The idyllic village of Wicken is the setting of a new psychological thriller by Ely author Alison Bruce.
Alison will be talking about her latest page turner during the launch of I Did It For Us on January 23, hosted by Toppings Bookshop.
Set largely in East Cambridgeshire, the thriller follows Emily, who moves into a converted house in Wicken to rebuild her life after a disastrous court case. Things take a turn for the worse after she befriends her neighbour…
“From the first time I saw them together I knew it felt wrong. I didn’t like the way he touched her or the self-conscious way he played with Molly and Luke. Joanne saw none of it of course. So I did it to prove to her that she was wrong. I did it for us.”
Alison, who teaches creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, told Spotted in Ely that the idea for her latest novel came into her head “in the space of 30 seconds” during a literary event in London.
“My agent was leaving at that point and I walked to the Tube station with her and sat in Trafalgar Square for a couple of hours, thinking through the characters and plot.
“She phoned me the next day and asked if I was okay as I had seemed very quiet. I explained about the book idea and she told me to write it down. She sent it to my publisher and they immediately offered me a deal.”
At the time, Alison was penning a different book and had to wait to finish it before embarking on I Did It for Us. Her latest novel took about a year to complete.
The author of eight crime novels and two non-fiction titles, Alison’s literary career was ignited at the tender age of 14 when her poem was published in the Pony Club Annual.
Her advice to aspiring authors is “don’t give up”, as well as reading books in their chosen genre to understand the skills required and then “ruthlessly” editing their manuscripts to polish them up.
Born in Croydon, the crime fiction fan moved to Cambridgeshire in 1998, working as an electroplater, taxi driver, band promoter and IT specialist before leaving to concentrate on her first novel, Cambridge Blue, published in 2008.
A champion of local libraries, Alison is the patron of Lakenheath Library in Suffolk.
I Did It for Us is published by Constable as a hardback and is currently on sale at Toppings and Burrows bookshops in Ely, as well as in e-book and audiobook formats, available via Amazon.
You can also get a signed copy and hear Alison speak at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 23, at St Peter’s Church, Broad Street, Ely.
For more information click here.
