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As I place the phone on the table and go to hit the record button, my interviewee says to hold on a second and begins to offer up some advice.
For a split second I wonder is she going to impart upon me the secrets behind her writing prowess, but in fact, her tip is far more practical.
Author Liz Nugent tells me to wrap the shattered screen in cling film and cut a hole for the home button, as the glass will soon splinter and cut my fingers.
She goes on to explain that she used to be a stage manager and is therefore a whizz at DIY patch-up jobs.
Inventive as Liz appears to have been as a stage manager and indeed successful too (she toured with Riverdance in the late 90s and early 00s) it is not this skillset that has her name on the tip of people’s tongues lately.
It is her writing. Specifically her new crime novel Skin Deep, which has been topping best-seller charts since its release in early April.
Through the main character, Delia (Cordelia), this dark drama explores the themes of nature versus nurture and appearance.
Similar to Liz’s previous two novels, from the very beginning the book grabs the reader’s attention and holds it throughout.
“I wondered when rigor mortis would set in, or if it already had. . . I needed to leave. I couldn’t think straight with him lying there, a blood-soaked monster.”
Complex characters
After stage management and before becoming an author, Liz worked in RTÉ as a story associate on Fair City.
The need to fully unleash her creativity led her to writing novels and thus creating her complex, layered characters.
Sitting in front of me drinking a cup of tea, Liz amiably explains that she is drawn to darker, more sinister characters because they are much more interesting to her.
I was slightly in love with Heathcliff [from Wuthering Heights] as a teenager, mad, bad and dangerous as he was to know. I just thought he was very fascinating.
In real life I am only attracted to nice men,” laughs Liz, who is happily married.
“Even in television terms, Tony Soprano or Walter White in Breaking Bad, they are far more interesting than John-Boy Walton.
"I am always interested in why the character has become that way, rather than a ‘who done it’, it is more of a ‘why done it’ for me. How did they get from childhood to this murderous situation?”
In the novel Delia is born on a small island off the west coast of Ireland and the book explores her progression (or some may say regression) from there to high-society London and on to the murky underworld of the French Riviera.
For Liz, you need to be able to “smell a place to write about it”, so she made sure to have extensive knowledge of the novel’s three primary locations.
I won a bursary through the Princess Grace Irish Library, so I was there in Monaco for a month.
I got that bursary, because I said I was going to write something based on the Neil Hannon song Lady of a Certain Age, which is set on the Riviera.
“That seemed to work out well, because it meant I got first-hand experience of the people who live there and the lives they lead.
"I lived in London in the 80s, a lot later than Delia did. I mixed in all different kinds of social circles in London. I got a hint of that upper crust lifestyle and how shallow it really was.
“The book is really about appearances and how deceptive they can be,” says Liz. “Not just Delia herself, but how deceptively beautiful the island is.
How deceptively beautiful that London high society is, but how shallow, dark and nasty it is underneath.
A Dubliner herself, Liz says the rural aspects of the novel were heavily influenced by documentaries she watched and books she read about island life, as well as plays like The Playboy of the Western World and Martin McDonagh’s Leenane trilogy.
She also has strong connections to the west of Ireland, which helped in making the island location authentic. Liz’s mother is from west Cork, one of the reasons why she is very excited to be reading at the West Cork Literary Festival this year on 14 July.
The act of writing
With such extensive research undertaken, it is no wonder that Liz’s characters seem so real to readers, that is in essence the skill of her craft.
But, the act of actually physically writing is quite difficult for Liz.
When she was six-years-old she had a brain haemorrhage as a result of a fall.
At the age of 20 Liz dislocated her kneecap in another fall in the shower.
“Because of the earlier brain haemorrhage, it caused a chain reaction of spasms up my right-hand side,” explains Liz.
“Thereafter, I had years of physiotherapy, hospitalisations and surgeries, yeah a hellish time.”
“I don’t really use my right hand, I type with my left hand. I can hold things with my right hand, if I hold my cup it is steady enough, but bringing it to my mouth would be a different thing, so I don’t use it very much.”
Something that would have discouraged many, is not so for Liz and she has persevered to weave her captivating tales, enthralling readers.
Liz Nugent will read from Skin Deep on Saturday 14 July at the Maritime Hotel as part of the West Cork Literary Festival.
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