The Woman In The Dark

I grew up in a small Gloucestershire village – back then, there were only four channels on the telly and as a teenager there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. My nearest library was ten miles away, my nearest bookshop twenty.

I was never one of the hanging-round-on street-corner kids, I preferred to stay in and read. As a teenager, I remember endless rainy Saturday afternoons when there was nothing but horse racing and darts on TV and my mum and dad’s bookshelves became my escape. I read anything and everything we had at home – on my mum’s shelf, there was Mills & Boon and Catherine Cookson, Jackie Collins and Shirley Conran. On my dad’s, it was Alistair MacLean, Stephen King and James Herbert. 

I like to think the access my parents gave me to all those wonderful fictional worlds has helped shape me as a writer and I want to thank them for that – I only wish they were still alive to see where their love of books has taken their daughter.

As I went from reader to writer, it was only natural I would be drawn to the genres I read most growing up. I started out writing women’s fiction, which grew steadily darker until I fully embraced my (literary) dark side and turned to crime. For me, it was a natural progression – domestic noir and romantic fiction can be opposite sides of the same coin. Romance is all about the build up to happy ever after. Domestic noir often explores what happens when the happy ever after goes wrong, the breakdown of relationships that leads to the crime. That’s what fascinated me as a writer – not in real life. In real life I’m all about the happy ever after! But as a writer, I became fascinated with exploring the darker side of a family’s relationships.

When writing, I tend to begin with character, so the Walker family were in my head for a long time before I started writing The Woman in the Dark, coming alive in fragments of scenes scribbled in notebooks. But it wasn’t until I moved my characters into a house with a terrible history – known locally as the Murder House – that the book came alive. The idea for the house was sparked by a ‘what if’ moment after reading a newspaper article about a real life murder house.

That house was destroyed, but it got me thinking… what if the house wasn’t destroyed? What if it was actually your family home long before it became a crime scene and you had the opportunity to move back into it? Could you make it what it once was, or would it be forever haunted by the subsequent terrible things that happened there? More than just a setting, the house became a character as much as the living, breathing ones and a catalyst for everything that happens in the story. And like many characters – what this beautiful seafront Victorian house presents to the outside world is vastly different to the reality once you step inside…

Sarah and her children struggle to get past the history but everywhere they turn, they’re confronted by things that remind them of the family that once lived there and begin to fear the house is haunted – there are unexplained cold spots, strange creaks and groans, a cellar door that won’t stay shut. How can a house not be haunted when such awful crimes have happened there?

Patrick believes they can get past that. He believes it’s just a house and they can paper over the past, make the Murder House a home – the idyllic family home he insists it once was.

But. You know when you walk into a house and you get a feeling? An instinctive feeling for if a house is a happy house. Is that real? Or is it just that you don’t like the décor? Can a house really be haunted by the things that have happened in it? 

Part of my inspiration came from memories of my own childhood home – nothing terrible ever happened there but it went from a happy home full of good memories to something lonely and too empty after my mother died and my father was there alone. The gap where she should have been was too big and none of us could fill it. 

I believe we haunt our own houses – the memories of lives lost, of pain and sadness, worry and stress, this is what haunts us, this is what gives us that ‘feeling’ when you walk into a house. And does your history continue to haunt a house long after you’ve packed up and moved away?

When the Walker family move into the Murder House, Sarah and her children know its’ history – they can’t see beyond the terrible things that happened there. Is it their imaginations – the cold spots, the strange creaks and groans? Patrick is sure they can make it into the perfect family home he insists it once was… but as he begins to change, is the house having an effect on him?

What makes a house a home? It’s not the bricks and mortar – it’s the life lived inside the walls. A life that can be filled with love or emptied by loss, memories of happiness and security or fear and pain. Echoes of laughter and tears seep into the walls. It’s the home not the physical shell of a house that is haunted and these are the things that inspired me to write The Woman in the Dark.

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Twitter – @VvSavage

Facebook – @VanessaSavageWriter

www.vanessasavage.co.uk

The Woman in the Dark is Vanessa Savage’s debut novel, published in January 2019 by Sphere. It sold at auction in the UK/US and Germany and translation rights have also been sold in Spain, France, Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic. She has twice been awarded a Writers’ Bursary by Literature Wales, most recently for The Woman in the Dark. She won the Myriad Editions First Crimes competition and her work has been highly commended in the Yeovil International Fiction Prize, short listed for the Harry Bowling Prize and the Caledonia Fiction Prize and long listed for the Bath Novel Award. Vanessa lives by the sea in South Wales with her husband and two daughters. Her second novel, The Woods, will be out in hardback in January 2020.

THE WOMAN IN THE DARK

There’s a stranger in the house . . .
But what if the stranger is your husband?

‘Kept us utterly spooked and utterly hooked’ HEAT
‘Claustrophobic and compelling’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘Unputdownable’ LAURA MARSHALL
‘A vivid portrait of buried tensions’ DAILY MAIL
‘An intense tale of deceit, treachery and loss’ THE SUN
‘Scary, pacy and compelling’ CLAIRE DOUGLAS
‘Creepy and atmospheric’ AMANDA JENNINGS

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For Sarah and Patrick, life has always been easy. Then they move to Patrick’s childhood home and everything changes.

Fifteen years ago, another family was murdered there. Patrick says they can make it perfect again, but their children are plagued by nightmares and Sarah swears someone is watching the house.

Worse still, the longer they live in their ‘dream’ home, the more different her loving husband becomes . . .

A chilling psychological thriller about dark family dysfunction and the secrets that haunt us, The Woman in the Dark will captivate fans of Shari Lapena, Louise Candlish and THE INNOCENT WIFE by Amy Lloyd.

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What readers are saying about THE WOMAN IN THE DARK:

‘I can honestly say that this book will be next years must read psychological thriller of 2019’

‘A deeply disturbing psychological thriller which always stays on the right side of horror’

‘What a cracker of a book. Unputdownable and well written’

‘I loved this book and stayed up half the night to finish it’

‘A real page-turner . . . I thoroughly enjoyed it’

‘A dark and many layered book. Hooked from the very first page’

Brilliant . . . a fantastic ending with a twist that I did not see coming

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing