Following her outstanding achievement as a finalist in the Page Turner Awards 2022, Sophie Morton-Thomas was thrilled to also win a category for ‘Best Title.’
She already had an agent at the time she entered our competition, but afterwards, they were lucky enough to secure a publishing deal with VERVE Books. The book was released today through a big launch at Waterstones.
Bird Spotting in a Small Town Receives Publishing Deal Following Page Turner Awards Success
My feet are itching to walk to the shore, to leave the kids again, to sit with the birds and pretend none of this has happened.
In a small, isolated town on the North Norfolk coast, Fran's life is unravelling.
As she fills her days cleaning the caravan park she owns, she is preoccupied by worry - about the behaviour of her son, the growing absence of her husband and the strained relationship with her sister. Her one source of solace is slipping out to the beach early in the morning, to watch the birds.
Small-town tension simmers when a new teacher starts at the local school and a Romany community settle in the field adjoining Fran's caravan park. From the distance of his caravan, seventy-year-old Tad quietly watches the townspeople - mainly, Fran's family.
When the schoolteacher and Fran's brother-in-law both go missing on the same night, accusations fly. Yet all Fran can seem to care about is the birds.
An eerie and unsettling novel, Bird Spotting in a Small Town perfectly encapsulates the intensity of rural claustrophobia when you don't know who you can trust.
Read more about Bird Spotting in a Small Town
Sophie's Literary Journey Takes Off with Publishing Deal
Sophie completed a Crime and Thriller Master's degree at the University of Cambridge in the last two years, where she studied under Sophie Hannah and Elly Griffiths. She was thrilled to learn that she had passed with a 70% in October.
The story of Bird Spotting came about because she had always wanted to write a chilling literary thriller similar to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, which she read at the age of twelve or thirteen.
Sophie had been a keen bird spotter as a child and wanted to tie the two elements together - a chilling thriller and spotting birds.
After spending several holidays on the North Norfolk coast, she found the perfect location to set the story. Settings are very important to Sophie, and she knew she couldn't begin writing the story until she'd found the right location.
When she was younger, she wrote lots of short stories and also had a passion for the boarding school stories by Enid Blyton, and tried to write some of her own!
She also enjoys writing flash fictions from time to time.
