Why I Made My Protagonist an MP: From Political Reporting to Writing My Daughter Knows

When I set out to write My Daughter Knows, I knew the story needed a protagonist who lived under constant scrutiny.

Making Kim an MP wasn’t just a plot choice—it was a way to bring my own experience in political reporting and communications into the heart of the novel, where public narrative and private truth collide.

I wanted Kim to be an MP because it put her at the centre of two worlds that don’t sit comfortably together: the intensely personal and the relentlessly public.

Grief, when it happens, is messy and private and often wordless. Politics demands the opposite. It asks for clarity, structure, and a version of events that can be repeated on camera without hesitation.

That tension was the starting point for My Daughter Knows.

Before I started writing novels full time, I spent years as a political reporter. I sat in rooms not unlike the one Kim stands in at the Midland Hotel—press conferences where every word is chosen, every pause measured, every emotional beat carefully judged.

You learn very quickly that authenticity is often constructed. Not in a cynical way, necessarily, but in a disciplined one. There’s a rhythm to it. A way of telling a story that lands cleanly, that survives scrutiny, that gives journalists what they need while still protecting what you don’t want to say.

Later, working in communications for a shadow minister, I saw the same process from the other side. You’re not just reporting the story anymore—you’re shaping it. You think about headlines before they exist. You anticipate questions before they’re asked. You build a narrative that will hold under pressure, because you know it will be tested. And it always is.

That experience fed directly into Kim’s character. She isn’t just a grieving widow. She’s someone who understands how stories are built and how they travel. She knows how to stand at a lectern and turn something devastating into something purposeful. She knows how to pivot from the personal to the political in three sentences flat. That’s a skill. It’s also a defence mechanism.

Making her an MP allowed me to write about that duality in a way that felt grounded.

On one level, she’s doing something admirable—channelling loss into a campaign that might help other families. On another, she’s operating within a system that rewards control, message discipline, and emotional precision.

Those instincts don’t switch off when she goes home. They shape how she speaks to her daughter, how she handles conflict, how she processes what’s happened.

From my time in journalism, I also wanted to capture the way a story grows once it leaves the room. You can give a perfect statement, hit every note exactly as intended, and still find that the conversation moves in directions you didn’t expect.

Journalists ask reasonable questions that open doors. Audiences pick up on details and run with them. The narrative evolves, sometimes subtly, sometimes all at once.

That’s part of what interested me about placing Kim in this role. She’s used to being in control of the message. She’s used to understanding the machinery behind it.

But the world she’s operating in now—particularly the online space her daughter inhabits—doesn’t follow the same rules. It’s faster, less predictable, and far less forgiving.

There’s also something very human at the heart of it. As a reporter, you’re trained to ask questions. As a communications officer, you’re trained to manage them.

But as a parent, especially one dealing with loss, those instincts can clash. You want to protect. You want to guide. You want to keep things contained. And sometimes that comes at the cost of actually listening.

Kim being an MP let me put all of that on the page in a way that felt true to the world I’ve seen up close. The language, the rhythms, the quiet calculations happening behind the scenes—it all comes from those years of sitting in press rooms, drafting statements, and watching how stories take shape.

At its core, though, the decision was about pressure. Put a character in a position where the stakes are already high, then add something deeply personal and uncontrollable. See what holds. See what cracks. That’s where the story lives.