Holly Seddon: There Is Always Conscious and Subconscious Inspiration
In this interview, author Holly Seddon discusses taking big swings with her new thriller novel, 59 Minutes.
Holly Seddon is the author of several thrillers, including the international bestseller Try Not to Breathe, and The Hit List. After growing up in the English countryside obsessed with music and books, Holly worked in London as a journalist and editor. After several years in Amsterdam, she now lives in Kent with her family and writes full time. Find out more at HollySeddon.com.
In this interview, Holly discusses taking big swings with her new thriller novel, 59 Minutes, the linguistic differences between the U.K. and U.S. editions, and more.
Name: Holly Seddon
Literary agent: Sophie Lambert
Book title: 59 Minutes
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release date: November 18, 2025
Genre/category: Mystery/Thriller
Previous titles: Try Not to Breath, Don’t Close Your Eyes, Love Will Tear Us Apart, The Hit List, The Woman on the Bridge, The Short Straw
Elevator pitch: Carrie is a young mother desperate to reunite with her daughter. Frankie, newly pregnant, faces a romantic vacation that takes a terrifying turn. Then there’s the enigmatic older woman determined to protect her teenage daughter, Bunny, no matter what. Across South England, these three women must navigate survival amidst chaos when the country receives a nuclear bomb alert. With only 59 minutes before mass destruction, will they make it to their loved ones in time?
What prompted you to write this book?
The idea arrived almost fully formed. I was driving up the motorway to a crime writing festival, listening to a podcast about the accidental emergency alert in Hawaii 2018, and thinking about how I would respond if a genuine alert was sent out to everyone in the U.K.
That was the spark, but there were subconscious sources of inspiration from throughout my life. As a child, I was caught up in an IRA bomb scare. Then as a journalist in my 20s, with two young children, the 7/7 London bombings happened near where I was working. The way the city braced itself, the eeriness of the tube train network stopping, cell phones not working, all of us walking home through streets with no buses or taxis, that left an indelible mark. There is always conscious and subconscious inspiration, but I often don’t recognise the subconscious elements until after I’ve written the book.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I started writing 59 Minutes in October 2022 and finished the first full draft in June 2023. After receiving my agent’s feedback, I did another full draft which I finished in August 2023, just before I went on vacation—it was a photo finish to get it done in time. At that point, my U.K. editorial team started work on it with me; when it was bought by my dream editor Emily Bestler (Emily Bestler Books/Atria), this became a kind of dual editorial process.
The core idea never changed, nor did the overall “time ticking down” structure. But the characters and their backstories went through several iterations until I found the right “cast.” Then it all clicked into place.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
During the first edit, my U.K. editor really encouraged me to be “painfully intentional” with my word count and told me that pace is a great driver of reader reviews. I’ve always aimed for pacy writing, but I was absolutely ruthless in my edits about not wasting a word. And 59 Minutes really is my paciest, tightest novel to date, and has the best reviews.
I love working with the U.S. editorial team, and I always enjoy finding out what cultural quirks and linguistic differences need adapting for different audience. For example, in the U.K., we call non-diet Coke “full fat Coke”, which I now realize makes absolutely no sense. In the U.S. version of 59 Minutes, it’s more aptly “full sugar."
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Not strictly a surprise, but I challenged myself to take the biggest, bravest swing that I could with this book. Not just in terms of plot or scope, but at every level. For example, there are moments in the novel where I use form (the layout of text on the page) to add an extra layer to the scene.
In challenging myself, I found that I could step up as a writer, and I’ll take that with me into my next projects.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope that as much as they have an exciting, twisty read, they also stop to think what matters most to them. 59 Minutes features three characters racing to be with the people they love before the unthinkable happens. For these characters, for this last hour, everything else is stripped away. All the day-to-day anxieties, all the stuff we aspire to buy, all the old arguments we’ve had, they really don’t matter as much as who we love and the things we want to tell them.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
There is no perfect time, nor any ideal conditions worth waiting for. Just get it written, even if it’s in snatched moments, on scraps of old envelopes or the notes app on your phone.
There are times when the words flow more easily because you’re in beautiful, quiet surroundings, and that’s great. But some of the best words I’ve ever written have been scratched out of hard, painful, inopportune moments. I wrote my debut novel Try Not to Breathe while juggling life with three young children, while scratching out a freelance career. I wrote late at night, early in the morning, while cooking the kids’ dinner, on the train to meetings, standing up in the kitchen, sitting on the floor of a poorly child’s bedroom. It was really hard at times, but if I had waited for it not to be so hard… maybe I’d never have written it at all.
