Lucy Hooft – Why taking a break with short stories can be helpful

This week we chat to Lucy Hooft. She’s had an incredible, interesting career travelling the world. She worked in the UK’s Foreign Office and for the Department of International Development, going to work for HRH Queen Rania of Jordan.

Lucy has taken her experience in geopolitics and written her first spy thriller. It’s called ‘The King’s Pawn’ and is the first of the Sarah Black series, that looks at a young, female spy. Lucy has planned 5. We talk about planning so much before you even have a contract – did she feel guilty for devoting time to unpaid work?

It’s inspired by a real life event no-one has heard of, and takes place around the South Caucus region, which few people know about.

We chat about why her genre demands concision, how it started with writing games to fend off baby brain, and why writing flash fiction helps with full-blown novels.

You can also hear why she has started to structure her books like a Netflix mini-series, and how that’s really helped with the plotting.

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