Earlier this year, Deputy Editor Niamh Devereux spoke with the Irish author, whose novel All Her Fault is soon to be the TV show you can’t stop talking about
For most of us, there will come a time in life where we are presented with a fork in the road; a moment when we are forced into making a decision that scares us, or to take a risk – with no promise that it will pay off.
For Andrea Mara, that moment arrived in 2015, when she received disorienting news: after 17 years of working in financial services, she was offered either redeployment to Luxembourg or redundancy. Out of her limited options, she chose the latter.
After a period of soul-searching, she realised that this curveball could in fact be an opportunity to live out a dream; to write for a living, something she never thought possible before. Using her redundancy payment as a cushion, Andrea set out on a daunting, albeit thrilling, new chapter, and three years later, on the eve of her 43th birthday, her first book was published.
Now, a decade on from that ‘sliding doors’ moment, she is a bestselling author, having recently launched her eighth novel It Should Have Been You, which is nominated for An Post Irish Book Awards for Crime Novel of the Year. Another book, All Her Fault, has been adapted for a TV show starring Sarah Snook and Dakota Fanning – with rave reviews across the pond, it airs in Ireland 6 November on Sky Atlantic and NOW. It’s safe to say that the risk paid off.
Setting the scene
Of course, like most success stories, Andrea’s didn’t begin overnight. The Dublin woman – who grew up in Co Cork – had long held a passion for writing, although she held the belief it wasn’t a stable job option for her. Instead, she took it up on the side of her long-held financial role. Two years before she was let go, she set up a blog.
“I was just after having my third child, and I didn’t understand how we were all supposed to maintain demanding full-time jobs, and bringing up children, and managing childcare, and so I began to type it all down on my laptop once I got the kids to bed at night,” she says. “Ironically, I had called the blog Office Mum and when I lost my job, I didn’t have an office anymore!”
She kept her “office clothes” in the attic just in case her writing venture didn’t go to plan and she had to look for a similar role, and set herself a six-month target to see how freelance writing would go. “When the six months was up, I realised that I was deep in the middle of deadlines and I thought, well OK, I’ll keep going,” she says.
Chance encounter
As for how she transformed articles into chart-topping psychological thrillers, it all began with a comment on social media. “I posted my blog posts to Facebook, and underneath one of them I got a comment from a woman called Margaret Scott saying that I should write a book. I didn’t know at the time that she was an author. It was like she gave me the permission I needed to pursue it. I had the stories in my head, but it again, it was something I had ruled out for myself.
“When she said that, I started writing the first line of what eventually – two years later – became my first book. I remember messaging Margaret saying, ‘I wrote 2000 words!’ and she replied, ‘Cool, now you’ve 99,000 to go.” Andrea laughs.
“It’s funny, I remember when I got a book deal and told my husband, he got champagne to celebrate and I said no – that I still had to write the book. When I finished writing it, he went to open it and I said no, the editor might not like it. It went on like that until it was out and people could read it, and I did not want to open that champagne until I heard what they thought.”
She continues: “Now, my mindset has completely changed. You can’t wait to celebrate how other people respond to what you’ve done, you celebrate the achievement of doing it. If I even finish a draft now, I’ll open – well, it’s probably more likely to be cava than champagne, but the point stands!”
Next chapter
So far, Andrea’s novels have sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Her newest domestic thriller, full of her signature twists and turns, tells the story of a woman who accidentally sends a loaded message into the neighbourhood WhatsApp group, causing chaos in suburbia.
“I’m probably a bit over-conscious about the knock-on effect of anything I do,” Andrea says. “My brain always goes to that ‘what if’ moment. Anything I do, I think about what the outcome could end up as. So, I love exploring that in my stories and what the consequences of our actions can be.”
One exciting consequence of Andrea’s decision to pursue a career as a novelist is the aforementioned TV series. US streaming service Peacock began production on the adaptation of All Her Fault last August, with Succession star Snook both starring in and executively producing the series. As well as Fanning, it also stars award-winning actor Michael Peña and The Bear’s Abby Elliot. The plotline, about a mother who arrives to pick her son up from a playdate only to have a woman she doesn’t recognise open the door, with no idea where her son is, is chilling and utterly gripping.
“It’s mad, the character in the next book I’m working on is called Siobhán, after Shiv Roy [in Succession] and that was before I found out the casting news,” Andrea beams. “They were filming it over in Melbourne, so I went over last October to visit the set, which was surreal and very, very exciting.” The author attended the New York premiere of the series this week, which she posted about on social media – it was a window into seeing someone’s dream come true.
I wonder how it feels for Andrea to reflect. If she could go back a decade, to that earlier version of herself standing at the fork in the road, what would she tell her?
“In a weird way, I probably wouldn’t say anything,” she muses. “Part of the reason it worked for me, I think, is because I was so motivated to make it work, since I really didn’t know if it would. So, in a way, the worry sustained me and made me all the more determined.
“I always try to pay forward that moment Margaret gave me. I will always tell people to just go for it, just write; after all, you can’t do anything with a blank page. Don’t wait for anyone else – give yourself permission.”
With thanks to Penguin Randomhouse and The Chancery Hotel, Dublin
