Actor and playwright Catherine Jansen-Ridings discusses her debut historical novel The Shame Child, a gripping story of survival, motherhood and the women left behind in the aftermath of violence. On a remote island off the Irish coast, Catherine Jansen-Ridings found the beginnings of The Shame Child. Before writing the novel, she travelled to an island herself, wanting to understand the physical world her characters would have inhabited — the winds, the wildlife, the sea and the isolation that shape daily life. “It helped to have an actual place to write about,” she says. “It was so helpful to see and feel the winds, the wildlife and the sea. The people who lived there would have spent most of their lives outdoors.” That sense of immersion runs through the novel, the first instalment in an epic trilogy set in Viking-era Ireland. But while the book contains shipwrecks, invasion and traces of ancient magic, Jansen-Ridings was less interested in violence itself than in what remains after it. Researching Viking expeditions and invasions in Ireland, she became increasingly aware of how often women’s perspectives are absent from these stories. “I realised I wasn’t interested in writing about violence, but about surviving the after effects of violence,” she explains. “I wanted to foreground the women’s experiences and imagine how they might have survived.” At the centre of the novel is Erronach, a woman haunted by her past and forced to navigate fear, grief and survival as Viking ships arrive on her shores. For Jansen-Ridings, the story became a way of exploring family, forgiveness and the complicated emotional bonds that endure during crisis. “It’s really about family, community, and how people who aren’t the winners can learn to work together and live in a male dominated world,” she says. “It’s about difficult kinds of love — struggling to love your child and learning to love people you thought were your worst enemies.” Although she admits she “cried a lot” while writing the book because she felt so deeply for the characters, there is one she returns to with particular affection: Fidelm, the family’s healer and caretaker. “She is a rock for her family: cooking, healing, and caring for others,” Jansen-Ridings says. “She is the kind of woman that inspires me.” Yet it is Erronach herself she most closely identifies with: “She’s so gutsy but, at the same time, wounded.” The roots of The Shame Child stretch back years. While studying Creative Writing as a mature student at Middlesex University, Jansen-Ridings was asked to write an origin story inspired by where she believed she came from. Research into her own Irish family history, combined with an interest in Viking history sparked while her husband was working on a Viking film, slowly evolved into the world of the novel. “I started to think about the women and children that were left behind after the long ships sailed away,” she says. For all its darkness, however, the novel ultimately reaches towards hope. Jansen-Ridings describes wanting to write “a stirring, emotional, historical-adventure-romance” while also exploring “a way in which we can move past the awful things in this world and make a better life for women, children, and all those who are powerless.” Across the trilogy, she says, the women gradually discover “they have strength in numbers.” “I want people to be swept along by the adventure,” she says, “and finish the trilogy feeling hope that a better, more caring, world is possible.” CATHERINE JANSEN-RIDINGS started her career as an actor and began writing plays to perform. Stand-up comedy, street theatre, and children’s TV followed, but she wrote through it all. She raised a family, studying for a Creative Writing degree from Middlesex University and home-educating her children. When the chicks flew the nest, she began writing plays for Chickenshed Theatre and wrote and directed her first short film, Josh & Lil. She lives in North London with her husband of forty years, actor Richard Ridings. BUY THE BOOK ‘A breath-taking story of terror and magic, courage and love.’Maggie Brookes, best-selling author of The Prisoner’s Wife. Available in paperback from most bookstores and also in eBook from the Kindle store. Add to Cart ABOUT THE AUTHOR CATHERINE JANSEN-RIDINGS started her career as an actor and began writing plays to perform. Stand-up comedy, street theatre, and children’s TV followed, but she wrote through it all. She raised a family, studying for a Creative Writing degree from Middlesex University and home-educating her children. When the chicks flew the nest, she began writing plays for Chickenshed Theatre and wrote and directed her first short film, Josh & Lil. She lives in North London with her husband of forty years, actor Richard Ridings.
From Consulting Room to Crime Fiction: An Interview with Michael Crisp, author of What Can’t Be Unseen. After more than two decades working as a GP, Michael Crisp understands better than most that medicine is rarely straightforward. General practice is full of uncertainty, complex human stories and moments of intense pressure – experiences that have now found their way into his debut novel, What Can’t Be Unseen. Blending clinical authenticity with fast-paced storytelling, Crisp introduces readers to a world where medicine, ethics and human behaviour collide. Drawing on his first-hand experience of medical practice and a deep understanding of how people respond under pressure, the novel explores what can happen when scientific ambition, moral boundaries and human vulnerability intersect. The story begins with a deceptively simple question: what if someone discovered the perfect painkiller; powerful, effective and free from addiction or side effects? It sounds like the ideal medical breakthrough. But as Crisp’s thriller unfolds, that possibility leads into increasingly dark territory involving unethical pharmaceutical practices and human trafficking. At the centre of the novel is Dr James Harland, a doctor drawn into a dangerous investigation that becomes as personal as it is professional. As Harland digs deeper, he finds himself forced into situations that challenge everything he thought he understood about medicine, ethics and even himself. We spoke to the author about the journey from general practice to crime fiction, the ideas behind the novel and how real-life medicine helped shape the story. Firstly, tell us a little about yourself and how you came to write your first novel. I’ve spent more than twenty years working as a GP and medicine has been a hugely rewarding career. Over time, though, I reached a point where I felt the urge to try something completely different. The idea of writing a novel began with a very simple question: could I actually do it? I’ve always been an avid reader, particularly of thrillers, but writing one myself felt like a huge leap into the unknown. In fact, there was a twelve-month gap between first thinking about it and finally sitting down to start. Once I began, I quickly realised how much I enjoyed it. The process became surprisingly addictive, it was a case of the more I wrote, the more I started to think that perhaps I really could write a book. What Can’t Be Unseen, draws heavily on the world of medicine. What sparked the idea for the story? Like many thrillers, it started with a “what if?” question. In my work as a GP, I see many patients living with chronic pain and pain is incredibly complex; there’s the physical element, but also a significant psychological component. In medicine we often rely on medication to manage it and while those treatments can help, long-term use can bring serious side effects, including dependence and addiction. That reality led to a fictional scenario. What if someone discovered a painkiller that worked perfectly without addiction or side effects? It sounds like the perfect solution but then another question arises: what lengths might someone go to in order to create it? That idea became the foundation of the novel and ultimately takes the readers of a journey into some very dark territory. Without giving too much away, what can readers expect from the story? It’s a fast-paced thriller that explores themes which feel very relevant today. The story begins within the medical world but expands into areas where innovation, ambition and morality intersect in dangerous ways. As events unfold, the reader is drawn into the murky territory of unethical pharmaceutical practices and eventually into something even darker: human trafficking. At its heart, though, the novel is designed to keep readers turning pages while also raising questions about the ethical boundaries of medical science and the consequences when those boundaries are crossed. Tell us about the protagonist, James Harland. Who is he? James Harland is a doctor who finds himself pulled far beyond the normal boundaries of medical practice. Readers follow him as he becomes involved in a dangerous investigation that becomes deeply personal. As events escalate, he’s forced into situations that challenge his understanding of medicine, ethics and even his own character. Watching his development was one of the most rewarding aspects of writing the book. By the end of the story he has changed significantly, learning difficult lessons about the world around him and about his own strengths and weaknesses. Your medical background clearly influences the book. How much of the clinical side comes from real experience? Quite a lot of it, particularly the emotional and practical realities of medical practice. There are moments of genuine clinical action in the novel, including a scene where Harland leads a resuscitation. That chapter was one of the quickest to write because the experience felt very familiar. Situations like that are something many doctors encounter during their careers. Another aspect of medicine that influenced the story is uncertainty. In general practice you often work with incomplete information. Unlike hospital settings, you don’t always have immediate access to extensive tests or investigations, so you’re constantly piecing together small clues to form a bigger picture. Harland approaches his investigation in much the same way by connecting fragments of evidence until the truth slowly emerges. What about the other characters in the book? Are they based on real people? Not directly. However, years of practicing medicine offers a fascinating window into human behaviour. Over the years I’ve encountered an enormous range of personalities, and you begin to recognise patterns in how people respond to pressure, fear or ambition. While the characters in the novel aren’t portrayals of specific individuals, they are influenced by those observations. My aim was to create people who feel recognisable. For me, memorable characters are just as important as the plot and ideally readers finish the book wanting to meet them again and find out what happens next. Many people imagine writing a novel to be daunting. How did you find the creative
Darlene by Phillip Michael Shirley is a literary noir novella examining desire, psychiatric authority, and the quiet violence of treatment. Spare, unsettling, and morally unflinching, Darlene follows a woman recently released from psychiatric hospital as she revisits the figures who once defined her — and begins to understand how narratives are authored, erased, and inherited. Q: Where did Darlene begin for you? I always start with the beginning. That sounds obvious, but I don’t begin with a plan. My novels are largely unplanned. Their climaxes are rarely climactic. They tend to hang, unresolved — much like life itself. I’m never entirely certain of where a story is going, and I’ve come to accept that as part of the process rather than a failure of it. Q: You’ve said your work resists resolution. Why is that important to you? We’re often told that a novel should move toward an ending, that it should resolve itself in a satisfying way. I don’t recognise that. We may know that life ends, but we don’t know how or when. Why should fiction pretend otherwise? Q: Your work often seems to sit between reality and something more abstract. Is that deliberate? I tend to blur the line between reality and fantasy, yes. A critic once asked whether my last novel, The Rivers That Run Through Us, was “full of symbolism.” I resisted that idea. It’s not symbolism in any deliberate sense. It’s people — often damaged, often unstable — moving along a very narrow line between what we call sanity and what we fear lies beyond it. Q: Your writing has been described as unusual, even erratic. Do you recognise that? I’ve been described as elusive, strange, and often erratic. That may be fair. I’ve experienced extremes — breakdowns and moments of clarity, poverty and comparative comfort — and I suspect those things find their way into the work. There’s a fine line between coherence and collapse. I’ve always been interested in that line. Q: How would you describe your style? Another critic described my prose as elegant and my narrative compelling. I would say I’ve found my style in a kind of stylised carelessness — allowing the work to breathe without over-determining it. I’m not a conventional novelist, and I’ve never tried to be one. Q: You came to fiction relatively late. Did that shape the work? Yes. In fiction terms I’m a late arrival. I started writing at eighteen as a journalist and worked across a wide range of publications, but I didn’t publish a novel until much later. By then, whatever voice I had was already formed — or perhaps fractured — by experience. Q: You’ve spoken before about difficult periods in your life. Did those influence Darlene? I came to fiction, in part, through a period of personal collapse — a self-medicated breakdown, if one were to be precise. It wasn’t something I set out to use, but it became foundational. Not in terms of content, but in how I look at things. How I approach what doesn’t easily make sense. Q: What kind of book is Darlene? It’s not a conventional narrative. It doesn’t offer resolution. It observes rather than concludes. It places a character within systems — medical, institutional, relational — that attempt to define her, and then quietly exposes the limits of those definitions. Q: What interests you most in that space? Proximity. How close we can come to understanding something without reducing it. I’m not interested in simplifying the darker aspects of human experience. Nor in redeeming them. Just in looking at them directly. Q: What should readers expect from the novel? I don’t think in those terms, really. I would only say that I’m not simple, and neither are my novels. Darlene doesn’t attempt to resolve that. In this outstanding novella we get a sense of how the author’s former work had rattled the composure of publishing professionals. I suggest ultimately to their loss. Readers themselves deserve the choice to be uneasy. From disturbance and disruption of equilibrium more complex and interesting concepts emerge. Darlene will be published this summer by Foreshore Books, an imprint of Foreshore Publishing. The novella features a foreword by acclaimed author and Professor of Psychology, Paula Nicolson. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Phillip Michael Shirley was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1965 and lives in London. His work migrates between narrative urgency and a stark, often elemental sense of place and human consequence. Early in his career he was a journalist; later he became an author with HarperCollins. His first book, Miracles Can Happen, was published in 1996, but it was The Soul of Boxing – longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year – which definitively established his reputation in 1999. His other nonfiction work includes Blood and Thunder: The Unofficial Biography of Jonah Lomu, Deadly Obsessions: Life and Death in Formula One and the widely acclaimed Where Is The Winning Post, the biography of Mikie Heaton-Ellis. In fiction he has explored mythic and unsettling terrain: The Rivers That Run Through Us has been described as sometimes surreal, starkly violent and astonishing in its narrative force, earning strong reader praise for its vivid and unflinching vision.
