Denise Brown is the author of It All Started With A Lie, a dark, absorbing and relatable YA mystery centred around family secrets and betrayals. Following the release of her debut novel, What We Reading sat down with Denise to talk through everything from how she found her way into the world of writing, to her love for Thomas Hardy!
Thanks for speaking with us, Denise! First off, tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to the world of writing.
Thank you for having me!
I’ve always loved books and stories. My dad was a storyteller, and I was always drawn to stories with the shock factor, but because I suffered from chronic shyness as a child, I chose to write stories rather than tell them. When I left school, I never considered being an author because it simply was never suggested as a career option. So I got married, found a respectable job in a bank, and had babies – five of them! But my love of books and stories never waned.
Then, following a traumatic divorce, I decided that it was time for me to focus on what makes me happy. I enrolled on a creative writing course with the OU, started writing every day – most of it rubbish to begin with! – and haven’t stopped since.
Talk to us about It All Started With A Lie. What is it about, and where did the inspiration for it come from?
The book is about 16-year-old Pearl who discovers a newspaper clipping one day during a game of hide-and-seek, showing a picture of her dad with the baby he found abandoned outside a hospital 16 years earlier. Thinking that she is the baby, she starts trying to find out more, and starts a domino effect of lies and family secrets.
Believe it or not, I woke up one day with an image of Pearl inside my head. She was holding the newspaper article, and I knew that she was scared because her dad had never told her that he’d found her outside a hospital. The book went through a couple of rewrites before I figured out what Pearl’s story was really about – what happened 16 years earlier – and that’s when I had the idea for the dual timeline.
What is the number one goal you want your work to have with readers?
I want the characters to be remembered. I want the reader to finish the book, knowing that the characters have resonated with them in some way, because the murder mystery is simply the glue that holds the characters together.
What do you think makes you stand out as an author?
I like to think that my writing is immersive, that the reader is drawn into the story, and that the characters, and the situations they find themselves in are relatable.
What would you say has been your biggest success so far?
I attended the Festive Indie Book Launch at Foyles Charing Cross in December. During the evening, a reader – a complete stranger – came up to me and told me that she thought my first book was amazing, and she couldn’t wait to read my second book. That is literally what it is all about!
If you could go back in time to one book you read for the first time, what would it be and why?
Tess of the D’Urbevilles by Thomas Hardy. This story is utterly heartbreaking because it is about the destruction of a young woman through circumstances beyond her control. It’s about love, and obsession, and control, all qualities that now seem to drive my own writing.
What’s one tip you would give your younger self if you had the opportunity?
Forgive yourself for the things you’re going to get wrong. It doesn’t matter what path you take to reach your end goal, what matters is that you never lose sight of it.
And finally, what do you hope the future holds for you and your writing?
I would really love to see Isaac in Heartstopper reading one of my books! That’s when I’ll know that I’ve made it.
Check out Denise and all of her work on her website or on Instagram
Check out our interview with Simon Hayes
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
