Stuart Neville: This Was the Book I Needed To Write

Stuart Neville, the “king of Belfast noir” (The Guardian), is the author of nine novels, including The Ghosts of Belfast, The House of Ashes, and Ratlines, as well as numerous short stories. He has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Dilys, Barry, and Anthony Awards and the CWA Steel Dagger. He lives near Belfast. Follow him on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

Stuart Neville

Photo by Johanne Atkinson

In this interview, Stuart discusses his experience returning to horror with his new novel, Blood Like Mine, his hope for readers, and more!

Name: Stuart Neville
Literary agent: Nat Sobel
Book title: Blood Like Mine
Publisher: Soho Press / Hell’s Hundred
Release date: August 6, 2024
Genre/category: Horror
Previous titles: The Ghosts of Belfast and other Belfast Novels, The House of Ashes
Elevator pitch: In LA Times Book Prizewinner Stuart Neville’s daring foray into horror fiction, a mother takes desperate measures to protect her daughter in a sinister, blood-chilling highway pursuit across the Southwest.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I’d been working on an entirely different book, one set in Northern Ireland around the end of World War II, that was a much more literary affair. I’d written 40,000 words and no one had been murdered yet! Then, out of the blue, I had the idea for Blood Like Mine. It arrived pretty much fully formed—the characters, the plot, the setting. I didn’t want to write it just yet, but it felt like the idea was burning a hole in my brain, so I typed up a synopsis, hoping that would scratch the itch. But it only made it worse. In the end, I realized this was the book I needed to write.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

Writing the novel itself was relatively quick, at least for me. It only took a few months. But the time between the idea and publication was unusually long. The book was finished by summer 2022, but I changed publisher in the U.K. to Simon & Schuster, and I was keen for them to publish at around the same time as Soho Press in North America. We had to hold the book for a suitable space in each publisher’s schedule, which meant a longer-than-usual delay. The book is very close to the synopsis I wrote all that time ago.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

It shouldn’t really be a surprise, but I was very strongly reminded how important it is to have a good team around you. There are times when you need your agent to go to the mattresses for you, and that’s when you remember what that commission is really for. I’m incredibly fortunate to have not one, but four great agents: Nat Sobel and Judith Weber in New York, Caspian Dennis in London, and Joel Gotler in Hollywood. They have each gone above and beyond for me over the last few years. And my editors, too. I’m lucky to count both my American and British editors as personal friends. Those relationships are forged over years, and they’re precious.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I was surprised how comfortably I slipped back into the horror genre having spent the last decade or so writing crime thrillers. I grew up reading horror, primarily Stephen King—I was an 80s kid, after all—then moved over to crime as I got older. When I began to write more seriously, my stories were a kind of crime-horror hybrid, culminating in my debut, The Ghosts of Belfast. I made a conscious effort to write more pure crime thriller novels for quite a while, thinking they would be more commercially viable, but my heart was always in the supernatural side of things. My last novel, The House of Ashes, was a return to that crossover of crime and supernatural, and Blood Like Mine moves more firmly across the line into horror.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

First and foremost, I want them to be entertained, to turn the pages, to feel their heartrates rise. If I can leave them afraid to sleep with the lights out, I’ll be very happy. Beyond that, I hope this book resonates with them on an emotional level. If I were to be so immodest as to say I had a strength as a writer, it’s creating stories with emotional heft. I want the reader to really feel for these characters, to care about them, to hurt when they hurt. Roger Ebert once said that movies were a machine for creating empathy, and I think books should be the same.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

I’m not one for practical writing advice because every writer is different, and what works for me probably won’t work for the next person. My one constant piece of advice is this: Write the next thing. Too many aspiring writers finish one novel then beat it to death, revising and revising, trying to sell it, then revising it again, flogging the proverbial dead horse. Rewriting is vitally important, of course, but it’s also important to keep moving forward. Write the next thing, because it’ll be better than the last, and the one before that, and the one before that, and…

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