Tandem Talks: Dissecting Sub-Genre with Psychological Crime author Erin Kelly
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Lex - Hello everyone and welcome back to the Tandem Collective Talks podcast. In this episode, I got to interview Erin Kelly on psychological thriller fiction and her recent move to psychological gothic fiction, an absolute dream interview for me, and I'm super excited for you guys to hear it. Before we kick off, we have got Jen and Lucy here too. And we're just going to have a quick discussion about authors that we love who's genre hop.
So, Jen, have you got a suggestion for this one?
Jen - Yes. So this is not so much an author that I love. This is an author who I really enjoy some of her work. And then I found that she genre hopped so successfully into another genre that she completely hopped out of the genre that I love. So I read Verity by Coleen Hoover for the first thing I've ever read by her.
Loved it. So it's fantastic. It's really kind of twisty thrillery amazing. And then I saw over Bookstagram that everyone has been reading and recommending Ugly Love. So I read that, and it's just kind of contemporary romance fiction, which I'm sure it was incredibly well done if you love contemporary romance fiction, but it's not my go to.
So it was interesting to see how different it was to Verity.
Lex - So different. So different. Whereas I feel like Erin's genre hop feels like it's aimed at a similar audience. I feel like if you love psychological thrillers, you're probably going to love psychological gothic. So really interesting that Colleen Hoover can do both, can do thrillers, and can do romantic. Would you call it romantic comedy or contemporary?
Jen - I think it's contemporary romance.
Lex - Sure, Luce, have you got any names to add to the pile for this one?
Lucy - I do. And I think it's a similar kind of genre hop to Erin Kelly in the way. It's quite a subtle one. It's an author that I have read a lot by. She also featured on last season of the podcast and it's Karen Swan. So all of her books, I think I've read most of her backlist, they have all been set in like a contemporary modern day setting, whereas her most recent book, The Last Summer, which are doing a readalong for next month, is set in the 1930s in the Scottish Hebrides.
So I feel she's testing the waters a little bit with historical fiction, but I still loved it. I think it will appeal to fans of both genres so keen to see if she continues doing that.
Lex - I love that. Lucy Jones coming in with an unexpected Karen Swan recommendation.
Lucy - Oh, any opportunity I have to recommend Karen.
Lex - Well, from one entirely unexpected recommendation to another and another guest that we had on the last season of this podcast, Clare Mackintosh. We know her as a psychological thriller writer, but a few years ago she released a book called After the End, which I think if I had to give a genre, it would be contemporary fiction or maybe domestic noir.
I wouldn't say it's a thriller at all, but it reads with the pace of a thriller. It is the story of a couple who have to make some very challenging decisions about the future medical decisions for their child. And you read it just like you do any of her thrillers. You are page after page of page, and it is so twisty, just like a thriller would be.
But it's not scary or creepy or crime based, which I loved. And interestingly enough, she's also got a nonfiction book coming out next year. So Clare Mackintosh will be hitting a trifecta of genre hopping, which is super interesting.
Lucy - I always think the fiction to nonfiction one is so interesting, you know, from a reader's perspective, it'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Lex - I think I would always love to read more nonfiction from fiction authors that I love because it's either going to be about something that they've been through or something that they are an expert in. And I love finding out more about authors in that way. Maybe I'm just overly nosy, but I love that. Right. Well, without any further ado, here is our Erin Kelly episode.
I can't wait for you guys to hear it. Hey there. It's Lex here with a reminder of how important it is to write, review and subscribe to this podcast on your preferred podcast player. We would also love to hear what you think and which episodes are your favorite. Hit us up on podcast@thetandemcollective.com . Now back to regularly scheduled programing.
So after reading the best selling, He Said She Said I knew I was onto an author that I wanted to read more of. So when the opportunity came up to support Hodder in their publishing of Watch Her Fall and Erin's next book coming out later this year, I jumped at the chance. Not only does Erin have at least seven psychological thrillers under her belt, she's also a journalist and loves to help emerging writers shape their books.
She's been teaching creative writing for over six years and has taught Guardian Masterclasses and six week courses for Curtis Brown Creative alongside guest lecturing Warwick University, London City University and led workshops at dozens of literary festivals. Today I am lucky enough to chat to Erin about a step away from what we know her to be writing psychological crime thriller fiction and a step towards what we're calling a psychological gothic fiction.
So firstly, Erin, thank you so much for being here today. I'm so excited to chat through this decision and your next book with you.
Erin - Thanks for having me. I'm excited as well. I love there's nothing I love more than getting under the skin of a book.
Lex - So I'm excited to dissect in a kind of an autopsy of sorts on all of these.
So we spoke a couple of weeks now ago on Instagram about what makes a good psychological thriller. And your resounding answer was peril. There must be peril. So what drew you to writing psychological thrillers in the first place?
Erin - Well, I didn't set out and think I'm going to be a thriller writer. What I did was write the kind of books that I love to read. I mean, it really was that simple. Like a lot of, I think I've been about 15 years since I sat down to write my debut and it was pre Twitter, pre-social media that was well, I mean, I think I was just about on Facebook, perhaps.
But what there wasn't is this ease of access to publishing insider tips. It was much, much more of a closed shop. Voices from the bottom of the industry werenโt heard. And so I didn't know much really about genre. I was incredibly naive. I certainly didn't do what I see new writers doing now, which I really admire, is saying โThatโs my market. These are the writers. This is where I want to be on the shelf in Waterstones and Iโm going to go for thatโ.. I wrote the kind of books I was reading, which was, or he kind of books I mean, I will read anything, Iโm very voracious and a real magpie. But the books I come back to time and again have always been psychological thrillers.
I mean, when I was a teenager, I โฆ once Iโd got all of the Agatha Christie's out of the way, which seems to be the origin story of every crime writer you ever meet. You know, you're 13. You're in the library. You pick up your first Marple or Poirot, and you can't stop until you've done them all. And then the crime writers tend to go off and find their own niche.
And for me, it was psychological thriller. So some writers who like crime fiction, which is really just a euphemism for a good old fashioned murder mystery, some will like really hard boiled detective stories. Others will like something that's super forensic and technical. But I was always more interested in the stories about ordinary people who've come across danger or crime or murder. People, not coppers, not forensic psychologists, people you do not expect to be involved in crime, certainly not in violent crime, finding themselves suddenly caught up in something. So that would have been with Ruth Rendell, especially when she was writing as Barbara Vie, which tended to be slightly more literary, often with quite a strong historical element. And also Nikki French was a huge influence.
I remember I think I was about 20 when I picked up my first Nikki French book and crime fiction until then hadn't seemed to be about people like me. But Nikki French wrote and still writes actually, books about young women who, because of something they witness or a choice they make or relationship they're in or risk they take, find themselves in pretty much mortal danger or under suspicion and need to claw their way out of a situation and the young women in these books were always people I wanted to be friends with.
They were always people I could relate to. They were always scrappy, and I was always on their side and I always wanted the best for them. So I guess it was, and that's actually the template for most psychological thrillers now. And I think because they're such a popular genre at the moment, it's easy to forget how groundbreaking Nikki French was 25 years ago, because now everybody's doing it and it looks normal.
But there really wasn't anybody writing that kind of book that had all of the satisfying drama and risk of a traditional crime thriller with very fresh and relatable urban characters who were living the same way that the readers did, that they would have been my big influences, and that's what I tried to do. I tried to write something with elements of Barbara Vine, and I was kind of hedonism and a big crumbling house and elements of Nikki French, which is, you know, you're young, you're out, youโre single, you're going to parties and you never know what's around the corner.
So really I wasn't thinking in terms of genre at all. I was just thinking, I like these books. Why didn't I try to do something along those lines?
Lex - And I think that that whole concept exactly came to life in Watch Her Fall. You've got these young women who are young women living their lives, doing their things, and then that kind of edge comes in when we know that they are elite ballerinas and the obsession and the striving for perfection that comes along in that world. It feels like these women are accessible and young because we know who they are.
And then there's that psychological element over the top that you've mentioned.
Erin - Well, I would, I mean, having just said that, I love Nikki French because the heroines were relatable. And I have heard agents and editors say, what you need to do is make your character relatable. Then I plunged into a book about prima ballerina, which is not, let's be honest, something most of us can relate to, how graceful we are, what we can, what everybody understands is paranoia and the feeling of being ousted by a rival.
And so in Watch Her Fall and this is where I guess the gothic element comes in, I was taking a situation that is familiar to most people, a sense that perhaps, you know, you're vulnerable at work or in your relationship and you're constantly looking over your shoulder and then throw in really full on, I'm not ashamed to use the word melodrama that, you know, the ballet lends itself to melodrama.
So there are echoing corridors and deserted theaters and spotlights bouncing off blood on the stage floor. And, you know, there are feathers falling out of costumes and floating ominously around. And there was so much that I could do just in terms of the pictures I could paint and the atmosphere I could create, that the ballet seemed to be a really irresistible, heightened place to play out what is just essentially the same human impulse and trauma that drives all my other books.
But it's definitely the, the furthest away from my own experience of anything I've written, because despite appearances, I am not, in fact, an elite ballerina.
Lex - What. Mystique ruined. How did I not know.
So you may not be an elite prima ballerina, but you are a huge pillar of what we know to be the psychological thriller authorship and community kind of ruling the roost at the moment. What does it mean to you to be part of that author community?
Erin - Oh, I love it. I love it so much. Not least because I still want to read these books. I'm still you know, people say โArenโt you sick of psychological thrillers? Don't you want to just go off and read Georgette Heyer or something?โ and. Well, I do enjoy, you know, who doesn't love a nice Regency romance, but apart from anything else, I've made incredible friends through my work.
But I also love that I'm still discovering new writers all the time, so I get sent probably a dozen books a week in the hope that, you know, I might read them and maybe give a quote for the cover or share a picture of the cover on Instagram. And I always do whatever I can to support other authors because I will never forget the pure buzz of those early quotes coming in.
That's when it really starts to feel real. I mean, I had Titans like Sara Paretsky and Stephen King quoting for my debut, and I don't actually know if it makes that much of a difference in terms of reaching readers, but I do know what it means for an author to have that support. And I know that it means a lot to booksellers and to reviewers, which I suppose all is part of the journey to reaching a reader.
So yeah, it's a community I love to be part of and I like the new books I read. So for example, I think Lucy Clarke and Gillian McAllister are doing really good things in this genre at the moment. It's a really joyful place to be and also the crime community in general is a very egalitarian place to be.
We're used to being dismissed by people who don't read crime fiction as kind of schlocky potboilers. And if you have ever read a book by Jane Casey or Tana French or Sarah Hilary or Will Dean, then you will know that crime fiction can be as beautiful and as powerful as anything that you'll find on a, Iโm doing finger quotes here which is great for audio, literary prize shortlist.
So we kind of there's a bit of an honor among thieves, you know, we're used to being dismissed, but we know the truth, which is that crime fiction is the most exciting genre you can get. And also I think it's crime in general in psychological thrillers to really hold a mirror up to society in a way that when literary fiction does, it tends to do quite self-consciously.
But with crime fiction, you are always getting a snapshot of the times you're living in because you can't write a thriller without dealing with the technology and the law and what's happening in society, which is why so many of us absolutely lost our minds when lockdown happened and just thought, how are we going to set thrillers in these circumstances where nobody can meet anybody?
And then, of course, Katherine Ryan Howard pulled it out of the bag with 56 Days, which is a really fantastic lockdown thriller. Fortunately, we're now out with the other side and wondering how much of the lockdown experience and how much of the pandemic to bring in to our work. But it's a really wonderfully supportive community, and I think what makes it that is that none of us have ever stopped being readers.
We can still get excited. The bar is high now, I have to say, and I think that's true for most published authors. I would say before I was published, I would stick with the book if I wasn't loving it. And now if I don't love a book, I won't get past the first two or three chapters. Sometimes it's within than a paragraph, I can tell this voice isn't for me. So I do. I guess I do demand a lot. I want something that's interesting to read at sentencel level as well as a fancy plot, but it's just a really great and fun community. Crime writers in general have the best sense of humor. Because we have to, because look what we're writing about all day.
We're writing about, you know, coercion and murder and blackmail. And so we have to have a gallows humor that gets us through it.
Lex - Oh, I completely agree. And I think actually a kind of subgenre that I've really enjoyed seeing all of my favorite crime authors kind of one up each other on recently is that locked room? You know, just like you said, it comes from the finishing school for readers of crime fiction with Agatha Christie. And then now we've got okay, well, now we're over on an island in Ireland.
Now we're on a plane and now we're in an avalanche. So it's been really fun to watch that snowball over the past couple of years.
Erin - I've never done it. I've never, never done it.
Lex - And would you ever, do you think?
Erin - I probably wouldn't sit down for the hell of it and say, let's see if I can do a locked room because my books always come to me. It's always about, oh, it's about the ballerina, or it's about somebody who watches eclipses or it's about a trial. It will always or it's aboutโฆ the place is usually the inspiration.
I never say never, but it's not something I've had a go at. And I would love to, if only for the technical challenge. But it would have to be a setting that hadn't been done before. I guess to make it worth my while on this. Probably none left.
Lex - That's it. There are no more rooms, no more.
Erin - But we have got some incredible books out of it. I agree.
Erin - Mm hmm. Okay. So let's talk about your next book. So at the moment, we know it's going to be set within the wonderfully named new genre of psychological gothic. What does this genre look like for you and what will you be keeping from your previous style of writing? Like you mentioned, you kind of dipped your toes into it in Watch Her Fall with those very eerie scenes, particularly the feather floating.
Lex - And what will Erin Kelly superfans love to see in this next?
Erin - Well, I think I have been creeping towards the gothic for a while now, actually, and that is, if anything, it's been a byproduct of me not wanting to write the same book every single time because they say, write what you know. But what I know is I'm a suburban mother of two and I can't write, you know, that's going to get that that did feed into The Poison Tree, actually.
And even with my third book, The Burning Air to an extent but I think that I can't always be writing about that world because the books will get samey and more importantly, I will get I'm bored, I'm going to start churning out formulaic stuff and the readers are going to leave. So I think it was a byproduct of always wanting to explore a different world.
I didn't used to love P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh detective novels, just because I never bought into him as a detective that used to recite Shakespeare in the middle of a murder scene. And write his own poetry. But what I did love was that she would always take you into a closed world, whether it was a publishing house or rowing club or a hospital.
She would always take you into a world. And William Boyd does it really well too, to find out something that you didn't know about before. So the mystery is central. But also there's a world, it's a passion or a way people live that isn't quite mainstream, that hasn't been done to death. And I think it began with I mean, I think Stone Mothers, which is my three books ago and just to make it confusing it's also published as We Know You Know, that was set in an abandoned psychiatric hospital over a 60 year period, I think.
And that was when I really decided to sort of break out the thunderclap sound effects and be creaky hinges and all of that. I really went for it in that book and I just loved being able to let go and really ramp up the tension and give people, you know, art and atmosphere and full on creepiness within. Because with every book I get more and more sure of my skill set.
I feel that there are other things and I get more assured as a writer at sentence level, I think I can be more over the top in other ways, though, I've actually pared back my writing style quite a lot. It's got much less flowery and more concise, and I think more powerful as the books have gone on, which then frees me up, you know, kind of purple prose and an overblown plot is a bit much, but when the prose is a bit more disciplined, I think I can get away with really leaning into it.
And there's just so much you can do. I mean, Wuthering Heights is a classic for a reason. Great Expectations is a classic for a reason. There is something about the claustrophobia and the drama of gothic fiction that has a really timeless appeal, I think. And the more I the more I think about the conventions of the genre and doppelgangers and people coming back from the dead, the more fun I'm having with it and Watch Her Fall as well was physically as was the you know, I'm very much drawn to physically very unique and creepy things and it's been fun to get those on the page as well, as opposed to just, you know, car parked in a driveway and in a place in some undefined suburbia, which kind of give rise to incredible settings. But if you look at Lucy Foley for example, I think her books are very setting led and The Paris Apartment is quite gothic in that there's lots of, you know, lots of spooky goings on in adjacent apartments. And yeah, I think readers really do respond to knowing where they're going to be and they like to be taken to a place, especially now actually when travel has been restricted and we're still finding our way out.
Again, I mentioned Lucy Clarke earlier. Her books are, well certainly the books I've read always set by the sea. And that's one of the things I look forward to. And the sea can be you know, the sea can lend itself to gothic if you get yourself up to Whitby or somewhere. But it's when you read one of her books, you always know that you're going to be taken to a certain place.
It's not going to be a thriller based on what you can see out of your window. And that's what I'm more drawn to.
Lex - And I'm so excited to read The Skeleton Key. I've seen the front cover, which sets it quite apart from the previous books that you've written. But just as you said, sets you very in that world of creaky doors and hinges and wind blowing at the windows. It does immediately give you that feel. But you mentioned how actually setting is so important and how you might run up to Whitby by the sea if you were writing that scene.
Has anything about your routine or your practice of writing changed for this new genre? A new discipline?
Erin - No, I don't think so. I wish I had a routine. What I'm trying to do is get better at plotting in advance. And I'm trying not to let myself get carried away because I've made the same mistake in every single book, which is to get so into the scene that I'm writing that I end up with five chapters that I polish and polish and polish then realise they throw the whole story off and I got to delete them and start again. And The Skeleton Key was really no exception. What was different with this book was that I didn't really need to go anywhere because it's about a treasure hunt that was launched in England 50 years ago, and it was a little gold skeleton buried in seven different locations all over England.
And the clues were hidden in a picture book. And the story opens on the 50th anniversary of the treasure hunt with only one little tiny golden bone missing, which is the skeleton pelvis, and at the party to reveal its location, they dig up what they think is the bone and it's actually a real human pelvis. So that's the premise of The Skeleton Key.
What I did to research it was look at the armchair treasure hunter movement, which is essentially, like I said, picture books with clues in. There are loads of things online. Thereโs geocaching websites and most of it is done with clues that you don't have to go you know, it's not about going out with your metal detector and digging.
It's about looking at a picture or looking at some text and solving a riddle. So it was much more of a sofa based reading experience than most of my other books have been. There was no real I mean, a lot of its set around Hampstead Heath and that was, you know, I walked around there a lot, but I do that anyway, so I don't know if I would necessarily class that as research.
Yeah, it was more about looking at art because it's a huge part of the book and it was about reading about artists' process and stuff. Actually, sometimes the research was quite dry, but it's my job to make it exciting on the page, which I hope I've done.
Lex - So actually, it doesn't sound like much has changed for you, which is probably quite nice and I think that's potentially because psychological thrillers and psychological gothic and like the other elements that you've mentioned in, We Know That You Know and Watch her Fall is is a nice transition for you. It's not like you've suddenly decided, actually, I am going to go away and write romantic comedies.
Erin - No, it's definitely been a very organic thing. I mean, the books are getting slightly longer every time, which is interesting to me. When I look at my old books now, I look at the ratio of incident to writing. There is a lot of writing around things happening. So definitely I'm getting more ambitious in terms of my plotting as I go on.
And there are occasionally historical elements. I mean, with Watch Her Fall, for example, there was loads of, it was an incredibly research heavy book. And the challenge then actually because I think anything this historical lends itself to the gothic because you are dealing with the potential for abandonment and loss and things that are uncanny because they're not the way we live now.
So there was lots of researching about the history of the ballet from the French court to the Russian Bolshoi, and then the problem becomes how? How do you write a book with all this really cool stuff, you know, without dropping in every single fact you've got so that the reader disengages with what's on the page. But no, it's definitely been just a gradual turning towards things that interest me and being inspired by different things, inspired by doing really deep dives in the research books.
So that is what's changing. Every book needs more research and throws up more possibilities, more settings, more twists, more weird characters to write about. Yeah. So I'm actually the book that I'm writing now, because The Skeleton Key is finished, I think we've put the pages of just last week is very light on research actually. It's a return to, itโs super gothic, but I decided to set it all in and around London and people have by and large, normal jobs.
And my challenge then is to make it as heightened and exciting as possible within those parameters. So that's a different kind of challenge, which I'm really enjoying.
Lex - So you mentioned your challenges around creating new characters and making them weird and wonderful in all the best ways. If we can talk about it a little bit more, I'd love to venture more into the details of The Skeleton Key. So the new book is out on September 1st. And in this book, as you've mentioned, readers meet Frank Churcher, a family with a deadly legacy whose threat is undimmed two generations later.
Can you tell us a little bit about creating Frank Churcher and this family?
Erin - Yeah, I created Frank Churcher backwards, actually, because I didn't, I knew that he had to be a gentleman of a certain age because, So he is, I think mid-seventies in the book because I knew I wanted to be dealing with a treasure hunt that reached back a long time. I knew I wanted the mysteries, the secrets to be really, you know, generations old rather than just a decade or so.
But I didn't think thatโฆ Well, I know my readers and I, I didn't think that a book opening and led by a 75 year old man would hook them in the same way that a female narrator would. So actually, it's the story of Frank's daughter, Nell, and she is she's kind of early forties. She's looking after someone else's teenage kid and she's not living quite off grid and on the run, but she definitely doesn't want, she's got her reasons to want her privacy.
And to want that kept. And the 50th anniversary brings up a lot of bad memories for her because the picture book in question and the skeleton in question belong to the cover girl from the picture book, which is called The Golden Bones. And it's a folk story from a made up folk song. And the story is about Eleanor, a fictional girl who Nell is named after.
And because the book was such a phenomenon, the real human Eleanor attracts stalkers and obsessives and people who do not want the best for her, and people who can't tell the difference between this human teenage girl, lots of the story set in the nineties, this human young woman and what they see on the page and what they're trying to dig up and attempt to meddle in her life.
So it's really about Nell not wanting to engage with this 50th anniversary thing and how a lot of old threats surface along with the bone. And it was really fun. It was really fun to write. Nell lives on a narrowboat. I wanted to make her somebody quite itinerant who doesn't like to stay in one place for too long and has, she's quite a lonely person. Doesn't set down roots because she's worried about making herself vulnerable. She never knows if anybody really wants to be with her for who she is or because it's another connection to the treasure hunt. So I wrote some of the book, actually staying in a narrowboat in Little Venice, which was really good fun and taught me that I am not cut out for narrowboat living.
I enjoy a more of a, I'm more of a flushing toilets kind of girl, but it was it was really fun way to, having said that, most of the research within the book, actually, that was the one treat I allowed myself. That was my trip to stay on a boat for a few days and writing like with the swans swimming past the window on the Regents Canal, which was really fun.
Lex - Oh, it sounds beautiful. So with Nell, you've and your previous books, you've talked about how there is always something in your characters that your audience can relate to. I think with Nell, it sounds like there's that privacy element, that want to be left alone, which I'm sure at times in our lives we can all resonate with where we just want our private lives to be private.
Do you think that's one of the most resonant for us Average Joe readers in this book?
Erin - Yeah, I mean, I think in particular, Nell, there's one dilemma that we can all relate to well, most of us can relate to is certainly if you work in the media in any form, there's the need to for work reasons, to have a public self and to project online and Nell often thinks that she thinks about what her career would have been if she'd had the freedom and the confidence to have thousands of followers on Instagram to show off the art that she makes.
And I think most of us at some stage thought, Oh, I would just love to turn the Internet off completely, but we know that it's part of our job, not necessarily just in media careers. And there's lots of us would like to walk away from the screen, but it's just not possible. So there's that dilemma. But it's more I think it's more the family dynamics that people are going to relate to.
It's not a spoiler to say that Nell was not, well parented, that she had very bohemian, narcissistic parents who I really want to stay on record on nothing like my own. But they are you know, I've got friends with the kind of parents who they have the philosophy, well, you know, if I offer you your first taste of marijuana, then you're doing it under my roof and itโs all cool and groovy and safe.
And actually, that goes one of two ways. It either tips into neglect or it's just so excruciating the children can't stand their parents. So Nell has a brother she's very close to and that I think lots of people will envy. Nell got a lot of attention when they were young because she was the one with the stalker. She was the one that had to be chaperoned everywhere she went.
And her brother, who is one of the good guys but there's very subtle things about how he sometimes finds himself being jealous of the attention his sister gets. And so when it comes to the 50th anniversary, he wants to be involved in that just as much as she doesnโt. And I think some people will be able to relate to the fact that when your parents are a nightmare, siblings are incredibly important because they were the ones who were there and nobody else understands you.
So yeah, I think in terms of families in the way, many, many ways we can completely wreck our children, I think, and be wrecked. And Nell,for all her good intentions, isn't a perfect parent to her foster child either. So I think that's where that's where people are really going to recognize themselves. So yeah, but privacy is a privacy and the desire to not have an online self.
I think a lot of us can relate to that.
Lex - Gosh, I'm so ready to read this. I'm going to be emailing for a PDF as soon as I possibly can. To wrap up my final question - at the very beginning of our interview today, I quoted your own words back to you and said that your word for psychological thriller was peril. If you had to come up with a word for psychological gothic that feels in keeping with The Skeleton Key, what would that word be?
Erin - Claustrophobia or paranoia? I don't know if I can do it in one word, it is the sense of doors slamming. Uncanny. Maybe there's a hint of the uncanny. And I mean, I know my books are very far from magic realism. Maybe uncanny. One word is never enough. One word is never enough. Otherwise I wouldn't need to write 100,000 of them with every book.
So I'll try and give you a sentence instead, which is that there's just always something out of the corner of your eye that you might not understand as well as might not like. So it's just a slightly otherworldly vibe that is layered onto the very mortal material peril that my narrators find themselves in or create.
Lex - Amazing, amazing, perfect. So that brings us to the end of our podcast recording today. Erin, thank you so much for recording with us today and for giving us your time. I have loved your psychological thriller writing and I am so stoked to check out The Skeleton Key, the new book that comes out on September 1st, ready to usher you into a slightly more spooky season.
Readers, keep your eyes peeled for ways that you can get involved over on the Tandem Collective Instagram and ensure that you are signed up to our newsletter so that you don't miss any opportunities to get your hands on a copy of the book. Erin, once again, thank you so much for being here and for chatting with me.It's been the absolute dream.
Erin - Oh, thank you for having me.
Lex - Okay, guys. So that was our interview with Erin Kelly. What did you think?
Jen - I loved it. I thought it was really interesting. And I particularly really enjoyed the way she described the differences between psychological thrillers and gothic psychological because I hadn't really thought about it before. I loved her use of the word claustrophobic because I think that sums up the gothic so well. And I probably have even considered that even though it's a genre I read all the time.
Lex - Yeah. When she said claustrophobia, I was like, Oh, of course, like that, you've kind of hit the nail on the head with that genre I think. it's not a genre that I read a lot of, but as soon as she said it, I was like, Yep, that's the word. That's it.
Lucy - Yeah, I thought it was a brilliant interview, very eloquent as well. And when she's talking, I thought it was really interesting as well. You know the age old saying for writers, write what you know, she starts by saying she didn't necessarily know that the crime of psychological thriller was the genre that she wanted to break into, but she wanted to write books that she would enjoy reading.
And after the episode, I was really kind of, I don't know, pondering or are there any authors? Do all authors do that? Do they write something that they would want to read themselves? Because a lot of authors still have that dissatisfaction with whatever they end up producing, even though it's brilliant work and it just really was something that I was left wondering, are there any authors who perhaps write something that is a genre they wouldn't necessarily read themselves?
I thought it was food for thought.
Lex - Yeah, I liked that. I thought it was super interesting. And actually it made me think when she was talking about authors now are kind of expected to know where your book is going to sit on the shelf, who it's going to sit next to, which publishers would like it. I think about that. Well, like I think if I was going to write a book, it would probably be published by I mean, I say probably be published like I'm talking myself up here but it would be a book in the genres published by Michael Joseph or Transworld or Little Brown or Hodder or some of these kind of more crimey spaces on the Internet and in publishing. But okay, so Erin gave us her word of psychological thriller peril, and she gave our psychological gothic would be claustrophobia. I now challenge you to give me your single words for the genre.
Jen - I donโt think I can do any better on Gothic, I think claustrophobia is absolutely it. For psychological thriller, I would probably say twisty. Like, I don't feel like I'm reading a psychological thriller unless I'm completely surprised by what's just happened.
Lex - Yeah, I completely agree. For me, the more twists, the better. And actually, I was recently reading a book that I thought was a good book, and then it got to the very end and within maybe the the end, two pages, it was suddenly a barrage of twists that made it for me, an amazing book. So yeah, I completely agree Jen twists are a massive tick from me.
Jen - Absolutely. Like when I was, I read my first Clare Macintosh and I was just messaging you throughout the entire experience like, oh my goodness, the twists.
Lex - My favourite kind of text messages to receive over.
Lucy - My words to associate with psychological thriller would be tense or tension. And it's not only how that's created in the writing, but it's also how I feel. It's kind of you're addicted to that feeling of being like on the edge of your seat and kind of similar with film as well. Not the way that, you know, if you have a horror or something where it's very obvious or gory in your face, like I find the most psychological horror sort of more impactful because of the tension that's created.
So yeah, that would be the word for me. That sums it up.
Lex - I completely agree because I think my word would be panic. That kind of like, oh, I mean, you can't see me, but I'm hyperventilating and I feel like that is a a tension feeling for sure. Okay. Last question and then we will wrap up, guys. Who are your titans of the genre so be it psychological thriller or psychological gothic?
Who are you recommending for us right now?
Lucy - Mine would be Christine Mangan. I absolutely loved her psychological thriller, Palace of the Drowned. And again, you know, thinking about the words tension and panic, that book just completely gripped me from start to finish. I haven't read a huge amount of thrillers, but it's something that I'd love to delve into further. Not my usual go to genre. But yeah, I would love to read more and I thought she was fantastic.
Jen - So I read both of them all the time. So I'm going to do a recommendation of the psychological Gothic, and I'm going to go Laura Purcell, because she's just she's the best at it from everything to do with kind of a story to her settings. It's just incredible. She really kind of captures that. There's a horror to it, but it's also just that real kind of creepy intensity. Sheโs just perfect.
Lex - Awesome. Thank you so much, guys. And for those of you who are listening, who are interested in reading these genres or in the concept of reading outside of your genre, we have a podcast episode. It might have come already or it might be after this one, but it's where all three of us will be challenging each other to read a particular title way outside of our comfort zones.
So go ahead and have a look for that one. If you are interested in The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly, keep an eye out on the Tandem Collective Instagram and on our newsletter because there will be multiple opportunities to get your hands on a book and join us for a readalong at the end of summer, maybe September kind of ushering you into that slightly more spooky season as the nights get a little bit darker.
But for now, let us know what you thought of the interview. Let us know what your favorite psychological thriller and psychological gothic books are, and we'll see you in the future. Sending Love.
Jen - Bye bye.
Lex - As always. Thank you so much for joining us today. Please do take a minute to rate review and subscribe and we'll see you next week.
Jaide - As always we're open to your feedback, so please do hit us up at @tandemcollectiveuk on Instagram or using the hashtag #tandemcollectivetalks. If there's anyone content creator wise, industry superstars or your favorite author that you think we should feature in a podcast, then let us know. Well see you later.
