Author Interview A.J. Waines

It gives me great pleasure to welcome AJ Waines to The Crime Warp today.  Here's a little bit about her before we crack on with the grilling:

AJ Waines has sold over 450,000 books worldwide and topped the UK and Australian Kindle Charts in two consecutive years with her number one bestseller, Girl on a Train. Following fifteen years as a psychotherapist, she is now a full-time novelist with publishing deals in UK, France, Germany, Norway, Hungary and USA (audiobooks).

Her fourth psychological thriller, No Longer Safe, sold over 30,000 copies in the first month, in thirteen countries. AJ Waines has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Times and has been ranked a Top 10 UK author on Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). She lives in Hampshire, UK, with her husband.

Find AJ Waines’ books here, visit her website and blog, or join her on Twitter, Facebook or get her Newsletter. 

Tell us a bit about your current book release:

Don’t you Dare is a psychological thriller, in which a misunderstanding leaves a mother and daughter trapped in a terrible dilemma that will affect their lives forever. Neither of them plans to commit a crime, but something awful takes place that sends their lives spiralling out of control. The tension in the book comes from the different ways in which they handle what they’ve done. Who is going to keep their nerve? Who’ll be the first to crack? It’s the kind of situation that almost anyone could find themselves in! It’s a nail-biting ride!

Where did the inspiration for Don’t you Dare come from?

As a former psychotherapist I’ve always been interested in people’s motives for the choices they make. In this story, I wanted a dreadful crime to be committed by Rachel, the lead character, but for a very good reason, and for this reason to be kept hidden from her daughter (and the reader). I always love stories involving lies and secrets and this novel has plenty of them, with a big twist at the end!

Is there a subsidiary character you have created and are particularly fond of and why?

I love the character of Beth in Don’t you Dare, the twenty-three-year-old daughter, an aspiring actress. She’s impetuous, the heart and soul of every party, the queen of oversharing, but also naïve. Like many young people, she craves being in the limelight. After an incident at the start, she changes instantly from a bright, sparky spirit who always speaks her mind, to a recluse, hiding away in her room with her phone switched off. She can’t trust herself to keep their crime secret and struggles with her own moral compass over what to do. Meanwhile, her mother sees her only as a dangerous liability… Don’t you Dare explores what happens when two people are forced to share a chilling secret and one of them loses their nerve.

Any writing exercises you’ve found particularly useful as a writing stimulus?

Not exercises as such, but three tips when writing a first draft that work for me. The first is to use a three-act structure and write a bullet-point list of all the main plot points in each act. This gives a secure framework for the story (inevitably, it changes as I go along!)

The next is never to leave my work at the end of a scene or chapter, without sketching in what comes next. When I return to my desk the next day, I then have a framework to fill out rather than a blank page. The third tip is to get the story down at all costs, without worrying too much about how ‘good’ it sounds or grammar etc. I put ‘#’ in the page whenever I can’t find the right word or need to add a detail I can only find out with extra research (such as how fast a yacht might travel). My priority when I’m at the first draft stage is to get the whole thing out, then later I’ve got plenty of time to add, change, move things around. This is a great lesson I learned from Stephen King’s book, On Writing.

Is there a particular book you wish you’d written and why?

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller. It’s is a clever slow-burn story about the toxic mix of jealousy and admiration, stunningly executed.

Can you tell us two things about yourself that your readership may be unaware of?

1. Studying music has helped me to write. I did an MA in music analysis, so I set about looking at a psychological suspense novel like a piece of music. It’s not hard to see instant parallels with writing: the structure, voice, texture, knowing which strands to bring to the fore at any one point, which strands to keep simmering away in the background. In novels, I started looking for elements like the flow of sentences and punctuation. Pace and creating tension are other qualities that music and writing share. I explored mood, speed and intensity and before long I had a far better grasp of what I was aiming for.

2. I failed my English literature GCSE. It’s a bit embarrassing really, as I’d always been near the top of the class! It meant I didn’t study English at A level as planned. Who knows if it would have made any difference, but I didn’t ever start writing fiction until much later in life, although I’ve always loved writing essays. My experience goes to show that anyone can have a crack at it!

What is it about Crime fiction as a genre that turns you on?

I’ve always been interested in what makes people tick, so ‘psychological thrillers’ as a sub-genre of crime fiction feels a perfect fit for me. I love exploring moral dilemmas, how we all create masks to present to the world and the way the external never truly reveals the internal. With a background working with ex-offenders from high-security institutions, some might say I have exclusive inside knowledge of the criminal mind. Crime is all about hiding what you’ve done and I play on this theme in Don’t you Dare.

Which fictional hero or anti-hero would you like to meet and why?

It would have to be Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s novels. He’s so sly, manipulative and cunning, wrapped in the veneer of a friendly, good-egg façade. I love the deceptions he conjures up and the dissonance between what he says and what he’s really thinking. Given it was my former profession, I’d like to invite him on to my couch and be his psychotherapist for a few sessions to see if I could break open his fake persona!

Could you describe the book you are working on at the moment using only 5 words?

I’m currently editing my next in the Dr Samantha Willerby series, Perfect Bones (working title), which is due out towards the end of 2018. In five words: tense, creepy, clock-ticking, shocking, murders.

Could you describe your next project using each of your five senses?

Great question! The book after that one is a standalone psyche thriller, in the making. It’s about revenge and visually, it’s dark. It’s haunting, brittle to the touch, sour to smell and tastes bitter.

Thank you so much, Liz, for having me on your site!

And thank you so much for coming.  It's been a pleasure.

AJ Waines' latest book, Don’t you Dare, is published by Bloodhound Books on May 8th and is available from all Amazon outlets.