Authors Electric

 And no, for once I don't mean Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. (Although he is one.) The Swan Inn, Newport, Shropshire - for credit, follow link.     In my blog last month , I told of jaw-dropping deceptions. My latest book, Bad Girl, features just such a conscience-free liar and I wanted to demonstrate that I wasn’t, entirely, making it up. (Though, obviously, some of it...) Bad Girl by Susan Price People fall for these enormous lies precisely because they can't believe them. They think, 'No one could expect to get away with a lie as unlikely, brazen and ridiculous as that. So it must be true.'  If you want a lie to be believed, make it a big one. This month’s despicable scammer was born Robert Freegard but adopted the posh double-barrelled surname ‘Hendy-Freegard’, as becomes a con-artist. I’m not going to pander to his pretensions, so I shall refer to him as ‘Freegard.’ In 1992, Freegard worked in Newport, Shropshire, as a barman in The Swan. Three st...

My three Sterkarm books have many adult readers but they were originally written and published as Young Adult. Bad Girl by Susan Price   Bad Girl is the first novel I’ve written with an adult audience always in mind. A friend said she loved its 'audacious' plotting but kept thinking: ‘That wouldn’t happen. Nobody would do that.’ Every time she thought this, she told me, there followed several minutes of thought, at the end of which she had to admit that it could happen. She just found it hard to believe. Consider this blog a public service, then, because the events in Bad Girl are actually very plausible. Chillingly plausible. I did my research. Let me put this unhappy scenario before you, while hoping that it never comes to pass: A member of your family— a daughter, a niece, a cousin— reveals that she has terminal cancer. She’s broke but desperately wants to take her child to Disneyland before she dies, to leave the child with one lovely, happy memory. Yo...