Portobello Book Blog

Today sees the start of a brand new author feature #TenThings. I will be joined by different authors each week who will tell you #TenThings they would like their readers to know about them. I’m delighted that this feature is starting with Claire Duffy, though she uses CS Duffy for her writing and tells you why below!

#TenThings

1. My name is Claire, but I go by C.S. Duffy for fiction because there are several Claire Duffys on Amazon, including one who writes incest porn which my Grandma found and thought was me.
2. I’m Scottish, but my family moved abroad on my eighth birthday and I just moved home to Glasgow last year – almost exactly thirty years later!
3. I have just started dictating my books and I love it, so most days you can find me traipsing for miles around the West End or Loch Lomond, apparently muttering into my hand about murder.
4. My ambition is to start Munro bagging while writing once the weather clears up – maybe I’ll start a trend!
5. I got the idea for my current series of books when I was working in an oil refinery in Toledo, Ohio and somebody told me a story about a date their aunt went on with Ted Bundy.
6. I wrote my first novel by accident. While taking a break from screenwriting I started to blog as a character from one of my screenplays as a creative outlet (https://lifeisswede.wordpress.com/) Regan’s story took off a tiny bit, and after six months I realised I had a novel on my hands!
7. The scariest moment of my life so far was when I ran out of petrol driving by myself, at night, in the middle of nowhere in central Queensland in Australia. I had no choice but to sleep in the car rather than risk stumbling around in the dark and possibly become a crocodile’s late night snack. Sometime in the middle of the night a group of drunk men came by and tried to tip the car. Luckly they got bored and wandered off before they succeeded!
8. The daftest thing I’ve ever set out to do was paddleboard the length of Loch Lomond in one day last summer. I trained for months and months, and only once my cousin fished me out the water a third of the way – nine and a half hours later – did we Google it and discover it’s pretty much physically impossible.
9. I once emigrated to Sweden on a whim.
10. I decided to feature my godparents in a small “cameo” scene in Dark of Night and found out weeks later that the scene I included them in actually happened to them – on day I was writing it. Every since, family and friends have been asking me to write in scenes of them winning the lottery.

Thank you Claire for kicking off my new feature in style!

You can find out more about Claire or connect with her by clicking the following links:

http://www.csduffy.com/

https://twitter.com/csduffywriter

https://www.instagram.com/csduffywriter/

You can currently read Claire’s first novel free – find out how here Dark of Night – Episode One

It is also available on Amazon: Dark of Night – Episode One

The second novel is also available on Amazon: Dark of Night – Episode Two