Rob Murphy (00:36)
TM Logan, thank you so much for being with us today and congratulations on the weekend. I’ve been lucky enough to read it and what a joy to read. What are your feelings about the book?
TM Logan (00:54)
Yeah, I mean, it’s been because my 10th book, it’s kind of it feels a bit of a milestone for me personally, but it just feels kind of, you know, it feels like it’s gone so, so fast since the first one came out in 2017. And I’ll obviously a book a year author. So but to get to get to 10, it does feel kind of amazing and surreal. And, I’ve got a looking forward to doing I don’t know the next 10 or 15 or 20 or something. So yeah.
Rob Murphy (01:20)
Don’t stop. Yeah, don’t stop. Don’t stop. We have this terrific quote, Henry Ford quote at the beginning, which I hadn’t seen before, but it really sets the tone, doesn’t it? Money doesn’t change men. merely unmasks them. And that’s that’s a great way into this, isn’t it? Just tell us, give us the the idea, the concept of the weekend.
TM Logan (01:42)
So it’s kind of like a sort of a moral dilemma really. It’s six friends, they find that they’re away for the New Year in the North Yorkshire Moors. They always go walking and spend time together over New Year. And one time they’re out on New Year’s Eve and they get caught in a thunderstorm. So they take shelter in a cave in the middle of the Dales and wedged way down in the back of this cave where somewhere you would never normally find it, quite by chance they find that there’s a backpack. One of the characters, Helen, finds this backpack and she...
hauls it out and opens it up and finds that inside there is a sort of a sealed, a very large sealed packet of lots and lots of money, these big big stacks of 50 pound notes and so it opens like that and obviously they all have the reaction that we hope we would have in a situation like that which is to say this is going to go, we’ll go to the police station tomorrow in Skipton on the way home and it’ll make an amazing story to tell our friends and then of course they go back to the cottage and have a few drinks for New Year’s Eve until one of them
kind of utters the fateful words, you know, let’s not be quite so hasty about this. Let’s think about it before we do that.
Rob Murphy (02:47)
And you’ve got a terrific cast of characters here. You mentioned Helen there and she’s very much, I guess, the lead character, isn’t she? But you’ve got all the different arguments going on as well. I love Dev, who’s just not up for it at all. He’s straight. I think he’s a magistrate, isn’t he?
TM Logan (03:03)
Yes, he’s kind of he’s got
various hats. He’s a driving instructor. He’s a magistrate. kind of you know, he’s quite he’s not a pillar of the community, but he kind of obviously takes his own personal reputation quite seriously. And he knows he sat in many, many, many, you know, court cases as magistrates will do and and seeing people pass through and so he kind of comes at it from a very, very black and white kind of
approach right from the beginning and he says I’m not even going to pick it up, I’m not even going to touch it, we should leave it there, we should just zip it back up and pretend this never happened and obviously you know with it being a thriller that would be quite a short book so they don’t do that, they ⁓ decide to take it back to the country so they can, in theory at the beginning, so they can do the right thing and take it to the police but obviously their sort of best laid plans are a little bit derailed.
Rob Murphy (03:50)
And as well as Helen, she’s got her husband there, she’s got her brother, Dev is there ⁓ too. ⁓ All these different characters. And of course, they’ve all got secrets, haven’t you? What can you tell us about their secret?
TM Logan (04:04)
Yeah, I mean, they’re all kind of, it’s a bit like the, you you mentioned the Henry Ford quote there at the beginning about, you know, money sort of unmasking people. It’s a bit like that. So we have these, you know, perfectly normal people in fairly normal jobs. know, Helen is a PA and Jason, her husband is a social worker. then there’s, you know, Kat works in a shop and Christian is a bit different because he’s kind of runs his own business. But they all, once they have this kind of, this money falls into their laps, they all kind of,
some of the things that they have going on in the background suddenly kind of come to the foreground. And in some cases, that is, you know, things they’ve kept secret from everybody. in some cases, it’s things they might perhaps discuss with their partner. But, ⁓ yeah, it kind of it makes everything ⁓ very real. It’s that kind of difference between two. You could say the question of having what do do with this money is one question. But really, I think it’s it’s two questions. It’s me and you having this conversation now in a hypothetical sense. But
If me and you are sitting in my lounge and I throw all this money on the table in front of you, that becomes a different question. It becomes a different sort of proposition because it’s real, because it’s right there. And it makes them act on sort of those secrets and impulses and desires in a way they perhaps probably wouldn’t have if they’d never been in that situation.
Rob Murphy (05:24)
You said the word real there. Also, what I really like about Helen is that she’s so relatable, isn’t she? She’s under pressure. There’s lots of women. I think she’s around 50, isn’t she? Of that age, she’s got an elderly mum with dementia. She’s got a late teen, 20-something son who is at home that she’s worried about as well. There’s an ex-boyfriend who I think we can mention without giving too much away who pops up. But there’s just a lot.
She’s a very relatable guide through this twisty book. You can put yourself in her shoes almost.
TM Logan (06:02)
Yeah, she’s she’s very much the kind of moral core of the story. She’s kind of the the sort of the ⁓ she’s right from the beginning. She’s sort of saying probably most of the things we would probably say, you know, we would like to think we would say and she ⁓ but yeah, she is she’s in that kind of point in her life when she’s, know, the sandwich generation, isn’t it the thing they call it so she’s not only is she looking after people kind of a mother above her in age, but she’s also kind of thinking about her sons and you know, but who are both
saddling themselves with lots and lots of debt as lots of our kids will do to go to university and all of that and that kind of hanging over them and then never mind them trying to get onto the property ladder. she’s almost at the point of being sort of an empty nest parent, but she knows that that is by no means the kind of the end of her responsibility. And she’s not, when she is kind of, is a...
bit of persuasion goes on to say, look, we could do some good with this money. She’s not thinking about going off and buying a speedboat with it. She’s then sort of thinking about how can I help my family? This is kind of a really practical, of ⁓ real life situation that she kind of thinks about and thinks maybe the, well, not to go too much of the story, but it’s a kind of a real life situation, I think.
Rob Murphy (07:18)
Yeah, exactly, which I think readers would love. I mean, she wants to do the best by her mum. She wants to put her mum somewhere comfortable. know, it’s just that she wants to do a nice thing. And there’s some fantastic twists later on. ⁓ Please get involved. I’m not going to say too much, but how much of that did you work out in advance and how much did it just come to you when you were feeling your way through the book?
TM Logan (07:47)
I I’ve always tried to do, I’ll do some planning with every book and whether that’s, know, sometimes it’s, it can be only, it might only be a half page kind of back cover sort of blurb, like the thing you would imagine on the back of a paperback. More recently it’s been more like a one or two or three page synopsis. So I’ll try to normally plan some of the turning points along the way. And obviously in this book, I knew at some point,
police would get involved and so that is kind of one of your key you know key turning points and there are other things other twists probably the more more of those in the first half that I kind of had a quite good idea of to begin with but then there are still other things and certainly the way the book ends and the way the resolution is is arrived at that is really comes more as part of the
organically, kind of as I’m writing, as you get to know the people better, you get to know the characters, what they would do and what they wouldn’t do and how they might react in certain situations. So it is, it does, it is a bit of both really. some of it is, I know from the beginning and some of it will kind of grow and, you know, certain twists and things will replace, might replace twists or developments that I’d originally kind of planned because I can see that they’ll work better. And then, of course, you’ve got, you know, with this book, where there was a big, big
structural edit, the first big edit was, you know, again made more changes to how things happen. it’s kind of, there are some things which do last all the way through, which are there from the sort of day one and end up in the book on, you know, day whatever. ⁓ But there are also lots of things that come to you along the way. So it’s a nice mix for me most of the time.
Rob Murphy (09:27)
And I see at the beginning of the book as well, you’ve got a sort of dedication to friends who you’ve shared, who you clearly have shared walks in the countryside with. Do your friends sort of slightly despair now that they know you, that they might end up inspiring some kind of twisty crime thriller?
TM Logan (09:46)
think they’re all kind of used to it by now. I think most of them are fairly confident that I wouldn’t show anybody in a bad light kind of thing. I think you obviously don’t want to have antagonists in the book that people can recognise as themselves. There are certain incidents and sometimes I’ll use someone’s name. There was a character in one my books called Paul Harmer who was a mate of mine. He a copper in the book and I just thought,
I’ll be nice to have him in there as a... He was a bit miffed he was only a detective constable. He said he should have been a sort of DCI or something by the time ended. But then, know, and the book also, you know, this book, The Weeknd, begins, you got this... The reason why she finds the bag anyway is because she almost loses her... She has this water bottle, it’s a Christmas present, she rolls down this rock and into this gap and that was a bit similar to something that did happen with Moomar out and it wasn’t... It was actually off the side of a...
Rob Murphy (10:25)
page.
TM Logan (10:44)
sort of cliff, this bottle and we were all saying, I’m not going to get it. he sort of, we didn’t, it was recovered in the end, but it was in quite a hair raising sort of spot, this bottle. And we thought, I just thought it’s not worth taking a hundred foot kind of dive off this cliff to rescue it. But it was recovered in the end. So, but that kind of features in one way at the beginning of the book.
Rob Murphy (11:04)
Great stuff. I mean, this is your, this is your 10th. Compare writing this with book, with earlier books. I mean, how is it? Does it get easier for you or does it get harder?
TM Logan (11:18)
think it doesn’t necessarily get easier. think it’s because the amount of work is quite similar. The amount of hours and months or whatever. I think it’s ⁓ probably bit less intimidating now than it was back with, know, with obviously with book one. Well, my book one was never published because it was kind of, you know, it’s still on my shelf over there because it’s never, it went out to publishers but wasn’t successful. So.
The one after that, again, is a bit different because I spent three years on it and there’s no deadline. kind of make it, polish it and improve it as much as you can. ⁓ But no, since then, I think it is a learning process and it becomes less intimidating. You still have some of the same stuff, some of the same imposter syndrome and some of the same, you always think every time, well, maybe this is the one where I’ll kind of, I’ll be found out or I’ll be, you
it’s not going to meet the standard of the other ones. there’s always an element of that. There’s always an element of existential crisis about 40,000 words, is, know, which is absolutely every single time happens. And I’ve now I’ve now realized that isn’t ⁓ something wrong with my brain. It’s just that’s just what happens to a lot of people. so, yeah, there are elements of it, which because you are now familiar with them, it becomes a bit less a bit a bit easier to deal with.
Rob Murphy (12:41)
Good stuff. So I’d like to take you back from here because you you’re obviously so successful and well known as a writer, but just take us back to the beginning. Was reading and reading crime something that you did very young or is it something that came to you later on? And I see you grew up in Berkshire, is that right?
TM Logan (12:59)
Yes, in Reading, yeah, I went to school down there and that’s where my parents still live. And yeah, my wife is actually from the Nottingham area. So we’ve ended up living here and I’ve lived here near Nottingham for more than half my life now. So I still haven’t got the accent, but you When you do, well, yeah, I do, but yeah, sometimes, but you’ve got to pick your moments for that. But no, was reading.
Rob Murphy (13:16)
You don’t call anyone duck.
you
TM Logan (13:28)
the same things that probably lots of people were reading as a boy. lots of CS Lewis and Roald Dahl and, ⁓ you know, Edith Blyton and all those kind of authors. And then probably my teens, lots of fantasy and horror and sci-fi, lots of Stephen King. And then probably not until really my 20s when I first started reading ⁓ thrillers or veering much more strongly towards thrillers. And, you know, one of the first ones I read is a
as I was kind of just starting my first sort of proper job was a book called A Simple Plan by Scott Smith, which is again, has kind of provided a bit of the inspiration for the weekend because it, you they open in similar ways with this kind of discovery in the middle of nowhere and the kind of the, you know, the question of how do you respond and what if you don’t do the sort of the exact right thing straight away kind of. So yeah, so that when I just.
Rob Murphy (14:02)
yeah.
TM Logan (14:25)
Yeah, they often moved into journalism after uni and kind of went from there, really.
Rob Murphy (14:33)
Yeah, so tell us about your journal. I mean, did you know growing up that you wanted to write or did you become a journalist because it was a way to write or did you want to be a journalist because you want to be a journalist?
TM Logan (14:44)
I think I had a really vague idea as a teenager probably that I wanted to, mean English was the only thing I could really, I felt comfortable doing at school. felt like I could, I wasn’t really good at maths or science or kind of, my dad was ⁓ a lecturer in economics and I kind of, knew that wasn’t really for me. ⁓ And so I kind of, I sort of gravitated towards it and I think I had a vague idea that I would, if I was a writer.
one day I would maybe write a book, certainly the sort of stepping stone towards that I think was journalism. I kind of, yeah, I went into journalism and I had a sort of three year kind of bit of a hiccup at the beginning when I worked in PR. And then I kind of realized that journalism was really where I wanted to go. So I went to work at the Nottingham Post, Nottingham Evening Post as it was called then, and then on to work at the Mail in London for three years after that.
But yeah, was useful, I think, in lots of ways. obviously, you’ve got the discipline of writing and having a blank page and all those things. But it’s also useful, I think, because you get used to having your work edited. And that is a kind of a, you just get it into your head that, yes, you put these words down, and yes, you spend all day doing it. But yes, there is someone in the sub-editors section who will.
Rob Murphy (15:55)
Yeah.
TM Logan (16:08)
make some changes and improve it and tighten it and make it sharper and better and punchier. Which has obviously similarities to the editing process for books.
Rob Murphy (16:17)
Do you still have in your head, because I do, because I was a journalist on newspapers at similar time to you, the things that the sub-editors were telling you, like it’s register office, not registry office, or all these kind of little things they’re so good at picking up on. Or their little turns of phrase that maybe you think, that’s a bit newspaper-y. Would people really say that? Did you get any advice from other journalists growing up at that early stage about writing?
TM Logan (16:48)
I I went to Cardiff School of Journalism before I was actually working. one of the, think, if you remember these little fragments, which are kind of, there’s a guy there, I think he was a Welsh guy. He was very, very experienced journalist and turned teacher. And he used to say he wanted our copy to be tight and bright. And that was all I can kind of, in his Welsh accent, I’m not gonna try and do it, because I’ll probably, he won’t do it very well, but yeah, tight and bright. And he would say,
what you would hear from any any journalism school, is, he’d say, well, why have you got your most interesting fact in sort of the ninth paragraph here? Why is this not right at the top of the story? And so, and that kind of drums it into you to say, you you want to try and grab someone right from the beginning, grab them right from the first line, from the first ⁓ paragraph, rather than sort of burying it way, down, down low. And that obviously is something that’s true.
drummed into all journalists, think. ⁓ it can serve, certainly for thrillers, think it can serve you quite well to remember that. Because you want to have, you’re competing with so much other media and so many other interesting things people could be doing that you need to try and grab them as early as you can.
Rob Murphy (18:04)
Well,
you’ve definitely done that in the weekend because it all starts off, it all kicks off within the first chapter and boom, off we go. It’s fantastic. It’s really great. I had my journalism training at Sheffield and I had an ex Nottingham Evening Post reporter teaching me and he didn’t go tight and bright. I had Crispin Crackling. ⁓
TM Logan (18:25)
I reckon it’s probably, that’s probably similar kind of advice. Crisp and crackly, that sounds like a chicken.
Rob Murphy (18:29)
It does rather, yeah. And your time in Nottingham, I guess you, I know you did some education work, perhaps maybe later on, but did you do any crime reporting at all? Did you go to the magistrates court or crime or go to crime scenes? And what thoughts did you have about that kind of world?
TM Logan (18:49)
Yeah, we would have when you’re on the general staff back when I was there, probably in the late 90s, there would be there was a I’m not sure exactly how many were on the roster. There’s something around about 30 journalists, 30 reporters on the rotor. And so it was a big daily paper. obviously, I think, sadly, it’s probably the numbers are kind of a shadow of that now. But but yeah, you would get every every week, you’d be every day you’d ⁓ be rostered to do either the coroner’s court or magistrate’s court or crown court or
it could be a county council or city council or any number of different things. So you would get a real, really great mix of different experience. And there was a obviously dedicated court reporter who would do it every day. But obviously there’s lots of of courtrooms in Nottingham that needed to be covered. And I think that was probably my first taste, I guess, a real crime, I suppose, in terms of in a professional context. And I don’t think I covered any
because obviously there were really big cases that be covered by the senior reporters or by the court reporter, but there was certainly quite a few cases that sort of passed through Nottingham at the time when I was working there and I...
know, this education specialism came up and I thought I quite liked the idea of that. think probably in a personal perspective, I’d just got married and my daughter had been born and I was thinking probably going to be a little bit easier if I’ve got a bit more predictability ⁓ rather than, you know, running around door knocking people at 10 o’clock at night and stuff.
Yeah, was, it was a, but it was a really good, it was a really good kind of training and introduction to, to journalism and kind of writing more generally, I think.
Rob Murphy (20:29)
And from there, you said you moved down to the Daily Mail. what when you I mean, that must be quite an imposing ⁓ newsroom to walk into or was it?
TM Logan (20:41)
Yeah, I I wrote, had this, again, I had this sort of vague idea that I wanted to see if I could work on a national paper. And so I wrote to six asking for shifts, you know, it’s obviously, as you know, that’s how, they’re still works that way, but you kind of just, they either write back or they don’t. And the mail wrote back and said, come down for a week. We’ll try you out and we’ll pay you, you get paid 86 pound a day, whatever, back then. And, and then after that, they said, yeah, we’ll give you some shifts. We come, come back and you can do maybe four or five shifts a week.
And it was a very, it’s ⁓ a change from the, I mean, it’s, you in some ways it’s similar, obviously it’s a newsroom environment, but it was very, very, it’s a tough place to work. was quite a, how do I say this without, ⁓ yeah, it’s a very demanding place to work and there’s no very, very uncompromising kind of, ⁓ yeah.
Rob Murphy (21:34)
News desk.
TM Logan (21:36)
Yeah, so there was no, there’d often be that, you know, I’d be driving in, I lived in High Wycombe, because it was kind of as close as we could afford to live, driving in in the morning, and you always kind of dread that phone call driving down the ⁓ A40 into London, your phone call from my newsletter saying, you know, Telegraph have got this, Times have got this, why haven’t we got this? And you got this kind of like, before you’d even got to work, you’re kind of getting, getting a very severe dressing down. And it wasn’t, it was obviously not as polite as the way I’ve done it. But ⁓ yeah.
Yeah, it was a tough place to work, it was a good training ground and a good place to live.
Rob Murphy (22:12)
And in terms of using that as source material for what you write now, has it influenced some of the scenes maybe you might write that you’ve been into places, you’ve been into rooms, you’ve been into situations that if you hadn’t been a journalist, maybe you wouldn’t have ever been?
TM Logan (22:33)
Yeah, I mean, think that there are certainly I have quite a few journalists in my books. I’ve never had one as a kind of a main character, but they’re often popping up. And there was one in the book called Trust Me, who was a male journalist who kind of comes along and plays a quite a key role. ⁓ But I think that I mean, the one of the biggest kind of things I took from it on not unfortunately, but that first book I wrote when I when I finished at the mail, and we came back to Nottingham, the next book I wrote, which took six or seven years, had a
sort of brought in lots of the elements that I had written about because I’d been a science reporter for most of the time at the Mail and I so I brought in lots of the kind of strands and stories and things that I’d written about at the Mail into that book and I think maybe ultimately because it wasn’t successful because it wasn’t picked up by any publishers I don’t think that was a waste I mean I think it was obviously pretty crushing at the time when you have that first book that’s rejected but
Lots of my experiences from the day job at the Mail went into that book and are kind of still sitting there, I suppose, on my shelf. ⁓ yeah, just, there’s loads of luck, there’s tons of luck, certainly with the debut when you submit. And it was just bad luck, think, partly that I didn’t manage anything with that first book.
Rob Murphy (23:50)
So before we get to your debut, you finished the mail after how many years and then you moved back to Nottingham to work at the university, is that right?
TM Logan (23:58)
Yeah, only three years at the mail, so...
Rob Murphy (24:01)
That long?
mean mean that’s... That puts heads in your chest, doesn’t it? That’s a long...
TM Logan (24:07)
I think it’s like dog years, so it feels like 15 years or cat years or whatever. yeah, again, and so we’d had a second child, our son Tom at that point and living out of town again, I just kind of had not really realised how difficult it would be. so yeah, we came back to Nottingham in 2004 and I went to work at the...
at the University of Nottingham as a press officer, kind of jumping the fence and dealing with media instead of actually, but still lots of writing and lots of writing about the research. it was quite a culture shock again, because I remember the first time I got given a press release to write, said to my boss, said, OK, what time do you need this? When do you need this? And he’s like, I mean, next week will be fine. And I’m like, what? No, I assumed he was going to say I need it by 5 o’clock. It was a lot longer deadlines.
Rob Murphy (25:01)
And you started, as I understand it, you started writing the book that you mentioned there that hasn’t been published at that time. ⁓ Why write? What was it?
TM Logan (25:14)
I think it was, again, was one of those, it had been kind of bubbling around in my head and I had done some evening classes in my 20s, sort of creative writing evening classes. And then I’d sort of kind of put that to one side and forgotten about it. And then you kind of, yeah, and then you obviously got married and you have, get, our daughter came along and the thing, you just sort of forget, I think, sometimes you kind of just forget or it just gets parked. And then one day you actually, you’re doing something, you suddenly think,
never actually did that thing. never tried, I’ve never actually tried to do that thing that I thought about all those years ago to do. And so I just thought now, why don’t I just, now I’ve got a bit more control over my day and obviously not driving into London getting shouted at by the news desk every day. I, you know, I’ve got a bit more of a routine, a regular life and I can make, I can find 45 minutes or an hour every day probably after the kids have gone to bed or weekends and.
and see if I can do this. And I’d obviously been reading lots of books and reading all about, you know, other authors and how they worked and I’d maintained that sort of fascination, think, the idea that I would try one day and I just sort of finally realized that if I’m going to do it, I just need to make it something you do every day. it did then, you know, add a little
sort of tick sheet every day and I’d write down how many words I’ve written. Sometimes it might only be a couple of hundred or three hundred or less. ⁓ But I thought if I just keep on going, eventually I’ll have enough to fill a
Rob Murphy (26:43)
book.
TM Logan (26:50)
think this is what I love then and what I still love now. think it’s what I was reading, the bulk, the vast bulk of what I was reading. You know, I do read some other stuff. I read some non-fiction. I read some historical as well, but the vast majority of what I read and probably what I watch as well on TV and things is in the kind of crime thriller ⁓ genre. I just gravitated towards that. yeah, I think, so I always say to people,
who are looking for advice on if they want to start writing, I just say I think you should do, you know, do what you love, do what you love, write the book you want to read yourself. And that’s normally what I’m doing. And I want to write it in a way that I would like ⁓ to read the sort of books I like to read and in the style I like to read them. So I think it’s, I think it becomes quite obvious quite quickly if you’re trying to write for the market or write for a trend or write for a, you know, for someone else, I think you got to, you got to
I always try and write the book I would like to read myself. that was one of the big drivers for me to go into crime and thriller.
Rob Murphy (27:55)
And The Weeknd is your 10th book, but you actually got your first book out in 2017. Lies. So ⁓ what was that like to suddenly see this thing that had been something of a dream, was something you worked so hard for to actually not just be realised, but it was a hit. It was a, you you sold, I think, is it half a million copies of that? That’s incredible.
TM Logan (28:17)
since then, since it came out. Yeah, so it was, I remember talking to my editor before it came out, when you start, when you’re a debut, obviously you have no frame of reference. You have no idea, you know, what is a success? And you think, well, there’s a Sunday Times top 10, but then obviously that was, I think I’ve realized that was, you know, out of reach for, certainly for me. And I said to my editor, what’s a success? What’s a good outcome? And I think he said something like, well, if it can sell, you know,
30,000, 40,000 copies, that’ll be a decent start, that’ll be a good start. And so I didn’t really have any expectation of how it went. And obviously things happened when it was released that year and it got some really nice word of mouth from people. got lots of, got some traction on social media, I think. it was, there’s some really good marketing from my publisher and...
it was priced quite quite competitively so and again it was it was luck there was a lot of luck involved and because no one really predicted i didn’t predict no one no one knew it was gonna it ended up as like the third best-selling kindle book of of 2017 and it’s just a complete you know no one can predict this stuff it’s just kind of it just happens or it doesn’t
Rob Murphy (29:25)
Yeah,
I know, but you’ve said luck. I don’t agree with that at all, actually, because word of mouth success is never luck. It’s good. It’s got to be good to have that reference, to have other people referring it to each other. Sure, there might be some little luck along the way, but the actual core product has got to be really good for it to be that successful, I’d say.
TM Logan (29:45)
Yeah, I suppose. mean, although I still feel like there are, you still do come across books that you kind of read them or listen to them and you’re just blown away and then you think, well, why don’t more people know about that? And it’s kind of, I don’t know. And I think it’s maybe not luck, but I think it’s some elements around timing and around ⁓ what else is out there. And, you know, it’s just things like that. So I agree with you that think that if people are going to recommend to their friends, then it needs to be, ⁓ it needs to have, you know, some, some
some good things about it, I suppose.
Rob Murphy (30:17)
Well,
you’ve had, I mean, you’ve written obviously nine further since then. You’ve had two adaptations as well, The Holiday with Joe Halfpenny and The Catch with Jason Watkins as well. Can you just talk us through what it was like getting those brought to the screen?
TM Logan (30:34)
Well, it was one of those things where I had been told by an author friend before my book, my first book even came out, she had already been published and she said, you know, lots of loads and loads of books get optioned, tons of books get optioned and it’s all very nice. But the truth is hardly any of them ever get made. And she was
And I was like, okay, they’ll send you a small amount of money and it’s all very nice and you can just treat that as a win and don’t have any expectations. So I didn’t have any expectations, I think, from that. And the first two books, Lies in 29 Seconds, been ⁓ optioned and hadn’t really quite gone anywhere. And the holiday was optioned. I think it came out in summer 2019 and it was optioned at some point after that and it got the green light in December.
2020, so it’s like a year and a half-ish to the green light. And so I was kind of shocked, apart from more than anything else, kind of surprised that it actually had reached that point, especially because was, obviously, you know, the pandemic was going on, lockdown, all those things. ⁓ so, yeah, was just a complete kind of surprise, I think. And it was amazing to see when I first saw the trailers.
It obviously came out in 2022 and I remember the first scene, the TV trailers and ⁓ Jill half peeing in the car with her husband and the kids in the back and thinking, you know, that was, it was quite a surreal moment because you literally obviously that, that, that scene, that story starts off as a daydream.
Rob Murphy (32:05)
Yeah, it’s just in your mind, isn’t it?
TM Logan (32:07)
It’s something
that pops into your head when you’re washing up or when you’re driving somewhere. And then for it to actually become a four-part drama was a complete... I mean, it’s sort of bit of a dream come true as well, because it’s obviously a great way of reaching lots of new people and it’s a nice way of telling the story in a different way, in a different medium. ⁓ Yeah, then the same company then had optioned The Catch, which was my fourth book, and they... ⁓
did the same the following year. So it was kind of, and I was actually able to go out to the set for that one to Dublin to watch some film.
Rob Murphy (32:44)
Yeah, and what’s it like walking around that? You know, all these people here, I know of course the production company have put it all together, but going back to what we said a second ago, you know, it all generated up there between your ears and then none of that would have been there had it not been for you and that initial work.
TM Logan (33:06)
Yeah, I mean, had this thought. So for the catch, we had one day on set near Dublin. We flew over there, me and my wife got a taxi out to the where they were filming on a little key side because it’s obviously set in the TV show. He’s a fisherman in the book. He’s not. But so we drove it, got out of the taxi, walked up this kind of towards the set. there was I was just like, what was people doing? it was because it was like there was dozens and dozens and dozens of people. And there was tons of them all sitting down, all kind of things going off and lighting and
because they’re working on quite a fast schedule. they’re kind of filming. We saw them film about, I don’t know, four or three or four scenes in the course of a day. So I think it’s quite a lot. but yeah, this is so much activity and you just think, my God, all these people are here. This is kind of my fault that they’re all kind of here. then, you know, at some point my wife was chatting to the director and then she then tried to get me a little cameo role in the back of the scene where they discovered this body by the... ⁓
in the bay and it ended up getting cut but my little...
Rob Murphy (34:09)
Look,
the next one.
TM Logan (34:12)
my little moment and ⁓ yeah, I mean, I was, was kind of wearing the wrong clothes because there were all these guys wearing kind of like fisherman’s outfits and I was there in my sort of street clothes. So I probably looked a bit incongruous, but either that or my acting wasn’t, wasn’t my surprise face wasn’t up to much. don’t know.
Rob Murphy (34:27)
So you know ⁓ you’ve written 10 books as we know. Where do you get the inspiration from? Have there been any true crimes or criminals or cases that have guided you to any of those stories?
TM Logan (34:47)
Yeah, I mean, that’s the one that really springs to mind is, I mean, there are more ways I’m a quite a lot. I’m not consuming true crime stuff all the time. But I do listen to quite a lot of the podcasts and just listen to listen to one now, which is kind of mind boggling, which is this case of this American woman who in Utah who killed her husband and wrote a book about coping with grief after your
Corey, Corey Richins, I think his name was anyway, she’s four years after he died, she’s finally been convicted anyway. But for to the mother was a book for me that is a story about woman who’s wrongfully convicted of killing her husband. And part of the spark for that part of the inspiration came from I was looking around for ideas a few years ago, and I watched was a 25th anniversary of of the Louise Woodward case. And
Rob Murphy (35:37)
⁓ yes, yeah, don’t any.
TM Logan (35:39)
and from the 90s and we had, my wife and I had watched, that was at a time when that was on court TV and it was all available, you can watch it here and we’d watched the OJ Simpson trial, which I think was a year or two before that and it was still quite a novelty. And I remembered watching that trial and then I watched the sort of anniversary documentary of it and it kind of reminded me of the spectacle of her being in court, this 19 year old British woman in court.
⁓ and the things that have been sort said about her and the things the way the media had treated her and the contrast between the British media and the American media and all these things that were said about, you know, is she emotional enough or is she too emotional? Is she crying, is the crime real? it not, is it fake? Is she too ice cold? Is she too, you know, all these things which were kind of, and it just reminded me of all the kind of stuff which was said about her, which would probably never have been said about a male defendant. And I thought,
something in that. And so I want, then I thought, I want to start a book, you know, my next book in a similar way. And the story really is nothing, you know, the stories don’t really have any similarity apart from that. The mother is a very different story to her case. But it was just that idea of this crime, which is predominantly committed by men. don’t know what the proportions are of murder, probably 90 plus percent, I would imagine, of murders are committed by men. to have a woman on the stand will be
⁓ quite striking image and that’s sort of very early on in the book. So that was kind of an inspiration for the mother and 29 Seconds, my second book, that also drew on some of the things I had, that’s really about people in powerful positions exploiting their power and ⁓ abusing and sort of exploiting people below them in the hierarchy and that would been...
there have been lots and lots of stories about this happening in higher education when I was working at the University of Nottingham, not where I was working, but in other places. you kind of read, I remember reading in The Guardian about all the NDAs that have been signed at certain places and the way that young female researchers had kind of in one place and sort of developed this unwritten list of rules with each other for how you had to deal with certain male academics, certain male professors, because they were, you know,
Predators basically.
Rob Murphy (38:02)
Okay. And how, when it comes to writing, how, is it something that’s always on with you? Is it something that you do year round? Is it something that you have to do to be happy? you one of the people who has to work Christmas day and your birthday and New Year’s day as well? Or is it, are you able to sort of take a step back and take a break?
TM Logan (38:26)
It is most of the year. it’s most of the first half of the year where I am now is first drafting and that’s sort of January to the end of May. And then there’ll be a short break in June when my editor is working on that draft. then probably end of June, early July until sort of late in the autumn, I’m going back and forth with her on different edits and at least three major edits on that book. And then there’ll be another kind of hiatus around.
November, December, when that’s sort of done and that’s sort of thinking time. So I’m not writing all the time. Lots of it is editing, lots of it is rewriting. But I don’t tend to write on New Year’s Day, no, or Christmas Day. But there’s always kind of, you know, you’re always thinking about ideas and thinking about picking things up and thinking about, you know, I was making notes out of notebook or notes on my phone of things you hear and things you think might make a, you know,
line or a chapter or even a whole whole story for the next book so you’re always kind of thinking about the next book.
Rob Murphy (39:29)
your books,
I understand they’re all standalones aren’t they? You haven’t gone down ⁓ a series but is there a common theme between them? Is there something that you think, well it’s TM Logan but it’s got to have this.
TM Logan (39:41)
mean, there are lots of twists. I most of them are kind of family based, I suppose. There are quite strong element of relationships and ⁓ often family relationships or sometimes friendships. So it’s kind of, as you mentioned before, they’re all quite relatable. They’re all quite normal people down to earth people. There’s no, doesn’t tend to really be lots of kind of serial killers running around or...
Not to say I don’t like Syracanists, but I like reading about them. my books are all tend to be people you might know who live next door to you or live across the street or they’re kind of pretty regular people. But yeah, there’s always lots of twists, there’s always a quite fast pace, I think. I always want to, I always hope that I can sort of surprise people with every book.
Rob Murphy (40:32)
Yeah, you’ve really done that with The Weeknd and it really is. can’t recommend this book enough. It’s such a page turner, so easy to read. It’s just a... of... I romped through it, if that’s the right word. Yeah, it’s an absolute joy to read. Who out there is doing it, do you think, at the minute? Who are the best writers around? Who do you look to and think, that’s a high bar.
TM Logan (41:00)
I mean, one of the person I’ve got most books off on my shelf is Michael Connolly. Obviously he’s an absolute master and has been around for a long time. I’ve got lots of Harlan Coban. really like, in terms of British authors, really like Louise Candlish. I don’t think I’ve read a single one of hers that I didn’t think was great. ⁓
I just read one which is coming out very soon by Ruth Mancini called The Stranger on the Stairs and she is a barrister or a solicitor and brings all of that kind of legal acumen and expertise into this into a thriller and it’s brilliant. She had one a couple of years ago called The Woman on the Ledge which also was brilliant. So that she seems to be, she’s really good. I’m trying to think who else is up there on the shelf.
Rob Murphy (41:49)
There’s a there.
TM Logan (41:50)
SA Cosby he’s he’s he’s an absolute Joe Callahan yeah ⁓
Yeah, I saw you had Anna Matola on recently and I really, really, I think I read Notes on a Drowning last year and ⁓ I really, really enjoyed that as well. I again, really funny, really well informed on the legal side and quite fast paced. was, yeah, really, really, really, really enjoyed that as well.
Rob Murphy (42:18)
She’s terrific and that is also a terrific episode as well. And what would you say to people who look to you now as a figure of authority? You’ve sold, is it three million books, I think? ⁓ 10 published books. What advice would you give to people coming through? What do you need to make it? And lots of people would be tempted to say luck. But ⁓ apart from...
that what things can you control that you can do?
TM Logan (42:50)
I tried to, so I did it because the 10th book was coming out. I tried to, I did a little series on ⁓ Instagram and the run up to it about 10 things I’ve kind of learned over the last 10 years. And one of those was about, I was trying to work out how to sort of articulate this. And I think in the end I said, you need to be two things at the same time. You need to be stubborn enough to keep going and to carry on and not give up. And also humble enough to be able to learn and adapt and
Rob Murphy (42:59)
true.
TM Logan (43:18)
take criticism and take things on board and improve. that and then you think you think being stubborn and humble almost a kind of two opposing forces and in some ways they are but you kind of like riding two horses at the same time because you know being stubborn I mean you’ve got to be kind of quite pigheaded about it about you know yes you wrote this book for six years and then no one wanted it that you’ve got to get on back on the horse and go again sort of thing so but you’ve also got to be able to listen to people and
read a and a brilliant book and think in your head why is this so good, why is this character so good, why is this premise so compelling, what can I learn from that? So I’m always trying to sort of improve and trying to learn. and obviously you know and the other advice is kind of what you’d hear from anybody which is you know finish your draft.
don’t give up and start the next thing. There will always be a shiny object will come along and you want to jump on that halfway through what you’re writing. Don’t do that. Finish what you’re doing. And then you can kind of look at the whole thing in its entirety. so yeah, I think it’s you know, the other thing is everybody has sort of their own method in their own way. And the more you hear, the more I hear about other authors, the more kind of variations you hear about how they do their how they do it, how they got there. So, so yeah, it’s
I can sort of tell people how I do it, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the right way for them to do it.
Rob Murphy (44:45)
The way you’ve done it, particularly with this book, The Weeknd is absolutely extraordinary. So thank you so much for writing it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can’t recommend it enough. And thanks so much for your time today, Tim. Thank you. really appreciate it. Thank you, Tim. That’s brilliant. Can I just double check that that recorded? This is the bit that I nervous at.
TM Logan (44:56)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.