Sue (Montgomery) McCauley Biography

Writers for screen and radio are never asked to provide an introduction to their work. That may be why I feel more comfortable in the role of script writer—being taken seriously is a terrifying thing. Another plus about writing for screen is that, providing you have an IQ over fifty, you can sample the genre and feel needed. But (and I say this after many years in journalism) prose fiction is still the only medium I know where a writer is allowed to tell the truth (at least as s/he perceives it). And every so often that freedom feels hard to resist.

All three of my novels have been about modern social attitudes and personal relationships. They have focused on people of low-to-average education and limited financial means—not by way of a political statement but because, as a person of low-to-average education and limited financial means, these have been the kind of people I know best.

However, in style all the novels are, I believe, unalike. I was attempting different things and driven by different motivations. Other Halves grew out of personal anger and Then Again out of generalized fear. Bad Music, my third novel was, I suspect, something of a reaction to the cultural circles that had been prepared (somewhat diffidently) to embrace me on account of my having written two novels. Bad Music I wrote just to please myself and other people with bad attitudes.

I've been writing for a living for thirty years and I don't think I've yet got the hang of it. But I do have one simple philosophy—the reader is a friend and should not be subjected to boredom, posturings or … I would say lies, but lies are a kind of fiction. I'm afraid the only word that suits it is … bullshit.

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