IN DEPTH


Author Interview Holly Jackson


of time inbetween stages, where you are just waiting for the next bit of work to dive into”. Nonetheless, the wait was worth it as she says one of her greatest moments as a début author was seeing the finished product in a bookshop for the first time. “There’s nothing quite like it. It comes with a healthy dose of impostor syndrome, seeing your litle book sat there next to all these ‘real’ authors, but the main feeling is pure joy, and also a sense of relief that you’ve finally made it aſter all this hard work.” Jackson is now preparing for the release of her follow-up


to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, titled Good Girl, Bad Blood. She was not originally intending to write a sequel, and explains: “When the idea of a sequel came into discussion, at first I was panicking a litle about how I was going to go back into this world and re-loosen some of those ends I had tied up so tightly in the first book. But eventually I had an idea for another mystery which built upon the small gaps I leſt in the book.” She adds: “I have really enjoyed going back to the town of Litle Kilton and exploring what happened to these characters aſter the events of book one.”


HOLLY JACKSON HAS BEEN PROACTIVE PROMOTING HER FIRST NOVEL WITH A NUMBER OF SCHOOLS TALKS AND SIGNINGS


author’s own true crime obsession, which was sparked by the podcast “Serial”. Jackson wanted to write a book that had “the texture of a true crime podcast”, so the mystery would feel “more accessible to the reader and they could fully step into their detective shoes”. As such, there are several multimedia elements included in the novel, such as interview transcripts, social media posts and an anno- tated map, to help give it the amateur-investigator vibe that Jackson enjoys in the podcasts she listens to. On her decision to write the story for young adults, she explains: “I think there are particular markers for the age category ‘YA’ which give it great universal appeal to readers who are looking for a fast-paced story that isn’t afraid to dig into the deeper stuff. And, as an aside, I love that this area of publishing is largely about celebrating the strength of young women in all their complexit, without being reductive or dismissive, as societ sometimes is.” As a first-time author, Jackson was surprised by the duration of the publishing process and the “huge chunks


18 27th March 2020


A waiting game Good Girl, Bad Blood kicks off just a couple of months aſter the end of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. Protagonist Pip, disappointed with the media’s portrayal of the murder case she solved, has released her school project as a true crime podcast, which has gone viral, but she has sworn that she is no longer a detective aſter the fallout of the dramatic events of book one. However, when a family friend goes missing and the police won’t do anything about it, Pip decides to investigate, airing her findings in a new season of her podcast. Jackson started writing the book last summer and says the nine-month turnaround between then and publication “almost made me miss the long wait times I had with book one”. Television and film rights for A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder have been snapped up at auction by Moonage Pictures, the team behind “Peaky Blinders”. Jackson says: “I was very impressed and happy when I spoke to the team about their vision for this potential


I love that this area of publishing is largely about celebrating the strength of young women in all their complexity, without being reductive


project, and I’m crossing all fingers that we someday get


to see it on the screen.” For now, Jackson is concentrating on writing another book, which she declined to share details of, but she promises “it will be a crime thriller-tpe book, and you can expect more murder and more mystery”.


Holly Jackson’s Good Girl, Bad Blood (9781405297752, £7.99) will be published by Egmont UK on 30th April. Its prequel, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (9781405293181, £7.99), is part of this year’s YA Book Prize YA10 shortlist (see pp06–07).


A Good Girl’s Guide... Extract


Pip knew where they lived. Everyone in Little


Kilton knew where they lived. Their home was


like the town’s own haunted house; people’s footsteps quickened as they walked by and their words strangled and died in their throats. Shrieking children would gather on their walk home from school, daring one another to run up and touch the front gate. But it wasn’t haunted


by ghosts, just three sad people trying to live their lives as before. A house not haunted by flickering lights or spec- tral falling chairs, but by dark spray-painted letters of “Scum Family” and stone-shattered windows. Pip had always


wondered why they didn’t move. Not that they had to; they hadn’t done anything wrong. But she didn’t know how they lived like that.


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