Author Lisa Gray wrote her debut crime thriller novel in Glasgow but set it in the US – using Google Maps to research locations.
It’s gone down a storm – hitting No1 in the Amazon Kindle store in the US and the UK and making the top 10 in the Washington Post fiction bestsellers chart.
She’s not alone as a writer setting a book in a location she hadn’t visited.
Outlander author Diana Gabaldon wrote the first of her bestselling books while she was a science professor in Arizona before setting foot in Scotland.
Lisa, 41, from Glasgow, said: “I suppose it didn’t do her any harm that she started writing Outlander books without having been to Scotland at all, which is really impressive, so it’s a bit like Diana Gabaldon in reverse.
“When my book deal was announced and I shared it on Twitter, I got a tweet from her congratulating me.
“It just shows you how really nice and supportive the whole writing community is and a massive star like Diana would take the time to say something nice about a new writer who’s just starting out.”
Lisa’s book, Thin Air, is about a private investigator called Jessica Shaw, who finds out she’s not who she thought she was.
Lisa said: “She was a child who went missing 25 years ago and she never knew about it. So she actually investigates her own disappearance.”
She’d initially planned to set her story in Scotland but switched it to the US.
Lisa added: “I found it really difficult to write a book in Scotland. I don’t know if it’s because I was too close to it but I found it was all a bit clichéd.
“I felt the story would work better somewhere like America.
“It probably seems less realistic that someone here could go 25 years without knowing they were a different person but in America, it seemed a bit more plausible.”
Lisa hasn’t been to some of the locations in her book so she researched them online.
The story starts in Simi Valley just outside Los Angeles, where she has family and visited a few years ago.
But she’s only been there and tourist locations such as Venice Beach and the Walk of Fame.
She said: “I’ve never been to the seedier side of Hollywood, where the strip bars and low rent hotels are.
“A lot of it is set in a neighbourhood called Eagle Rock and I’ve never been there either.
“It meant many, many hours sitting in front of a computer on Google Street View.
“You drop a yellow guy on to a street and it’s a case of clicking along the road as though you’re driving along it.
“You can see what kind of restaurants and bars there are. It was about trying to get a feel for the place as much as possible.
“I probably spent more time with that yellow guy than I did with friends and family at that point.”
After studying to be a journalist, Lisa, 41, first became a football reporter and is now a commercial writer at the Daily Record.
She wrote a non-fiction book about Rangers that was published in 2013 but was always keen to write a crime fiction novel.
“I spent years going to the crime-writing festivals where you get to meet all these amazing authors like Ian Rankin and Lee Child and people like that,” she said.
Her character, Jessica Shaw, has even been described as reminiscent of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.
Lisa said: “I thought I could write a book one day but I kept talking about it for years before I actually did it.
“Maybe I was a bit scared of doing it in case it didn’t work out and it was a failure and I didn’t get an agent or I couldn’t get a publishing deal.
“Then a couple of years ago, I thought, ‘I’m just going to have to sit down and write this book.’”
She became friends with Scottish writers she’d met at festivals, including Craig Robertson, Susi Holliday and Douglas Skelton, and they encouraged her to start writing.
She said: “I’m quite lucky that the job I do is four days a week, after life as a football journalist, where I worked every weekend for 15 years. I now have a three-day weekend.
“It was just a case of in my lunch hour, making some notes and maybe taking my iPad in and writing a chapter.
“There were a lot of really late nights and early mornings just trying to fit in the time, and weekends, to try and get it done.”
She admits being single and with no children meant she could devote all her free time to writing.
Lisa took eight months to complete her first draft but was disappointed when she received rejections from agents after a couple of months.
She redrafted it and received feedback from authors Susi and Douglas.
Susi recommended it to her agent, who took her on and secured here a two-book deal with Amazon imprint Thomas & Mercer.
Lisa said: “We knew there had been some interest from Amazon and I was hoping they were going to make an offer on the book.
“Then an email from my agent popped into the inbox, saying, 'Here's the offer from Amazon. What do you think?'
“It was an amazing feeling to know that your book is good enough and someone else believes it.”
Her second book, Bad Memory, is out in October and features the same private investigator – this time looking into the story of a woman on death row who has confessed to a crime she doesn’t remember committing.
But she admits the deal hasn’t meant she’s able to give up her day job.
She said: “At this stage, it probably means I could actually go to Los Angeles and do some proper research for the books I write about.
“I’m not quite at the stage where I’m able to give up the day job.
“It's a dream for most writers to be a full-time author but I think that could be a bit down the line yet, if it ever happens.
“It’s life-changing because the response has been so much more than I could ever have expected in my wildest dreams.
“When I went to No1 in the US Kindle store, I did get a nice bottle of Moet and went to my mum’s house and had a fish supper and drank Champagne.
“I’m too old for wild nights out.”
There have been hundreds of positive reviews and emails from people who’ve enjoyed reading her book and got in touch via her website.
“It feels quite unbelievable that they contact you to say how much they enjoyed the book,” she said.
“It kind of feels like validation as well.
“The thing that put me off writing a book was the fear of failure that I might never get an agent or a book deal and then, when that happens, it becomes quite terrifying.
“As much as you write a book because you want people to read that book, it becomes terrifying when you know people are actually reading it and you’re waiting to hear their reactions.
“It feels quite surreal and I keep waiting for someone to tell me it’s been a big elaborate joke and it’s not actually real.”
:: Thin Air is published by Thomas & Mercer on June 1 but is available as part of a special pre-publication offer on Amazon now.
