Yeah.

Couldn't do that.

And And I always thought he's an honest kind of guy.

And I always thought he'd been really honest with me about things.

And it turns out in the end that he wasn't.

He hadn't been honest about things.

And I had been fooled quite a bit.

As did most of Ireland.

And

that was a massive chain reaction of spasms all the way down my right hand side.

And when...

I had been on the hospital ward of an orthopedic surgeon and I kind of should name him.

I can name him because he's dead, but I won't because I'm sure he has living relatives who wouldn't want to hear how badly he treated me.

But he decided that the problem was in my head.

that I was screaming in pain because I was looking for attention or something.

So how did you develop Sally as a character?

It also has, it kind of alternates between locations and between character perspectives.

Yes.

It's told between Erin, uh, her sister, uh, and Ruby narrate it between them until, you know, 25 years later, more narrators come in.

But it's really the two sisters telling the story.

And Ruby and her mother, after this incident occurs, Ruby and her mother move to Ireland, and Erin and her father stay in Boston.

And part of the reason was that I wanted to separate these sisters.

I, I wanted to see that, how they would react without each other, how they would behave without each other.

Are you aware of your readership?

What's the book and author, Liz, and, and how did it impact on the writing of The Truth About Ruby Cooper?

The book is called The Butcher Boy, by Pat McCabe, and it's set in a small Irish town.

And in, it features a, a psychopathic child, which links us back to, uh, Ruby, who's more sociopathic, I think, than psychopathic.

Although, I've never been able to, to get the specific definition of one over the other.

Um, but, uh, yeah, he is, um, Francie Brady is his name, and his mother has been taken to a psychiatric institution.

She later dies by suicide.

His father is a raving alcoholic, and later dies of alcohol poisoning.

So Liz, reveal to us, what is this best-selling novel and its author, and how did it influence the writing of The Truth About Ruby Cooper?

Mm.

And I thought, "That's a catchy opening line.

I'll use that." And then I thought, "Okay, who says this? What kind of person is she?" And I thought, "Hmm, may- I don't think she's naturally promiscuous.

Uh, maybe it's something she does when she's drunk." And then, then I thought, "Okay, she's an alcoholic." And then I thought, "Why is she an alcoholic?" And I thought, "Maybe she doesn't belong in the environment that she lives in." And I decided, "Okay, she, okay, she's in Ireland, but she doesn't belong here, so maybe she's an immigrant of some kind." And because I didn't want to do the, the, the tortured immigrant story-

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, I don't, I don't have a massive house, but I don't need one.

I've no kids, so there's just my husband and I. Yeah, I don't, I don't need a bigger house.