The Adulterer's Wife Blog tour : Leigh Russell blog post : Revolutions In Books
REVOLUTIONS IN BOOKS
Nearly ten years ago, my debut novel hit the shelves. Because that’s what books did in those days, they turned up on the shelves of physical bookshops, in libraries, and in readers’ homes. Ebooks were still virtually unheard of and books were published in print. In fact, when a fellow author suggested I ask my publisher to bring my debut out as an ebook, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. I’d heard of ebooks, but I didn’t really know what they were.
Some things haven’t changed. I continue to love and champion print books. There’s nothing quite like the excitement of walking into a library or bookshop and seeing rows and rows of other worlds waiting to be explored. It’s still a thrill to receive a box of my own new books and be able to see and hold them for the first time, and to find them out in the bookshops. But I wouldn’t be without my kindle app now. How rapidly times have changed!
Less than ten years after my debut launched, I’ve had three trilogies published, in addition to a long running series which has been translated around the world and sold over a million copies. It had taken years but I was happily established with my series. So you might wonder why, at that point, I decided to write a stand alone novel. Unlike the ebook revolution this was a small, personal change, and it happened out of the blue, for no reason. I’d never attempted to write a stand alone before, and was busy enough with my series books. You might wonder what I was doing, writing a stand alone novel? It’s a fair enough question. In fact, I’ve been asking myself what could have prompted me to write The Adulterer’s Wife, my first ever stand alone novel.
As most writers will tell you, the answer is that there was really no decision to make. The late great
By and large the same is true of the characters who people our stories. Once they find us, they can really seem to have a life of their own. The Italian playwright Pirandello wrote that “When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody... and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.” So we might think we are in control of our characters but, like in Pirandello’s most famous work ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’, the characters have their own stories to tell.
Of course, as writers, we aren’t really compelled to follow wherever our characters seem to lead us. We’re not mediums in contact with unearthly beings, nor are we in thrall to some mystical powers. Our characters arise purely from our own imaginations. But they can appear to us, fully formed, and ready to talk. And that is exactly how the narrator in The Adulterer’s Wife came about. I woke up one morning and she was there, complete with the story she wanted to tell.
Like all stories, her narrative sprang from a ‘What if... ?’ question. Perhaps if I wasn’t so secure in my marriage, I wouldn’t have been comfortable writing about the question explored in The Adulterer’s Wife: ‘What would you do if you discovered your partner of twenty years had been having an affair for two years, and the other woman claimed your husband had promised to leave you to be with her?’ And more important than ‘What would you do?’ is ‘How would you feel?’ Those were the questions that prompted the story and from there the narrative moves into darker territory, because that’s what I do. I write about murder. And that isn’t a deliberate decision any more than my other writing choices are.
Honestly, I’d love to write humorously, and there are many crime writers who succeed in doing so brilliantly. LC Tyler, and Ruth Dudley Edwards, are two among many whom I admire. But somehow my writing always plunges into areas of dark suspense. My bent is not to amuse, but to create tension. Since another ambition of mine is to write a haunting romance one day, I did once write what I considered to be a tragic love story. It ended up as a Best Pick in the Sunday Times Crime Book Club. So I’ve come to accept that I just can’t get away from murder when I’m writing.
With that in mind, I suppose it was inevitable that my starting point of a cheating husband spun itself fairly quickly into a murder story. If you speculate about how the narrative unfolds, there are a number of possibilities you might come up with. You might even find your own imaginary character creeps up on, you suggesting a story. But if you want to know how my character’s story turns out, you’ll have to read the book. I hope you won’t be disappointed. If you are, please don’t blame me. After all, The Adulterer’s Wife isn’t my story.
The Adulterer’s Wife blurb
Julie is devastated to learn that her husband, Paul, is having an affair. It seems her life can’t get any worse - until she comes home to find his dead body in their bed.
When the police establish he was murdered, Julie is the obvious suspect.
To protect her son from the terrible situation, Julie sends the teenage boy to his grandparents in Edinburgh while she fights to prove her innocence.
With all the evidence pointing to her, the only way she can escape conviction is by discovering the true identity of her husband’s killer.
But who really did murder Paul?
The truth is never straightforward…
Author Bio:
Leigh Russell, author of the internationally bestselling Geraldine Steel crime series, has sold well over a million books worldwide.
Her novels have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Turkish. Reaching #1 on Kindle, her books have been selected as Best Fiction Book of the Year by the Miami Examiner, voted Best Crime Fiction Book of the Year in Crime Time, a Top Read on Eurocrime and shortlisted for the John Creasey New Blood CWA Dagger Award, long listed for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award, and a finalist for the People’s Book Prize.
Leigh studied at the University of Kent, gaining a Masters degree in English. She serves on the board of the Crime Writers Association, chairs the Debut Dagger Judges, and is a Royal Literary Fellow
Links:
Twitter: @LeighRussell
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