1--What is the title of your latest release?
ONE OF THE BOYS
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A “male violence” gene has been identified. Would you have your newborn son tested for it?
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I tend to set my books in places that feel familiar, so similar to places where I’ve lived, though not identical. That means an urban setting, in a town big enough to be anonymous in but not so big that you feel lost or that it takes a long time to get anywhere! I tend not to name the town, so that readers can imagine the story taking place somewhere recognizable to them.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I probably wouldn’t hang out with Antonia, I don’t think we’d get on! She seems like a lot of work. But I might go for coffee with Bea because I imagine that being a bit more relaxed, and I think that we’d have an interesting conversation.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Antonia: ambitious, determined, impulsive.
Bea: stubborn, independent, contrary.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That there is always room for another twist, even if you think you’ve figured out all the ones that the story needs or contains.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit and rewrite A LOT, so I would say both. I am definitely not someone who writes a clean first draft. Generally I try not to edit as I go too much because you can get stuck rewriting the same part over and over when the most important thing is to get that draft finished. Get to the end. That’s key.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Swedish Princess Cake – if you’ve never had it, you should hunt it down! It’s a sponge base, then raspberry jam, then vanilla custard, then whipped cream, and then a sheet of green marzipan placed on top and shaped to look like a dome. There’s a bakery in Covent Garden in London that sells it. Be still my beating heart.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I share an office in the attic with my husband, as post covid everyone is working from home! His side of the room is tidy. Mine . . . is not. It also doubles as my sewing room, so there are threads and fabrics everywhere, and plants, and photos of my children. On the wall above my desk, I’ve got a cross-stitched picture of all Jane Austen’s characters, which I made myself, and a print by a female art collective called the Guerilla Girls, which is titled “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist.” It reminds me of how much work women still have to do, which keeps me going when I don’t feel like it.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Sadly, she died recently, but Hilary Mantel. She was very open about her endometriosis diagnosis, her surgeries, and the impact it had on her life. I read her book ‘Giving up the Ghost’ shortly after having major surgery for the disease myself. She was so honest about her feelings and the grief for her loss of fertility and the children she had wanted. We’re supposed to be grateful for the things that doctors do to us, and thank them for their help, but there can be a lot of anger, too, and Mantel expressed that so eloquently. She’s better known for her historical novels but Giving up the Ghost is just as important in my opinion.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
That’s a tough question! Do I have to stick to one? The book that I’ve been recommending to everyone for the past few years, which when I read it really changed the way I saw the world, is Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. It’s a book about data, really, and the fact that most of the information we use to make decisions about how we design things and build societies is based on the male body as default. The assumption has been that if it works for men, it will automatically work for women, and that simply isn’t the case. It’s why women get cars that are less safe, drugs that don’t work, and tech that is too big for our hands.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was a Friday evening, as I recall (publishing moves REALLY slowly, so this was a couple of years ago). The book had sold at auction in the UK, so I knew it was going to be published here, and then I got a call from my agent to say that a US publisher had made an offer, and did I want to accept it. The offer was a pre-empt, which was extremely exciting! Sometimes editors will move quickly for a book that they think other publishing houses are likely to be interested in, to try and take the book off the table and avoid going to auction. That had never happened to me before.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
At the moment I’m reading a lot of non-fiction, particularly books about science and technology. I think it’s important to understand where we are with tech right now, and where we’re going, so that we can decide if we want that to be our destination. I also love a good hit job on a dodgy tech company – Bad Blood by John Carreyrou (which is about the rise and fall of Theranos) and The Cult of We by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell (about the rent-an-office company We Work) were both fascinating.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Stranger than Fiction. It combines all my favorite things, it has an uplifting ending, and I love Emma Thompson’s portrayal of a writer. There’s a bit in the film where Maggie Gyllenhaal describes all her favorite things to bake, which is just magic, plus Will Ferrell gives her a bunch of flours as a gift, which as to be in the top ten most romantic moments on film, because it shows that above all else, he understands who she is.
15--What is your favorite season?
Spring. I love it when everything starts to wake up and the first flowers appear, especially the daffodils. I have filled my garden with them. Their sunny yellow faces always make me happy.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Cake! I usually go out for dinner with my family, too.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Young Sheldon! I know that Big Bang Theory is not everyone’s cup of tea, but the writing on Young Sheldon is just perfect. It’s not just the nostalgia for the early nineties, which I have in abundance (Missy’s cabbage patch kid!) but the exploration of the dynamics of an ordinary family. I think the recent storyline concerning teen pregnancy has been a revelation. For once the focus is not on a teenage girl who has got herself "in trouble," but on a teenage boy, and Georgie’s struggle to figure out how to be a father at seventeen. We don’t see that too often, and it’s important. It doesn’t make teen pregnancy look like a good idea, but it doesn’t make Georgie look like a bad person, either. Plus, I want to be MeeMaw when I grow up.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
My husband’s cooking. I overheard him recently telling our teenage son that he has to learn how to cook because that’s how you get girls, so I now suspect an ulterior motive.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I do a lot of different things – knitting, sewing, embroidery. I also like growing vegetables and I love a museum or an art gallery. I also read as much as I can.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m currently writing another dystopian thriller – imagine if there was an algorithm that could see everything you’ve ever done online, and I mean everything, and share that information with your spouse . . .
If you could test your son for a gene that predicts violence, would you do it? From the author of Curfew comes a suspenseful, heart-wrenching novel about the consequences of your answer.
Antonia and Bea are sisters, and doting mothers to their sons. But that is where their similarities end.
Antonia had her son tested to make sure he didn’t possess the "violent" M gene.
Bea refuses to let her son take the test. She believes his life should not be determined by a positive or negative result.
These women will go to any length to protect their sons.
But one of them is hiding a monster.
And there will be fatal consequences for everybody....
Women's Fiction | Thriller Crime [Berkley, On Sale: July 18, 2023, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593336809 / eISBN: 9780593336816]
As an avid reader and life-long writer, Jayne Cowie also enjoys digging in her garden and makes an excellent devil’s food cake. She lives near London with her family.
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