Agatha Christie she’s not, but one woman is making a living by delving into the darker side of life, as Ian Robson reports

JULIE Morrigan has been a bad girl, a very bad girl, and is loving every minute of it. She has joined the ranks of women writers who relish exploring the dark side of human nature.

The murderous little boy, the psychotic backing singer, the crime writer with a penchant for hands-on research.

All these and more have been created by the North author eager to make her name in a genre which can be described as grimy crime noir with a modern twist and North East flavour.

Gone Bad: Tales About Bad People Doing Bad Things, available in an e-book, contains 18 stories from the up-and-coming writer where no holds are barred and no punches are pulled.

Julie said: “A lot of the writers I like are from the dirty, grimy, crimey end of the market and it seems to me you can write with a very honest voice when you write about things like that.

“I like the challenge of writing about people who in themselves are very often distasteful and trying to make them understandable, not to excuse what they do, ever, but try to have an insight into a life that is very different from the way I am.

“I’m not quite sure where it all comes from but there does seem to be an appetite for writing about violence, very often towards women, by women which I find quite odd. Women are traditionally nurturers and carers. Maybe we have a dark side that we let out occasionally and maybe by writing about it and reading it stops us from doing it.”

Julie hopes to follow in the successful footsteps of Lynda La Plante, who wrote Prime Suspect and Trial and Retribution, and Val McDermid, of Wire in the Blood fame.

It is surprising to find that Julie, 50, from Sunderland, is a very ordinary woman with a background in financial writing and a talent for making her own jewellery.

She is a member of the UK Society of Authors and is also a copy editor and proofreader. She used to work for a development agency and contributed, in one way or another, to titles like Everything You Need To Know For An NVQ In Management.

Losing her job was the catalyst to turn an interest in crime writing into something more.

She said: “I’m going back to 2007 now, I was made redundant and I pottered around for a while, lived off my redundancy, looked after my mother who was ill at the time.

“Then I got back in touch with my publisher and asked if they were interested in doing something with me again and they said yes.”

She has, however, written under four different surnames and admits her many identities can be confusing.

She said: “My proper name, if you like, is Julie Lewthwaite. I had business books published under that name and what I wanted to do was differentiate between the business writing and fiction writing.

“The first stories I had published were as Julie Wright, which was my family name, and then I decided to change it and went with Julie Morgan but it was boring and did not google very well.

“Then Morrigan was suggested to me by someone and I thought it had a ring to it.

“From here on in, it’s dead straightforward, it’s Lewthwaite for business books and Morrigan for fiction books, so everyone can find what they want.”