Julia is the author of seven internationally published crime novels: Cuckoo, Every Vow You Break, Tarnished, The Long Fall, Her Husband’s Lover, The New Mother and The Daughters. Reckoning that the term psychological thriller didn’t do her work justice, she coined the phrase ‘Domestic Noir’ to describe her particular subgenre of crime fiction. The term has since gone into general usage, and has earned her some academic kudos, including writing the foreword to a collection of essays on the subject. She also writes (and reads, given the opportunity) slightly chilling, off-beat short stories, which have been published in various collections.
A fine example of career adaptation and survival in order to raise children – she has three – she came to fiction through a series of callings that took in theatre directing, playwriting, screenwriting, double-entry bookkeeping, teaching, graphic and website design and children’s book writing and illustration.
Currently working on her eighth novel and a screenplay, she is also Visiting Fellow on the UEA MA Creative Writing Crime Fiction and teaches online for Faber Academy and the National Centre for Writing. She co-runs the Brighton Crime Wave, a bi-monthly crime fiction night.
She writes in a shed at the bottom of her garden in Brighton, in the company of her two cats, Keith and Sandra and a dog called Uncle. With those three children now grown up, she spends a lot of time down there, occasionally coming up to the house for a coffee with her husband of many years, the playwright and screenwriter Tim Crouch.
