I am thrilled to have interviewed author Alison Irving, who shared with us details of her writing life, her book ‘Her Best Friend’s Husband‘, which was released on 6th August 2024, and answered a few fun questions. This post contains affiliate links.

Alison lives in a village outside Belfast in Northern Ireland with her husband and very spoiled cat Hamish. She worked in the NHS as a physiotherapist for 32 years before taking early retirement. She loves walking on the North Coast and has an addiction to frothy coffee.

I wrote Casual Cruelties initially about a menopausal woman as I was having a lot of ‘fun’ with menopause myself. As the story continued, I realised the real story was about the unravelling marriage between Laura and her controlling husband James. Her Best Friend’s Husband is a follow up, where Laura’s friend Claire is the protagonist. I wanted to explore why a fundamentally good person would make bad choices, and the futility of revenge.

I’m not great at planning, I usually see where the story takes me. However I inevitably get my best ideas when I’m either driving the car or on a plot walk, so the notes app on my phone is invaluable.

Bloodhound Books, my publisher, suggested the title of Her Best Friend’s Husband and it perfectly summed the book up, so I was very happy to go along with it.

Naming characters is unbelievably difficult. I had far too many characters beginning with ‘J’ so about three had to be changed. Because of intricacies within the plot, I had to play about with names, which limited me to a certain extent. If you read the book, hopefully you will see what I mean!

There are a couple of hard hitting themes in the book and I had to ensure they were covered sensitively. I did extensive research online and there are links to support groups in the acknowledgments for anyone who may require them.

Psychological suspense novels are my go to when I’m reading, so it made sense for me to write in that genre. I love twisty books with darker themes, so I doubt I will ever write a romance novel.

It took about seven months to write, redraft and redraft again. I signed the contract for it in November and it has just been published on August 6th.

Past. Present. Payback.

Second guessing myself constantly. When I wrote my first book Casual Cruelties, I wrote it with little expectation of getting published. It has done quite well, so Her Best Friend’s Husband was much harder to write, as there was a different expectation of it.

Anyone who likes complicated women living secret lives would enjoy my books. Nothing is quite as it seems behind closed doors.

Hamish is my writing buddy and lies in a cardboard box on my writing desk to keep me company.

I sometimes play music when I’m writing that fits the scene. In Her Best Friend’s Husband Claire plays soft rock from the eighties when she is recalling her deceased father, and I played those songs on repeat when I was writing the scene. I have to admit, they always made me shed a tear or two.

I recently turned a room into my writing room. It’s filled with books, candles and plants. I’m naturally a chaotic person, but my writing space is calm and tidy.

Drinking frothy coffee in a leisure centre café after pretending to exercise.

‘There is no doubt you, like your characters, are suffering from menopausal madness!’

A big thank you to Alison Irving for sharing her writing life with us and for a wonderful interview.