LISTEN: Irish crime writer takes aim at the wicked stepmother myth in gripping new thriller

Eleven novels into her career, Irish crime writer Sheila Bugler still sits down at her desk with no idea what the next chapter holds, or even the next word. Speaking on the Irish books podcast Natter with Kate and Michelle, the Ballinasloe native discussed her latest psychological thriller "The Stepmother", which turns one of fiction's most enduring and misogynistic tropes on its head.

Crime writer Sheila Bugler has published eleven novels, but she still sits down to write without knowing what is going to happen next.

Since she published her first novel, "Hunting Shadows," in 2013, Bugler says the way she writes has not changed all that much. She is still not a plotter and has to "write my way into the story". Her publisher will usually get a one- or two-page synopsis, but beyond that, there can be very little mapped out in advance.

“I will sit down this afternoon to work on my next novel, and I will literally have no clue what that chapter is, or what’s going to happen in that chapter, and that’s the only way I can write. Often I don’t even know what the next word is going to be.”

While she admits it can be "terrifying" to write like this, it clearly works for her as she gradually begins to discover the shape of her story over a number of drafts.

The Ballinasloe-born author, whose latest psychological thriller "The Stepmother" has just been released, joined the Irish books podcast Natter with Kate and Michelle to talk about her writing life, her long and at times rocky publishing journey, and the pull Ireland still has on her after many years living in England.

Bugler’s debut, "Hunting Shadows", was published in 2013, the first in her DI Ellen Kelly series. She published three books in that series before moving on to her second series featuring journalist Dee Doran, and then into stand-alone thrillers. 

"The Stepmother," a psychological thriller that has just been released, is her 11th published book and has a premise designed to hook readers straight away. Protagonist Sarah goes to collect the two children she has helped raise for six years from school, only to find they are not there. Their father, her partner Mike, has taken them out of school without telling her. Then she gets a message from him: “Don’t go home. It’s not safe.” After that, she hears nothing.

As Bugler explains, Sarah adores the children and sees them as her own.

“They are in every way, apart from the fact she didn’t give birth to them, they’re her children.”

But Sarah and Mike are not married, and she has never legally adopted them, leaving her in an extremely difficult position when they disappear.

The book gave Bugler the chance to play with the old idea of the wicked stepmother, which she describes as “a very kind of misogynistic kind of myth.”

Parenthood comes up often in Bugler’s work, something she links closely to her own experience. She began writing seriously after the birth of her second child and says becoming a mother made her very aware of just how much responsibility comes with raising children.

“Loving your children is the easy bit,” she remarks. “Actually, parenting them in the right way, nobody tells you how to do that right.”

Like so many working mothers, she remembers constantly feeling that she was falling short somewhere. “I just lived with the constant guilt of not doing any of it right.”

Bugler studied psychology at University College Galway, and says it is less the qualification itself that feeds into her writing and more the curiosity that made her study the subject in the first place.

“I think I’m just intrinsically fascinated by people, by our motivations and how people are able to lie to themselves about their reasons for doing things. All of us do things that are bad, but we justify them to ourselves to such an amazing extent. I find all of that fascinating.”

That helps explain why the women in her books are rarely neat, uncomplicated characters, but have no shortage of contradictions, weaknesses, and faults.

“I’m not a big fan in my own writing of the kind of woman as victim in a crime novel or the really good woman to whom bad things happen,” she says.

“I love women. I love all my girlfriends, all my women friends, and they’re all complicated and flawed. I'm massively flawed. And it’s so much more fun to write women who are flawed and to show that three-dimensional woman who has good and bad in her.”

Bugler describes herself as a “reluctant emigrant”. Now living in East Sussex, she has spent longer outside Ireland than she has lived here, but the pull of home remains powerful. For years, she wanted to set a novel in Ireland and found herself unable to do it.

Finally, with her tenth novel, "Dark Road Home", she broke through that emotional barrier. Set in County Clare, where her father was from and where Bugler spent childhood summers, it became the book she feels closest to emotionally.

She still has deep affection too for Ballinasloe, the East Galway town where she grew up, recalling childhood sweet shops, family memories, and the particular sense of safety that certain places retain long after we have left them. Perhaps that is why Bugler’s books, even at their darkest, are ultimately about more than crime but about families, belonging, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to live with the choices we make.

Sheila Bugler was speaking to writer friends Kate Durrant and Michelle McDonagh on the books podcast Natter with Kate and Michelle, produced in association with Bookstation, Ireland’s fastest-growing and best-value bookseller, and IrishCentral. You can buy her new book "The Stepmother" at Bookstation.

Listen to Sheila’s interview on Natter with Kate and Michelle now at Acast or on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to follow us on Instagram @natterwithkateandmichelle or Facebook.

Listen to the full interview with Sheila Bulger here: