Kia Abdullah joins Book Gang to discuss Next of Kin, her gripping backlist thriller about sisterhood laced with a high-stakes courtroom drama you won’t forget.
Kia Abdullah joins Book Gang to discuss Next of Kin, her gripping backlist thriller about sisterhood laced with a high-stakes courtroom drama you won’t forget.
This week on Book Gang, we’re joined by Kia Abdullah, award-winning novelist and founder of Asian Booklist, for a deeply engaging conversation about her acclaimed thriller Next of Kin. We’ll dig into Kia’s unique journey from a career in tech to her bold work as a full-time author, and explore how her advocacy is changing the landscape for British-Asian writers in publishing.
Kia share more behind the art of writing high-stakes suspense, the impact of BookTok on the thriller genre, and the real-life inspirations behind Next of Kin’s unforgettable courtroom drama. Discover the secrets to building authentic tension, crafting twisty plots, and what she hopes readers will take away from her exploration of sisterhood, responsibility, and the complexities of motherhood.
In this informative conversation, we discuss:
📚 The Writing Journey & Bold Storytelling: From a background in computer science and tech to full-time novelist, Kia shares what gave her the courage to pursue writing and how she built a career tackling controversial themes. Her reflections on confidence, resilience, and the impact of BookTok on her work offer deep insight into her evolution as a thriller writer.
📚 Crafting High-Stakes Suspense (Spoiler-Free): Kia discusses how she uses backstory, emotional stakes, and authentic courtroom drama to build suspense in Next of Kin. From the novel’s powerful opening to its exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, and responsibility, she shares her approach to writing tension-filled, thought-provoking crime fiction.
📚 Amplifying British-Asian Voices: Kia Abdullah founded Asian Booklist to spotlight British-Asian authors who are often underrepresented in publishing. Through this initiative, she’s opening doors for new and established writers, creating a much-needed space for authentic stories and diverse perspectives to reach wider audiences.
📚 BONUS FREE WEEKLY BOOK LIST: 16 Legal Thriller Books to Read Now
Discover 16 Books 16 Legal Thrillers to add to your book stack. Prepare for high-stakes courtroom drama, fascinating true crime, and the kind of page-turning suspense that keeps you up way past your bedtime. Patrons receive a printable book list, five bonus book ideas, and a bonus spoiler chat with Kia in their inbox today.
Meet Kia Abdullah
Kia Abdullah is an author and journalist from London. Her novels include Take It Back (a Guardian and Telegraph thriller of the year), Truth Be Told (shortlisted for a Diverse Book Award), Next of Kin (longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award) and Those People Next Door (a Times Bestseller and Waterstones Thriller of the Month). Her new novel, What Happens in the Dark, is out now.
Kia has won a Diverse Book Award (2022) and a JB Priestley Award for Writers of Promise (2020). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, and the BBC, among others.
Next of Kin, this week’s featured selection, is on store shelves now.
NEW BOOK LIST: 16 Legal Thriller Books to Read Now FREE TO BROWSE ON PATREON THIS WEEK)
NEW: Download the 2026 Summer Reading Guide (57-Pages of Bookish Fun With 70 Tried-and-True Recommendations)
2026 MomAdvice Book Club Books (All 12 Selections)
Next of Kin by Kia Abdullah
Take It Back by Kia Abdullah
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Truth Be Told by Kia Abdullah
Books with Good Plot Twists That Will Make Your Jaw Drop
The Chain by Adrian McKinty
Stealing Hollywood by Alexandra Sokoloff
The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr
What Happens in the Dark by Kia Abdullah
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas
Bookshop.org pays a 10% commission on every sale and matches it with 10% to support independent bookstores.
Connect with Kia Abdullah on Instagram or Her Website
Connect with Amy on Instagram, TikTok, or MomAdvice
Get the Daily Kindle Deals Newsletter
Book Gang Podcast Transcript: Next of Kin with Kia Abdullah
Kia (00:00)
Hi, I'm Kia Abdullah, the author of Next of Kin and four other novels, and number five is on its way later this year.
Amy's Warm Intro: Hey, Book Gang! Kia Abdullah may already be a familiar name to seasoned thriller fans, but I came to Next of Kin through a community recommendation in our monthly “What’s the best book you read?” thread in our Facebook group. Leighann sang this novel’s praises for the unpredictable twists it offered, and I grabbed it from the library for my weekend, and can assure you, after prepping for our Summer Reading Guide season, that this one is better than most thrillers coming out right now. And that, my friends, is why this novel has been selected as one of this year’s Backlist features. And if backlist is a new term to you, this just means that the novel has been out for more than a year on bookstore shelves!
In Next of Kin, London is sweltering through its hottest July on record as architect, Leila, navigates her morning commute. The day is anything but ordinary: her partner is set to pitch a high-stakes project, and the tension is palpable. Just after 8 a.m., Leila’s assistant calls in a panic—the blueprints have vanished, the only backups are locked in Leila’s office, and without them, her partner’s big meeting could fall apart. Laser-focused, Leila races to the office, parks, locks her car, and hurries inside to save the day.
But in her rush, she’s forgotten that her three-year-old nephew, Max, is asleep in the sweltering backseat. She was supposed to drop him off at nursery, but it’s not until 11:25 a.m—over three hours later—that her brother-in-law’s worried call jolts her memory.
This devastating mistake sets off the novel’s heart-wrenching spiral. Leila soon finds herself on trial, with a relentless detective determined to unravel what really happened that morning. As the story unfolds, Abdullah deftly explores the lifelong bond—and tension—between Leila and her sister, Yasmin. The ways Leila has filled in the gaps for Yasmin since their troubled childhood have become a double-edged sword as their adult lives began to unravel.
Told in alternating perspectives by Tania Rodrigues and Avita Jay, the audiobook for this novel is immersive—drawing you not only into the story but also into the complicated, compelling bond between the sisters. For anyone craving a legal thriller with real substance, Next of Kin is a true standout and one I would recommend, especially to fans of Jodi Picoult’s courtroom dramas,, because it offers the reader the same plot surprises and compelling, meaty familial layers that make so many of her stories stand out.
Today’s book description is light for a reason, so you can discover this book all on your own, but I’m thrilled to connect the dots on not only this writing journey but also Kia’s nonprofit, Asian Booklist, which spotlights British-Asian voices. We’ll be discussing her efforts to amplify diverse authors in this week’s spoiler-free conversation. I do want to say that you can likely sense where some of this conversation may be going as we discuss this heartwrenching plot, so please take the space you need if today’s feature is not a fit for you right now.
To celebrate Kia’s novel, I have put together a fun book list you can browse for free on Patreon today, featuring 16 Legal Thrillers to add to your book stack. Prepare for high-stakes courtroom drama, fascinating true crime, and the kind of page-turning suspense that keeps you up way past your bedtime. Patrons receive a printable book list, five bonus book ideas, and a bonus spoiler chat with Kia in their inbox today.
If you’re new here, hi! I’m Amy Allen Clark, the voice behind the Book Gang podcast, and I’m so happy to have you. This show celebrates debuts, backlist favorites, and under-the-radar book gems. It is a delight to continue my full immersion into the 2026 Summer Reading Guide as we celebrate some of my favorite books from this year’s selections.
This special guide is available for purchase, offering a handpicked collection of 70 carefully selected titles—upcoming releases, buzzy debuts, and new-to-me backlist treasures (like this one)—across 57 pages designed to help you build your perfect summer stack. You will receive it as an instant download for $7, and that purchase allows us to keep our lights on at Book Gang.
This month’s book club selection we will be celebrating is Woodworking by Emily St. James. This moving debut explores trans identity and self-acceptance, set in a small town in South Dakota, and is a perfect pick to celebrate Pride Month. Join us for our Zoom discussion on June 25th at 8 PM ET—membership is just $5 a month, with a 10% discount for annual signups.
Now, let’s meet this week’s guest: Kia Abdullah is an author and journalist from London. Her novels include Take It Back (a Guardian and Telegraph thriller of the year), Truth Be Told (shortlisted for a Diverse Book Award), Next of Kin (longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award) and Those People Next Door (a Times Bestseller and Waterstones Thriller of the Month). Her new novel, What Happens in the Dark, is out now.
Kia has won a Diverse Book Award (2022) and a JB Priestley Award for Writers of Promise (2020). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times, and the BBC, among others.
Next of Kin, this week’s featured selection is on store shelves now.
If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a review on iTunes—it’s a quick, free way to support what we do. And to our patrons who keep the lights on at Book Gang: may every backlist book you pick up exceed your every expectation as a reader. Thank you for supporting human creators in a world turned upside down by AI. Now let’s get chatting!
Amy Clark (00:08)
Kia, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to get to talk about your work. I have to give a shout out to one of our listeners named Leanne, who put this book on my radar. She brought it to this little roundup we do where we ask everyone monthly, what was the best book you read of the month? And she said Next of Kin, and I picked it up, read it in a day, and I was like, I need to know more. So I want to say thank you to Leanne, first of all, but also thank you for coming back for your backlist book. I know you had to do a little homework for this episode.
Kia (00:41)
It's funny, Amy. Firstly, thank you for having me and thank you, Leanne, for recommending Next of Kin. But when you're in a book, you're so immersed in it. And then within a year, you're onto the next book. And so I remember doing an event where I forgot one of the names of, I mean, he wasn't like a main character, but he was one of the important secondary characters of my debut, Take It Back. And I thought, my God, I spent so long with these four boys. How could I forget one of their names? And so I just wanted to make sure that, you know, I remember the pertinent details of Next of Kin since that's the book we're talking about today.
Amy Clark (01:16)
Well, I do feel like sometimes it's hard to motivate people to come on to talk about their older books because they're so excited about their new work. And so it means something to me that we get to talk about this book because, you know, it's new to me and I feel like a lot of readers, especially readers who love Jodi Picoult, for example, will really find a lot to latch on in the story. But before we dig into this book, I want to ask you about something that I discovered, which is that you run a nonprofit and have a sub stack called Asian Books list to amplify British Asian authors and it got me thinking what gap are you seeing in publishing especially right now in this moment that you wanted to create this space?
Kia (01:59)
I wanted to create Asian Booklist for two reasons. Firstly, to try and get a critical mass of readers who are interested in reading books by British Asian authors and to see if we could harness that purchasing power to propel more British Asian authors onto the bestseller lists. Because the main gap that I was seeing that I wanted to fix was that although there was an appetite to publish more diverse authors, not many of us were hitting the bestseller lists. And that was specifically true of novelists. And so you'd have a lot of nonfiction. So, you know, doctors telling you how to lose weight or be healthy and so on, hitting those lists, but it's much harder to hit the fiction lists. And so I wanted to ask why is this happening? And also to have some stats behind it and I'm the first to admit that it's an imperfect way of collecting statistics because it's not always obvious from someone's name or their bio, whether they are British Asian or not.
So it was done in a crude way, but what I found was an average of one British Asian novelist per year was hitting the Sunday Times Best Sellers list. And one year it was Salman Rushdie and another year it was Monica Ali, the author of Brick Lane, which was massive. So even though the appetite is there, why are not more of us hitting those lists? And so I just wanted to put a kind of empirical backbone to the argument that I think most of us know anecdotally that why aren't more of us hitting those lists. And it is tricky because I think there is an appetite among publishers to make us do well, but where is the disconnect? Is it the marketing dollars? Is it reader appetite? So Asian Booklist kind of gave them a very stark figure. Why is only one of us hitting the list each year?
Amy Clark (03:51)
So are you keeping a database of these writers and what are you doing with all of this information to be able to help that translate into sales and give them that push that they need in publishing?
Kia (04:05)
That's right. So on the website, there is a bestsellers page which lists all the bestsellers that hit the list each year. And then the sub stack is really to try to get more readers to those writers. I should say that we are on a brief hiatus because last September I enrolled on a diploma in journalism. And so I had four different things kind of pulling at my time. So there were the novels.
I also run a travel blog. I volunteer at my local boxing gym. And then I was running Asian Booklist and I thought I can't do this course, which is an academic year's worth of work truncated into four months. And so it was really intense. So it wasn't a brief hiatus, but I do have plans to bring it back.
Amy Clark (04:52)
Yeah, speaking to, you know, getting guests and trying to find books for our guides and the things that we do here. I do feel like every time I get a pitch, I have to push back and say, Hey, do you have any BIPOC authors or marginalized voices that we could also highlight? That's our priority on the show, but it has been very hard. And I feel like increasingly hard, at least in this last year, especially in publishing, to actually get the kinds of guests that we're looking for. So it's so wonderful that you're creating resources for people like me and other readers to find new voices.
Kia (05:25)
Thank you. And I really hope that diversity as an initiative isn't over. And I think I do hear that in UK publishing that after Black Lives Matter, there was this huge appetite to publish black authors. And luckily some of that transferred into other people of color. And a few years on, I think, I don't know if it's a reflection of just the general political climate in the UK and US, but it does feel like those initial efforts have quietened somewhat. And so I would just urge publishers to, you know, not give up. There's so much talent out there and please put the effort into finding, platforming and continuing to find those readers, continue to find those writers, their readers and the readers that they deserve.
Amy Clark (06:10)
Yeah, this is exactly the conversation we've been having here. We hosted Aaron Crosby, Eckstine, who wrote a beautiful debut called Junie and it got a publishing deal, you know, in the height of everything that was happening with George Floyd, the 2020 push. There was an initiative to really bring on these voices. And then there has been almost like a lack of support, a lack of others finding writing contracts after this time. It doesn't seem like that this has been a really big priority here in the U S so it's really interesting to hear about what's happening elsewhere and how this trend isn't just here. You know, we don't exist in a silo. We're all trying to do our best. But I do think that as readers and as people who are tastemakers are seeking new voices that we have to really push back on publishing to say, Hey, this is what I'm looking for. And I want you to pitch this back to me. But it is always an effort and I wish it wasn't that way.
Kia (07:06)
Absolutely, and I appreciate the work that you do, Amy.
Amy Clark (07:10)
Well, I want to talk about your background before we dig into this book. I know that you studied computer science and you worked in tech before you became a novelist. And my husband is in this field. Now I would not say it's necessarily stable right now with all this stuff happening with AI, but it was a more stable job, I think, than making the leap into publishing. But you decided to pursue writing full time. Take me back to that beginning time.
Kia (07:37)
That's right. I think I always wanted to be a writer. Even as young as seven years old, I knew that I wanted to be a storyteller of some sort. And I was always writing my own stories. In the UK at 14 years old, you do two weeks of work experience in an office as standard. And I managed to get a placement at the Sunday Times Magazine, which was a huge deal for me. But in a way, I was really daunted because I didn't see anybody who looked like me, who sounded like me. And I thought, can I make inroads into this world?
So when it came to choosing my degree, I essentially followed the money. I followed what was then a very stable career path. Sometimes I look back and I think, you know, should I have followed my passion and gone and studied journalism or English literature? But on the other hand, I'm really glad I did do that, Amy, because that was what allowed me to build up a bit of a trust fund, so to speak, and have that financial buffer in order to enable me to take a 50% pay cut to go and become a writer. And so I worked in tech for three years. I saved diligently because I always knew one day maybe I could take that leap. And then the sort of catalyst was I published a column in a consumer glossy magazine called Asian Woman, which is sadly now defunct, but back then was kind of the main title read by young British Asian women. And that thrill of seeing my name in print for the first time was just so amazing. And that really encouraged me to take that leap. And I could not have done it without those years in tech. And so I took a 50 % pay cut to go and become a sub editor there, worked as a sub editor for a couple of years, was freelancing for a couple of years, and then became features editor at that magazine.
That's when I really started writing fiction as well because even today with, you know, I'm one of the few writers who actually gets a royalty check because I've earned out, but even then, I don't make the sort of living that I would like to make fiction alone. And so what you'll find with most novelists is we all have either a day job or a side hustle or something else going on. And so I'm very kind of clear-eyed about what is possible as a novelist. So I always say to aspiring novelists, there's no shame in having a day job. It doesn't mean that you're any less of a writer. It just means that you can pay your bills and put food on the table.
Amy Clark (10:07)
I completely agree. You know, I do a lot of these interviews and a lot of times we're meeting on people's lunch hours or at the end of the day after they've already put in a full day of work and this is their passion project that they do, you know, to explore their creativity and to, you know, put their work out in the world. And there are not a lot of writers that I talk to that are not juggling both things. And I think that that really speaks to me because, you know, I think there are many of us that believe that there's a book in us and we just have to figure out how to also pay the bills and maybe get to pursue those creative endeavors.
Kia (10:46)
No, absolutely. And it is a juggling act because I think when I started off, the dream was to sell a million copies, but now I am far more clear-eyed about it and I don't feel any less of a writer because I don't write fiction full-time.
Amy Clark (11:04)
Yeah. Well, we want to talk about, you know, these early novels, especially when you were first starting writing, you were not afraid to take on some very like controversial themes and bigger themes, I think for your first books. And that takes confidence. Tell me about building confidence to come out with more hard hitting topics for readers.
Kia (11:27)
It's interesting because people often say to me, were you caught in controversy or you were really brave for writing Take It Back? So Take It Back was my debut. And just for some context, the premise of the novel was four Muslim boys are accused of rape by a young white girl and the fallout from that. Looking back, especially in these kind of more feverish political times, I think, yeah, of course, yeah, I can see the controversy.
But when I was writing it, for me, it was just a reflection of the world I was seeing, especially in the UK. Anytime a Muslim person committed a crime, it would be that facet of characteristics that would be pulled out in the media. And you'd always see Muslim men commit so-and-so crime. And I thought, well, when was the last time you saw Christian men committed so-and-so crime? And so it was my way of grappling with what I was seeing in the media at the time.
So I knew that it would maybe cause a little bit of attention. What I didn't expect is a little bit of criticism from the Muslim community because I think they felt that I was capitalizing on some of the pain that they were going through as a community or I was using it as a bit of a gimmick. And what I always said to them was, please read the book because the whole point of the book is that we choose to do things because we choose to do them as individuals, not because of the color of our skin or the faith that we believe in. But I think that nuance got lost in, if you just read the blurb or you heard me talking about it at a literary festival, I can understand some of the anger. But for me, even now, even in these times, I try not to censor myself because you really have to tell the story that is most true to you. And so even though there have been occasions of kind of cancel culture or authors being pilloried because maybe they put something in a clumsy way or hadn't researched something well enough, I still think that you have to write the book that is most true to you and not worry about all the voices because then you're just going to write something insipid, lacking of flavour, lacking of life. And so I always say to young writers, write the book that's most true to you.
Amy Clark (13:43)
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, were you surprised then that the community was so bothered by that? Because I feel like, who is to tell this story, right? And it really, and it is for people like me who are white to read these stories and to really grapple with the ways that we have interacted with both media and cases like these and our own preconceived notions and prejudices that we carry even though we think we don't. I don't know who is supposed to tell those kinds of stories then.
Kia (14:15)
Yes, and if you refuse to engage with the work, if you refuse to read it, do you forfeit your right to critique it? And the answer is complicated because some people will say, well, I don't want to read a book with rape in it, for example, and that's absolutely fine. But for my community to kind of say, and you know, I don't want to give a false impression. It wasn't widespread controversy, but it was one or two people who kind of said to me, well, aren't you perpetuating negative stereotypes? And I always say, please read the book. And if then you want to criticize me, that's absolutely fine.
But there's a book reviewer, a Muslim book reviewer called Zubs Uncovered. She gave me one of the most kind of touching reviews. And she said, when you review this book, please remember that you're reviewing our lives. And I thought that that was just so touching because that was my intention to, you know, I hesitate to say humanize the Muslim community because we are human. But at a time when we were being dehumanized, then I would hope that this book would make people be more sensitive and rethink the ways in which they engage with these headlines.
Amy Clark (15:29)
Yes, absolutely. And don't you love it when reviewers leave something that moves you in that way that this many years later, you're still thinking about that review and how it impacted you.
Kia (15:38)
Exactly, yes.
Amy Clark (15:39)
Well, you know, speaking of reviews, it's an interesting time in publishing. Book Tok has taken off and I really think that, especially for the thriller community and romance community, there is so much,you know, content that is being made around books. And I'm wondering what that has been like for you to see your work discovered in that space. And do you feel any pressure, conscious or not, to write towards what is performing well in a community like that?
Kia (16:08)
I think there's always an attraction to seeing what's doing well and thinking, can I emulate that? You know, at the moment, Freida McFadden is doing incredibly well. And so the temptation is, could I write a book like that? But I think by the time, and I'm sure you've heard this before, you know, publishing moves so slowly that by the time you try to write to a trend, that trend is over.
And so again, I think you come back to just writing the novel that's most true to you and I see in TV and movies, there's this idea of second screening that somebody can watch the movie and then also be on social media. Obviously that's less true of novels because I think, especially if you're sitting down to read a paperback or hardback book as opposed to an audio book, it really needs 100 % of your attention. And so I think the temptation is to maybe try to simplify your book or simplify the dialogue. But I think thriller readers are smart.
And so you would be doing them and yourself a disservice by trying to kind of dumb down the language or dumb down the plot. I suppose the other temptation is to try to write to you know, what might Netflix pick up, know, woman going missing from a cabin in the woods or whereas my novels have always been more rooted in reality. You know, they've been very much in East London. They've been quite nuanced. So it's not always a massive crime or a very dark crime.
It's often a good person just caught up on a bad day or made a bad decision like in Next of Kin. Did Leila leave Max on purpose as she went in to deal with this emergency at work or was it a genuine accident? She's a good person, but she made a terrible mistake. So do those nuances translate onto the big screen?
So I think that's the other temptation, but again, I come back to, you know, just writing the story that's true to you.
Amy Clark (18:08)
Yeah, I totally understand that. Well, you know, I have talked to some seasoned writers before who do thrillers and Mary Kubica comes to mind. I remember reading her very first book and she started to kind of develop a signature twist. I would say Jody Picoult too. We expect something to happen towards the end and you have some twists, especially in this story. Is there any pressure to outdo your last twist? What is that like as an author when you have surprised readers and then now you have to try and do it again. What's that like for you?
Kia (18:41)
I think there's definitely pressure to have a twist. I don't necessarily feel a pressure to outdo my last twists, but there is some expectation where readers know, okay, if I'm reading a Kia Abdullah book, what I think, and when I think that I've got it figured out, actually she's going to turn that on its head. And so there is that pressure. I remember, I think it was my second book, Truth Be Told, having a conversation with my editor saying, you know, is this a twist, does it come out of the blue? Is it earned enough? And she was like, look, readers are expecting a twist. And so if you can make it big, that's absolutely fine.
What I don't like is when, and luckily my publishers don't do this, when they market it on the twist. So on Amazon, you'll see, know, Next of Kin, a twist you will never ever guess, you know. And I think that's setting the author up for failure because the reader is constantly thinking, is it this or is it that? And so I like my novels to just kind of gently set up a scenario and then turn something on its head. But from a technical point of view, it has to feel earned. So doing that legwork in terms of setting up the clues can be quite difficult. You know, I'm sure you've discussed this with past authors, how do you set enough clues without giving away the final reveal? And that's always a balancing act. And the way I deal with it is just having a lot of beta readers and saying, you know, did you guess? And if so, what was the clue that gave it away? And then maybe dialing it back.
Amy Clark (20:11)
I love that. Well I will say speaking to your publisher, your book descriptions are so sparse and I love that. I mean I don't know really what I'm getting into. I have a feeling and yes when someone says twist then I'm just waiting for the ball to drop and it's hard because you know it is really fun to talk about how you know we have a book list called like Plot Twists That Make Your Jaw Drop and we're setting readers up for something to happen, but that's not the meat of the story and that's definitely not the meat of Next of Kin. It's just a fun surprise when you get there. Well, I want to ask for this last part before we get into your book. For writers who are currently trying to break into writing thrillers, what advice would you give about building a sustainable career rather than just chasing a one book deal?
Kia (20:58)
My advice is twofold. The first is very basic, just read a lot of thrillers. I think when writers start out, they may think of their book as one thing and then through the publishing process it becomes another thing. And it's interesting you've mentioned Jodi Picoult because actually she was quite a strong influence on my debut novel, Take It Back. And although most of her novels have a crime, at their heart, they aren't marketed as crime novels. And so I kind of thought I was writing more of a Jody Picoult book and then my publisher said, well, you know, this could be marketed as crime. And so just read a lot of thrillers if you want to be a thriller writer.
And the second thing comes back to what I mentioned before, which is don't feel like you're not a writer or not a writer enough just because you have a day job or you only write on weekends or lunchtimes or, you know, snatched hours on your commute to work because this is a really tough game and you might break out with your first novel, you might break out with your twelfth novel. I think it was Adrian McKinty, the author of The Chain, who was very frank and said he had got evicted. I think he was working as an Uber driver and then The Chain just blew up and became massive. But that massive book may never come. You might just be kind of toodling along as a mid-list author and there's absolutely no shame in that, but there may never be a breakout book. So do it for the love, but also just make sure that you can look after your mental health by having a regular income, putting food on the table, being able to pay your bills, because nothing strangles creativity quite like being worried about your bills and stressed about whether you're going to be able to pay your mortgage, for example.
Amy Clark (22:46)
Yeah, that's wonderful advice. Kia, when do you rest? When are you resting?
Kia (22:53)
Yeah, I do have to remind myself to rest because I'm one of those people that are either working or resting with a capital R. And by that, mean, you know, I'm traveling somewhere or I'm on a beach reading a book, but I can't just, you know, I'm quite good at kind of watching Netflix. But if I've spent an hour on, say, Instagram or TikTok, I'll then just berate myself because that's not true relaxation.
So for me, I relax by going boxing and I relax by going for a walk or going for a run. But yeah, sometimes it is Amy like, when do I just sit down and do nothing? You know, so it's something that I always learn and then relearn and then forget and then have to relearn.
Amy Clark (23:31)
Yes, yes. I love this like soft life trend that's going on with Gen X where they're like embracing the soft life. I get it. We're definitely of a different generation where we are, after that. But also like we're so lucky because you know, you being so ambitious means that we get more books from you. So we're really grateful for that.
Kia (23:50)
Thank you. I mean, the soft life is so interesting because after I finished my diploma, I had a couple of weeks to myself and I thought, what do I do? And I went for a walk and I came home and I made some chai and I sat down and I just thought, in theory, I love the idea of the soft life, but in practice, it's just not for me.
Amy Clark (24:07)
Same, same. Well, I want to talk about this story. We're going to be talking about Next of Kin today, and this is a thriller that I actually was able to secure from the library. I did the audiobook and did the paper copy in front of me because I love to take notes and obviously I'm leading this conversation, but I think either avenue is great. And you had two audiobook narrators, if I'm not mistaken, right, for both sisters' perspectives.
Kia (24:34)
That's right. And they were amazing. Tanya Rodriguez, she does most of my books and then they had another voice artist in Next of Kin as well. Full disclosure, I don't tend to listen to my audio books. I hear snippets, but I'm always, I don't know. It's kind of like, you know, some actors say they don't like watching themselves on screen. When you hear your words back, said back to you, I don't know, it just feels really weird. And so I don't tend to listen to the audio books, but the snippets that I hear and from all the feedback, you know, they're amazing. And so I'm glad you got to listen to Next of Kin.
Amy Clark (25:10)
Yes, I was fully immersed in it and I thought they did an exceptional job and obviously some pronunciations and I wanted to follow the best way that I could and so the audiobook really enhanced my experience as a US reader. So I want to mention that and it was available on Hoopla. If you have Hoopla you might be able to check that out. I want to start with the way that your story opens. We are opening very early setting up this sister story. There's a line that says, “It was a strange thing to be jealous of your sister yet perfectly natural at the very same time. Perhaps it was inevitable. After all, weren't women taught to compete with one another, to observe, assess, rank, and critique, which made your sister your earliest rival?"
So from that very first chapter, we get to see this love between these sisters, as well as the sacrifice that the older sister is making for her younger sister after their parents' death. I want to talk about the sister story. Do you have a sister? And how did you want this backstory to be layered into their whole drama right from the top.
Kia (26:11)
I have an embarrassment of wealth when it comes to sisters. I've got five sisters. And so I grew up in a very big family and there's a spread of about, I want to say 18 years between the youngest and the oldest. And so I've been very lucky in that sense.
In terms of layering their backstory into Next of Kin, it was really important to me to have two very distinct personalities. And so Leila, the older sister, she's very responsible, she's very disciplined, methodical, whereas Yasmin is a little bit freer. She’s allowed to have been freer because Leila has taken on the parental role. And I wanted to layer in that backstory because I always say a novel, readers will follow you anywhere if they believe in the characters. And if you really put the work into those characters, it could be a 400 page novel about a divorce and not very much happens. But if those characters are actually compelling enough, the reader will follow you.
And so just because it's a thriller and there's a lot of plot and there are lots of things happening, I feel like, well, you shouldn't still get complacent when it comes to character. And so I really wanted these women to feel like full-bodied characters, actual women that you can envision going about their lives. And I'm sure we'll come to this, but a few people have said to me, know, where do they end up? Like I need to know what happens to Leila and Yasmin after the end of the story. And I find that really lovely because it means that people are really invested into those characters.
Amy Clark (27:47)
Yes, for sure. Now, Kia, I have to ask you, where are you on the birth order in your family?
Kia (27:53)
Okay, god, I've to do the maths. There's Rena, Justina, Shoknami. So I'm number four, and there are two younger than me. So there are six of us in total.
Amy Clark (28:01)
Were you, you know, feeling like your older sisters, do you see them helping you in those ways? Like maybe not to the extent as this story, but you know, I think birth order is so interesting. So I'm the oldest and I, I'm like the mother figure. And so I definitely related to Leila's experience of filling in the gaps when parents are not able to do that. And I called my little brother, there's eight years between us, my baby, because he was my baby too. So I'm wondering if, you know, were kind of borrowing a little bit from your older sisters and then also having that experience as being younger on that.
Kia (28:37)
I credit my older sisters with so much and it's funny because they all kind of take different roles. So Rena, the oldest, she is gentler and more of a mother figure. Then there's Justyna who's the disciplinarian and she's very practical. If you need a problem solved, she's the one that you go to. And Shotna, the one immediately older than me is more of a confidant so I can tell her about the mischief that I've been up to. But really the biggest change they made to my life was just taking me to the library every Saturday.
I grew up in a very working-class family. We had no books in the house. But luckily, my parents, they understood the importance of reading. And so they would allow us to kind toodle off to the library every Saturday. And I'd come home with an armful of books. And without my sisters, that would not have happened because my parents were just so busy trying to survive and trying to put food on the table. Even that tiny little outing just would have been too much. So without them, I would not have been a writer. And so I think it really makes a massive difference to people's lives, the birth order and whether they have older, younger siblings and their personality as well. I think, you, the youngest of the six is just naturally more, a bit more like Leila, you know, laissez faire and like just kind of living her life. And that probably wouldn't have happened if she wasn't the youngest.
Amy Clark (29:57)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I know at the top of the story, we are really dropped right into the drama. We have every parent or caregiver's worst nightmare happening almost immediately in the story. It's interesting to me that you just really went right into it. Did you always know that you wanted to begin with this devastating accident happening or did that end up coming later and drafting and you realized it would be better to move it forward?
Kia (30:25)
It was always going to be early on. And it's funny because with my later books, I became more familiar with the three act structure of storytelling. So whether you're writing a play or a novel, and one of the books I read was called Stealing Hollywood and Applying Scriptwriting Techniques to a Novel. And I look back and think, actually, if I had read that before, maybe the inciting event would have come later, closer to the end of the first third of the novel.
But I'm glad that I just kind of wrote it by instinct because I think it really works in Next of Kin. And so I do plan my novels, but I had always from the beginning planned that the tragedy would happen early on. And it is a bit of a gut punch, but then hopefully it just pulls the reader straight into the story and off we go.
Amy Clark (31:12)
Yeah, I mean...effective. I could not put it down after that happened. This is centering Leila on forgetting her nephew in the car. It is the hottest day of the year. You really build that atmospheric tension I think right away letting us know that the weather is really really hot and and just I felt like I could feel that environmental situation right from the start before and it's creeping that dread is.
I would love to hear a little bit about what drew you to explore this particular kind of tragedy and if there's any true events that have transpired that you were inspired by to try and bring this moment to life for readers.
Kia (31:59)
Yeah, there were several things that I came across in real life and often with the best ideas, the sources are different and then they kind of just come together in this incredible alchemy. And so one of the stories that fed into it was when I read this news report about a father in the US who had been charged with homicide after leaving his twins in the back of his car on one of the hottest days of the year. And I thought, God, that would be absolutely horrific.
And then I also read this article in Stanford Medicine Journal. I won't give the title in the spoiler free section just because it is a bit of a spoiler, but that fed into the story as well. And then there was this third event where when I was a bit younger, I went to the park with my nieces and nephews and all but one of my sisters was there. And she said to me, just, can you just keep an eye on Faisal, who's her daughter and my niece, because Faisal was the only niece that was coming along whose mother wasn't going to be there. So I was like, yeah, sure. I'll take on that mantle. And when we were in the park at one point, we had a picnic and I laid down and when I sat up, Faisal was gone. And this, you know, the kind of ice that you feel in your heart. And I just freaked out. And luckily we found her and all that had happened was she'd seen a pram. We'd had, we had a pram with us and she saw a pram or a push chair, I think you call it in America. And she had just mistaken that pram for ours and had headed over there and luckily we spotted her.
But that just moment of pure terror that I had said to my sister, yeah I'll keep an eye on her and so even though the whole family was there it would have been my responsibility that she got lost. And so all of this kind of came together into the idea for Next of Kin and so that's where I wanted to root the novel. And in my research I found something really interesting which was actually in the UK, car deaths in this manner are far less common, but that doesn't mean we don't forget children at the same rate. It just means that our weather is colder and that's the only reason we don't see more fatalities. And that's quite a chilling thing to know. And it's often grandparents or aunts or uncles, people who don't have that responsibility as part of the course, and that's why they forget. And so I thought that was really chilling.
Amy Clark (34:23)
Yeah, it's interesting because my kids are in their 20s, so it's been a very long time since I've had to put a kid in a car seat and take them anywhere. One of my most haunting memories is that I had terrible dreams that I left behind a child or I had one where I would let the stroller go down a hill with my kid in it. And it was like a reoccurring dream building up to the birth of my child. And I think it was that my brain was trying to prepare. Like what if I do something wrong?
And I think as parents we're always thinking of that. But there was, this was way back in the day obviously, but Oprah had a daytime show and she had a mother on who had left her child in the car seat and they had died and it was so scarring to hear that story to witness that. But I attribute her work, you know, some of her work has been more controversial, but that particular episode was so impactful to me as a mother because I never forgot it and I was so diligent about watching out for my child. Now our new cars have a little sign and it dings and it says there's something in the back seat because now that I, you know, drive around my library books, it's like setting off alarms that I'm carrying around a child, but it's just my books. And I'm thankful that parents have that. But back then we just didn't have, you know, any kind of electronic device monitoring and you're so tired and a lot of times you're just doing things on autopilot so this incident feels so real to me.
Kia (35:57)
Yeah, and there's a line in the book, I can't remember it verbatim, it asks, you know, the line between tragedy and not tragedy is very thin. And we don't know how close we come to tragedy on a daily basis sometimes. And so just because somebody forgot their child, doesn't make them a terrible person. It just means that in that moment, in that morning, there was something on their mind and how easily that could be one of us. And so one of the points of the novel is, know, who do we owe grace to? And one of the themes of the novel, which I'm sure we'll come to, is motherhood and childlessness and how we treat women who either choose not to have children or are unable to have children and the ways in which they are portrayed in the media.
Amy Clark (36:45)
Yes, absolutely. Well, you know, as soon as I clocked in, this is where we were headed, I started to get that creeping dread. Like, okay, where's Max? Where is he? Like the entire time. And I think, you know, the scenes, especially early on when all of that is being processed, there are many, many layers to the tension that is required in these moments. One, to kind of where did the child go? Like the reader is thinking about that. Then we have lots of different kinds of tension. We have relational tension, have internal tension that's building up, have that situational tension. Tell me about writing suspense and how you wanted those early moments and that story to really build for a reader on a page. What's required to build that?
Kia (37:33)
I think just really thinking about texture and detail. So there's a book called The Science of Storytelling by a writer called Will Storr. And he says in moments of panic or high alertness, our cognitive functions kind of slow down in a way that we're registering more detail. And so what is actually a few seconds can feel like half an hour because our brain is bringing in and absorbing so much detail. And so I think in terms of writing a scene, it's just really thinking about the senses and what you're registering. It could be the plastic ticking of a clock, it could be the rustle of the leaves outside. And so just layering in that texture, I think really helps build the suspense because you're putting the reader in the shoes of the character. And so that's one thing.
How else do I build suspense? I think just trying not to rush through scenes. I think early on in my career, I was always keen to just get the story down to make sure that I had enough of a story. And now that I've done it four or five times, I've got more confidence that, okay, I'll get there because I'm a chronic underwriter. And so when I finish a novel, I'm often at 70,000 words rather than the requisite 80 or 90. And so I've learned that, okay, don't panic, you know, you can go back and layer in that detail. Don't try to rush through to the end. It's fine. You've got this. And so that really helps me kind of think about slowing down the scene and what's really happening.
Amy Clark (39:13)
Yeah, it was so beautifully done. It really, really pulls me in. And this one has courtroom scenes. And for me, they just feel so authentic. And I would love to hear about your research process for the legal side and how you balance that accuracy, but also pacing, since readers don't necessarily want to get stuck in the weeds. They want that to move at a clip. And I'm sure that takes a bit of refinement as well.
Kia (39:39)
Yes, absolutely. So all my books have an element of the courtroom in. And partly that's because I love the courtroom as a narrative device in a way, it's just a natural place where there's good and bad and the stakes are high. And so all those things that you need for a novel. But also the other aspect of it, speaking about pressure from publishers, because Take It Back, my first novel did really well.
They were like, you know, readers loved the courtroom aspects, so can we have more of the same? And so for Take It Back, certainly, I'd done tons of research. I spent a week at the Old Bailey, which is the highest criminal court in the UK. I managed to find a barrister who was willing to consult on the novel. I met him at chambers. And throughout the writing of the novel, I'm sure that I maybe asked about 300 questions. And so I think with those early novels I was really obsessed with getting the detail right because I knew that I wasn't a lawyer and so I was very keen to get the detail right.
But then I had to say to myself, you're a novelist first and foremost and so you can't be bogging down the story with all this legal procedure just because that's the way that it would happen in real life. And if you actually go to a courtroom, most of the time there isn't that much drama and so I, my philosophy is you do 100% of research and then you pull it back to 70%. And if that means the odd reader with some legal knowledge will read it and maybe be taken out of the story, which you never want to do as a writer, but there will be occasions if you've taken creative license, then that's okay. Because actually, if the layman reader can read it and it's believable, then that's absolutely fine. And I think it's more plausibility as opposed to accuracy which is my priority when writing those courtroom scenes. That's just something that I've had to learn. And I still do worry about the detail. You know, I had a scene with a juror who had not a juror, somebody in the public gallery who had sunglasses on. And so then I had to email the barrister that consults on my novels and say, would they be allowed to wear sunglasses? And so that level of detail, I do still get obsessed over, but in terms of procedure, I'm a little bit more light touch now.
Amy Clark (41:54)
Yeah, yeah, I get it. Well, I would just have a hard time, I think, moving from research to actually getting on the page. Do you ever feel like you get so immersed in that that it's harder to move to page or you are like really anxious to get whatever you learn right onto it?
Kia (42:07)
I find bringing the research out of the story the harder part and so you have to remember that you don't always have to be accurate. So my next novel, which is a follow-up to What Happens in the Dark, which is my novel that's kind of out at the moment, there are scenes where a doctor is explaining how a one-punch injury managed to kill somebody and I read an actual doctor's testimony and ordered the transcripts. And so I was using a lot of that in the book. And then, you know, there was a stage where I was talking about intracranial bleeding and the physiology of the brain. And I thought, well, you know, this might actually happen in a court case. Well, it did, you know, based on the transcripts, but the reader doesn't need to know all of that. And so I had to really try hard to simplify it. And I'm not sure I'm there yet. You know, I'll give you an update once I receive the notes from my editor. And so for me, it's always, no, you've got to make it less complicated, you've got to make it simpler, more engaging. And so that's where the tension happens for me.
Amy Clark (43:09)
Yeah, I understand. Well crime fiction often serves as a lens, I think, for social issues too. What conversations do you hope that this book is going to spark? For whether it's a reader or a book club that may take this book on this year?
Kia (43:27)
For me, Next of Kin was about exploring the ways in which women who choose not to have children or end up not being able to have children are portrayed. I think sometimes we see them as not necessarily selfish. I think we've moved on from that, but just unfulfilled in a way. And I don't have children myself and I see the ways in which I'm treated sometimes. And it's particularly interesting to see in my community, which is very much, you know, an Asian family in East London where, you know, fertility is just par for the course. And I remember sitting with my young niece on my lap at one point and a male relative walked past and said to me, that's a baby, you should get one. And I just, you know, the level of kind of offensiveness to that, and I didn't even know how to react because it just made me so enraged. And this is coming from a man who doesn't speak to his own children, you know. And so I just thought, just because I've chosen not to have children, to think that you can talk to me like that was really enraging.
And so one of the conversations that I want people to take from this novel is how do we view women in our family that have chosen not to have children or can't have children? Why is the first question we often ask someone, know, do you have kids or why have you chosen not to have kids? my mom said to me once, you know, one can never be happy without children. And my younger sister who's got two just splattered and she was like, mom, she's just come back from a beach holiday where she was like sipping cocktails on the beach. Don't tell me who is and who isn't happy. And so the fact that you have to then explain to people that no, really genuinely, I am happy sipping cocktails on the beach. And there's that idea of, the lady doth protest too much. And so sometimes you feel like you can't win. That I can be having this really fulfilled, amazing, exciting life, but if I'm trying to convince you of it, then I sound more like I've got an empty life. And so, you know, it's a tricky balancing act. And I just hope that that's one of the themes that people take from the novel. And, you know, how do we treat the Leila's of the world versus the Yasmins of the world?
Amy Clark (45:35)
Yeah, for sure. You know, I do think generationally, like we are hopefully getting better, but I feel like we're maybe the first generation that realizes that, there is a choice even involved. I don't understand why that is our go to ask question, but it has taken, I think there was a book that we read together as a book club called the Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano, but it was written by Donna Freitas and it was one of the first conversations I had with someone who had no desire to have children and was writing about that, exploring that in her fiction. And it's so important. I think books are such a great way to explore that, to talk about that, to talk about how we show up for other women in society.
And not only just, that sometimes people choose not to, but that sometimes that is layered with painful, painful decisions or lack of decisions about what our bodies are doing. And to even say that sometimes brings up a well of emotion that people do not realize and that also came from you know losing a child between my two kids and suddenly being aware that you know this is not an easy process for people that a lot of people would love to be mothers but aren't able to. There's so many conversations but that shouldn't be the first question. What is a question you would like to see people ask instead of do you have kids?
Kia (46:55)
That's a good question. know what's exciting you at the moment? Like what exciting projects are you working on? Or have you traveled somewhere exciting recently? There's so much, and it's so hard because as humans, we default to the lowest common question. When I meet somebody at a party, I will often say, how do you know the host or what do you do?
You know, and it's just this framework that we have, but maybe it's just reprogramming that framework. Because as you say, sometimes it is painful for people. Luckily, that's not my situation, but there's a writer called Elizabeth Day, who's been really good at talking about her inability to have children. And that was always the kind of life that she envisioned for herself. And I think she's done great work in reprogramming the conversations that women are having and men are having when they meet a stranger. And the question isn't, why don't you have kids? It's, you know, what are you working on at the moment? That's really exciting.
Amy Clark (47:52)
I know, I always ask, what are you reading right now? Are you a reader? And that's like my little go-to crutch thing, but it really doesn't work out if they don't read.
Kia (47:57)
Good question. Are you part of my tribe? Yeah, that does happen, sadly.
Amy Clark (48:04)
Well, I want to ask you as we're closing out this main show and just for listeners, if you are a patron of the show for $5 a month, you get access to every bonus episode and you'll get to hear a little bit about the decisions that were made with, you know, those plot twists we were hinting at in this story. But I would love to hear from you, Kia, like what can we expect from you ahead with your writing? And maybe if people loved Next of Kin, where would you like us to go next?
Kia (48:32)
If you love Next of Kin, I think you'll really love What Happens in the Dark, which is, it doesn't have a US release date, but it's the one coming out in paperback in the UK in April. And I really love Safa Saleem, the main character in that. I think she's probably my favourite character that I've ever written. And again, it's very much rooted in East London and looking at some of the decisions that women are forced to make and so I think that's probably the one that would resonate the most.
Amy Clark (49:02)
Okay, well, we will definitely be adding that to the list. And we always end our show with asking our writers what they're feeling proud of, whether it's with this project or with life in general. And it also gives me just a chance to say thank you so much for coming back to talk about a backlist book with us for this summer. You know so many people are going to fall in love with your writing. I often feel ashamed when I have an author on and I haven't read their entire backlist because I feel like I should be very well versed, but this has actually been really fun because it's a discovery process for me and it's an authentic one for everyone. So we all will be able to like dig into your books. And it makes me so excited about all the other books I'm going to get to read when I get off of here. But I would love to hear what you are feeling proud of right now, Kia.
Kia (49:47)
I think one of the proudest moments for me was being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. So in the UK, you're elected by your peers and you have to have published, I think the metric is two works of outstanding literary merit. And crime writers don't often get into those rooms because often genre fiction is seen more lowbrow than kind of literary fiction. So the fact that I was elected was a really proud moment for me especially coming from the background that I did, you know, I had free school meals at school. My parents couldn't read, write or speak English. And so to be elected into the Royal Society of Literature was a really proud moment for me.
Amy Clark (50:30)
Oh my gosh. I feel like a proud mom right now. I'm proud of you, Kia. That's amazing. That is so cool. Well, this has been a delight. Readers, if you would like to follow me, you can, click on the show notes and join our Patreon and we will meet you on the other side to hear all the spoilers for Next of Kin.
Kia (50:32)
Thank you. Thank you, Amy.
This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the transcription, errors and omissions may occur. The content of this transcript may not be comprehensive and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional advice or judgment. The views and opinions expressed by individuals in this transcript are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the transcriber or any associated entities. Furthermore, this transcript may be subject to copyright protection. Any reproduction, distribution, or other use of this transcript without the express permission of the copyright owner is strictly prohibited.