Sarah Bailey's new crime novel and the connection to advertising

Chris Pash
By Chris Pash | 31 August 2021
 

Three housemates. One dead, one missing and one accused of murder.

VMLY&R's managing director Sarah Bailey has a new book out, The Housemate (Allen & Unwin).

This is her fourth book, all of them written while still in her 30s, in a writing life running parallel to her advertising career. 

The latest story follows Melbourne-based journalist Olive (Oli) Groves who is teamed with millennial podcaster Cooper Ng.

‘I’m always fascinated by the way certain news stories capture the attention of the public and I felt that the murder of a young woman at the hand of one of her female housemates was likely to be such a story," says Bailey.

"I liked the idea of an old cold case hotting up, giving our protagonist Oli the chance to revisit a story that had set her journalism career in motion.

"I also wanted to give Oli a personal connection to the story and I felt that being engaged to the widow of the deceased detective, Isabelle Yardley, who led the original investigation, created an interesting 'Rebecca' type dynamic.

"My work in advertising also prompted me to explore the dynamic between Gen Y and Millennials, as it’s something I observe every day.

"I thought it made sense to demonstrate these inevitable differences and defensiveness by highlighting the wrestle between old and new media formats. Oli represents traditional journalism and Cooper the new digital platforms and podcasts." 

AdNews asked Bailey how she manages such a strong creative output while managing a senior role in the industry.  

How do you fit writing into your day?

It varies a lot depending on workload. If it's a busy week I don't even try to fit writing in because I'm already doing work out of hours. But generally I try to write at night and on the weekends, just an hour here and there. I've become good at using the time I have and not waiting for the elusive 'entire afternoon to myself' because it never comes. 

I'm a terrible plotter and never map out my books in advance. But I do think about storylines and characters a lot. I think this means that when I do get the time to write I can get a lot of words down pretty quickly.

What does your day job give you for writing? Or is this complete escapism?

I get great energy from my team and the work we do. I find being in such a creative environment very inspiring, which I think feeds into my writing.

My role at VMLY&R gives me the chance to work alongside smart, interesting people every day as we are tasked with solving all kinds of advertising and communications challenges. While it can be demanding, in many ways I think it is the perfect job to do in parallel with writing.

If my role involved delivering concepts or copy day in and day out it might be harder to delineate between the two, but the majority of my tasks are strategic and commercial. This means that I can switch into writing after hours without feeling too drained. When it all boils down to it, advertising is an industry centred around trying to understand and influence the way people think - perfect for a writer. Plus it is never short of weird and wonderful characters - even better!

The Housemate is your fourth novel, and a standalone from your previous Gemma Woodstock trilogy. Are you already writing your next book? Does it feature Gemma from your previous series perhaps?

I have an idea for a fourth Gemma Woodstock novel but I haven't managed to put pen to paper just yet. It's been a pretty busy eighteen months with work, homeschooling and writing. The only thing I'm working on at the moment is a treatment for the film adaptation of The Dark Lake. I have no idea if it will ever get made but the licence was picked up a few years ago and they have asked me to give it a crack, so we'll see what happens.

Her first book, The Dark Lake, was published in 2017 and became a bestseller here, in the US and Canada. It won the 2018 Sisters in Crime Davitt Award for Best Crime Debut and the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime. That book was followed by Into the Night in 2018 and Where the Dead Go in 2019.

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