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Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Describe your latest book/project/work.

Penance is an untrue crime novel — that is, a fictional novel told in the form of a true crime book. The book covers the violent murder of a teenage girl by three of her schoolmates and is told by a washed-up tabloid journalist — but how much of it is true? It’s came out on September 26 — and response has been very positive so far!

My first book, Boy Parts, was released in the UK in 2020, but came out in print here in May of this year. The books have some overlapping themes but aren’t especially similar. Boy Parts has often been compared to American Psycho but I hadn’t read it when I wrote my novel, and Tampa by Alissa Nutting and The End of Alice by A. M. Homes were far more influential.

Both books are dark thrillers with some comic elements about horrible women — but presented quite differently.

What does your writing workspace look like?

I don’t have a fixed writing workspace at the moment. I tend to write in local cafes, in bed or on my sofa. I’m in the process of setting up a teeny tiny office in my flat’s “bonus room” It is a three-foot-wide utility space which inexplicably has a door on it. I have it painted green, have installed a floating desk in it, and am currently waiting on curtains, as the window is so large and the room is so tiny, that the space is molten hot and completely unusable until the sun goes down.

Introduce one other author you think people should read and suggest a good book with which to start.

I’d recommend Matt Wesolowski’s books, particularly to fans of Penance, if you read it and would like to read something similar. Matt mentored me through an arts organization called New Writing North, and his Six Stories series has been very influential. They’re fictional crime books told in the form of true-crime podcasts; each book covers one major crime from six different perspectives. Most of the books are set in and around northern England and tie local folklore to the crime, giving the stories an edge of supernatural horror… I’d recommend starting with the first book in the series (also called Six Stories) — the rest can be read in any order, my personal favorites are Hydra and Deity.

What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?

In my last year of university, I worked for the designer underwear brand Agent Provocateur as a shop girl — at the London City branch, which has been closed for several years. The City branch was quite staid but someone weird came in pretty much every time you covered a shift in Soho — where the shop had its own security. I have several long anecdotes about working there (my own and secondhand), most of which are unfortunately too disgusting to share! If you read this and come to an in-person event, feel free to ask for one!

Describe a recurring or particularly memorable dream or nightmare.

I have a recurring dream about going through a serious of increasingly narrow hallways with small doors, to access large rooms which only really exist as spaces between the small hallways/doors I need to traverse. It’s a stress dream, I think. I also have one where I’ve killed someone and need to bury the body, which I think is very common.

What's your biggest grammatical pet peeve?

Initially I thought I didn’t really know enough about grammar to answer this question. My own grammar isn’t spectacularly good (I don’t really have much beyond a high school level education in this kind of thing) and I don’t really make a habit of judging others on small things like comma placements and semi-colons. However, it did occur to me that I absolutely hate when people use the word ‘orgasm’ as a verb? ‘Orgasmed’ instead of ‘had an orgasm’ or ‘came’ — very clunky!

Do you have any phobias?

As you might have guessed from my recurring dream — I am quite claustrophobic. I really struggle with films etc. that involve small, closed spaces or extended crawling sequences in video games. The first hour of The Descent is really terrifying to me for this exact reason. I’m not good with heights either, or spiders — or dogs! In general I’m a very anxious person.

Name a guilty pleasure you partake in regularly.

I wouldn’t really consider video games to be a guilty pleasure — interactive narrative storytelling is an incredibly exciting new field that I think more novelists should engage with! Otherwise I just don’t consider any pleasure to be guilty — there’s value in anything that brings you joy and lionizing some hobbies and pursuits as worthy and others as embarrassing and shameful is simply no way to live your life.

Five books which were most influential to Penance.

I did a lot of reading and research for Penance and here are the books I was most inspired by and drew the most influence from.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Killing for Company by Brian Masters
The People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
Kamikaze Biker by Ikuya Sato
Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe
A native of Newcastle, Eliza Clark lives in London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. She works in social media marketing and has worked for women’s creative writing magazine Mslexia. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s “Young Writers’ Talent Fund.” Her short horror fiction has been included in Tales to Terrify, and she hosts the cultural podcast You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? with her partner. Boy Parts was her first novel; Penance is her newest release.