CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2025 – Interview with Stuart Neville
In the run up to the announcement of the winner of the 2025 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, we’ve been talking to the shortlisted authors to find out more about their novels. Read on to learn about Stuart Neville and Blood Like Mine.
How does it feel to be on the shortlist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger?
It’s a tremendous honour to be shortlisted for a CWA Dagger award, particularly the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. It feels like a validation of all the weeks and months that goes into writing a novel.
How would you summarise Blood Like Mine and what inspired you to tell this story?
Blood Like Mine is about a mother and daughter on the run from a terrible secret. When an FBI agent finally tracks them down, he finds that Rebecca Carter will do anything to protect her daughter Moonflower, even if she’s a monster. I’ve always enjoyed the gray area between thriller and horror, and with this book, I wanted to take one of the oldest horror tropes and use the thriller format to treat it in a realistic way.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
First and foremost, I want readers to keep turning the pages into the small hours, and maybe have a few scares along the way. But ultimately, I hope they’ll see the core theme is the unyielding devotion of being a parent, even in the most desperate circumstances.
What is your writing process?
I didn’t used to outline my books, but as the years have gone on, I find it more necessary to map out where I’m going with a story. I’ll start with a broad structure then extrapolate from there. The actual writing tends to come in bursts; there’ll be a few weeks where I’m writing thousands of words, then a few weeks when it slows to a trickle. If I could change anything, it would be to be more consistent.
What advice would you give to aspiring thriller writers?
I’m not a great believer in writing advice because every writer is different, and what works for me won’t necessarily work for someone else. The one bit of advice I always give, however, is not to flog a project to death, and to move onto the next thing. I see too many aspiring writers who complete one manuscript then spend years trying to refine and sell it rather than writing the second book, and third.
What is your favourite thriller and why?
I think The Silence of the Lambs is the perfect example of a novel and film that straddles the border between horror and thriller. As a thriller it’s perfectly engineered, and although it doesn’t veer into the supernatural, its portrayal of Lecter comes close. Red Dragon, the book that first introduced Lecter, is also in the very top tier of thrillers.
Our thanks to Stuart for answering our questions! The 2025 Daggers winners will be announced on 3 July. Find out more about past winners of the Steel Dagger on the CWA site here, and learn more about the rest of the Daggers and shortlists here.