Library Assistant Hannah is passionate about books and reading. In the latest in her series of author interviews, Hannah chats to British novelist John Marrs.
Before becoming a full time author in 2016, John Marrs was a freelance journalist, interviewing celebrities from the world of television, film and music for national newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Q, Total Film, and the Huffington Post.
Marrs has since published 13 books - psychological thrillers and speculative fiction - including multiple number one bestsellers. His latest book, You Killed Me First, came out in March 2025 to rave reviews.
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Hannah: Can you tell us about your new book, You Killed Me First?
John: It follows three neighbours in a village - Margot, a faded pop star, her long-suffering friend Anna and a glamorous Liv who has just moved into their street. They soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own terrible secret – and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors of her new friends. And on November 5, one of them awakens to find herself trapped in the centre of a bonfire. But who is it and why are they there?
I’m currently working on Dead in the Water which will be released the following year. Both of my latest books are psychological thrillers.
Your speculative fiction set five minutes in the future is so gripping! Will there be anything else in the series?
Thank you. The Family Experiment was released in April and will be my last in the world of speculative fiction, for a few years at least. But inspiration can strike at any given time, so who knows? I might change my mind.
What inspired you to write them?
In 2016, my partner and I were planning our wedding for the following year in New York’s City Hall as it’s a city we have both visited before many times and that we love. I was working in London at the time and one evening on my way home, I was on the escalator heading for my tube train, people watching. I was looking at the folk on the other side thinking how lucky I was to have found my match. Then I began wondering how much easier it would be if there was something inside us all that matched us with just one person in the world. And if we came into contact with them, we just knew on instinct, they were the perfect person for us. I started writing The One the next day. Then I kept coming up with other ideas for books set slightly in the future and I’ve now written five in total.
You self-published a couple of your early novels, which were then picked up by publishers. What are the benefits of self-publishing?
You control everything. The cover design, title, price, how it reads. The downsides are that no-one will do the promotional work for you. It won't just find an audience in your book’s early days. You have to find it yourself. There are literally millions of self published books coming out each year. You have to work to make sure yours doesn’t just vanish amongst all the others.
I’m glad you had the tenacity to keep pushing despite the rejection letters you received. What made you decide to self-publish your novels, rather than giving up?
I spent about eighteen months writing a book only to find no agent or publisher wanted it! So I had nothing to lose by self publishing it - otherwise it would have been a complete waste of time. My aim was to find 100 people I didn’t know, to download and read it. Fast forward ten years and it’s gone on to sell almost half a million copies. I can’t quite make sense of it.
Do you have any helpful tips for aspiring authors?
If you have an idea and don’t know where to start, don’t make excuses. Just write. It doesn’t have to be chronologically. You can write chapters here and there then piece them together at the end. And decide why are you writing early on. Is it for fun, for critical acclaim or to earn a living? Then choose your genre accordingly.
The One was made into a Netflix series; how much involvement did you have with that?
None! I took my book in one direction and the producers took it in a different direction. It was fascinating to watch the final version play out in front of me knowing it was all based on my idea.
Who are some of your favourite authors? And some of your favourite books?
I’m a big fan of a lot of current writers, such as Lisa Jewell, Peter Swanson, Tom Rob Smith, Liz Nugent, Cara Hunter and John Boyne. Other authors such as Gillian Flynn, Paul Theroux and Alex Garland also inspire me.
Some of my favourite books include John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, Alex Garland’s The Beach, Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and JD Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye.
Do you have a library card?
I do, but only recently! I spent a lot of my time as a kid in libraries in Northampton. When my parents did their monthly grocery shop in Tesco, they’d drop me off at the library opposite where I’d spend an hour or so flicking through the new releases and modern-day classics that were new to an eight-year-old me. It was there that I discovered The Hobbit and the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, along with anything by Jules Verne. I’d pay for a postage stamp and fill in a postcard request form and order books and couldn’t wait until it dropped through the letterbox informing me my next read was ready to pick up. Then as I got older I would borrow CDs and DVDs from the library too. My son is four and we joined a library so that he could enjoy the experience of choosing his own books from the shelves. Borrowing and requesting books is much simpler these days than it was back then!
