Holly Watt's To the Lions is shortlisted for the 2019 Best Published Novel award. To The Lions follows Casey Benedict, star reporter at the Post. Casey, tipped off by an overheard conversation at an exclusive London nightclub, begins to investigate the apparent suicide of a wealthy young British man whose death has left his fiancée and family devastated. 

Her determined hunt for the truth takes her from London, to the glitz of St. Tropez, to the deserts of Libya and on to the very darkest corners of the human mind. 

About the author:

Holly started her career at the Sunday Times, before moving to the Daily Telegraph. During six years at the Telegraph, she was the Whitehall Editor and jointly ran the investigations team. She then moved to work on the Guardian's investigations team. Holly has been nominated for a wide range of journalism prizes, winning awards for her work on stories including MPs’ Expenses at the Telegraph and the Panama Papers at the Guardian. She has reported from a wide range of countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon. Holly also worked as an undercover journalist. In 2008, she was the Laurence Stern Fellow, spending several months working at the Washington Post.

WNSF: What does adventure writing mean to you? Would you have considered yourself an adventure writer before being shortlisted for the Prize?

Right the way through writing To The Lions, I was aware that it didn’t fit any label especially well (my poor agent!) and, once the book was finished, I was worried it would struggle to fit into a “publishable” category. But I didn’t think the book would work at all if I tried to squash it into a specific genre, so there wasn’t much I could do about it. When it was nominated for this award, it all suddenly made sense! 

Adventure writing - for me - is about approaching a story with a slightly wider lens. Big, bold stories based in places that most people would never dream of visiting - probably quite sensibly. In hindsight, as a journalist, it was my task to try and make readers understand new places and different ways of life, so when I started writing To The Lions, it was natural to continue that sense of exploration and discovery.

WNSF: Are there any particular books or authors which have made a lasting impact on you? 

So many! As a child, I loved reading adventure novels - from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson to Gulliver’s Travels. I especially loved the Hornblower books. With my sister and cousins, we spent a lot of time reenacting the dramas - mainly building dens in the garden.

WNSF: Can you tell us about any adventurous experiences in your life? Have they influenced you as a writer or your writing?

For several years, as a journalist, I would start the day not knowing where I would be by the evening. I would be ordered to Heathrow, and only be told where I was going when I was halfway there. As a result, there were several adventures along the way. Whether hunting for documents in a nuclear bunker in Libya or chasing Somali pirates round the Indian Ocean, there were certainly a few times when I thought: “that was a bit close for comfort.” Oddly, the moment when I think I came closest to disaster was high up in the Rockies. I managed to drive off a road and into a snowdrift in the middle of a blizzard. I was stuck there long enough to think, “this might actually be it”. 

I didn’t realise at the time, but it was this sense of “never knowing what was coming next” that created both the characters and the settings for To The Lions. I spent years of my life never knowing quite where the stories would take me - Kabul? The Bahamas? Wrexham? - and the book’s central character, Casey Benedict, has a similar existence.

WNSF: In To The Lions, Casey and Miranda's relationship feels very genuine. Can you tell us more about the foundations of their relationship and how you made it feel this way? 

When I first started in journalism, I worked in a very male-dominated newsroom. When another female reporter who was roughly the same age as me started working there too, one of the news editors implied that we would not get on because two women of the same age and approximately the same skillset simply would never get on. After that, we decided we would work together - and do well. For the next decade, we worked all over the world - from Miami to Bratislava to Seoul - breaking some of the biggest stories in journalism at the time. Along the way, we became close friends. Although we are nothing like the two central characters in To The Lions, there are elements of our friendship in there - the trust, the determination and - sometimes - the ludicrousness. 

WNSF: A strong sense of place is vital to any great adventure story. What role does research play in your writing? How did you make your setting feel realistic? 

For me, creating a realistic setting almost always involves visiting a place. I sometimes feel you can learn more about a country in the drive from the airport to hotel than you can from a dozen books. I wasn’t planning to write To The Lions when I travelled to several of its locations, but as a journalist I kept notes and they were vital when I came to write the novel. At the same time, I also enjoyed doing more detailed research subsequently, when gaps in my knowledge emerged. For example, at one point, my characters visit Geneva, and although I’ve been there several times, it was helpful to go on Google maps to remind myself of the layout of the streets. I also used Streetview to see the shape of the lakefront. In a rather contrasting setting, I visited Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan relatively early in its development, so when I came to write the book, I ended up doing more research about how the camp had evolved with a further influx of Syrian refugees. 

At one point, I had written my two journalist characters into a corner, and couldn’t work out how to get them from A to B. I went out for quite a long lunch with an old friend and former colleague - and we worked out how we would have solved that problem. 

WNSF: What would you say is the hardest thing about writing? And the easiest?

Some days, you’re quite sure the words just won’t come, but actually if you force yourself to your desk, they will. And some days, the words just won’t come. The problem is that both these days look much the same as you make that first cup of coffee. The easiest bit - and best bit - is when the words are flowing. You’re racing along - and the story just comes to you, as if you’re just taking dictation from some weird internal force. 

I also find the isolation of writing quite hard sometimes. I have to be alone when I am writing - because I will seize literally any distraction - but I don’t actually like to be alone. 

The winner of this year's Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize will be revealed at a special ceremony in London on 12th September 2019.