Novelist Andrea Mara: ‘Throw some kidnappers in, raise the stakes – it’s much easier than worrying about your kids in creche’

The bestselling author on her penchant for suburbia's dark underbelly, the power of ‘what-ifs’ and how she made the leap from financial services to writing

Author Andea Mara at her home in Dublin. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Emily Hourican

‘I’ve learned to acknowledge the good things that happen and stop looking ahead,” author Andrea Mara tells me. “I remember when I first got my publishing deal with Poolbeg, my husband, Damian, was in London on a work trip. He brought home a bottle of Champagne and said, ‘Will we open it?’ And I said ‘No, because now I have to write the book...’ I hadn’t written the book yet, just an outline.

“So he said, ‘OK, when the book is written, we’ll open it.’ But then, when it was written, I was like, what if my editor doesn’t like it? And when my editor liked it, what if I can’t do the edits? And then, what if nobody buys it? This went on and on. In the end, we opened that bottle of Champagne on my birthday. We had to take it away from the book thing.