THE DARK SIDE: Ruth Dugdall, whose writing career is moving into top gear

In 2009, Steven Russell met two Suffolk writers who were getting somewhere after lots of hard graft and juggling of time and obligations. Both now have new books out. A perfect time, then, to catch up on news

JUGGLING TIME: Teacher and writer Bryony Allen, whose latest story is about bullying

IT’S been a stellar week for Ruth Dugdall. She was 40 on Thursday, but really felt all her birthdays and Christmases arrived en masse the previous day, when she was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. After the team at Legend Press treated her to a champagne lunch, she returned to Felixstowe to discover the “Jenni Murray effect” had pushed her books up the Amazon rankings. New offering The Sacrificial Man, for instance – not officially published for a week or more – had shot from 190,000-something to number five in the psychological thrillers list.

In fact, it’s been a giddy nine months. After false starts, crossed fingers, late nights and early mornings, The Woman Before Me came out at the end of August. The print run ran out after six weeks and more were ordered. Then it was long-listed for the New Angle Prize for East Anglian Literature. And to prove that good things happen in threes, March brought cheering news about the foreign rights – “and it was only about then that I thought ‘Actually, I can make a living from this’.”

Quite frankly, there have been many times when she’s almost abandoned her dream of becoming a successful author. It has been a long, sometimes-messy, slog, with the great prize often tantalisingly near, only to vanish when she reached out.

A quick recap: born in 1971, Ruth spent her first seven years in the Hull area before her family moved down to Ipswich. A-levels at Westbourne school and then English and theatre studies at Warwick University. She got a job with an Ipswich-based charity and then, aiming to work in prisons and use drama and writing, she did an MA in social work at the University of East Anglia.

OTOLI, by Bryony Allen

Fascinated by the dark side of human nature, Ruth actively sought a post at the Carlford Unit, near Woodbridge, when it opened in 2000 and took some of the most serious young offenders in the country.

She penned short stories, took a writing night-class, and then was taken by the 19th Century Suffolk story of Maria Marten and the Red Barn Murder.

After they had first child Amber early in 2002, husband Andrew suggested she had a year off and write a novel based on the ideas buzzing around her head. When The James Version won a competition at a writers’ festival, Ruth paid for copies to be printed and managed to sell more than 700 of them.

She also wrote The Woman Before Me: a tale with stalking at its heart that taps into the primal fear of having one’s baby taken.

The Sacrificial Man, by Ruth Dugdall

Late in 2005, it beat off more than 400 entries to win the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger for novels not yet published commercially.

It’s a Big Thing. Ruth appeared on the verge of making the breakthrough, with book industry folk whispering of potential advances of £50,000.

Didn’t happen. The manuscript was pored over by about half a dozen publishers. Some thought it too dark and relentlessly bleak, and struggled to pigeon-hole its genre.

It all went a bit quiet on the book front, and Ruth left the probation service early in 2006, too. Next to carry her hopes was The Sacrificial Man. Frustrated by waiting for the big boys to knock on her door, she approached small independent Solidus Press, which liked the story and offered a genuine publishing contract. Hallelujah!

Then Andrew pointed out a competition run in memory of a young writer. Ruth always felt The Woman Before Me had deserved more, so submitted it. It won the 2009 prize: a handy £2,500 and a deal with Legend Press. Which is how it came to be published late last summer.

To make things neat and logical, and maintain the momentum, Legend and Solidus came to an arrangement so that The Sacrificial Man could be published under the same flag as The Woman Before Me.

You can see why Ruth felt a bit frustrated during this long and tortuous journey . . . but was she really close to throwing in the towel en route?

“I could have given up so many times.” She actually went as far as getting job application forms and filling them in. “It was Andrew saying ‘Don’t get a job. If you go back to social work, or probation, it’s just not going to happen.

“There was another time when he thought we should give up, and it was my father in law who phoned and said ‘Don’t let her do it. I just know it will happen.’

“Even after The Woman Before Me got the deal, I thought ‘This is still going to be small potatoes; sell a thousand if I’m lucky.’ I still thought ‘This isn’t going to be a career.’”

Luckily, those darker days seem to be well of the past. Things are tickety-boo and The Sacrificial Man is about to launch.

In fact, the timing is serendipitous. Another dark tale of obsession, it explores how strangers sharing odd desires can find each other and communicate via the strange intimacy of the worldwide web. Assisted suicide is also a theme of the story. Both subjects have recently been in the news.

“Man seeks beautiful woman for the journey of a lifetime: Will you help me to die?” runs the message that sets events in train. Alice Mariani is charged with assisted suicide – she argues her story is one of misinterpreted love – and probation officer Cate Austin (whom we met in The Woman Before Me) has to recommend a sentence.

It’s the highest-profile case she’s faced and, investigating the grey area between murder and euthanasia, Cate has to meet the woman who agreed to comply with her lover’s last request.

With Ruth, people often find it hard to comprehend how the imagination of a sparky and “normal” mother of two can construct such dark material!

Her next two novels – both already finished, thanks to lots of writing opportunity during those years of waiting and hoping – also walk the edgy side of the street.

Family Snap, set in Ipswich, is about a teenager whose relative has been attacked and left brain-damaged. Police are closing the case and so Sam decides she’s going to find the culprit and exact vengeance.

Innocence Lane – also inspired by a Suffolk setting – is about a woman who is strangled by her husband – who claims he was sleepwalking and thus did not do it deliberately. Events are seen through the eyes of the victim’s daughter – a woman who is already troubled, with her husband having an affair and her life falling apart.

Ruth says it’s probably the darkest tale she’s written, and it has a dreamy, nightmarish tone: “Was I awake when I thought that, or was I dreaming?” – that kind of thing.

The author’s success so far hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major publishers.

“My agent would describe it as there being much more of a ‘sense of awareness’. When she made one submission, the editor said ‘I’ve been tracking Ruth.’ So they keep an eye on things and are aware of what’s happening.”

Both books are being paraded around the industry. In fact, Family Snap nearly was nearly bought by one of the big players.

“It got as far as ‘acquisitions’. The editor wanted it and marketing wanted it. They had this discussion and they phoned me and said ‘We really love it, but Sam can’t use a gun, because we don’t think a teenager could get a gun.’”

Ruth pointed to reports last summer of a group of people, allegedly with guns, outside an East Anglian high school.

“‘I’ve been to a gun club and they’ve told me stories, and I’ve worked with kids who have used guns. What planet are you living on!’ So, even now, there’s this sense that ‘If we take it, you’re going to have to water it down.’”

The writer now faces something of a dilemma. Of course, she’d love to be taken on by one of the major houses, but doesn’t want to dilute her fiction. And she feels a tremendous sense of loyalty towards the independent publisher that believed in her when few others would, and which has nurtured her.

“Legend Press would publish it as is, and trust the writing, but the big publishers . . . Oh, and they don’t like the fact Sam swears so much. She’s an angry teenager! I am still hearing those things.

“I’m just waiting to see at the moment. I just think they’re out of touch!” she laughs of the corporate-led book business.

Enough of this negativity: she’s got a lunch with friends to attend, to celebrate her birthday.

“I feel like I’ve already had the exciting present yesterday. I feel it’s pretty good to get to 40 and think I’m happy with where I’ve got to.”

• The Sacrificial Man is published by Legend Press at £7.99

• Ruth has a signing and reading session – plus wine and nibbles – at Ipswich Waterstone’s to launch The Sacrificial Man. It’s at 6.30pm on Saturday, June 25. Tickets are £3; available in-store and redeemable against the purchase of the book on the night

Web: http://ruthdugdall.blogspot.com/

WE interrupt Bryony Allen’s midweek vacuuming. She teaches two days a week at a Suffolk middle school and two at a primary school. The Wednesday sandwiched in between is meant to be a day off. So much for Plan A . . .

With near enough a full-time job, and three children at home aged between 15 and nine, how does she manage to cram everything in and find the time to write? “I don’t! It really is a juggling act, and finding odd hours late at night and at the weekend.”

When we spoke in 2009, she’d just brought out Mystery, Deceit and a School Inspector. It was set in a fictional school that had received a scathing Ofsted report . . . and then an inspector is found dead in the staff room. Cue a tale of love, ambition, jealousy, passion, guilt and innocence.

School life is one of the main fuels for Bryony’s newest story.

OTOLI – it stands for On The Outside Looking In, the appropriate name of a café – is essentially for teenagers, but can equally be enjoyed by adults.

It’s a story about a social outcast called Alice who is bullied at school and goes to the café to escape her tormentors, the Populars. She’s befriended by Jenny, a waitress who might not be all she at first seems.

Bullying is something Bryony knows a lot about: from her own childhood, and from the point of view of both a teacher and a mother.

It’s insidious, can be difficult to combat, and often leaves a lasting impression on the personalities of the victims long after the callous acts have stopped.

Her story is an attempt to show those who are suffering that they are not alone, and to demonstrate to perpetrators just what damage they do through taunting, letter-writing, graffiti-painting, social isolation and other tactics.

Bryony, who lives near Stowmarket, is giving 5% of the proceeds from sales to the charity Bullying UK, which helps children and their families deal with the issue.

Sadly, bullying seems to be one of the darker sides of human nature. “It makes people feel better about themselves, because they can undermine other people. I think that’s going to be the case until people change.”

Most schools now have wonderful policies and practices to deal with bullying, but she recognises that modern technology has given the taunters more channels to spread their misery – and further and quicker, too.

“Facebook is actually very good, because if the administrators find there’s something going on, they stop it. But there’s texting . . . so many ways of getting at people.”

She herself suffered as a child – partly thanks to moving from the south to the north, and her accent marking her out. “But I didn’t get it half as badly as some people did.”

Bullying might stop, but it doesn’t wipe clean one’s feelings. “You are vulnerable for a long time afterwards. There’s a feeling you’re not quite with them (other people at school, say) – like being sober on a hen night or something. I’m not sure that ever totally goes. And there’s that thing about feeling grateful that people like you . . .”

In a middle school, she says, one can sometimes spot children who have been bullied in the past and are not now really part of anything: not in a group. You can almost ‘see’ how they feel.”

For those being troubled, there are many support networks – like www.bullying.co.uk – and it’s also worth trying to hold on to the fact that it’s only a minority of people who are horrible, not the majority.

“The best advice I ever heard was to write everything down. Just keep a diary – totally private, unless you want to share it – but write everything else down.

“You might look back on it weeks later and think ‘I was over-reacting’ or ‘I need to do something.’ But at least it’s there, written down, and if necessary can be used as evidence.”

A confessed fan of ghost stories, Bryony is also “polishing” a book about witchcraft in Suffolk. Called The Assembly Room – and inspired by a ramshackle building she knows – it’s based on the Suffolk witchcraft trials of 1645 that saw 18 hanged in one day. A teenage girl finds herself recreating the past as witches try to wreak revenge.

Bryony’s also started work on a story about a local haunted house: a fictional tale, but inspired by the atmosphere in one of the bedrooms. It feels bitterly cold, noises have been heard coming from it, and the door keeps opening by itself.

Watch this space.

OTOLI is published through Pneuma Springs at £5.99

Web: www.bryonyallen.co.uk

Bryony has a signing session at Waterstone’s Buttermarket branch in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday, June 25, from 11am to 2pm