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June is National Crime Writing month. We’ve asked Bristol-based crime author Emily Koch some questions. We hope you enjoy reading…
What are your top 5 writing essentials?
1. Noise cancelling headphones to block out the rest of my family while I work!
2. Huge cups of tea
3. Post it notes and a board to stick them on (for plotting)
4. Lots and lots of notebooks and nice pens
5. Motivational notes stuck above my desk, such as: “I am allowed to write a terrible first draft.”
June is National Crime Writing Month. Do you have a favourite crime book or author?
I love crime books that do something different with the genre, like Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place, Wrong Time. I also really enjoy good series that you can get stuck into – I recently read an advance copy of the first in a new detective series set in Cornwall called The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall which is out next month and would highly recommend it!
![Keep Him Close book cover](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VL-Book-cover-Template-46.png?resize=642%2C1024&ssl=1)
Where do you get your inspiration from?
All sorts of places – my debut was inspired by a news item on the radio, my second by the prison round the corner from where I live, and my latest book was inspired by a news story I covered when I worked as a journalist.
How do you research and plan before beginning to write?
I do lots of reading around the subject of the book, and sometimes interviews with people who have some insight into the story I’m trying to tell. For my latest, What July Knew, I set it in the 90s and to help me remember life back then I spoke to lots of my childhood friends, who I’d grown up with at that time. The protagonist in the book is a ten-year-old girl, so I also read lots of the books I was reading back then to get into her head – Anne Fine, Judy Blume… that kind of thing.
As for planning, I normally have a solid plan before I start writing – I write each chapter’s key moment on a post-it note and pin it to a board, move them around and work out the structure of the book before I write. Then I flesh each scene out with more notes, make a spreadsheet and jump in to the writing part!
![What Judy Knew book cover](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VL-Book-cover-Template-47.png?resize=642%2C1024&ssl=1)
What are you working on next?
I have no idea! Well, I do have some ideas, but it’s very early days yet. I’m not rushing into anything for the moment. There is one book I have an idea for which I’m really scared of as I think it will be difficult, and no matter what I do I keep coming back to it – I think it’s going to have to be that one!
To learn more about Emily and her books please visit: https://emilykoch.co.uk/
This interview was conducted for Crime Reading Month in 2023.