The List of Suspicious Things follows 12-year-old Miv as she navigates a 1970s Yorkshire plagued by the Yorkshire Ripper. Miv lives with her Dad, her Mum (when she’s not having one of her regular spells in hospital, having completely withdrawn from life) and auntie Jean. She caught her Dad and auntie Jean talking about moving away from Yorkshire, citing the Ripper as one of the reasons, so if Miv can discover the identity of the killer, maybe she won’t have to move away from her dear friend Sharon, and so it is that 11 year old Miv decides she’s going to catch The Yorkshire Ripper, and persuades her best friend Sharon to help her. Without meaning to sound sycophantic, I have always been inspired by you for deciding to go it alone and set up your own business. You were completely in the unknown, and although things didn’t happen in an instant, you held your nerve.

Your debut novel The List of Suspicious Things follows 12-year-old Miv in 1970s Yorkshire as she launches her own investigation into the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper.It will be published by Hutchinson Heinemann in 2024. Can you tell us more about the novel and the inspiration behind it? Full of humour, warmth and eye-popping honesty ... a beautiful, candid and uplifting testament to female friendship that will make you laugh and cry WOMAN & HOMEThink about your book as a whole and consider the aspects identified earlier in this blogpost. Some useful prompts to think about are:

This is an interesting one. As far as I know there aren’t any. But there are some agent preferences, guidelines, and some common sense, which often morph into ‘rules’ when they appear on social media enough times (see also how many social media followers’ writers need to have). I’m making near-constant decisions, and, for me, this is a clear example of everyday leadership. Nothing has been prescribed to me in terms of how to do what I’m doing; I just have to make my way. Impossible not to weep. Yet, we also find ourselves laughing out loud through the tears ... For all the sense of tragedy and loss, we see Ash develop renewed gratitude for the beauty and humour in even the most mundane moments of life. DAILY EXPRESSHow did Catherine Neman write a book about dying that is so luminously alive? Earthy, funny, and terrifyingly honest - this is a book with heart and guts and all the other goopy gravt we need to stay among the living. A radical delight. RUFI THORPE So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don't. If Sutcliffe played an outsized role in Jennie’s life, so did books. She was once dragged to the doctors by a mother worried she wasn’t sleeping because she spent so much time reading under the covers. There is a strong sense of place and time in the book and although I grew up a few years later than the setting, much of it was nostalgic - the games of Bulldog, the excitement of a new lip gloss and the anti Thatcher sentiment definitely very familiar. Also a time of innocence when children played freely in the streets but also an era where adults didn’t quite want to grasp just how dangerous characters like ‘Uncle’ Derek were. Protagonist – does your main character share traits with another? Are they of a similar type? A tortured artist? A stand-up comedian? A reclusive young woman?