Q&A: Fiona McPhillips

We sat down this week to talk to Fiona McPhillips, author of WHEN WE WERE SILENT, to talk about her journey so far, from querying agents to getting to grips with the publishing process as a debut author.

How long did it take you to write your debut, WHEN WE WERE SILENT?

It will be three and half years from when I started it in late 2020 to when it comes out in May 2024. The draft that got me an agent took a year and a half, and I spent about the same again on edits, with my agent first and then with my two editors.

Tell us about it.

WHEN WE WERE SILENT is a dark academia reading-group thriller about an outsider who joins a private convent school in 1980s Dublin to try and expose the school’s dark secret. I hope it will appeal to readers of THE SECRET HISTORY, MY DARK VANESSA and ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL.

What inspired the novel?

In 2020, I had the good fortune to read Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird and I took to heart her advice to write about your childhood: “that time in your life when you were so intensely interested in the world, when your powers of observation were at their most acute, when you felt things so deeply.”

At the time, I was also listening to the BBC podcast Where is George Gibney? about the former Irish national swimming coach who avoided trial in 1994 for years of sexual abuse against his young swimmers. I was so inspired by all the victims who stood up to him in the 90s, and by everyone who went public with their stories for the podcast. They painted a clear picture of how he was supported to keep abusing kids for so long, how slow everyone was to believe he was capable of it and to understand the true horror of what “it” actually was. As a journalist with a background in academia, I read and researched as much as I could in this area to try and understand exactly how and why it was allowed to happen.

In When We Were Silent, I wanted to explore both of these things, the determination, loyalty and joy I remember from my own teenage years and the forces that try to steal that power. Like most women, I have my own stories, although this one is a work of fiction.

Lou Manson is an outsider in the throes of grief and rage when she joins Highfield Manor, an elite convent school in 1980s Dublin that hides a dark and deadly secret. Lou has come for revenge and retribution and yet she still manages to find friendship, solidarity and love in the most unexpected places.

How did you find an agent?

I was only a few chapters into When We Were Silent when I fired off the opening and a synopsis to the CWA Debut Dagger competition in early 2021. I was overjoyed to be longlisted, then shortlisted and eventually runner-up in the competition. And I couldn’t believe my luck when I started to receive requests from agents and publishers for the full manuscript. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one. What followed was nine months of furious writing for which I was lucky enough to receive an Arts Council literature bursary.

I’m not sure there could have been any greater motivation than knowing agents were waiting to read my work. All I had to do was keep up the momentum of those winning chapters and pull off everything I’d promised in the synopsis. Simple, right?

Well, not quite. I sent that first draft to seven agents and five asked for the same structural edit. So it was back to the drawing board, albeit with detailed feedback from experienced professionals. I spent another three months working on draft two and that was the one that earned me multiple offers of representation. It was stressful! The dream situation, for sure, but still an agonising choice. In the end, I signed with Rachel Neely at Mushens Entertainment, partly because Mushens was always my dream agency but also because Rachel was so passionate about the book. Luckily, she turned out to be the best agent in the world.

I’ve no doubt the Debut Dagger helped me over the line. At the very least, it got me to the top of the slushpile, and maybe more importantly it gave me the confidence to keep going with the belief that this novel would be published. And that is possibly the biggest challenge of all, to keep writing to the end, editing to the bone with no promise of publication at all.

What advice would you give to other debut authors beginning their querying journey?

Once your manuscript is ready to go, spend time perfecting your pitch. If you can create a buzz with your query letter then agents will know they can do the same when they submit to editors. So study sample letters, narrow down your pitchline, find the perfect comps, get feedback from other authors and editors, and rinse and repeat. When your query is as compelling as it can possibly be, send it out to your preferred agents in batches of five or ten. And then, get off the Internet and start working on your next novel! (If you actually find out how to do this, please let me know.)

Did the process of submitting to editors feel very different to when you were submitting to agents?

Yes. This time, I had a whole team on my side who believed in my work as much as I did. Writing and querying can be such a lonely process, even with the most supportive writing groups and critique partners. Success is often a matter of timing as much as talent and skill, and rejection is an inevitable part of the writing life. More than any other creative medium – music, art, film – literature divides opinion, and it can take time to find that agent who is the perfect fit for you and your book. But when you do, you’re in it together and that’s a fantastic feeling.

Submission was exciting but tense. Offers came quickly, big decisions had to be made and I was grateful to have Team Mushens’ experience on my side. Within a week, we’d accepted two six-figure pre-empts, one from Transworld in the UK and another from Flatiron in the US.

How have you found the publishing process?

Publication has been a long process, from accepting offers in September 2022 to launch in May 2024. I’ve had the privilege of working with two amazing editors and that collaboration has been a joy after so many months of meandering solitude. But there’s also a lot to learn for new authors. This is when you need your peers, those debut author groups where you can pool information and resources, share the many highs and lows, as well as make valuable connections. Just because you’ve finally got everything you ever wanted doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.

What are you writing next?

I’m currently working on my second novel, due out in summer 2025. It’s another reading-group thriller that centres around a boy who goes missing at a rave in the Dublin mountains in 2001. Twenty years later, his remains are found and the friends who were with him that night are thrown back together – and they are all suspects in his murder.

When We Were Silent is out on the 2nd of May in the UK/Ireland and the 21st of May in the US. You can preorder it here.

And for those that can’t wait, here is a short extract from the opening chapter:

For years, I tried not to think about Highfield Manor. The pompous rise of its granite walls, the secrets hidden in its stone-cold shadows. The dark veil of cedars shrouding the school from the outside world. But still the memories fester in me, real as a disease.

Even now, as I watch the new students gather on the cobblestones of Trinity’s front square, I can’t help but think of the intimacy of teenage girls, their social hierarchies and my naive certainty I could conquer them.

It doesn’t take much for Highfield to trespass on my life. Just a whisper of chlorine at the gym or the groan of leather on bare skin and my heart picks up pace. The body remembers everything the mind wants to forget.

In my office, slatted sun brushes parallel shafts of light and shade onto the books that fan out across my desk. Beads of sweat gather on the bridge of my nose as I prepare the words I’ll deliver at my afternoon lecture, a revival of Irish female writers of the last century. It’s a crime, I think as I write, that these voices were suppressed for so long, always deemed too quiet to matter.

As I lose myself in my work, my phone vibrates on my desk and I glance over. It’s a number I don’t recognize. I hesitate and then grab it.

“Ronan Power,” he says, and it only takes a second for the terror and guilt to find me.

And I know whatever happens next, one thing is certain: my story is about to be resurrected, more than thirty years after I tried to bury it.

Ronan’s at an outside table when I arrive, sunlit and tie-less, nursing an americano. He’s better looking than I remember, the graying beard only adding gravitas to the sculpted lines of his face. As he leans in to greet me, I catch sight of the ice-blue Power eyes through the tint of his Ray-Bans, and the soft edges of nostalgia ease my trepidation.

He was only fifteen back then, three years our junior. Shauna’s cocky younger brother, nothing more. I’ve kept an eye on him over the years, his litigation successes and society engagements. But Shauna, she has managed to live a life offline, without a trace left behind for the casual observer. The sole reason I’m convinced she’s still alive is that a Power surely could not die without mention. It’s only now, in the fluster of this formal summons, that I’m numb with the possibility.

“I wanted to tell you in person,” says Ronan.

And so it’s here, surrounded by fumes and footsteps and the blinding gaze of the midday sun, that it’s all finally going to come to an end. I’m almost as eager for the news as I am fearful of it. Shauna’s death would put our story back in the headlines, but it would mean the end of the dread I’ve lived with all these years, the reason I can’t sleep at night.

“It’s happening again,” he says. “At Highfield.”

“What?”

“I’m taking a case on behalf of a swimmer.”

This is not what I was expecting. A return to Highfield instead of an escape from it.

“Only fourteen years of age.”

“Oh god.” I put my hand to my head to shade it from the force of his

words as much as the flare of the sun.

“I need your help,” he says, and the strength seeps out of me. “I want you to testify.”

Something shatters deep inside, but I am nerve-numb to it, my rigid exterior unbroken.

“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

“Come on, Lou. Surely I don’t have to spell it out for you?”

I shake my head, both in disbelief and to stop him forming the words I know I won’t be able to handle. All I can think is, I’ve done this before, I can’t do it again.

“Look,” says Ronan, “none of us wants to revisit the Highfield affair, but we can’t let something like that happen ever again.”

The Highfield affair. That’s what they call it online, the armchair de- tectives and internet sleuths. But the past is not contained within those wrought-iron gates. It is part of all of us, the Highfield girls you think you know, born into privilege, the world at their feet. And me, the intruder. Our testimony does not begin and end on that one fatal night. We are the before and the after, the culmination of cruelties that made it all seem inevitable: just a consequence of the time.

A different time. The era of synth pop and mixtapes, hair gel and new wave. Of Prince and paramilitaries, Madonna and moving statues. Magda- lene laundries, the Eighth Amendment, bodies as battlegrounds—pig slit and gaping. Different but the same. Absolution for the guilty but not for us.

“I’m sorry, Ronan, I can’t. I have a daughter now.”

He sits back in his seat and takes a deep breath.

“You can come forward as a witness,” he says, “or I can summons you.” I close both hands across my face.

“And there’s enough testimony from you on record already to back me up.”

I’ve done this before, I can’t do it again.

“What does Shauna think?” I say, rubbing my neck.

“She’s already preparing a statement. She’s ready to tell everything.”

It doesn’t sound like the Shauna I knew, the girl who went to unimaginable lengths to keep a secret. That was always the one thing Highfield valued more than grades, more than silverware or celebrity alumni: silence. Even now, there are still so many questions, the answers buried deep in the sacral belly of Highfield. We all have them, our secrets and half- truths, the memories that rage in the delirium of night. Some of us will take them to our graves. Some of us already have.

“I want to talk to Shauna,” I say, “before I make any decisions.”

“I’m sorry,” says Ronan. “She doesn’t want that.”

“Can I call her? Or email even?”

He shakes his head. “I’m under strict instructions.”

So that’s how it’s going to be. Everything on Shauna’s terms, like always.

“It’s better this way,” says Ronan. “Believe me.”

I want to say I’ve no reason to believe anything a Power tells me, but I stay quiet.

“I’m going to need you to write down everything,” he says. “As much detail as you can remember.” “Everything?”

“Yes.”

I can only hope the impatient flick of his hair means he doesn’t know it all. That she hasn’t told him everything.

“Concentrate on your friendship with Shauna, how much you confided in each other. Her testimony is worth so much more with your corroboration. And, of course, we want to focus as much as possible on what happened before that night.”

That night: Monday, December 8, 1986. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception. My head pounds with the thought of it and Ronan’s voice fades to a distant mumble as I sink into the murky depths of memory. I tried for so long to make sense of it, as if there was a single moment that could have changed it, as if any of us had been owed a happy ending. But I’m still not sure it could have ended any other way.