Adele Parks is marking a major milestone this year as one of the country’s most acclaimed – and successful – female authors. Her books, famous for their twists and turns, have sold more than 5.5 million copies in the UK alone, and she’ll soon be ticking off her 25th novel in 25 years.
The Teesside-born writer, who lives in Surrey with her husband Jim Pride (her son Conrad has now flown the nest), is something of a cult figure in certain literary circles, and she’s all too aware of the pressure she’s under to deliver something great. But as we learn during what might be Adele’s most candid interview ever, she’s not afraid of that pressure and, in fact, she rather likes it.
“Every book is like your first book,” she tells us. “There’s the joy and the excitement of seeing people’s reactions to it, but also the absolute nerves and horror of seeing how it’s received! But you know, I like that. I like the fact I still feel nervous. I think each book should still feel important.”
Her latest – and 24th – offering, First Wife’s Shadow , tells the story of a disciplined but likeable single woman in her forties who becomes fixated on her partner’s ex. Even after many books’ worth of characters and twisty psychological plots, Adele says it’s her “best yet” – although it turns out there’s a slight caveat to that.
“Every time, I have to think it’s my best yet!” she laughs. “Now, there are two books I can pinpoint in my career that I think, ‘No, they were not the best yet’, but every single time I have to think, ‘This is getting better.’
“I’m very disciplined and I’m quite self-critical so by the time my editor receives my book it has been edited and edited and edited, and I think it’s a done deal. I write to entertain and I want people to be surprised and shocked, I want the jaw-dropping moments.”
Adele, 55, who was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature in 2022, published her first book, the romantic novel Playing Away , in 2000.
Coming up with enough interesting and different characters to fill the pages of 24 books sounds difficult, but Adele has a special way of working. She essentially “interviews” her characters, using a list of around 200 far-reaching questions like, ‘Can you remember your first kiss?’ ‘What was your favourite Christmas?’ and ‘What’s your biggest secret?’
“It probably makes me sound slightly bonkers,” she laughs. “But trust me, it’s fun. I often have the plot first, and then I think, ‘OK, who is the worst person for this to happen to?’ So if I have a plot whereby a woman becomes obsessed with her partner’s ex, the worst person that could happen to is somebody who doesn’t believe they can be obsessed, somebody who believes they’re totally rational.
“Then I sort of sit down with that person. I first work out what their name is going to be. Is it going to be a solid name? Or an arty sort of name? And once I have that, I know who I’m talking to and I have my series of about 200 questions and I run through them. All of this happens somewhere in the back of my crazy little head, I don’t write much of it down.”
When she was first published 24 years ago, it was a period of highs and lows because her first marriage to Conrad’s father broke down when her son was less than a year old.
She met her now husband Jim, who is a marketing director-turned-film producer, a short time later, and he’s been her biggest champion ever since. Proving this point, Adele reveals, “When Jim was just my boyfriend, he wore a T-shirt on the Tube with a photo of my book that said, ‘My girlfriend wrote this book, please buy it.’ He was out there, desperate to spread the word!”
Adele and Jim now live in Surrey, where she spends her working days writing in her home office, and her free time producing highly artistic decorated plates.
She also frequently returns to her native Teesside. As well as it still being the home of her family, it’s also an important part of her role as an Ambassador for The Reading Agency and the National Literacy Trust, the UK charity working to boost literacy and in turn reduce poverty. It’s estimated that at least one in four children is growing up in poverty in almost 90% of the North-East’s constituencies.
“Increasing reading enjoyment in the UK leads to a happier and healthier population, a population that can articulate their needs, that can help our economy and change the world,” Adele says emphatically. We’re a very privileged country in so much as how we are born isn’t how we have to stay, but only if we have opportunities. And I believe opportunities through reading is one of those major opportunities.
“But for many people, reading just doesn’t come into their world. If your mum and dad don’t read, you’re unlikely to pick up a book because you won’t see it lying about the house, you won’t be taken to a library. So you miss out on all that entertainment, education and development and empathy, because reading – and it’s absolute fact – does all those three things.”
We’re surprised to learn that Adele had never met another author before she wrote her first book and the closest thing to a literary mentor was her local librarian.
“I was about seven years old and the librarian suggested to me I might want to be a writer, and I’m sure she said it to loads of kids, but I felt really seen,” Adele says. “I suspect it was a throwaway comment but I absolutely latched onto it. And what was interesting is nobody told me I couldn’t be an author. My parents didn’t say it was insane, nor did my teachers. People did say things like, ‘You’ll probably need a different kind of job as well.’ But that seemed OK to me, it seemed like a reasonable way of managing my time.”
After becoming the first person in her family to go to university, where she studied English, Adele spent around a decade “as per the suggestion of having a real job, as they call it”.
She taught English in Italy, and worked in advertising in Botswana, before returning to the UK and joining a management consultancy firm. This job was the making of her, she says, and equipped her with many of the skills she needed to make a success of her writing career – hitting deadlines, setting goals, project planning and the like. It’s also helped her become as prolific as she is – although she says that writing a book a year was in part down to another throwaway comment.
“My lovely first publisher said to me in passing, ‘You need to write a book a year so every summer you’re the person people reach for.’ So that was the advice, and I didn’t know any better, so I just thought, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ Nobody has ever told me different. Although some people have told me to write two a year but no thank you, I don’t see that one in my world!”
With her 25th book due out this summer – and she’s already midway through number 26 and reveals she “already knows what 27 will be and I have an idea for 28” – we wonder how long she plans to keep writing.
“If it got to a stage where I thought, ‘No, it’s not getting better and this one is a bit soggy’, I would try to see if I could take longer to work on it, or if that was impossible, that would be it, it would be the end, because I’m proud of what I’ve done.”
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