Killer Women Week - Day 4: Sarah Hilary

It's Day 4 of my Killer Women Crime Writing Festival Feature Week. 

Today I have Sarah Hilary on my blog talking about preparing to edit a first draft. Sarah's latest book, Tastes Like Fear, is being published in paperback by Headline on 28 July 2016. 

The Killer Women Festival is taking place at Shoreditch Town Hall, London, on 15 October 2016 - more details at the end of this blog post and on Friday. 

Getting Ready for Round Two

By Sarah Hilary 

It’s a funny old business, writing a book. You spend months sitting alone with just the voices in your head for company, listening intently and cajoling these people onto the page. Then you hand it all over to a stranger.

Well, not a stranger to you (I’m blessed with a very friendly and very talented editor), but a stranger to your words. To those characters you tempted out of hiding. It has all to be laid bare before the gaze of someone with a very sharp eye and a very red pen. ‘It’s like leaving your child at the school-gate,’ another writer told me. ‘You know she needs to be educated, that ultimately she’ll return a better person, but it’s hard.’

There is a blissful space of about ten days after I’ve submitted my first draft before my editor has time to read it. For those ten days it is still ‘my’ book; it can do no wrong. In the back of my head, of course I know it needs work. The edges need knocking off it, and more besides. But I can hold onto the happy thought that it is complete, and in a way faultless—until I have proof of its faults in the form of the editorial notes which come back to me, always after a phone call from my editor.

We ping ideas back and forth, chat about why this character works and this one doesn’t, unstick plot points that weren’t quite working. You might think that being told there’s more work to be done on a story over which I sweated blood for six months would leave me feeling flat or disheartened. But one of my editor’s many talents is to make me feel energised—an hour on the phone and I’m raring to get stuck into round two.

So here I am, with the duplicated document — renamed as v2 — and a long list of notes and changes. Wish me luck.

About Sarah Hilary

Sarah Hilary won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for her debut, Someone Else’s Skin. She is about to begin editing her fourth book in the Marnie Rome series, Quieter than Killing, which is out in March 2017. Her latest, Tastes Like Fear is out in paperback on 28 July. Sarah is chairing the Fresh Blood panel at the Killer Women Festival and looking forward to chatting to four stellar debut authors about their writing day.

Find out more about Sarah Hilary on her website and follow Sarah on Twitter - @sarah_hilary

The Killer Women Festival

The FIRST EVER Killer Women Crime Writing Festival takes place on Saturday 15^th October 2016 at Shoreditch Town Hall, London EC1.

Founded in 2014, Killer Women is a collective of female crime writers from London and the South East. As well as the Killer Women themselves, other high-profile authors taking part in the Festival include Ann Cleeves, Martina Cole, Mark Billingham and Val McDermid.

The day-long programme includes readings and debates, masterclasses, an exclusive Murder Mystery, Killer Women cocktails and much more.

Tickets cost £75 and are now available to book here!

Learn more through the Killer Women website and follow Killer Women on Twitter - @killerwomenorg

Read my other Killer Women Festival Week blog posts:

Day One - DE Meredith
Day Two - Tammy Cohen
Day Three - Erin Kelly
Day Five - The Killer Women Crime Writing Festival

Tastes Like Fear by Sarah Hilary

Tastes Like Fear
By Sarah Hilary
Published by Headline (7 April 2016)
ISBN: 978-1472236838

Publisher's description

You'll never be out of Harm's way

The young girl who causes the fatal car crash disappears from the scene.

A runaway who doesn't want to be found, she only wants to go home.

To the one man who understands her.

Gives her shelter.

Just as he gives shelter to the other lost girls who live in his house.

He's the head of her new family.

He's Harm.

DI Marnie Rome has faced many dangerous criminals but she has never come up against a man like Harm. She thinks that she knows families, their secrets and their fault lines. But as she begins investigating the girl's disappearance nothing can prepare her for what she's about to face.

Because when Harm's family is threatened, everything tastes like fear...

My verdict
Tastes Like Fear is the third book in the DI Marnie Rome series, and yet again Sarah Hilary has written a stunning crime novel. This could easily be read as a standalone, although I had already read No Other Darkness, the second book in the series.

Sarah Hilary tackles some very real issues in her books, twisting seemingly normal scenarios into something quite shocking. Tastes Like Fear looks at homeless teenagers trying to find somewhere that will keep them off the streets. When a man offers them shelter, they believe they've found a family set up where they can feel safe and have a sense of belonging. But Harm is lurking at every corner.

Marnie Rome is one of my favourite fictional detectives - she's very real and believable with true emotions. In Tastes Like Fear, she's battling with her own demons too, as her foster brother Steven (imprisoned after the brutal murders of her parents) continues to play with her mind.

The book is chilling and terrifying in places with a complex yet easy-to-read entertaining plot. Sarah Hilary certainly loves to play with her readers'  minds. Tastes Like Fear is a creepy and haunting read. I couldn't put it down and it kept me guessing right until the last page.

I received an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.