Gillian McAllister has found one major change after becoming a full-time author – she’s got her life back.
Gillian was a lawyer before her first book became a huge bestseller and set her on the path solely to penning popular novels and not combining that with writing dense legal documents.
She had always been interested in writing but it was really a hobby until her first novel Everything But The Truth was published by Penguin and became a top-10 smash.
As she’d landed a two-book deal, she had to double up on her duties.
“I had no social life at all for two years,” Gillian told P.S. “I was writing on my 15-minute train journey home at night, writing until midnight and then getting up early to start again.
“I was doing it weekends, Bank Holidays, every spare minute. It really was insane and I look back now and have no idea how I did it.
“I had never expected to get a book deal with someone as big as Penguin. And with Everything But The Truth not yet out, I felt I couldn’t really do anything about my job.”
Gillian, who lives in Birmingham, went part-time at the legal practice, then finally took the plunge and quit. “I did think about it a lot as you’re becoming your own boss and it’s an insecure income but it felt like redressing the balance.
“As a lawyer, your life is so regimented as you record all your time in six-minute slots. So it’s taken a while to adjust but I’ve had time to see friends, start exercising, even take a pottery class. I was rubbish at it – but it wasn’t wasted as I put it in my book.”
With a book-a-year deal, The Evidence Against You, which came out just last week, is Gillian’s fourth novel.
It’s a psychological suspense novel about a woman whose father contacts her after 17 years in prison for the murder of her mother. He is pleading his innocence and wants to defend himself against each piece of evidence from his trial. Should she give him the benefit of the doubt or is he luring her into a trap?
As part of her research, she visited an open prison to meet eight lifers on the last step before release. “They were normal, really nice blokes and you had to remind yourself what they’d done.”
Gillian’s dad Tony accompanied her on the prison visit, as he does on many of her research trips.
“I talk through all of my plots with him,” adds Gillian. “I storyboard all of my plots on a whiteboard and he’ll go through them with me.
“He’s very insightful and totally involved in my publishing career. He’s like my muse.”
Gillian McAllister The Evidence Against You, Penguin, £7.99
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