The Sham
by Ellen Allen
Release Date: 09/07/14
238 pages
Summary from Goodreads:
When love leads to death, be careful who you trust…
Eighteen-year-old Emily Heath would love to leave her dead-end town, known locally as "The Sham", with her boyfriend, Jack, but he's very, very sick; his body is failing and his brain is shutting down. He's also in hiding, under suspicion of murder. Six months' ago, strange signs were painted across town in a dialect no one has spoken for decades and one of Emily's classmates washed up in the local floods.
Emily has never trusted her instincts and now they're pulling her towards Jack, who the police think is a sham himself, someone else entirely. As the town wakes to discover new signs plastered across its walls, Emily must decide who and what she trusts, and fast: local vigilantes are hunting Jack; the floods, the police, and her parents are blocking her path; and the town doesn't need another dead body.
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS UNSUITABLE FOR YOUNGER TEENAGE READERS. IT DEPICTS ADULT SITUATIONS, MURDER SCENES, CONVERSATIONS ABOUT SEX AND PROFANITY.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The idea for this book came to me in a nightmare... It was so vivid that I imagined I was 17 again, at school, in the same group of 4 friends that I used to hang around with. We were involved in a murder and cover-up. I started writing partly as a way to get it out of my head and then the characters turned into real people... and Emily and Jack were born.
As some of the early reviewers have stated, it is quite extreme in chapter one, and necessarily so. This is the incident that sets up the whole book; something awful happens that sets off a train of events for the characters. This book is a mystery in two ways in that we're: 1) trying to find out who killed Emily's classmate; and 2) trying to work out who Jack is. I hope you enjoy it!
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An Interview With Ellen Allen
Tell us a little about yourself.
Three years' ago I quit my job in London and moved with my small daughter to the south of France. The plan was to stay for a few months - to fulfill a lifelong dream of lollygagging in rosé wine vineyards, writing a book, getting the hang of French grammar, etc. - but we haven't been able to leave!
We've built a new life here, complete with jobs, schools, and French subjunctive tenses - as well as the vineyards and writing - and the best part is that we're only a few hours away by train from our family in England. It's also sunny here, roughly 300 days a year…
What do you write, and why? What do you enjoy about what you write?
My first book is a Young Adult thriller which was fun to write because I got to work through some of those teenage neuroses; the huge difficulties you have at 17 or 18 trying to reconcile what you want, what you know and what you can actually do. I remember feeling continuously pushed and pulled between huge insecurities (am I good enough? will I do well enough?) and a burning desire to burst onto the world and mold it to my liking.
I'm not sure contemporary thrillers are an easy genre to market in YA - too old for younger YA readers, too young for adult readers - but it's one I'm keen on pursuing. I've just started my second YA thriller; it seems to suit me.
Briefly tell us a little bit about The Sham:
The Sham is a YA crossover thriller, about an eighteen-year old girl, Emily Heath, who is desperate to leave her small dead-end town called, "The Sham" with her boyfriend, Jack. The problem is that Jack is very, very sick; his body is failing and his brain is shutting down. He's also in hiding, under suspicion of murder. The police think that Jack is a sham himself, someone else entirely, and responsible for strange signs that have been painted across town and for one of Emily's classmates washing up dead in the local floods. As the town wakes to discover new signs plastered across its walls, Emily must decide who and what she trusts, and fast: local vigilantes are hunting Jack; the floods, the police, and her parents are blocking her path; and the town doesn't need another dead body.
Where did the idea come from to write The Sham?
The idea for this book came to me in a nightmare. It was so vivid - I imagined I was 17 again, at school, in the same group of 4 friends that I used to hang around with. We were involved in a murder and cover-up. As soon as I calmed down, I realised that it would make a great book. I started writing almost immediately and Emily and Jack were born…
What inspired you to be a writer?
I never set out to be an author but I've always been writing: at school, it was often some sort of trilogy involving magic kingdoms and dwarfs (I loved Tolkien); throughout my teens, I religiously recorded monumental events in my diary but mostly filled it with inconsequential lists of things I had to do each day (have a bath, feed the cat…); when I was pregnant with my daughter, I finally finished something serious. I wrote a play for the BBC. The play was rejected but it was the first time that I actually considered that I might be able to write because I received a really encouraging critique. Since then, I've written a few more plays as well as my first book, The Sham. It sounds a bit silly but I believe I do it because I simply can't not write. I love the entire process as well as the sense of completion.
What is the hardest thing about being a self-published author?
Well, you go through months of editing, formatting, proofing, designing the book cover, etc. and then it's released and you realise that you haven't even started the hard work yet! For example, there are over a million books on amazon and it's hard work to get people to read mine. That said, I find it really rewarding because you know that you've done everything yourself. So you can really celebrate when you manage to link people to the book. Then they just have to like it...
What would you say to aspiring authors?
I'm new to this so I don't really feel qualified to offer advice to anyone. Instead, I'll offer up other people's advice that I'm following religiously:
a) As Stephen King most famously says, "reading is writing". You need to be reading widely and voraciously to write well. I have a non-writing job, so I find it hard to find the time to read as much as I should. The 2014 reading challenge on Goodreads has been great for helping me keep track of how many books I'm getting through and what's next on my list.
b) Lionel Shriver - one of my favourite authors - was asked what the best advice was for new authors and she put it well: "Don't turn it into a mystical process. Just get on with it!" You have to be disciplined, dogmatic, stubborn and organised to be a jobbing writer. I try not to think about the rest - the doubts about talent, whether anyone will read it - and I just get on with it. I want it to be my career, so I treat it as if it is.
c) There is tons of writing advice out there that isn't very good - the irony in reading writing advice that isn't well written! You can spend hours trawling through it, but it's distracting and time wasting. Find a few blogs that you rate, a few sites that you trust, follow a few similar writers, watch how they progress and then - you guessed it - get on with it.
Who is your favorite author? And why?
I have lots of favourites: for dark teen issues, you can't go wrong with anything by Laurie Halse Anderson; for literary fiction, my favourite is The Secret History by Donna Tartt - she writes characters that stay with you long after you finish her books; if I want comfort reading, I'll read To Kill A Mockingbird or any Jane Austen; and no one can scare me as much as Stephen King.
Where do you get your ideas for your books?
I always carry a notebook with me and I write down all the interesting and macabre things that I hear: stories about people's lives; the way people love; the way they die; and random things in the news. At the moment I'm trying to work on my characters and how they act/react in different situations. I'm busy writing down how people look when they eat, drink, talk… especially when they think no one is looking. I just hope that no one is watching me!
What do you like to do when you're not writing?
I love wild swimming; my favourite spots are under Pont du Gard in the south of France and Dosthill quarry in the Midlands, England.
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More about Ellen Allen
In a previous life, Ellen Allen was an Associate Director in a small consultancy firm (focusing on Sustainable Development and Climate Change) running research projects and writing client reports. She doesn't find fiction writing too dissimilar in process but she gets to use her imagination considerably more. She now lives in the south of France with her small daughter.
About The Author:
I've just finished writing my first book, so I've been busy trying to work out how all the pieces fit together - the planning, the plot, the rules, the imagination, the characters, the grammar, the structure, the endgame… there's too much stuff to remember and a lot of the information that I've discovered online about how to write isn't that good or even well written (the irony in reading advice on writing that isn't well written…)
So I decided I needed to find somewhere to store the good stuff. Then it occurred to me that other people might find it useful too. So here it is. My online reference tool of all the useful (i.e. good) advice for writers-to-be. I only post here when I have something really useful to say about the craft (Twitter is for daily musings, Goodreads to review and Amazon to buy my work); it's all about the quality here, folks, not the quantity… Enjoy!
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