Sarah Vaughan's Blog, page 2

Anatomy of a Scandal has been bought by Netflix!

Are you good at keeping secrets?

One of the most frustrating things about publishing - as opposed to journalism - is the requirement that you do just this. For what feels like a lifetime, I have been sitting on the most incredible secret: that Netflix has bought Anatomy of a Scandal and will screen it as a six-part series! (For once, I think an exclamation mark is justified.)

It hasn’t felt real. Though it was optioned soon after being published only a small percentage of novels that are optioned ever make it to the screen. And, despite being made an executive producer, signing contracts, employing an LA entertainment lawyer, meeting key players and feeling very involved with the process, part of me wondered if this amazing opportunity was something I’d imagined. Was it proof I was an imposter? (I had, after all, just been writing about a woman with hugely disordered thinking).

And then, all of a sudden, I had an evening email telling me that Netflix was going to announce the series the next day. The US trade press, Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter broke the story at 8am West Coast Time - 3pm over here - and it suddenly felt very real indeed. Stylist and Red magazine picked up the story, as did Metro, and before I knew it, I was being interviewed by The Sunday Times.

More than 3 weeks later, I’m finally getting around to sharing some of the details here. Anatomy of a Scandal is being developed into an anthology series by the team behind Big Little Lies: writer David E Kelley, who also created Ally McBeal, and producer Bruna Papandrea. 3Dot Productions’ Liza Chasin will also produce; Melissa James Gibson, show runner on the US House of Cards, will co-write, and the wonderful SJ Clarkson ( Jessica Jones, Succession, Collateral, Love, Nina) will direct.

Filming will all be in the UK. As with every industry, covid-19 has complicated things but the expectation is that, once protocols are put in place to ensure everyone is safe, filming will start by the end of the year.

And I could not be more excited. I can’t wait to share news about the actors - !!! - and, covid protocols allowing, to go on set. More than anything, I’m just so thrilled that a novel that continues to feel relevant - the news broke in the wake of Dominic Cummings demonstrating his entitlement - will reach a far wider audience.

Publishing in a pandemic

A publication day surprise: an instagram post from Paula Hawkins recommending Little Disasters.

“I’ve got a cough so I won’t hug you,” said my agent, on February 26, at the end of a meeting to discuss the final exciting plans for the publication of Little Disasters. Conscious of covid-19, the rest of us chatted about ginger shots and boosting immune systems, and then hugged each other anyway.

This meeting - just six weeks ago - belongs to a different time. When I next went into London, on March 9, I avoided the tube and walked from King’s Cross to Piccadilly, conscious of the bus drivers wearing masks and an air of fevered, near apocalyptic panic. By March 19, when I was supposed to be filming a youtube Shelfie at Waterstone’s Piccadilly, non-essential travel was banned and it was the eve of school closures. Lockdown came three days later. The world - for all but key workers - had shrunk, swiftly and entirely.

Our plans for Little Disasters, which had once involved buoyant bookshop and supermarket orders, have also radically altered.

At first it seemed churlish to think about trying to promote a book while the UK was engulfed by a virus that, at the time of writing, has reached a daily death tally of 980 - more than any single day in Italy or Spain. My husband is an NHS doctor and most of my anxiety has centred on whether he would have adequate PPE to treat his patients safely - not to mention how to minimise the risk of him transferring the virus, if or when he caught it, to our kids.

But while it has felt a little like shouting into a void, I’ve increasingly felt a responsibility to Little Disasters. The team at S&S have shown such passion and commitment that it felt rude not to champion this book. And, in its detailing of the claustrophobia, anxiety and isolation of early motherhood, the subsequent fracturing of mental health, and the need to look out for one another it could not feel more relevant or relatable to these unsettling lockdown days.

And so, like all of us in this weird new world, I’ve learned to embrace social media. First there was a wonderful, anarchic twitter launch, hosted by Blackwell’s Books and shared with my friend, literary suspense author Lucy Atkins. We’d been due to share four bookshop and literary festival events - all obviously cancelled - but instead have taken our Bad Mothers double act to the radio, with interviews with BBC Radio Devon, here at 1 hour 9 minutes in, and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire, at 2 hours 21 minutes in. BBC Radio Sussex is next.

Then came a complete career high when I talked to the warm, incisive and thoughtful Jane Garvey about Little Disasters on BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour. You can listen here. I felt as if she completely “got” my book - an “excellent read” she told listeners - and I am kicking myself that I froze with one quesiton. The answer to the prevalence of maternal OCD is 2-3% in the first year after birth, according to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I forgot it momentarily but it is, of course, now ingrained.

I’ve also taken part in two virtual festivals, thanks to Zoom. The first with the My Virtual Literary Festival team (@myvlf), see below, and the next as part of the Stay At Home Literary Festival, which was viewed by over 100 people and involved a real sense of connectivity.

Now that I’ve worked out how to film myself and transfer videos, I’ve filmed that Shelfie for Waterstone’s (click here), not in its flagship Piccadilly branch but my study, and a clip of me reading the first chapter of Little Disasters for The Book Depository. I also wrote a blog for Waterstone’s about my favourite bad mothers in literature, click here.

The publishing industry has embraced Zoom and its potential and so I appeared in a literary “event” with debut author Nikki Smith and her editor, Harriet Bourton, discussing maternal mental health with which Nikki’s All In Her Head is also concerned. The interview on the Orion youtube channel is here.

Finally I experienced my first Facebook Live with the incredibly professional Catherine Isaac, a fellow S&S author and former journalist. You can see the resulting chat on her Facebook page by clicking here. I’m hoping to do an InstaLive with Clover Stroud, though it’s fair to say I’m a long way off being sufficiently proficient to host my own.

Meanwhile, the reviews so far have been thoughtful, incisive, and very positive. From The Literary Review to heat, the Daily Mail to the Daily Mirror, Cosmo to the WI’s Life magazine, my novel about the darkest reaches of motherhood seems to have resonated. The novel’s currently £4.99 as an AppleBooks audio book of the week and is, of course, also available as an e-book if you can’t find it at Waterstone’s, Hive, Amazon or Blackwell’s. You can read the first 3 chapters here, read a clip from Grazia Online here, or listen to a four-minute snatch of the audiobook here.

I hope that, if you buy it, it proves an immersive distraction in these difficult times.

Little Disasters - events!

I’ve a novel coming out, incase I hadn’t mentioned it sufficiently, and to celebrate I’ve lined up lots of events. I’m particularly thrilled that I’ll be pairing up with Lucy Atkins, whose literary thriller Magpie Lane combines Oxford Gothic with one of the most narcissistic mothers ever created, and with Jane Shemilt, whose Little Friends is a compelling mix of Big Little Lies and Lords of the Flies.

Both these novels detail dysfunctional parenting and so dovetail with Little Disasters - my psychological drama about the darkest reaches of motherhood - extremely well.

I’m also excited that the Oxford Waterstone’s event will be chaired by Cara Hunter, whose recent All the Rage is riveting, and that I’ll be meeting Joanne Harris, chair of the Society of Authors and a multi-bestselling author perhaps best known for Chocolat, which was made into a film starring Oscar-nominated Juliette Binoche.

To make it easier to book - here are the relevant links (just click on the venue)

Exeter Why do we love a good thriller? with Jane Shemilt

Cambridge Bad Mothers with Lucy Atkins

Leeds With Joanne Harris. Gliterary lunch.

London Bad Mothers with Lucy Atkins

Bath Bad Mothers with Lucy Atkins

Oxford Bad Mothers/Crime and Wine with Lucy Atkins

Marlow Me alone! Please come and join me.

Further events are planned - details when they’re firmed up. In the meantime, please do come to listen to us. There is little better than discussing a novel with readers, or potential readers - and it’s such a refreshing contrast to sitting alone, staring at a screen.

And, just a gentle reminder that five weeks from publication, you can always preorder Little Disasters from your local independent bookshop, or from Amazon, Waterstone’s or WH Smith.

How Boris Johnson helped inspire Anatomy of a Scandal.

Photo credit: REUTERS. Boris Johnson confirming his intention to stand as Conservative leader at a business meeting in Manchester last week. “Of course I’m going to go for it,” he said.

The voice down the end of the phone was rich and cajoling: the tone that of someone used to charming their way out of situations, either by appealing to your better nature or by playing the hapless buffoon.

“Deep background, deep background,” Boris Johnson chuntered. It was the day after he’d been sacked by the then Conservative leader Michael Howard for lying about his affair with the journalist Petronella Wyatt and the reason this had become such a huge story - other than it being of sex scandal involving an MP - was that Boris had dismissed it with characteristic élan a week earlier as “an inverted pyramid of piffle.”

I was the Guardian lobby correspondent working that November Sunday in 2004 and, with the News of the World threatening to reveal details of the affair and a subsequent abortion, I was tasked with tracking him down. To my surprise, he rang me back. Obviously this couldn’t come from him, he explained, hence his “deep background, deep background” - journalistic code for his comments being completely non-attributable. And there was a definite “all-chaps-together-because-we-work-in-journalism-let’s-not-stitch-me-up” air about our conversation. But yes, amid all the bumbling and the skirting, it was clear the story was true.

We didn’t stitch him up. We didn’t run a story about him confessing to this, partly because we wanted to throw the story forwards. (He’d been sacked as Tory vice-chair and shadow arts minister on the Saturday afternoon, and this story would appear on the Monday morning, after all.)

But the fact that he had lied about the affair and had thought he could get away with it for almost a whole week rankled. It sounds naïve but I think this was the first time I was aware of a public figure blatantly not telling the truth. Not in a semantic sleight of hand; a sly massaging of the figures.

But by telling a great big fib.

I wish I had a contemporaneous note of that conversation. I have searched my attic for the relevant notepad but after three house moves, and 14 years, I can’t find one. I never imagined ever relaying it: it goes against all journalist ethics to betray a source, even one who’s betrayed his wife countless times and, in spinning the erroneous £350m a week for the NHS claim, has betrayed the electorate. (To say nothing of his slapdash betrayal of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratliffe by conveying inaccurate information about why she was visiting Tehran.)

But the conversation stuck with me for over a decade, and was a key inspiration when I dreamed up the idea of a novel involving an Old Etonian and Oxford-educated minister. Not that Boris is in any way my fictitious James Whitehouse, a man accused of raping a parliamentary aide with whom he’s been having an affair, in a lift in the House of Commons. For one thing, James is an athletic, former Oxford rowing Blue who is conventionally handsome with his chiselled jaw, green eyes and six foot three rower’s frame. For another, for all his faults, I never thought the former foreign secretary abusive at all.

But in his relationship with the truth – crucial to the issue of consent at the heart of my novel - there are clear parallels.

As my narcissist James tells his wife: “I told the truth, near enough. Or the truth as I saw it.”

It’s a philosophy Boris Johnson, the favourite to become the next Conservative leader and prime minister and a man whose relaxed attitude to the truth has been copiously documented, could have spouted himself.

 

Anatomy of a Scandal: number 5 in the charts, tour dates, and a quick catch up.

I’m absolutely delighted that, ten days after publication, Anatomy of a Scandal has stormed to number 5 in the Sunday Times bestsellers’ charts - in a week when abuse at the heart of Westminster’s in the news once again. I am proud, but also grateful to everyone who’s bought my novel, and in particular to the team at Simon & Schuster who’ve been championing it for almost two years.

I’m off on tour this autumn, venturing as far as Wales, Devon and Scotland to talk about my prescient novel about power, privilege and consent.

The first stop was last weekend, where I appeared at Guildford Literary Festival with my bestselling writer friend and fellow S&S author, Louise Candlish, and for most of these events I’ll be pairing up with other authors, which I thinks makes for a far more interesting discussion. So I’ll be talking alongside authors including The Secret Barrister and William Clegg, QC, psychological thriller writer, Amy Lloyd, EC Fremantle, whose latest has been described as a Jacobean Gone Girl, and novelist Sofka Zinovieff.

Anatomy’s also been picked as The Mail on Sunday YOU magazine’s reading group book of the month for October. You can get 20% off the £7.99 price of a copy, and read about the inspiration behind it here. From Thursday, 17th, it will be both the book of the week in Waitrose, and a deal in Tesco where you can snap it up for £2.50 if you buy a copy of the Sun. (It’s also £3 in Sainsbury’s.)

Enough hustling. I need to get on with writing, inspired by the large audience Louise and I met at Guildford - one of whom told me she’d been reading my novel until 4am that morning; and another who was inspired to tick off a man who’d been trying not to pay for his cappuccino at the hotel bar after listening to us talking. A third concluded, after listening to us: “But you’re lovely women, really.”

We are, and I am. Do come to any of these events if possible. I’d love to meet you.

Anatomy of a Scandal: tour and quick catch up.

Anatomy of a Scandal’s off on tour this autumn, with me venturing as far as Wales, Devon and Scotland to talk about my novel about power, privilege and consent.

The first stop was at the weekend, where I appeared at Guildford Literary Festival with my bestselling writer friend and fellow S&S author, Louise Candlish, and for most of these events I’ll be pairing up with other authors, which I thinks makes for a far more interesting discussion. So I’ll be talking alongside authors including The Secret Barrister and William Clegg, QC, psychological thriller writer, Amy Lloyd, EC Fremantle, whose latest has been described as a Jacobean Gone Girl, and novelist Sofka Zinovieff.

It’s also been picked as The Mail on Sunday YOU magazine’s reading group book of the month for October. You can get 20% off the £7.99 price of a copy, and read about the inspiration behind it here. From Thursday, 17th, it will be both the book of the week in Waitrose, and a deal in Tesco where you can snap it up for £2.50 if you buy a copy of the Sun. (It’s also £3 in Sainsbury’s.)

Enough hustling. I need to get on with writing, inspired by the large audience Louise and I met at Guildford - one of whom told me she’d been reading my novel until 4am that morning; and another who was inspired to tick off a man who’d been trying not to pay for his cappuccino at the hotel bar after listening to us talking. A third concluded, after listening to us: “But you’re lovely women, really.”

Come all - I’d love to meet you.

Anatomy of a Scandal is a WHSmith Richard & Judy pick!

I’m usually hopeless at keeping my own secrets, invariably wanting to share good news. But this summer there have been two I’ve held tight and I can’t tell you what a relief it was to share one last Thursday, when Anatomy of a Scandal was published in paperback.

As the obligatory sofa shot reveals, my novel about power, privilege and consent has been picked as one of Richard and Judy’s autumn Book Club picks. I could not be more thrilled. For a writer who loves reading the books they pick, and aspires to write novels that provoke and resonate, this feels like the pinnacle of my career.

Although I’ve known since early June - June 8! nearly three months! - it didn’t feel completely real until I met the legendary pair less than a week before publication day. OK, so I’d already answered questions for them and written an essay on the inspiration behind Anatomy of a Scandal; I’d gone through the proofs of these pages; and I’d even seen a finished copy of the special WH Smith’s edition, which I’d hidden in a box in my office so that my children wouldn’t stumble upon it or I’d inadvertently show it to friends. But I didn’t quite believe it was happening until I was on my way to a five-star central London hotel to record a podcast with them.

I was ridiculously early, of course, and there was no sign of them initially. (I didn’t realise they and the production team were hidden away downstairs.) But after I’d been asked various questions about my writing technique - to be spliced into the trail for the interview - and given myself a pep talk in the loo (where I correctly guessed another smartly-dressed woman might be an author; she turned out to be Amy Lloyd, author of The Innocent Wife), I was ushered to meet the couple who are so well-known that, like Nigella, or Tess and Claudia, they’ve no need for surnames.

And they were lovely. Warm, interested, professional and so intent on putting me at my ease. Richard drew parallels with his own experience as a court reporter before he went into broadcasting, and with their experience as TV hosts in pouncing on a story. “We’ve found that, haven’t we Judy?” he said, referring to a part of the novel where journalists, listening as evidence in the court scenes, know they have a top line.

Although I’d been told they read all 15 books on this selection’s shortlist before whittling them down to the final six, I hadn’t expected them to remember mine in such detail. (That’s a reflection on me: I can love a novel but a few months later will have forgotten the names of characters, or even a twist.) I genuinely felt as if they engaged with, and engaged with the novel. And as I left, Richard told me: “Some books choose themselves. It’s a fantastic read.” (You can read what they have to say about Anatomy of a Scandal here, while the podcast will be live from November 1.)

Meeting the two of them, and seeing my novel at the front of the Cambridge store, and advertised in the window, were real “pinch me” moments: experiences I doubt I’ll ever forget. I’m so proud that they’ve rated my novel but most of all I’m delighted their seal of approval means Anatomy of a Scandal will be widely available, and hopefully read. (As well as the special WHSmith edition, it’s on sale in Waterstone’s, independent bookshops, amazon and in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose - the full sweep of supermarkets.)

In an era in which the issue of entitled men becoming even more powerful has never been more evident - see Kavanaugh and President Trump’s apology to him this morning - nor the subsequent burgeoning of women’s rage, I hope my novel, in some tiny way, adds to the debate.

And that other secret? Well, there’s a hint of it in the questions posed by Richard and Judy at the end of their edition of the book. But the details? I’m still having to keep them safe.

Powerful allies, frat boy culture and consent: how Anatomy of a Scandal resonates with Kavanaugh.

It’s the US paperback publication of #Anatomy of a Scandal today - and once again the timing could hardly have been more prescient. The issue of what happens when entitled boys become powerful men has been thrown into sharp focus by a televised drama that has gripped America: the Senate judiciary committee hearing into whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford at a teenage party 36 years ago.

Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is alleged to have clamped a hand over the then 15-year-old’s mouth and wrestled with her clothing. Giving evidence under oath, Dr Ford said she believed she was going to be raped and accidentally killed, and was “100 per cent” certain he was the 17-year-old who pinned her to a bed against her will. A visibly irate Judge Kavanaugh repeated that he was innocent. But while the President immediately tweeted his support - his performance “showed America exactly why I nominated him,” - Judge Kavanaugh’s injudicious behaviour has raised doubts about his suitability as a Supreme Court justice. As an article in the New York Times yesterday opined: “Retribution and distemper — even under extraordinary stress, which can obscure but also amplify a person’s character — are not qualities one should seek in a Supreme Court justice or a judge of any kind.”

Without creating spoilers, Anatomy of a Scandal - my #metoo marriage thriller/courtroom drama - explores the sort of frat boy culture that Judge Kavanaugh is alleged to have enjoyed at Yale law through a fictitious Oxford university dining club called The Libertines. (Itself, a thinly disguised Bullingdon Club, to which the former prime minister David Cameron, and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson belonged.)

In my present day story, when my charismatic politician James Whitehouse is accused of raping a parliamentary aide with whom he’s been having an affair in a House of Commons elevator, he retains the backing, at least in private, of his ally, the Prime Minister - just as Judge Kavanaugh retains the support of President Trump.

I’ve written about the cognitive dissonance of writing fiction only to see it reflected in real life here for the US literary site, CrimeReads: a piece prompted by the Westminster sexual harassment allegations, that led to the resignation of two Cabinet ministers, last October (and included three claims of an MP groping in a lift.)

A year to the week that the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke, Anatomy of a Scandal’s themes of power, privilege and consent, and its examination of a certain kind of toxic masculinity have not only been seen in Hollywood, sport and the City but are now being discussed in relation to a nominee to the Supreme Court.

In the words of People magazine which picked it as their book of the week, it’s “a nuanced story line perfectly in tune with our #metoo times.” To quote New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell it “completely skewers the zeitgeist.”

I hope it enrages, as much as it entertains.

Powerful political allies, frat boy culture, and consent: how Anatomy of a Scandal resonates with Kavanaugh.

It’s the US paperback publication of #Anatomy of a Scandal today - and once again the timing could hardly have been more prescient. The issue of what happens when entitled boys become powerful men has been thrown into sharp focus by a televised drama that has gripped America: the Senate judiciary committee hearing into whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford at a teenage party 36 years ago.

Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee is alleged to have clamped a hand over the then 15-year-old’s mouth and wrestled with her clothing. Giving evidence under oath, Dr Ford said she believed she was going to be raped and accidentally killed, and was “100 per cent” certain he was the 17-year-old who pinned her to a bed against her will. A visibly irate Judge Kavanaugh repeated that he was innocent. But while the President immediately tweeted his support - his performance “showed America exactly why I nominated him,” - Judge Kavanaugh’s injudicious behaviour has raised doubts about his suitability as a Supreme Court justice. As an article in the New York Times yesterday opined: “Retribution and distemper — even under extraordinary stress, which can obscure but also amplify a person’s character — are not qualities one should seek in a Supreme Court justice or a judge of any kind.”

Without creating spoilers, Anatomy of a Scandal - my #metoo marriage thriller/courtroom drama - explores the sort of frat boy culture of excessive drinking and entitlement alleged to have happened at Yale when Judge Kavanaugh was a student, through a fictitious Oxford university dining club called The Libertines - a thinly disguised Bullingdon Club, to which the former prime minister David Cameron, and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson belonged.

In my present day story, when my charismatic politician James Whitehouse is accused of raping a parliamentary aide with whom he’s been having an affair in a House of Commons elevator and retains the backing, at least in private, of his powerful ally, the Prime Minister - just as Judge Kavanaugh still retains the support of President Trump.

I’ve written more about the cognitive dissonance of writing fiction only to see it reflected in real life here for the US literary site, CrimeReads: a piece prompted by the Westminster sexual harassment allegations, that led to the resignation of two Cabinet ministers, (and included three claims of an MP groping in a lift.)

A year to the week that the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke, Anatomy of a Scandal’s themes of power, privilege, consent, and its examination of certain kind of toxic masculinity have been played out in Hollywood, sport and the City, and are now being discussed in relation to a nomination to the Supreme Court.

In the words of People magazine which picked it as their book of the week, it’s “a nuanced story line perfectly in tune with our #metoo times.” To quote New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell it “completely skewers the zeitgeist.”

I hope it enrages, as much as it entertains.

Anatomy of a Scandal: A catch up - and tour dates.

So much has happened since I last posted here - not least Anatomy of a Scandal soaring to number 7 in the Sunday Times bestsellers list, spending 3 weeks in the top 10, and six in the chart in total. It remains in the e-book bestseller chart - 15th bestseller throughout February and peaking at number 10; and is riding high in the audio chart, too. 

I've done a promotional tour in Madrid and Barcelona, involving 18 interviews, two on TV, and the most forensic questions - covering Trump, Deneuve and Woody Allen; an imminent Catalan rape trial, and the reach and impact of the MeToo phenomenon.

I've also written about the cognitive dissonance of writing about something only to see it reflected in real life for @CrimeReads, an offshoot of the US literary site, lit hub. You can read the article here. For someone who hates listening to her voice, I've surprised myself by loving participating in two podcasts. First, I took part in @TheWords podcast on feminism with the hugely impressive Everyday Feminism founder, Laura Bates, and writer Ann Helen Peterson. Grazia and The Guardian chose it as their pick of the week's podcasts, and you can listen to it here. And then I laughed my way through an interview with the two crime writers, Luca Veste and Steve Cavanagh. I'm episode 53 and you can download it here. Both podcasts really give a flavour of Anatomy of a Scandal, and the Words includes two audio excerpts, my first taste of the incredible narration.

There have been  events in Cambridge, London and Oswestry with fellow authors Elizabeth Day and Fiona Cummins, as well as a First Monday Crime panel at City university which I loved.

S&S are also sending me out on tour again, from Glasgow to my home city of Exeter, with Oxford, Bristol and Liverpool thrown in too. I've loved the events I've done so far and this time I'm paired at each one with at least one other writer, which always makes for the most interesting conversations. I'd love to see you. Do come along!