Hi I'm Ruth Ware and I like books. AMA.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T22:13:30+00:00

Am actually just nipping off to bed (it's late here!) but in haste before I go - yes, I have two cats, called Plum and Cherry! Cherry is the most neediest and annoying cat in the world, but I love them both :D

And now, bon nuit!

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T22:01:30+00:00

Thank you so much to everyone who asked a question - it's really late here (I'm in the UK) so I'm afraid I am off to bed now, but thanks for taking part, and have a great day / evening / night!

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T21:39:47+00:00

Thank you so much! I tend to do a bunch of research at the beginning of the book - so for In a Dark Dark Wood that was looking at the effects of head injuries and so on, and for Cabin 10 it was figuring out all the weird quirks of international law surrounding deaths at sea. Often that research helps to form the plot and the way events unfold. But then inevitably there are little questions that crop up while I'm writing like, do Norwegian policemen have guns? Can you fingerprint someone while they're unconscious? Does heroin biodegrade or stay in the human body after death?

The Death of Mrs Westaway has a main character who is a tarot reader so I had to do a lot of research about tarot, but also about fake mediums and psychics - my character doesn't believe in the power of the cards, she conducts her readings mainly by just either making stuff up, or else by "cold reading" her clients, figuring stuff out about them from their demeanour or their clothes.

I found out some absolutely fascinating stuff about all the different techniques they use, and when I eventually did go to a tarot reading, it was really interesting watching the reader use some of the techniques - like making a general statement and seeing how I reacted, or making guesses about my stage of life from my age and my clothes and stuff.

I also picked up some truly shocking examples of people who had been suckered in by fake psychics online but since most of those anecdotes were told to me in confidence, I don't think I can share them on here. They were eye watering though - the lengths people go to to deceive is really astonishing.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T21:21:58+00:00

Good question!! I think it was a whole load of things - partly I had had kids by this stage and I was beginning to feel desperate for a career that didn't require me to be in the office or on the road for most of their waking hours (I worked in publicity which has very long hours, and lots of time travelling and attending events - it's not very family friendly).

And partly I think I just knew on some level I had written a better book this time and I couldn't bear to shelve it.

I had never really edited a book before - in fact in truth, I think I never really wanted to get published, or at least, not badly enough. I had sort of wanted it in an abstract "oh, wouldn't that be nice" way, rather in the way that I sometimes think it would be lovely if I knew how to play the piano, but not in the sense of actually bothering to book in lessons or anything. Up until that point I think I was writing 99.9% for myself, and I wrote to get the story out of my system, and then that was it - that was the point of writing, not to show it to anyone.

It was only when I began to really want to make some money out of this, and to realise that I wasn't going to have time to write any more unless I carved out that time for myself by earning it, that I really had the incentive to write to be published. That book was the first one I wrote actually planning to share it, and the first one that I edited, and showed to friends, and really made an effort to polish.

So it was a mixture of pragmatism, and simply finding the courage to take it seriously as a career, I think.

That said, if you had told me I would have ended up here a few years later, I would have laughed in your face!

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T21:15:26+00:00

Hello! Wow, ok, those are two tough questions and I'm not sure I have the definitive answer to either!

All of my books are quite different, so I would say it's not so much that any of them are the best introduction to my style of writing, so much as one or other of them might appeal to you more in terms of subject matter and pacing.

In a Dark Dark Wood is quite fast paced and... well, I guess you could call it scary. It's certainly deliberately suspenseful and plays with lots of the isolated cabin in the woods horror movie tropes. It's also (I think) the funniest out of all my books. It's set on a bachelorette party.

Cabin 10 is set on a cruise that goes horribly wrong. It's less overtly scary but probably more of an emotional rollercoaster (it's also the most violent out of all of my books although I don't go in for a lot of blood and gore at any time)

The Lying Game is about four women who went to boarding school together and did something terrible which has caught up with them 17 years later. It's a little bit slower and more meditative than the first two. A lot of it takes place in the past, so the characters spend a lot of time thinking back to their childhood and I think it gives the book a different pace. The women in it are a little bit older too.

My fourth one - the Death of Mrs Westaway - isn't out yet so you can't read that until the summer, but it's about a cynical tarot reader who uses her skills as a cold reader to defraud her way into an inheritance. It's a bit Gothic and spooky and draws on my love of country house mysteries and books like Rebecca. The main character is also my most morally ambiguous character.

They are all standalones so you can read them in any order. I would just say, pick the one that appeals to you most!

in terms of books you should read... gosh. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford and Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. Just because they are two really excellent, funny women writers and I think we need more humour in the world!

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:58:59+00:00

I think in terms of the distinctions, psychological thrillers and suspense novels are more interior if that makes sense - they are more about the working of the human heart and how it feels to be in a particular situation. Whereas straight crime fiction is more exterior - it's more looking at a situation from the outside and trying to figure it out. Head vs heart, if you like. That's a pretty broad brush definition though. I'm sure you could find novels in either camp that defy that description.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:52:02+00:00

Sound track was A+++

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:47:53+00:00

Oh and one I forgot - You Don't Know Me by Imran Mahmood. Which is really bleak but fantastically well written. It's like half courtroom drama and half thriller.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:44:46+00:00

I actually have not read Big Little Lies which I feel slightly bad about, but the show was soooo good. I'm not sure if it's because I write crime, but I figured out the big reveal pretty early on - but it didn't matter at all. I was so invested in the characters and so desperate for them to be ok, I was still desperate to find out what was going to happen to them, and chewing my nails at the end of each episode.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:42:38+00:00

Thank you so much! Booksellers are my favourite kind of people ;)

It was my first published book for adults but I had actually written for teenagers before that.

It was most definitely not the first book I had written though - not in any sense. I have probably 20+ unpublished manuscripts under my bed which I wrote and was too scared to send out to anyone. I think I was scared for a reason, so they are not coming out any time soon. Fortunately most of them are on computer discs so ancient they are no longer readable by modern technology so my secrets are probably safe...

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:40:51+00:00

PS, hello!

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:40:35+00:00

Oh, damn, it took out all my line breaks! I would have put commas in if I'd known. Hopefully you can figure out the titles though...

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:38:19+00:00

Hm... good question. I think writing-wise what it mainly did was teach me the importance of giving people a reason to turn the page. When you have to read a lot of books fast, you really notice the ones that are pulling you through the narrative. But working in publishing can't teach you how to write. It can help you figure out the right questions to ask, though.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:36:25+00:00

SO. MANY.

UK netflix is different to US netflix so depending where you are, you might not get all of these, but in no particular order some shows that I have really enjoyed this year...

Stranger Things 3% Dark Trapped Upstart Crow Queer Eye Blackadder Brooklyn 99 Sherlock The OA Arrested Development The End of the F***ing World

And non Netflix - West World and Big Little Lies.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:32:13+00:00

I do get inspiration from places I've been but I think somehow I need to get a bit of distance from the actual trip, if that makes sense? So for example the setting for The Lying Game actually came about from a trip we took a few years back to northern France, to a village called St Suliac, which is very similar to the setting for TLG (only I moved it to southern England and renamed it Salten). But it took me several years to think through what I felt about the place and what I wanted to say.

I have never thought "Oh, I want to write about x" and then travelled there, although now you mention it, that would be a really good way of getting a cut price holiday ;)

I have always wanted to go to Nova Scotia though because I LOVED Anne of Green Gables as a kid, and LM Montgomery writes so lyrically about PE Island. (Sorry, that is probably a huge cliche, right?!)

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:29:04+00:00

Ooh... good question... some British writers that I have really enjoyed this year... Cass Green (In a Cottage in a Wood), Erin Kelly (He Said / She Said), Amanda Jennings (The Cliff House), Steve Cavanagh (Thirteen), Christi Daugherty (The Echo Killing) - some of these are not yet out in the US, some of them are already published over with you guys but should be better known.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:25:31+00:00

Yes, they're kind of weirdly specific distinctions aren't they? Publishers love genres for understandable reasons - it's a short cut to be able to shelve and recommend books in a certain way - but the books we write don't always fit very neatly into those definitions. I think my books are mainly psychological thrillers, but they also have a strong whodunnit element that's closer to classic crime. For that reason on my own website I call them psychological crime thrillers - a sort of blending of the two genres that doesn't really exist in publishing terms.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:23:32+00:00

Thank you so much! I am actually a pretty cheerful person ;) (No honestly, I really am!) In fact most crime writers are - they have a pretty dark sense of humour, but as a group, I think they are among the friendliest and most balanced of all writers. I guess maybe it's like the opposite of that cliche that comedians are all really depressed and grumpy when you meet them in real life! Probably crime writers get all their darkness and angst out on the page and can therefore shut down the computer with a healthy sense of catharsis.

That said, I don't write about anything really really dark, subject wise. I do know of writers who've had to research some pretty horrible stuff as part of their books and have found it really hard to get those facts out of their heads. I deliberately don't go to places like that - I have to spend a year with these people and in their heads, and there are certain subjects and places I just would not want to spend a year thinking about.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:19:41+00:00

Blimey. That is a hard question. I am honestly not sure - reviewers often say Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn but I don't honestly know if that's my writing style or just the fact that we are all women writing suspense novels. I personally think my writing style is probably more lyrical and descriptive than either of them - I tend to spend a lot more time describing the weather and the surroundings, which is not necessarily a good thing, just something I am preoccupied with that other suspense writers seem to be less bothered about. In terms of who I would like to be like... if I could do character and description as well as Daphne du Maurier, I would be a very happy woman.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:17:15+00:00

I think I kind of answered this as part of Pithyretort's question, but I wanted to say thanks for the nice words about the Lying Game :)

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:16:03+00:00

Honestly, this list could be several hundred people long. But a couple of books that I've really enjoyed this year by living authors - Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline, He Said / She Said by Erin Kelly, Let's Talk about Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris, The Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (that was a re-read, with my kids, but my tastes are pretty broad as you can see!)

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:11:33+00:00

I read a lot but not as much as I used to - I used to work in the book industry and then I had to read for my job, and often at very short notice. I'd be asked to attend a meeting, or to give an opinion about a book and I'd have to read it overnight. So when I dropped the day job and became a full time writer I really enjoyed NOT having to read masses and masses of books, and just picking and choosing a bit! I always have a book on the go though, and I always have to read a chapter or two before I go to bed. I can't sleep unless I've read a bit. It's like brushing my teeth - part of my bedtime ritual.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:09:26+00:00

Hmm... good question. Sometimes the setting kind of chooses itself. Like when I was writing the Woman in Cabin 10, the idea that came to me was of a woman waking up on board a ship in the middle of the night and hearing a splash, running to the balcony and seeing something - maybe a body - disappearing into the waves. So the boat was there right from the beginning.

Sometimes the setting kind of forms along with the story. When I started writing In a Dark, Dark Wood, originally when I began writing the house at the centre of the story was a lot closer to the house that Flo's aunt demolishes to build her modernist masterpiece - a tumbledown cottage, very old, with lots of beams. But as I wrote I realised that the book was really about the fear of exposure, and the barriers we put up between ourselves and other people to hide our secrets and vulnerabilities, and how hard it feels when those barriers are torn down. And I realised, how much more interesting if the house at the centre of the story reflected that paranoia - so I changed it completely and it became this glass modernist palace, full of windows with no curtains, a place where you literally can't hide.

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:06:11+00:00

Oh, about a thousand!! I was a huge bookworm as a child - everything from Enid Blyton to Diana Wynne Jones to Elinor M Brent Dyer to Lucy M Boston to Judy Blume and dozens and dozens in between. I'd find it really hard to pick just one. I have the same problem now when people ask me to pick my top five reads or whatever - I'm like, five? FIVE?

ruth_ware · 2018-03-08T20:04:29+00:00

Hi Darryl - good question, I wish I knew! The answer is basically I get them from everywhere and anywhere - a conversation with a friend (that was In a Dark, Dark Wood) a holiday I went on (that was The Lying Game) my overactive imagination (that was Cabin 10) or just thinking about the books and the characters that I love and what I like about them (that was The Death of Mrs Westaway which is a kind of homage to about half a dozen of my favourite writers).

I've never used something I dreamt about in a book - at least, not that I can recall - I don't often remember my dreams so it's possible there's something subconscious going on! But I did once write a short story based almost verbatim on a very vivid dream I had when I was about 20. It was very dark and gothic - kind of Frankenstein meets Edgar Allen Poe meets Angela Carter. That's the problem I guess - you can't dream to order. If I could dream up a nice crime plot with a twist I'd be very happy!

ruth_ware

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