They say never work with animals and children - but what about working with your other half? For the last 14 years, husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French have been creating taut psychological thrillers together under the pseudonym of Nicci French.
Of course there are arguments, laughs Gerrard, a petite, elegant woman who exudes warmth, while her husband nods in good-natured agreement. But the spats aren't about egos or whose bit is better crafted.
“There's not a power struggle over the writing,” says Gerrard (53).
“We trust each other. It's not an egotistical, jangling activity. So we don't shout at each other about changing tone or direction. We argue about leaving dirty socks in the corner of the room!”
French adds: “People think what a strange thing it is to get together and then live together and spend decades together. One argument is that divorce rates are much higher now because marriage wasn't designed to last so long. People used to die in their 40s.”
Each writes alternate chapters and one of their rules is that they'll never tell anyone who wrote which bit, not even their own children, because they believe the flow of the books would somehow unravel if they did.
They also make changes to each other's work - surely a recipe for a row?
“We never tell each other what we've done wrong,” Gerrard explains. “If I've written something that Sean doesn't think works, he won't point it out to me like a teacher with a red pen. He just changes it, which can be a slight shock when I get it back.
“And if one of us changes something, the other isn't allowed to change it back,” French says. “When Richard Curtis and Ben Elton collaborated to do Blackadder, I think they had that rule.”
After writing 12 stand-alone psychological thrillers including Land Of The Living, Secret Smile and Killing Me Softly, some of which have been adapted for television, they have now penned the first in a series of eight novels featuring psychotherapist Frieda Klein.
In keeping with their penchant for strong, independent female characters, Frieda is a single woman in her mid-30s who has an instinct for being able to tell what is going on in the minds of troubled souls. She has a few issues herself, including a fear of falling in love and a needy teenage niece.
The series will be written in real time and there's an over-riding mystery linking the books, although they can be read as standalone novels. The first story, Blue Monday, sees Frieda taking on a patient who has been having dreams in which he sees a child he can describe in perfect detail. The abduction of a five-year-old boy of similar description prompts Frieda to go to the police and a link emerges with a similar abduction 20 years previously.
Gerrard hopes they'll sell the option to TV and says Sofie Grabol, the star of The Killing, a psychological thriller shown on BBC4 this year, would be perfect in the role.
“I want to be an extra,” she says. “I want to be the dead body in one of the episodes.”
The couple say their ideas come from snippets they might see in a newspaper or just everyday conversation.
“We don't sit and talk about murders all the time. We are just interested in the weirdness of people's minds,” says French.
As well as conducting painstaking research into different types of therapy, Gerrard drew on her own experiences of counselling. As a journalist 15 years ago, she was deeply affected when covering the case of Fred and Rosemary West.
“I was deeply perturbed and shaken by that, not just about its grisly nature, but I got very distressed about these missing girls that nobody had missed,” she says.
“It tormented me and I did go and talk to somebody about how that feeling had buried itself into me. What really helped was me finding a way of transforming it and making myself take control of this feeling.”
The second time she sought counselling was when her first marriage to journalist Colin Hughes, with whom she has two children, Edgar and Anna, broke down.
French lightens the story, revealing that Gerrard had already booked sessions with Relate when her husband left her. She met French shortly after the break-up and he offered to accompany her to the counselling. “We were a very unusual couple,” he laughs. “It was the first thing we did. We're still here, so maybe it was fantastically effective.”
It seems that Gerrard and French were destined to be together.
Both studied English literature at Oxford University at the same time but their paths didn't cross. Both became journalists working for national newspapers and then met at the New Statesman just as Gerrard's first marriage was crumbling. They married in 1990 and had daughters, Hadley and Molly, in 1991 and 1993. They have now flown the nest, much to Gerrard's chagrin.
She says their sprawling house in Suffolk now feels terribly empty, but may have given them some inspiration for Blue Monday.
“I'm sure if Frieda were here she'd be saying, 'Have you considered why at this point you've created a series with a therapist, starting with the subject of missing children?”' French says wryly.
Work, however, is keeping them busy. While they plan things meticulously together, they can't bear to work in the same room.
Gerrard says: “I write in my study at the top of the house and Sean is out in the shed. It's a little hut which we had put up in the area of the garden where we couldn't get the internet, so Sean can't be distracted.”
French adds: “Nicci is fantastically efficient. If there's work to be done, she just sits down and does it. I find that difficult. Nicci's desk is neat and tidy. At the moment my desk is in such a terrible state it even frightens me.” There was one disastrous day when they had to work in the same room due to computer problems.
“The worst thing was when he said, 'We should learn Russian'.”
And Gerrard concludes: “The whole reason for writing this octet is that we need to have a new adventure ourselves.” - Belfast Telegraph