of the two women, their very different backgrounds and lifestyles clashing but the common factor of their both being present one night in a club in Camden bringing them together. When Keisha arrives at Charlotte's flat, Charlotte wonders, ‘how was she to talk to this girl, so different to her, so full of angry energy that she hummed with it?’ Despite all of the hardship in Keisha’s life, she can see how much Charlotte is struggling with all the trouble that her new situation has dealt her, and she finds that she ‘really did feel sorry for Charlotte…the poor little rich girl.’ They both have to deal with so much as a result of the murder, to work through all the threads, the half-remembered details, the anxious feelings: ‘It was as if they both had a suitcase full of troubles that had to be upended.’

I really liked how the narrative skipped about between the three main characters, it made for a pacy read, and I was always looking forward to reading the next part from each of them. It’s an intriguing story, with dry humour at times. It's also very timely, including the less than honest aspects of Dan's profession.

This novel is about love, relationships, violence and criminal activity, honesty and trust. As Keisha remarks, ‘you never knew anyone, not really. You never knew what someone would do, or how many ways they would let you down.’

An involving, character-driven page-turner of a debut. I eagerly look forward to reading this author’s next book.

Published by Headline


You can follow the author on twitter @inkstainsclaire and visit her website here


Claire McGowan is currently the Director of the Crime Writers' Assocation


Find out more about the Crime Readers' Assocation here


Reviewed for Amazon Vine