A Q&A with Linda Hill

Q:  Without spoiling the plot, please could you tell us a bit about Behind Her Back?

A:  It’s about backstabbing colleagues at a TV station and about a secret Liz Lyon, the heroine, has to keep. If the secret got out it would result in a scandal but the secret causes Liz a lot of trouble. And a new Head of Sales arrives at the TV station and, although they should be allies, she tries to undermine Liz at every turn. 

Meanwhile at home Liz has started to date again but her fifteen-year-old daughter Flo deeply resents the new man in her life. These are the conflicts which drive the story.

Q:  You've worked in television. To what extent do you agree with the advice to new authors to 'write what you know'?

A:  I don’t think you have to do this literally. What I think this means is write about the emotional truth of your experiences. 

You can put your characters into a fictional environment and let them act out your own emotional history.  
But certainly, in Behind Her Back I have drawn on a world I know very well as I worked at TV-am and later at WestCountry TV as a producer for fifteen years. Both TV stations offered a lot of colourful characters and rich material to draw on.

Q:  How far is it your intention in your writing to uncover the world of television and how far simply to write a great story?

A:  Always to tell the story first and foremost because that is what will keep a reader turning the pages. I have to believe in my characters and care for at least one of them, so I enjoy creating characters who are rounded, flawed and authentic people.

I worked in live TV for 15 years.

Q:  You write very visually. How do you go about creating setting in your writing?

A:  I do see things visually and vividly before I write them down. 

For example, I had to know what Liz’s flat looked like. I could see the French doors opening into a courtyard garden with hollyhocks that are too big for the small garden and Liz’s squashy yellow sofa that she loves to slump on. 

I thought about what colours Liz likes to wear – basically all shades of red - and what the TV studio where she works looks like. For the StoryWorld TV station I even made a rough sketch to get the geography of the offices, staircase and dressing rooms right!

Q:  In Behind Her Back Liz is quite feisty. How did you create her as a character in advance of writing the novel?

A:  What I do is I create a sheet for my main characters and think about what food, what clothes, what music they would like. I also think about what might be their greatest fear and the worst thing that has happened to them? 

Even if not all of this makes its way into the book it helps the characters to live in my mind. With Liz Lyon I wanted to create a strong and capable woman who is also subject to guilt and self-doubt. Liz is divorced and worries about being a working mum with a full-on job. She feels she spends too much time at work. 

But she is also feisty. She will fight back when attacked and I particularly enjoyed writing those combative scenes. I wanted to reveal how Liz reacted under pressure because that is when a character emerges most strongly. 

Q:  When did you realise you were going to be a writer?

A:  When I was seven or eight. I wrote a story for my younger sister about Sally Dumpling, a fairy with curves. She lived in a yellow rose and polished the walls till they shone like gold and her best friend was a robin. My sister loved it! 

When I was older, I wrote a few short stories. I knew I wanted to write but it took me an age to get down to the business of completing a novel.

Q:  If you had 15 words to persuade a reader that Behind Her Back should be their next read, what would you say?

A:  A relatable heroine battling big egos, conflicts and betrayals at work and trouble at home!

A longer version of this Q&A appeared on Linda Hill's lindasbookbag.com last year. 

Thanks for the questions Linda.

Behind Her Back is published by Head of Zeus.