This week, we spoke to the brilliant Nell Pattison, author of the gripping Paige Northwood series. Her debut novel, The Silent House, was a USA Today bestseller. The Silent Suspect, the third instalment in the series, will be released on 29th April and is available to pre-order now (Waterstones, Amazon, and The Rabbit Hole, Brigg for signed copies).

Her series of crime thrillers (The Silent House, Silent Night and The Silent Suspect) features Paige Northwood, a British Sign Language Interpreter who is called in to support the police when deaf people are victims of crime, or suspects.

Your books place the Deaf community at the heart of their story – what inspired your latest novel, and what do you hope people will take away from reading them?

I find myself being inspired more by places than events at the moment, so the idea for The Silent Suspect came from driving through a particular part of Scunthorpe and seeing a house – straight away, I could picture who might live there, and what might happen to them, and the story grew from there. The deaf characters in my books really vary in their personalities, backgrounds and life situations, so I suppose what I want to do is portray people who happen to be deaf, rather than deafness being their defining characteristic.

What has been a highlight of the publishing process so far, and what are you looking forward to?

Seeing my books in supermarkets has been a bit surreal, and having friends send me pictures of them in shops around the country. My debut novel was released in March 2020, so I’ve only had the opportunity to take part in one small writing event in person so far. I’ve really appreciated the effort that has gone into the online events I’ve contributed to over the last year, but I can’t wait to get out and meet readers in person.

What was your journey to gaining representation like, and what advice would you give to writers who are submitting to literary agents? 

Two pieces of advice: make sure you’re writing the right thing; and rejection isn’t personal. My journey to representation was a long one, because I spent years writing sci-fi. I received lots of really nice rejections telling me that I wrote well, but nobody liked my plots. I nearly gave up at one point, until I realised that I have always read more crime than sci-fi, and thought I should turn my hand to a crime novel. It took me about eighteen months from starting to write The Silent House to signing with Juliet, which leads onto my second point: Juliet rejected me twice for my sci-fi novels. Those rejections were nothing to do with my personality, or even the quality of my writing, and when I sent her something different she knew I was finally going in the right direction.

What are you working on at the moment? / What are you writing next?

I’m currently working on my first standalone psychological thriller, Hide. It’s about a group of seven friends who go for a walk on Boxing Day on an isolated nature reserve, only for one of them to be killed…

You can follow Nell on Twitter and Instagram. Her third novel, The Silent Suspect, will be released on April 29th.