A:- It follows a young married couple, Finn and Mia, who buy a property that needs much renovation work. However, when pregnant Mia begins decorating the nursery, she find a message etched into the skirting boards. It reads, ‘I will save them from the attic.’ Together with her fractious in-laws, they go into the attic and discover it’s much smaller than the floorplan suggests – there’s a hidden room that has been bricked up. And inside, they find seven suitcases, each with a pile of children’s clothes in front of them. The novel is told from four perspectives, along with the person responsible for the secrets the house is hiding.
Q:- The core idea of the book came to you in a dream. Would you be able to expand upon that?
A:- It was literally just that. I’ve had dreams before with story ideas and I’ve woken up, telling myself I’ll remember them in the morning but failing to do so. I’ve also other dreams that seemed amazing at 3am but in the cold light of day, they’re just awful! For this book, I dreamed about a couple who bought a house and found suitcases in the loft complete with piles of clothing in front of them. I woke myself up, dictated it into my phone and fell back to sleep. Two days later I remembered vaguely dreaming about a plot, checked it my notes section and thought ‘I might be on to something here.’ By the end of the week, I had my entire story and characters mapped out.
Q:- You’ve explored disturbed family relations in some of your previous books, including What Lies Between Us. What is it about this that you are keen to explore?
A:- I think I enjoy writing about twisted family relationships because the lives and experiences of my characters are so far removed from my own. My mum and dad were together until my father died 18 years ago, I’m happily married with a wonderful almost-three-year old. My life is nothing like those I write about. I like putting my cast through the wringer, making them suffer and seeing what comes out the other side for them. Some learn from their mistakes, others don’t. Maybe I’m living vicariously through them and and working out how far I’d need to be pushed before I reach breaking point.
Q:- Children are often in danger in your books. As a parent yourself, can this be hard to write about?
A:- I purposefully don’t go into any great detail about what happens to the children in this book. I hope I give the reader just enough for them to use their own imagination and decide the hows and wherefores. What I found most disturbing was a book I read when researching what it must be like to have a killer in the family. Love As Always, Mum by Fred and Rosemary West’s daughter Mae is more disturbing than any fictional story a writer could come up with.
Q:- The early days of parenthood are so vividly drawn in Keep It In The Family. Did you draw on your own experience of fatherhood?
A:- For some parts, yes. Our son was born two months prematurely, like Mia’s baby, and he spent the first month of his life in hospital. So I drew on experience of what a worrying time that was for my characters. He is now three so those sleepless lights, self-doubt, panic and apprehension you’re doing it all wrong are still very fresh in my mind! But to be honest, he’s been a great little lad and has made it relatively easy for us.
Q:- Covid and lockdown make a couple of appearances. Why did you choose to include references to the pandemic, and how challenging was the experience of writing during lockdown?
A:- I don’t think I could pretend it hadn’t happened, particularly with the dates this book was set in. But I didn’t want it to take precedence over the story. I didn’t include Covid at all in my original drafts, but my editor persuaded me to change my mind. It was the right thing to do or it would be like setting a book in the late 1940s and failing to mention World War 2. Its omittance would have stood out more than its inclusion.
Q:- You write both speculative fiction and crime thrillers. What’s the process of writing them – do you write both simultaneously, or do you alternate?
A:- I alternate. But I usually have three books on the go at any one time. The one I have just started, the one I’m working on rewrites for with my editor, and the plotting out of the next. I am fortunate to be able to write two different styles of novel for two different publishers who are very patient with each other! So I’m able to alternate books – a speculative for one publisher and then a crime thriller for the next. My brain is constantly buzzing.
Q:- The One was adapted for Netflix last year. How has this changed your life?
A:- On a day-to-day basis, I don’t know if it has really. But it has perhaps made me more widely known than I was and it’s helped to sell a lot more copies of The One. And as a result, my back catalogue sales have also expanded. Another result has been a project I’ve been working on for my social media channels. I started approaching other authors I didn’t know personally but admired, asking them to take part in my 60 Second Interview challenge on Instagram. And it surprised me how many said yes, and how many of them had heard of me through the Netflix series. So it’s opened up doors that way. I’ve also since had three other books optioned by different production companies so fingers crossed something might happen with them too. It was a very surreal time through, watching on television something I created in my head one evening on the way home from work, then becoming the number one most watched show in the world on Netflix that week.
Keep It in The Family by John Marrs (Thomas & Mercer) Out Now
Mia and Finn are busy turning a derelict house into their dream home. At last, they’ll be able to move out of Finn’s parents’ house and start living alone. In the midst of this, Mia falls unexpectedly pregnant, adding a sense of urgency to the renovations. But just as the house is nearly ready, Mia discovers a chilling message scored into a skirting board: I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC. Following this clue up to the eaves, the couple are shocked to find that their dream home was once a house of horrors. In the wake of the traumatic discovery, their baby arrives early. Plagued by nightmares and struggling with motherhood, Mia becomes increasingly obsessed with the terrible crimes that happened in what was to be their new home. Maybe once she uncovers the truth, she’ll be able to focus on her new baby boy Sonny. But in doing so, she is alienating her husband, and risking the fragile relationship between her and in-laws. Meanwhile, the terrible secrets the house has revealed are not confined to the past. A murderer is watching, and waiting for the perfect moment to strike... Mia will do anything to protect her son, but is it already too late?
More information about John Marrs and his work can be found on his website. You can also find him on Facebook, On Twitter @johnmarrs1 and on Instagram @johnmarrs.author
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