Bookwild - A Con Woman, A Wealthy Woman, and a Dead Husband: Rebecca Sharpe's Harmless Women

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

In this episode, I talk with Rebecca Sharpe about her debut con-thriller Harmless Women.   Listen to hear about: Rebecca's long, bumpy publishing journey How the book explores the way society underestimates women, and how that perception can be both a vulnerability and a weapon How Rebecca's fluid, character-driven writing process focuses on emotional pacing, moral complexity, and letting the story evolve organically rather than rigid outlining Harmless Women Synopsis Avalon Dale is a masterful grifter. She researches her victims thoroughly, kidnaps and sedates them, cleans out their bank accounts, and uses injections and hair clippers to change their appearance so that when they wake up, they can't easily prove who they are. It gives her a head start and a new identity to get away. She's targeted Primrose Meath for her last big score, and then she'll fade away to a life of ease and luxury--something she's dreamed of since a very tough childhood. On paper, Prim is the perfect wealthy, workaholic, and distracted by her cheating husband. But when Avalon finds Prim's husband dead, she can't get away so easily--not when she's been mistaken for Prim who's now wanted for murder. The two women, opposites, enemies, are suddenly on the run together, and must learn to get along, to depend on each other, in order to get away. And then, what starts as a cat-and-mouse run to the coast of England becomes a fight for their survival. Check Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackGet Bookwild MerchFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrianMacKenzie Green @missusa2mba 

This week I got to talk with Rebecca Sharp about her debut thriller, Harmless Women. It is a female con thriller, so you know that I was intrigued from the start. And it was really fun talking to her about creating this world that these two characters lived in. This is what it's about. Master Grifter Avalon plans one final con targeting wealthy Prim Rose. But everything unravels when Prim's husband is found murdered and Avalon is mistaken for her victim. forced on the run together the two women enemies turned uneasy allies must rely on each other to survive as the con spirals into a deadly fight for freedom if you happen to watch the peacock show ponies uh it was a play on like person of no interest

and how these women in the soviet era russia no one assumes that they could do anything because they're women And the title is so similar to this book that is literally called harmless women. And I loved how Rebecca played with that. That in some cases, it can actually be beneficial that no one assumes a woman could cause any harm. So that being said, let's hear from Rebecca. Well, I am super excited to talk about harmless women, but I do also like to get to know a little bit about you at the beginning. So what has your journey to writing been or like when did you first have an idea? Did you always want to be a writer?

How did it play out for you? It's been like the bumpiest ride imaginable in terms of getting from wanted to be a writer to being like a published author. It's been a really bumpy ride. I'm one of those people that's always wanted to be a writer ever since I knew it was a thing. Like ever since I realized that these books I was reading as a kid. were actually written by people and that there are these people in the world and that's all they do. I was like, well, that's me then. That's me done. And then I've written my whole life.

I used to, like, I lived in the library when I was a teenager. I used to write stories and then like little novellas that had all my friends in them. And it just progressed from there. And so I went to, I just always had this vision of writing a book. And I tried doing other stuff, but I was the nightmare employee in any job I tried to hold that wasn't doing writing, because I would be there and I'd have like two screens open and one's going to be my job. And another screen would be just stories I was writing in my spare time. So I got very little work done that got some really good ideas down. So the idea was always there. The confidence was kind of an issue.

I yeah in my certainly in my early 20s mid-20s I don't know if I had the confidence to send my stuff out yet and then the change in that was really after I had I had my kids in my late 20s and after my second son I suffered really badly from postnatal depression so part of the therapy I had for that was really creative based so I had this really wonderful therapist of time that you know just just try to find that joy in life again, just do as much creative stuff as you can. You're like paint, do sculpting, and like if you can write, write.

And I did everything else but right. And then it was my dad at the end who kind of pulled me aside. When I was kind of on the road to recovery, he pulled me aside and said, I really think you need to start writing again. So I did. So I know. So he's a good dad.

Lots of, loads of, I know lots of writers or lots of people in the creative industries who haven't necessarily had to support from their family, but I've been very lucky that they've kind of understood how important it is to me to write and they've never stood in my way. They've always been like my biggest cheerleaders, which is really important in a job like that. So then, and I was super naive. I thought, great, I'm going to write a book and it'll get published straight away and then that'll be me done for the rest of my life. So that was 13 years ago. Yeah. So I wrote this, this book. And in many ways I've been lucky than most. I got an agent pretty quickly. I got picked up by a publisher in the UK. And it was all going smoothly.

It was a two book deal. It was all going smoothly a week before my first book was set to be published my editor, my marketing person, and my publicity manager all left. So I was stranded in this contract with no one to push my work. So I wrote the books and they were published, but they really had no one to even like introduce them to market. Like you couldn't go into a shop and buy one of my books. So that was really, really, really. heartening. So I picked myself up. I tried again. I wrote another book in, this is sort of just before lockdown. I wrote another book. My agent at the time didn't like it. And she said, you've got two choices. You can either write, stick with me as an agent and write me another book. Or you can

stick with this book and find yourself another agent. And that's no, that's not a position any writer really wants to find themselves in. But I had real, I had real faith in the book I'd written. So I left my agents. I went back on submission, back through join the slush pile. And then again, I was very, very lucky. I got picked up very quickly. I then got a publishing, another publishing deal and I thought this time this time is the one it's going to do it this time and then I went through the first round of edits of my editor and she left so she left to go and join another I know it's ridiculous and so the same kind of thing happened again not to not to the same extent but right I didn't really it's hard people just kept leaving I'm trying to tell myself it's not

me, but you know, and then the other part of my head then was because I had changed agent and changed publisher and the book I'd written at the time was different to the books I'd written at the beginning, they wanted to give me a fresh start. So we chose a new name. And unfortunately for me, someone else also chose that exact same name, which is Rebecca Thorne. So do you know, Rebecca Thorne who wrote, you can't spell treason without tea? Like a romantic fantasy writer? I haven't read it. No, so she's super, super popular.

She's done really well. And if you're looking for a good romantic book to read, I highly recommend it. But it was felt that, especially in the UK market, readers would get confused with their two Rebecca Thorns. So when it came to renewal, they were like, sorry, we're not, we're going to, we're not going to, we're not, going to push another Rebecca thorn so I was oh my I was just this is why me by

Bumpy it was insane so after that yeah I thought like a like third time lucky I had totally lost faith by that stage in the UK publishing market so I came over to the States and wrote another book I was again super lucky I got picked up by absolutely fantastic US agents and this time It has been first time lucky. The book's gone out. No one has left. There are no other Rebecca Sharp writing in this framework. So it's all going well. But yeah, it's been, you know, you sometimes hear people say like an overnight success made in 10 years. It feels a little like that. Yes. Yeah. That, I mean, that is more than just a bumpy road. But I do think it's

it's really helpful for some people to hear what it's really like uh because yours is definitely bumpier than most of the stories i've heard but it's not like uh it's not like oh i wrote i wrote a book i loved it it was great and like i got published the next year like that's typically never the case that's such a rare story for that to happen yeah it is i i do love um that you just kept with it though, and that it started so long ago, but at least now we're getting to read this one. So I'm assuming you've written quite a few books, even ones that were and weren't published along that journey. How did your writing process develop? Like, how do you typically approach an idea? I think there's two things I've realized about the writing process along

the last few years. The first one is, when I had that first publishing contract way back years and years ago, I was writing what I thought other people wanted to read, which I think is a common trap that new writers often fall into. Instead of sitting down and thinking, I want to write a book for myself or I want to write a story that I really believe in, I look to the market and I thought what's selling well, what's going to be, what is likely to give me some kind of security. And it's such the wrong way to go about it. So I think that it can be really tempting, especially if you see other people have success, you want to kind of emulate that. And you've kind of got to fight against the urge to write what other people are writing and just sit down and write what's

true for you. And the second part I've learned is there's no real right or wrong way to do it. I've usually had a technique where I'll have an idea either of an ending or a beginning. and it'll be a really clear scene in my head. It'll usually have characters that are really clear. And then I go from there. So I think if it's the ending, so with harmless women, it was the ending.

It was that final scene, which is called quite a lot of controversy from people who've read the book. That kind of final, final scene was the one that I had in my head. I thought, well, how can I get to this point? And then I had the idea almost alongside it. almost as if I had two books in my head and I suddenly realized I don't need to have two books, I can join them together. Because as well as having this idea about that ending, we had those two them together, I thought, I just had this like this image of a female con artist thief

and a hit that goes wrong. You know, that, that in the really early stages of the book, in the very, very first draft, I had it where Avalon turned up, she was more like a house, robber than a, the con man she is now. She turned up at Prim's house to kind of rob it and went into her kitchen, opened the fridge because she has always been obsessed with food. Open the fridge and there was Prim's husband's head like in the fridge. That didn't stay. Like it's changed from there because I just couldn't, I just couldn't work it. But so I had that kind of idea and then the final idea. And then I just kind of try to knit them together. And it's a little bit like writing. with the tide you'll you'll you'll write a bit and then you'll have to go back and

neaten it all up and then you write a bit more and go back and even it all up until you have something that's really cohesive and sticks together yeah so you pretty much um but you didn't you don't necessarily like outline everything you kind of just like go go with like what's coming to you yeah i just go the flow i i try to write a first draft before i go back and edit anything but uh okay i get i kind of get bored if i play it if I plan it all out I just get really bored because I feel like I've already done it. So the most our plan is maybe two or three tracks in advance. So I've got some forward momentum I can understand where the characters need to get to.

But I don't really like planning. Yeah. That's okay. It's whatever, however you finish a book is how you finish a book. I do, I loved both of the characters. Avalon and Prim, you were kind of talking about both of them. And so it sounds like that final scene is kind of what started it all for you. Did you do anything to get to know each of them before you started writing with them? Or did you kind of get to know them as you wrote? With Prim, I got to know Prim as I wrote her. She came very quite naturally though and she didn't

require too much honing as a character. I think as a character, she's kind of easier to write this woman who's kind of been driven by money, does everything that she thinks she should do to have a successful life, thinks very much about the people around her and the pressures from family, from husband to go off and make as much money as possible. So she was kind of easier.

Avalon was more challenging. It's really, the main challenge with her was the fact that from the outset, from the minute you meet her, you know she's capable of doing some really, really dark things. and she's also a total loner. So for her, I had to work out what Prim needed to do to get Avalon to open up.

And I also need to find a way to make readers kind of like her. Or if not necessarily like her, align themselves with her enough to carry through the book. So the two things I used then was one, humor. my daughter, I've got a 15-year-old daughter, and she's very, very funny. She has a lot of humour, which has got a real dry sense of humour. So I borrowed that heavily for Avalon. Yeah.

And also those kind of those vulnerabilities. Avalon's life was, I mean, she's, Avon was a kid from care, and she had a very, very rough, rough teenage, kind of adolescence. and there were some pivotal things that happened to when she was about 17 and that's not too far off my daughter's age so I can kind of see those where those teenage vulnerabilities lie and I use those a lot to yeah to soften her and yeah yeah I really enjoyed that part that we get like we get a lot of her backstory and I feel like not that I haven't read con thrillers with men that I enjoyed. But I think it's kind of, it felt like there was still a little bit more feminine energy in it in the sense that we were like really getting to understand their motivations on like a deeper level. And I like, I really enjoyed that part of it. And the title, we're kind of talking about how they're two, it's two women. And the title harmless women is kind of fun and it was reminding me I recently watched ponies. Okay. Um, on peacock. And it's a person of interest is

P-O-I and then person of no interest is P-O-N-I. So it's these two women whose husbands were spies. And all of a sudden like that because their husbands die, they're like in Russia in like I think the 80s. And basically they get an opportunity where they're like no one suspects women of things like do you want to do you want to help a little bit so it was reminding me of like both of those titles that are like playing with how underestimated women are yeah so was that kind of like always in your head as you were writing it yeah absolutely uh that was always in my head alongside how women are presented in the media when something happens so it's always like oh they were so sweet she lit up a room especially when women are victims of any form of crime

You know, she was so selfless. She was really caring. And I think like, it's, I'm so bored of that narrative. I'm so sick of seeing in the media. That all is notable to write about women when anything happens is how sweet and kind and selfless they were. And that's definitely not always the case. Like there are very few women in my life who I've described once that adults as being sweet. And so yeah, it was definitely play on that.

This idea that women kind of move through the world being seen as this kind of benign, relatively boring force. Yeah. But you can also use that. And there are many women who do. Like you will use that image to hide behind. It's like a mask. You can hide behind it. You can do all sorts of stuff because you'll never be suspected.

Right. Yeah, so it was good fun saying about it. Yeah, I really, I really enjoyed it with both of them. The other thing that's like really fun about this story and a little bit scary to think about is part of how Avalon operates is that she kind of like steals people's identities. And the way that she like safeguards herself is like shaving their hair and like performing some versions of like plastic. surgery to make them look totally different so that they can't even prove their identity. And I couldn't believe that I, it's so far, I've never encountered that approach and I thought it was so smart. So where did like that idea come from? That idea came from a really harrowing story I read

years ago about a gang who would do something similar but much darker. So they would go in and basically like chop your hands off or pull all your, pull the really brutal. beat someone to a pop so you couldn't recognize them anymore. And I thought what would be really interesting and I think how women would really respond to that isn't necessarily the violence, it's more changing. It's recognizing why you were doing it and doing it differently. Again, so you can kind of go below the radar.

And what works, she does the, she has a hit a few years before she targets prim, where there's a guy in France, the Parisian guy who she lures to the Alps with the promise that she pretends to be an ex-pay boy bunny, she doesn't give him ski lessons. And she does the same thing to him. So she shows his head, does his eyebrows, gives him huge lips, really big, prominent cheekbones. And the beauty then is he's so embarrassed. He doesn't tell anyone. So for her, it works on two levels.

One, it's not violent because she's also quite a small person. that she doesn't have that kind of brute force that men do. But also, it's more underhand. So it would be really difficult for you to kind of, as a victim, it would take an extra layer of courage to be able to go to the police and say, I fell for this and now look at me. So she uses it again to an advantage. It's just, I couldn't ever see her being hugely violent unless she has to be.

And. Right. And for her as well, it's survival. I mean, when you look at gangs who commit cons or mainly other men, a lot of the time, who commit cons, it's less about survival and more about greed. They just want to get as much money as they can to live this kind of lifestyle that they want to live. Whereas with Avalon, she feels trapped. She feels like she's got very few options to actually,

she doesn't feel safe in the world as a part of society. and that most people feel. And she just wants to survive. She just wants to get enough money so she feels safe. But her problem is no matter how much money she has, she never feels safe. Yeah. Yeah, she's got a lot. She's trying to like force control on her life so that it feels safer, basically.

Did you do any, like, research? It sounds like that kind of came from like an article. that you read. Did you do any research about like con women, con men or spies or any of that stuff as well for this? Yeah, I did. I had, I was very lucky to meet one of the guys who heads up the cybercrime for Barclays Bank. And he was great. He gave me so much information and loads and loads of stories. And the thing that I took from those conversations the most is actually how easy it is to steal money like cyber crime is actually not even that complicated anyone can do it anyone in the world could do it we just choose not to we have we all have this like moral compass right but

yeah like it was it shocked me how easy it is how plausible it is and um and the tech is out there for any like anyone could guess it's just most people don't want to most people are happy living um you know law-abiding lives. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. It is a little crazy to think about, especially, like, I don't know, we're getting in America so many more spam texts.

Like, and they just, like, disguise it so well. Yeah. That, like, especially people, like, 50s, 60s, like some of people who aren't as used to technology, they're like, oh, my gosh. this is like my bank calling and they say that I'm locked out and I have to do something. So it is. It's a little bit crazy when you actually think about like you're saying, quote unquote,

how easy it could actually be to do that. Yeah. I mean, it's time consuming. I suppose that's the other thing. We don't all have loads of hours to set up all this fake tech, set up all these fake accounts and go in and do it. But yeah, it is easy. Like, scare it easy.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. So there are, there are some like very actiony scenes as well. And I'm always intrigued by how authors write it because I feel like when it's a movie, it can be like just shown so much differently. So do you have any approach to like writing the really like more physical action scenes? So with the physical action scenes, those again, I mean, I said earlier about how it's kind of like writing with the tide. You go and you write, you come back, and you write a bit more. With those scenes, what I find it really helpful is I will go in and I will write it almost like a skeletal draft. I'll think, I'll know what I want to happen. It's going to be this, this, this. Then I'll go away and I'll come back to him and think, well, how do I want the reader to feel going into that scene? how do I want them to feel coming out of that scene?

Where are the key points where I want to build tension? Where do I really want to let rip and just show action? Where is there going to be an emotional layer? And then that helps me with the kind of framework of filling it out and kind of putting the meat on the bones of the prose. So I will go back several times. And what really helps is having a break from it. So I will go in and spend it.

maybe a day writing that scene, I will go away and spend a couple of weeks doing other stuff within the book and then I'll come back because those ones where where pace and emotion are so kind of intrinsic to the success of a scene, you can't rush it, but it's also very easy to become like blind to the problems if you spend, spend too long reading or reading. So I find it really helpful to take a break and then go back in the fresh eyes. And then I can respond to it more naturally myself as well. I can think, well, if I'm rereading it now, is my heart rate going up or am I feeling emotional? Do I feel connected to the characters or do we feel alienated from them?

But then I have to be that that sort of middle scene with Avalon and Prim in the woods. I had put so much my daughter into Avalon, that scene was hard. That was really, really hard to write. I had to come back and give myself a lot of space to write that. Yeah. To write that section. That makes sense. Like, yeah, when there's so much of someone you actually know in it, the other thing, too, that I noticed or that it had me thinking about is for both women, I'm being vague for the sake of spoilers. There's kind of like maybe they did quote unquote bad things, but it was for survival or for like desperation because of certain certain things that were really outside of their control as

well. And I really like characters that like explore that part where we're like kind of like thinking like crimes of desperation are very different than kind of what you were even saying like gangs like crimes of like pure greed. So how did you kind of like balance incorporating all of that into the story too? I think so something that happened when I was writing a book. I write a book coming out of lockdown. I wrote the kind of first draft in 2022 and I'm in the UK so I was writing in England. And there was a case that happened in 2021 where a young woman called Sarah Everard was murdered. And she was murdered by a police officer. And it was during that time of COVID,

sorry to drag everyone back to those dark times of COVID. In the UK, we've gone into lockdown. And when lockdown was lifted, there's a sense of hope. Like we were all going to have this freedom again. And almost as soon as people were let out, we had a case where a young woman was murdered by a man. And it was this feeling of, well, there are certain people in society who will always be safe, but it's not going to be young women, like young women walking on their own. Yeah. And it just, I mean, it devastated me.

It devastated every single woman, I think, in this country. when that came out. So when I went into writing this, that was already kind of an in-playing in my mind. And then in 2022, it was the court case for the man who murdered her. And when the trial was over and they released some of the evidence to the press, there was the last time that Sarah Evard was seen alive on CCTV. And you see her being lured into this guy's car.

And everyone watching that knew exactly what was going to happen to her. Like you all knew. And you knew by the stage that that was released to the press, we'd had a year of all the evidence going through trial. And we'd seen her mom and her sisters talking to the press. And it was just you could see the heartbreak on anyone who spoke about it, anyone who's affected by it. It was absolutely brutal.

And then alongside it, there was this. feeling, especially of watching that CCTV footage, this desperation that I just wish I was there. I wish I'd been there. And so many other women who, no, I've never met Sarah Everard. I don't, no one in my circle I'd ever met her, but we all had this really strong feeling. We just had enough. And if, if we had been there with what we knew was going to happen, we would have got her out. And it was, it was just that, that feeling of wanting to save them, and really wishing that she hadn't been alone and that she'd had someone to stand by her. And so that really affected me.

And I took it into the book and I just thought that, you know, it could have been Sarah Everard's worst enemy. You know, it could have been her bully from high school. And Sarah Everard would have come out of that situation alive. Right. So when I had Prim and Avalon, I thought they were going to be, if it's two women making their way across country on their own, whether they get on or not, whether they like each other or not, they will stick up for each other.

And you see that, you see that happens several times. But it was really important for me to, yeah, to include that. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. We do have to stand up for each other, even if we don't like everything about each other. Yeah. Which is definitely the case between Avalon. And they also, oh, I just lost my train and thought completely. Where did it go?

Oh, so the pacing, too, we were in the present and I kind of mentioned like also then we get these like back stories where it kind of goes back in time as well. And so we're getting like different information at different times. And I think it like adds to the suspense too or like you're just about to find something out in the past and then like you're back in the present. So was that did you write it linearly and then figure out how to stagger the chapters or were you like writing and you're like, okay, now it's time to go back to the past? It was with Avalon. It was I wrote it as it came to me. I did in later drafts.

I did restruct the chapter slightly to make sure that the key information came at the right point for which you most affected for the reader. But when I was writing in those early drafts, I just kind of write it as well natural. And when you look back on Avalon's past, you see things that one makes sense to the Prim's storyline. and then you also see things that make a lot of sense to Avalon storyline. And there is this thing that she's always kind of running from that happened in her past. And the further, it's like the further back she goes, she can go, she can think up to a certain point in her past and then can't think of any, and it can't let herself remember any further back.

And then there's a moment where she finally does allow herself to do it back. there with prim. And then that's kind of the end of her flashbacks when she's finally able to get to address her past in a place where she feels supported if not safe. That's when she can kind of stop living so much in her past and can look forward and make the most of the present. Yeah, that is the cool part about, yeah, about how they like getting to know each other is technically a bit of a healing experience for both of them, even though they start off from a

really strange space. And the other thing that I think is always fun is like all the like outfits and like wigs and all of the like that that that goes along with like spy thrillers or con thrillers. So did you do anything to get like inspiration for those parts or is it kind of just like as you're writing you're like oh she's going to wear this wig this time it's one of these funny things i never noticed i never noticed wigs or um disguises at all in my life until i started writing it until i started writing i saw them everywhere yeah and there were tv shows there were um like podcasts there were articles uh i drove as doing like i was driving up to the north of england and i just drove past like truck stop which had a

costume shop in it. I was like that's wild. It was really weird. I mean, I can imagine the kind of costume shop you get in a truck stop, but it suddenly seemed as they were they were everywhere. And that sometimes happens when your focus is somewhere, you start to open your eyes to everything else that's linked to it in your existing life. And yeah, and that was just great fun. I think that if you're, the thing that Avalon does by shaving her head and keeping her own facial feature super neutral is it gives her great license to be anywhere. And we see that when she's living in Geneva, she has various like personas that she uses. And again, you know, it's literally a physical mask, but it's also that kind of metaphorical much she can hide behind these other identities. And she can go into the world feeling a little bit safer knowing that she's not being her.

But yeah, it was great fun. Yeah. It was really good fun. Yeah. With all of the, you mentioned you wrote lots of books previously. And so I'm not sure if those were mysteries, thrillers as well. But is there something that draws you to writing in the kind of mystery thriller arena, at least for this one? They've all been mysteries.

This one is probably the least traditional mystery. In the past, I started to do, I started off doing psychological thrillers and then moved more into kind of Gothic, a Gothic thriller space, which is why I'm most, I'm most comfortable. I really like combining the thrillers with anything that's slightly Gothic, be it atmosphere or tension or ghosts, anything like that is right up my street. Yeah. So, yeah, they've all been like this. And I think it goes back to it. I had, when I was a teenager, as I said, I spent most of my time in the library and I got really sick of books that had been written for kids. I think I read three in a row that were just really rubbish, really let me down.

So I gave myself, like, I didn't know where this weird rule came from. I wasn't going to read anything unless it had been consistently in print for at least 100 years, which took me right back to, kind of Victorian novels and 19th century, 18th century books. And I just read all of those. I just read all the classics. And they're always, there's so much Gothic mystery tied up in in that tradition of storytelling, especially kind of Victorian ghost stories. From there, I was introduced to something called sensation fiction, which was the early, stages of detective fiction and it was always like mysteries and and and often quite feminine focused mysteries and I think because I read so many of those and loved them I love that

kind of space I love the not just the historical side of it but that sense of tension and the lure of the mystery wants them to know either who'd who done it or what was going to happen. And there's a great book by Wilkie Collins called No Name, which is, it's not like a murder mystery at all. It's more like an adventure story, an adventure story told in that kind of like slightly gothic, really atmospheric way about two young women who discover when parents die, their parents were not married and therefore they've been disinherited and they're legitimate. So they go from being super, super wealthy to being destitute. And the younger of the two daughters just decides she's not going to stand for that and she goes on this like cross-country mission all on her own to get back with the family fortune. And it's great fun. Wow. So when I was

thinking of what to write for this one, that had I love the idea of, not just having a thriller but having a kind of adventure story and especially adventure story of like women having to look after themselves in the wild. That's really cool that it kind of came from that. And that's like very cool as a teenager to be like, these books aren't doing it for me. I'm only going to read books that have been in print for a hundred years. I love the you just. Yeah, I think that's the only cool thing about me of a teenager.

I definitely wasn't like, I definitely wasn't running with. Well, us bookers, yeah, it's cool. That's probably all of us. Hi, well, I love that. I similarly, I love Gothic stories. So now I'm like, well, now I want to read what your gothic stuff was. But one, no name sounds good too. I'm going to add that to my list as well.

But yeah, I love. that vibe as well those vibes are always fascinating for me but then also what you're saying I kind of started realizing kind of last year as well that like adventure probably is the word for some of the especially in like fantasy kind of like and then with con thrillers like this where it's like oh it is fun when like a character is like really going on a journey through something yeah I like the I love the idea of that journey because you have the, you see where the characters go as people as well. It's not just about going from A to B,

it's about how the journey changes them as people, how it changes their relationships with each other and with themselves, and changes how they view society as a whole and their places within it. I find really, really interesting. Yeah. And it's also kind of a nice challenge. The books I've previously written and certainly most of the books I've read, the central kind of mystery is around a murderer who done it.

And I wanted to shy away from the who done it because you know from the beginning. You know that the person doing all these things in Babylon, you'll never in doubt as to who is doing it and why. But the mystery I wanted to create more was less who done it and more how are they going to survive. Now they're in this position. How are they going to get out of it? and that was good fun. I heard yeah I heard someone say that like mystery is figuring out is like figuring out an anxiety about like what happened

and then in a broad sense thrillers are about what's going to happen and like how kind of yeah yeah and I think it doesn't apply 100% every single time but it stuck with me because I do think it's pretty close and then I think when you get like mystery thriller as like a combo for a book then you're like okay so like some stuff did happen in the past and we're really worried about what's happening in the present or the future that's really I love that I think yeah you're right it's so true it reminds it if yeah something I heard recently was that there's only ever two types of stories so all stories can kind of be boiled down to two things either a stranger arrives to town or a character goes on a journey

and that's basically all it is and I think I want to combine those two as well the stranger comes to town and then drags you on a journey and you didn't want to go off. Yes, yes. Oh, that's so true with this one. Well, I loved it.

I think everyone can tell I'm also kind of known for loving a female con thriller. So everyone who really loves those plots too, you can go you can go get your copy now however you get your copies um and i think you'll really enjoy it and yeah i i just i really loved it but um the other thing i always ask at the end is if there are any books you like always recommend or any books you read and loved recently oh there are so many um i'm reading dream state at the moment by eric cook now which is brilliant okay i've just finished reading anatomy of an alibi

by Ashley Elfton, which really good. And I'm... Oh, it's really good. Yeah, it's very, very good. I haven't read her first one, but I've now added that to my list. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. It's another common.

The first one, is it? Preparing for women to get in my own headspace, there comes a point where you have to stop reading anything else that's to do with that. so it doesn't I can delve back in now which I'm really excited about doing and then the other night I'm reading is please help me by Geitha Lodge

which is coming out later this year so that's an arc so it's coming out I think it's coming up July Ooh that's soon-ish Yeah I'm going to have to add that one then to my list too Where can people Although the other one that I can't stop recommending

And I love and I'm super excited because the next one's coming out really soon is we used to live here by Marcus Cleaver. I loved that. It's in my top three of all the time. I cannot wait for caretaker. I'm really excited. I know. And I actually got to interview him, but it doesn't come out until April 21st.

But I did get to interview him about the caretaker. really enjoyed that one too. Yeah, I've got that on my list and I've, I've pre-ordered that, so it's going to come to me as soon as it's out. Yeah, it is fantastic. He's just like the way he writes creepy stuff is so engaging. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Well, where can people follow you to stay up to date with everything? You're writing? So Instagram is probably the best place. Rebecca Sharp author is my tag. And yeah, all updates will be on there. And, yeah, all updates will be on there. it's uh yeah harmas woman's out now so you should be able to get it in any any good bookshop yes yes you guys do need to go get it and then you can DM either of us and tell us how much you loved it but thank you so much for coming on and talking about it pleasure