As you know, I love being in at the start of a new book and with today being publication day for C. R. Westbrook\u2019s debut I\u2019m thrilled to welcome her to the blog to chat all about it. My huge thanks to Sarah Hembrow at Vulpine Press<\/a> for putting us in touch with one another.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s find out more:<\/span><\/p>\n Welcome to Linda\u2019s Book Bag<\/em> Caroline and thank you for staying in with me.<\/strong><\/p>\n Hi Linda! Thanks for having me as a guest, it\u2019s great to be here!<\/span><\/p>\n Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why\u00a0have you chosen it?<\/strong><\/p>\n So today I\u2019m bringing along my debut novel Troublemaker<\/strong>, which is published by Vulpine Press today \u2013 and since it\u2019s the only one I\u2019ve had published so far, bringing this one along was an obvious choice.<\/span><\/p>\n Congratulations on your debut and happy publication day. How did Troublemaker<\/em> start out?<\/strong><\/p>\n I first started writing it in the summer of 2021, just as we were coming out of lockdown, after spending the enforced time behind closed doors teaching myself how to write and structure a novel, as well as researching the publishing industry and how I could possibly get my work out into the world!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Is Troublemaker<\/em> your first attempt at writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n Troublemaker<\/strong> is actually the second full-length novel I wrote (not counting the long-forgotten, utterly self-indulgent and completely terrible attempt I made at writing a book when I was 25!)\u00a0 -and I wrote this one just to confirm to myself the first one wasn\u2019t a fluke and I could actually do it!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ah! I have one of those \u2018first\u2019 novels too Caroline!<\/strong><\/p>\n And then, when my beta readers starting telling me it was better than my first, I decided trying to get this one out into the world would be a better bet. Now, after lots of late nights, an awful lot of panicked overthinking, much questioning of my character\u2019s motivations, four birthdays, three bouts of Covid and plenty of emotional support dark chocolate it\u2019s here. And I couldn\u2019t be prouder of what I\u2019ve achieved. Which makes it such an honour to share it with you today.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m so impressed. It\u2019s not easy getting into print so you should be very proud of yourself. So, what can we expect from an evening in with Troublemaker<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Troublemaker<\/strong> is (deep breath) a dark-comedy-psycho-thriller with a romcom twist. <\/span><\/p>\n That sounds really innovative.<\/strong><\/p>\n Before I started writing I was struggling a lot with anxiety and depression (both thankfully now stable) and one of my coping strategies was reading, usually around a book a week or every ten days. Specifically I love psycho-thrillers but always noticed with the genre there\u2019s very little in the way of humour (or at least that was the case before the current trend for sassy female serial killer stories, of which I wholeheartedly approve).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I think many of us can empathise with those feelings. <\/strong><\/p>\n Obviously it\u2019s a tough one because thrillers often deal with very sensitive subjects which are no laughing matter. But I noticed when I did read something which had any funny moments in it at all it really stood out to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As someone who has always had a darkly comic sense of humour (my favourite films include Heathers and Grosse Pointe Blank, and I love TV shows like Inside No 9 and What We Do In The Shadows) I did wonder if it was possible to apply the same to a thriller. And when I started writing that very first night, around 1am in January 2021 I realised very quickly that doing a serious drama wasn\u2019t me. Hence I dropped right into this genre-straddling hole and didn\u2019t look back!<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s brilliant \u2013 and we do need light and shade in all genres I think \u2013 and even Shakespeare agreed! So what is Troublemaker<\/em> about?<\/strong><\/p>\n Troublemaker<\/strong> tells the story of star showbiz reporter Elena Robins, who works at a news website in Canary Wharf called Spark. She\u2019s feisty, witty, popular, has a millionaire boyfriend, an ill-advised crush on her cynical deskmate Nathan, and fabulous fashion sense. Oh, and she might have murdered a colleague seven years earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n You can\u2019t just leave me hanging there. Tell me more\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n When a mysterious newcomer, Katja Lake, shows up in the office, it sparks off a chain of events which threaten to ruin both Elena\u2019s career, and her life. Which leaves her fearing that her murky past is back to haunt her \u2013 until things spin wildly out of control with an unexpected moment of violence, and she realises she\u2019s in real danger from the new girl. But will anyone believe her? Or will she wind up as dead as her ex-colleague?<\/span><\/p>\n Is this Elena\u2019s single person perspective then?<\/strong><\/p>\n The story is told from the points of view of several different characters \u2013 Elena, Katja and Nathan in the present, and we also have a dual timeline woven in from the past featuring the victim, Laura Lucas, and the events which lead up to her death.<\/span><\/p>\n It sounds as if Troublemaker<\/em> is very much more than just a comedic thriller.<\/strong><\/p>\n Troublemaker might be a comedy but it\u2019s got serious underlying themes, mainly around my fascination with how we treat each other (which isn\u2019t always as we should \u2013 all of us have at some point in our lives behaved in an ill-advised way towards someone else!) But equally it asks the question of whether you can make that one huge, enormous mistake and still be redeemable \u2013 or if you deserve to be forgiven.<\/span><\/p>\n Most of the characters are pretty morally grey \u2013 perfectly likeable on the surface, the sort of people you\u2019d probably get on well with if you met them down the pub. But underneath they\u2019re concealing secrets and lies and a whole lot of eyebrow-raising behaviour, the sort of things many of us have done but would never actually admit to.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ve just captured humanity in a sentence I think! Where did you get your ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n Most importantly, the book is inspired by my own experiences working in entertainment and lifestyle journalism for the past 35 years, at places like Empire Magazine, the BBC and, currently metro.co.uk where I worked on the entertainment desk for several years before moving departments (I currently work on what\u2019s called Audience, which I\u2019m not going to explain here but it involves curating our content for other platforms on the internet, writing fun quirky original content across a range of topics, playing around with analytics and spreadsheets, etc etc).<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve read books before about showbiz reporters and it\u2019s always along the lines of them meeting some hot film star on the red carpet and falling in love, having the whole Cinderella dream come true etc, but in reality that almost never happens. It\u2019s true there are some glamorous aspects to entertainment journalism, and I\u2019ve met some incredibly famous people others can only dream of meeting. But those red carpet encounters are generally fleeting \u2013 and I certainly don\u2019t know anybody who\u2019s run off with a celebrity they met on one!<\/span><\/p>\n How would you describe showbiz journalism as a career then?<\/strong><\/p>\n For the most part at least \u2013working in showbiz journalism is much like any other office job, with meetings and deadlines and squabbles over who gets to take leave when, and complaints about people heating up last night\u2019s fish in the microwave. And yes, everyone works very hard, with people on those desks often putting in very anti-social hours including evenings and weekends. Not all swanning off to parties and events and premieres then \u2013 and even when I did work on that desk they were few and far between.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So my aim with this was to reflect that by writing about the relationships between the actual people in the office, rather than going all in for the more glamorous aspect. Which a lot of the time can be overrated \u2013 just because you get invited to showbiz parties doesn\u2019t always mean they\u2019re good! Laura discovers this in one scene where after doing an interview with an up-and-coming pop star she gets invited to his launch party, and it ends in disaster. As she tells us:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018The party was not what I expected. The entrance was bold and flashy and covered in thousands of lights, twinkling shards of glass in the night sky. Inside, though, it was far from glitzy. Instead it was hot, noisy and thronged with people drowning out the DJ with their chatter. Everybody seemed to know somebody and have something to say to them. The floor was so sticky I had to prise my boots off it like Velcro, and while there may have been a bar somewhere, it was so murky and crowded it was impossible to find it. My colleagues had done, however, as about ten minutes later, a dark brown beer bottle, dripping with condensation, was handed to me. And just like that, they disappeared.<\/span><\/p>\n Leaving me to fend for myself.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n That sounds highly relatable!<\/strong><\/p>\n One final thing to say here is that obviously, a lot of what happens in this book is inspired by things which I have experienced in my time as a journalist \u2013 for example Gleam, the website where Elena and Laura both work is very similar to the long forgotten teen magazine where I began my career all those years ago. The party which ends so badly for Laura also actually happened, given the turn events take it might seem embarrassing to admit this. But at the same time I was also 19 when it happened. And if you can\u2019t make mistakes when you\u2019re 19 then when can you? We\u2019ve all been there.<\/span><\/p>\n Other parts, however, are complete fiction. And I\u2019ll leave it up to you to figure out what\u2019s the truth and what isn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n I think Troublemaker<\/em> sounds fabulous. <\/strong><\/p>\n What else have you brought along and why have you brought it?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of elements in Troublemaker<\/strong> which you can adapt for a great evening in with your book, and it\u2019s those I\u2019m going to focus on. <\/span><\/p>\n Firstly some pink d\u00e9cor as it\u2019s the signature colour of the book, right down to the cover! It\u2019s Elena\u2019s favourite colour and she wears it a lot, in some pretty significant scenes. There\u2019s a lot of clothing descriptions in the book, which is reflective of my own love of dressing up for work (rather than rolling in to the office in whatever\u2019s clean). So that was reflected here. As for pink, well it\u2019s a pretty wholesome colour, and Elena likes to give off this air of being cutesy and innocent when the reality is she is anything but.<\/span><\/p>\n So if I\u2019m having a night in with Troublemaker<\/strong> I\u2019ll wear something to match the book cover, maybe wrap up in a pink blanket. Elena also loves her cuddly toys, specifically her plush bunnies. So those would be my reading companions.<\/span><\/p>\n Secondly, snacks.\u00a0<\/span>Troublemaker<\/strong> has quite a few scenes of people in restaurants enjoying sushi and steak dinners, eating takeaways on the sofa on a Friday night, eating toast in bed, so you have a lot to choose from. However to accompany reading time and discussion of the book I\u2019d have to pour myself a glass of Shiraz \u2013 it\u2019s Elena\u2019s favourite, as we find out, and as a red wine drinker myself it works perfectly for this!<\/span><\/p>\n To that I\u2019m adding some salted caramel ice-cream, to reflect a scene in which Elena, having done something seriously ill-advised, eats an entire tub of it in bed. It happens to be a favourite flavour of mine, but I also chose it because at the time I was listening a lot to a song called Salted Caramel Ice-Cream by the band Metronomy. It\u2019s a cute electro-pop tune with lyrics in which the singer is expressing how he feels about a mystery woman. It seemed to fit the mood of the romcom subplot, so I had to fit an oblique reference in somewhere!<\/span><\/p>\n Now you\u2019re talking! I can\u2019t drink wine as it makes me ill, but I can certainly help you with that ice-cream\u2026 And is music important to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n Music plays a big part in my writing, and when I was up late finishing off drafts of Troublemaker<\/strong> and working on edits I\u2019d stick my earbuds in and basically listen to whatever random cheese I could find on Spotify. So for my evening in I\u2019d compile a playlist of songs which feature or are mentioned, kicking off with All Out Of Love (the Air Supply version not the Westlife one!). I love an 80s power ballad and this one has to be on there, given that it crops up at the worst possible moment in the action, at least for the character who hears it. And from that point of view the playlist also needs Blame It On The Boogie and the Macarena on there. Two party classics that, as you will discover, play their part in proceedings.<\/span><\/p>\n The Macarena has unfortunate connotations for me. I was dancing to it on a cruise on the Nile in Egypt just before I went down with horrific food poisoning!<\/strong><\/p>\n Characters are also described as listening to songs by Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Duran Duran, so I\u2019d add those also. For a fun twist I\u2019d chuck in Jaja Ding Dong from the Netflix movie Eurovision \u2013 it\u2019s Elena\u2019s ringtone so any excuse!<\/span><\/p>\n Speaking of which, it\u2019s a little known fact that all the characters in Troublemaker<\/strong> are named after (in some cases forgotten) Eurovision singers \u2013 given I\u2019m such an enormous fan of the contest it\u2019s like my little tribute to the whole thing!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n You do realise that I\u2019m now going to have to research every one of them!<\/strong><\/p>\n The playlist would get far too long if I included every song by every artist whose name I\u2019ve borrowed, but two in particular stand out to me. One is a song called Verona, which was Estonia\u2019s entry at Eurovision 2017 by a duo called Koit and Laura \u2013 I listened to this one a lot when I was writing the initial draft as it somehow seemed to fit in with the romantic element of the storyline. And although nobody\u2019s named after this one, Sweden\u2019s 2022 entry, Hold Me Closer by the singer Cornelia Jakobs, hit me in the feels so much that it actually influenced the direction the story took towards the end of the book. I originally had a very different ending in mind for it, then around the end of March 2022 as I was coming to the end of the first draft, I caught Covid for the first time. Luckily I wasn\u2019t seriously unwell with it, merely feeling as though I had the worst cold ever, but because I was too stuffed up to sleep I sat up for several nights into the small hours writing the final chapters of the book while listening to that song on a loop.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ha! Finally something positive about Covid!<\/strong><\/p>\n By the time I recovered I had this ending which I had no intention of writing but just, to me, worked so much better than what I had planned, and literally sent my emotions all over the shop. I knew I had to go with it. So, Cornelia Jakobs, if you\u2019re reading this, it\u2019s all your fault.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m sure she won\u2019t mind\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Two other suggestions for this now epic playlist: firstly we have Habanera from Carmen \u2013 which is Elena\u2019s custom ringtone for her boyfriend Daniel, and like the Air Supply song comes in at the worst possible time. I\u2019d stick that on for a touch of class. And finally, you have to have a song called Troublemaker<\/strong> on there \u2013 Olly Murs\u2019 hit is the obvious but I recommend the one by Green Day, purely as a reflection of my own personal taste.<\/span><\/p>\n So once you\u2019ve done your reading, talked about the book, drunk your wine and eaten your ice-cream you\u2019ve still got the living-room disco to come.<\/span><\/p>\n I think we definitely need to get the music on Caroline. You do that and I\u2019ll give readers a few more details about Troublemaker<\/em>. Thank you so for much staying in with me. I wish you every success with Troublemaker<\/em> \u2013 it sounds fabulous.<\/strong><\/p>\n Showbiz reporter Elena Robins, the rising star of London\u2019s biggest news website\u00a0Spark<\/span>, is talented, witty, popular, has fabulous dress sense, and might have murdered her biggest work rival.<\/p>\n Nobody knows what happened to promising young writer Laura Lucas that night, and Elena doesn\u2019t want to talk about it. Not to her millionaire lawyer boyfriend Daniel, nor her spiky boss Paula. And especially not to moody, cynical colleague Nathan, whom she\u2019s had a secret crush on for years.<\/p>\n But when mysterious newcomer Katja Lake shows up at work, nabbing Elena\u2019s longed-for promotion, it sets off a chain of bizarre events involving poisoned colleagues, badminton mishaps, and spectacular film star tantrums.<\/p>\n As Elena\u2019s career and reputation crumble, she wonders if her murky past is back to haunt her \u2013 until an unexpected, violent showdown leaves her fearing for her life.<\/p>\n Did she really kill Laura? And can she prove she\u2019s in grave danger from the new girl\u2013 before her death becomes the next big\u00a0Spark<\/span>\u00a0headline?<\/p>\n Published by Vulpine, today, 27th March 2025, Troublemaker<\/strong> is available for purchase through the publisher links here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n (Photo credit: Natasha Pszenicki)<\/span><\/p>\n CR (Caroline) Westbrook is a journalist and author with a CV that includes Metro, Empire and BBC News Online among others, writing about showbiz, TV and film. Troublemaker<\/strong> is her first fiction novel, coming 25 years after her first literary endeavour, writing biographies of Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio which were translated into Japanese, Spanish, German and even English.<\/span><\/p>\n She lives in West London with husband Leslie Bunder and teenage daughter Emily. When she\u2019s not writing she is a dedicated Eurovision fan who has been to the contest four times, an enthusiastic film quizzer and a distinctly average badminton player.<\/span><\/p>\n You can find out more about Caroline on Instagram<\/a> and on Bluesky<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindasbookbag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/troublemaker.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nStaying in with C.R. Westbrook<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nTroublemaker<\/span><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\nAbout C.R. Westbrook<\/span><\/h3>\n
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