The Intel: Saul Black/Glen Duncan

©HACQUARD et LOISON/Opale/Leemage

In these times of austerity we know you’re always looking for more bangs for your buck. Which is why Crime Thriller Fella is bringing you two intel interviews for the price of one, sort of thing.

The other day we reviewed Saul Black’s The Killing Lessons, and you can see that by clicking here, or scrolling down. It’s a rollercoaster of a novel about the hunt for a pair of serial murderers, alpha killer Xander and his beta buddy, Paulie, and it’s intense, brutal and urgent.

Saul Black is, of course, the nom de plume of critically-acclaimed author Glen Duncan. It’s his first foray into the crime genre. We’re delighted to say that Glen and Saul are here to give us the intel about alter egos, how writing is like probing a wobbly tooth, and why his protag is such a mess…

Tell us about Saul Black

As ‘Glen Duncan’ my writing style has been ironic, digressive, oblique, parenthetical – and my previous books (werewolves excepted) have not been particularly ‘plot-driven’. I knew that if I was going to attempt a thriller I was going to have to develop a more economical style and concentrate a lot more on pushing the story forward in a dramatic, suspenseful way. So I decided to give myself a new identity, to pretend to myself that I was a different kind of writer and see if that helped. Psychologically, it did. Of course the boundary between two writerly selves is permeable: Granted ‘Saul Black’ has no patience with essayistic asides, jokes and literary allusions, but for all that ‘Glen Duncan’ doesn’t quite manage keep his trap shut. The chase is still cut to, but not, I hope, at the expense of psychological depth, decent sentences and fresh metaphors.

It turns out I rather like having an alter-ego. It’s a bit like being in disguise, which has always appealed. What worries me, now that Saul Black is up and running with serial killers, is the potential discovery that he has even worse habits than Glen Duncan… 

What was the inspiration for The Killing Lessons? 

I’m very rarely ‘inspired’, since that suggests either a specific trigger or a mysterious epiphanic moment. It’s much more a process of gradually (and indeed grudgingly) working around a few ideas, the mental equivalent of being unable to stop prodding a wobbly tooth with one’s tongue. WithThe Killing Lessons it was just a case of deciding to write a thriller (see answer to next question) and then sort of mooching about in my imagination for something that would at least get the story off the ground. I had no confidence that it would turn out to be anything more than a false start when I wrote the first five thousand words – but I sent it to my agent and he was very encouraging, so I persisted with it. 

What made you want to write a crime novel? 

The practical part of the answer is that crime is one of the few markets in fiction that’s actually thriving. The nobler part is that it occurred to me (with a laughable belatedness) that although I’d always been writing about ‘good’ and ‘evil’ – along with extremes of deviant behaviour and the ordinary human sacraments of friendship and humour and love set against it – I’d never written a straight murder story. So I thought I’d have a go. These days, I’m so old and knackered that nothing gets written unless I set it as a piece of self-imposed homework. I really didn’t know (and in a way still don’t) the first thing about the ‘crime thriller’ genre. It was an experiment. Time will tell if readers think it was a success.

How is your serial killer Xander different from other literary wrong ‘uns?

There are two approaches to writing psychopathic serial killers. One is to invite the reader in to psychological speculation, to suggest toxic seeds or traumatic antecedents such that, given enough shrinks and enough time, we might begin to understand what’s going on in the homicidal head. The other is to present the subject as a closed book, a finished product, a psychology that renders any prospective analysis pointless. (Imagine a globe of impenetrable metal, with the strange consciousness trapped forever beyond view or reach within it.) In Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, this is the way Harris presents Hannibal Lecter. (I understand that later writing delves into the doctor’s past, but for most readers, I suspect, the definitive version is the one found in the first two novels.) My guy, Xander (and his sidekick, Paulie) fall into the former category, which yields, I hope, a believable past feeding into a believable present. There’s nothing wrong with erudite, charming serial killers (I wrote one, in a way, for The Last Werewolf) but I was after something a bit grittier this time around. I haven’t answered your question. I don’t know that there’s that much new or ‘different’ to say about serial killers – but there are new and different ways of saying it, which is always a writing goal, no matter the subject.

Your detective Valerie Hart is a mess – what attracts us to such damaged protagonists?

Perfect people are boring. All but inveterate narcissists feel flawed and not-up-to-the-job most of the time, so why should cops be any different? It’s more sympathetic to be dealing not only with someone who has a hellishly tough job to do, but who must do it in a state of emotional frailty or psychological disrepair.

The violence in The Killing Lessons is brutal and twisted – why are we so fascinated by dark and horrific stories? 

Because we’re all too often a dark and horrific species. We’re fascinated by our potential, and we crave the false comfort of stories in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished. It’s not quite so straightforward in The Killing Lessons, which I’m sure some readers won’t like. Similarly, some readers will throw up their hands at the starkness of the violence. To which I’m afraid I have no reply. I don’t think I have what it takes to write a delicate or decaf serial killer novel, and I would consider it an act of imaginative bankruptcy if I did.

 Who are the authors you admire, and why?

How far back do you want me to go? Milton. Robert Browning. Thomas Hardy. W. H. Auden. D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene. Of more modern (or slightly less dead) writers, Anthony Burgess, Paul Bowles, Mervyn Peake, John Updike, J G Ballard. Among the actually living, Martin Amis, Susanna Moore, Mary Gaitskill. I’m drawn to writers who are first and foremost stylists, whose work relies as much (if not more) on the quality of the prose as it does on plot.

 Give me some advice about writing…

Make every sentence the definitive version of itself. Never use figurative language you’ve heard or read before. Treat most adjectives like lice. Don’t write completely drunk. Don’t kid yourself that quality equates with success.

What’s next for Saul?

I’m just about to deliver a second thriller, featuring the same detective, Valerie Hart, from The Killing Lessons. If anything, this novel is darker than its predecessor. What I’ll do after that I’m not sure. With any luck, go on a vacation and catch up on some reading.

The Intel: Robert Olen Butler

We’ve interviewed a lot of talented and successful people on The Intel already. But Robert Olen Butler is the first guy we’ve done who’s won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Yeah, you heard that right: the goddamned Pulitzer.

In Butler’s new crime novel, The Hot Country, war correspondent Christopher Marlowe ‘Kit’ Cobb arrives in Mexico to cover the country’s civil war and soon finds himself up to his neck in political intrigue. He’s nearly shot by a mysterious sniper, joins forces with a double agent and falls in love with a headstrong young Mexican woman who may be mixed up in the revolutionary plot.

The Hot Country — published by those nice people at No Exit — is the first in a new series to feature Cobb, who finds himself in the thick of the flashpoints of The Great War. In The Star of Istanbul Cobb finds himself in the depths of the Ottoman Empire on the eve of First World War, and travels to Berlin in The Empire Of The Night to meet the Kaiser. Both those novels are coming this year.

Butler gives us the lowdown on Cobb, his famous webcast in which he wrote a short story, Graham Greene, and following the muse wherever she may lead.

The Hot Country is set during the Mexican Civil War in 1914 – what was the cause of that conflict?

It’s a challenge to say this briefly, but here’s my best shot, with a selective emphasis on the elements that shaped my novel. A classic military dictator, favoring the rich and oppressing the poor, Porfirio Diaz, ruled Mexico from 1876 to 1911. When he was deposed, 1000 men owned 97 per cent of the land in Mexico. The man who overthrew him, Francisco Madero, was one of the thousand who had a major change of heart. He was, however, a weak leader and soon all the repressed factionalism in the country began to struggle for ascendancy.

The first to effectively assert his power was one of Madero’s generals, Victoriano Huerta. In 1913, he ousted Madero, had him murdered, and began his own repressive rule. All the factionalism then created an ongoing civil war in one form or another for the next seven years. From this emerged such widely familiar figures as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, though, ironically, neither of them ever ruled the country.

Was it a civil war that had subsequent consequences for the US?

The turmoil was certainly of concern for the U. S. But Huerta in specific prompted action from the American president, Woodrow Wilson. In April of 1914, Wilson finally found a pretext to invade the country and attempt to overthrow Huerta. Mind you, this was a president who would keep us out of the imminent Great War in Europe for three years. But he invaded Vera Cruz, Mexico, to overthrow a dictator he didn’t like and to protect American oil interests, while fully expecting the Mexican people to welcome us gladly as their liberators. (They didn’t.) This sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?

Your protagonist, journalist Christopher Marlowe Cobb, appears in another novel, The Star of Istanbul – is the idea to send him to other conflicts in the early 20th century in subsequent books?

Indeed! He actually appears in a third novel, The Empire of Night, just published in the U. S. and coming to the U. K. this year. It is set only a few months after The Star of Istanbul. The Cobb series will explore the four years of the Great War.

What attracted you to the idea of writing a series set during that turbulent period?

The great allure is foreshadowed in one of my previous answers. From international politics to modes of technological warfare, from repressed personal rights to genocide, from media machinations to religious conflict to terrorism, most of the big issues of the beginning of the 21^st century were in full uproar at the beginning of the 20^th.

How do you keep on top of all the research?

I’ve accumulated an extensive library of useful physical books, including fifty Sears catalogs from 1893 to 1993. During the Cobb period almost literally every quotidian thing a person might own was sold and described in detail by Sears. But these Cobb thrillers could not have been written nearly so well or accurately if it weren’t for another major resource. By rights I should be dedicating all the Cobb novels to Google. For Google Books and for their word-search access to the vast informational resources of the Internet as a whole.

You famously wrote a short story in real-time on a webcast – what did you discover about your own writing process by doing it?

I was reminded of how solitary a task literary creation really is. And must be. Doing that project was a serious act of creative schizophrenia, toggling between the trance state of good writing to the analytical state of teaching your own process. By the way, that whole series is viewable on YouTube, under the title Inside Creative Writing. In spite of being two hours long, the first episode, as of the first of December 2014, has 59,000 views.

Take us through a typical writing day for you.

Up early, usually before dawn. Feed the dogs. Grind and brew the special coffee beans for which I’m always scouring the micro-roasters on the Internet. Write (on an iMac) for as long as I need in order to meet my daily quota of polished words, usually 400 to 500. That “writing” often includes several hours each day of ad hoc period research. What would her perfume be in 1915? Where is the safety catch on that Luger pistol? What were the London taxis in that era and where did the passengers sit? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Your collection of short stories A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – how did winning such acclaim affect your writing subsequently?

As for the writing itself, not at all. I might have been expected to repeat the sort of book that won the prize but I stubbornly stayed the writer I was before, open to following the muse wherever she leads, ready to reinvent myself with each book.

Who are the authors you admire, and why?

I always duck this question because I admire many of my contemporaries and as soon as I start listing them I forget someone. I run into too many writers in too many places to risk hurting any feelings. Of dead writers there are also many. But let me mention Graham Greene. He divided his work into his novels and his “entertainments”. I suspect he smiled an ironic smile at this division, however. His entertainments were often, in their deepest core, as “literary” as the rest of his work. I would hope this is true of the Cobb books as well. So called serious writers have too often and unnecessarily exiled themselves from dynamic storytelling.

Give me some advice about writing…

Write every day. Every day.

What’s next for Cobb?

The beans for the fourth novel have been roasted. I’m drinking a bottle-of-wine novel at the moment, but I will grind and begin to brew those Cobb beans sometime next fall.

The Defections – Hannah Michell

The Defections, by Hannah Michell, has a terrifically compelling backdrop, the division of Korea into North and South. It’s a setting that instantly echoes those fantastic Cold War novels of the past — and indeed The Defections has echoes of both Graham Greene and John Le Carre in its depiction of a doomed relationship between diplomatic translator Mia Kim and a British attaché.

The blurb wants to be somewhere else:

Seoul, South Korea. Mia is an outsider. The child of an English mother, she defies the rigid expectations of her Korean stepmother to work as a translator at the British Embassy. Her uncle runs a charitable – and controversial – school for North Korean defectors, and prevails upon Mia’s stepmother to shelter a traumatised young student. Mia is too preoccupied to note the defector’s strange behaviour – or its implications.

She has become infatuated with Thomas, a diplomat with a self-destructive streak. When an outrageous indiscretion endangers his position, it is Mia who saves him from humiliation and rescues his career. And the boundaries between them are crossed.

As a reward for his reformation, Thomas is commissioned to audit security amongst Embassy staff. Learning of Mia’s connections to the defector, he is compelled to dig deeper into the life of the woman who has captivated him. Suddenly, all that Mia has done to get close to Thomas begins to cause her undoing.

First and foremost, The Defections is a character study. Its thriller aspect isn’t, let’s be frank, hugely satisfying, and when it does belatedly kick in –- ultimately, Mia and Thomas’s relationship, and the discovery of a tunnel connecting the two countries, spark international tensions — you don’t get the sense that Michell is hugely interested in it. It’s the characters who power the novel and the relationships.

Michell’s protag, Mia Kim, is an outsider in a nation of misplaced people. Because of the split, whole families have been lost to each other for decades. Mia’s mother — who she barely remembers –- is English and so she’s persecuted by her bitter stepmother Kyung-ha, and still carries the scars of attacks from vicious classmates. It’s Mia’s dreams of becoming English that fuels her relationship with diplomat Thomas. Other narratives involving Kyung-ha and a young defector called Hyun-min weave in and out of the central story.

There’s an interesting lack of context to the drama. The traumatic division between North and South Korea, and subsequent fraught tension between the two nations, is a menacing pulse beneath the prose, and yet we’re never really given details about the fractious and disastrous relationship between these two countries.

Michell — who grew up in Seoul — doesn’t provide any history outside of the experience of her characters, and so the city remains an alien place, the kind of strange society, rain-lashed and neon-soaked, that China Melville would create. Everyone seems dislocated, out of whack with their surroundings. Everyone wants to belong, to go home; everyone has someone missing from their lives. Thomas and his long-suffering wife Felicity move from city to city, becoming steadily more unhappy. Korea, seared down the middle, is as disfigured as the network of scars across Mia’s body.

The prose is careful and delicate and soaked in layers of theme and meaning. Michell lets her characters be themselves, warts and all, and we get to like most of them, even the hot-tempered and abusive Kyung-ha. The exception is perhaps Thomas, a monumentally selfish and self-absorbed diplomat and the latest in a long line of sozzled literary consuls.

There’s little here to interest a diehard thriller reader, perhaps, but The Defections is a haunting and bold debut about a people, and a city, straining to cope with the sins of the past.

Many thanks for Quercus for the review copy.

The Intel: Penny Hancock Reloaded

Crime Thriller Fella is taking a much-needed summer break. But let’s make a pact — me and you — to meet up again right here very soon. However, do keep coming back. Over the last year there’s been all sorts of stuff we’ve enjoyed plonking on the internet, and which you may have missed, like this Intel interview with The Darkening Hour author Penny Hancock…

We love writers here, and like nothing better than to find out about how they go about their writing business. Penny Hancock’s new book The Darkening Hour is a tense and topical tale of slavery in contemporary London. It’s the follow-up to her debut novel, Tideline, an equally sinister tale of abduction, and a Richard & Judy Bookclub pick.

Tell us about The Darkening Hour – where did the idea come from?

A news story about a doctor who kept another woman slave in her London home. I was baffled as to how one (highly educated) woman could abuse another in this day and age, and wanted to explore the dynamics between the women. I wondered how far one woman go to maintain control over the other, (and what her motivation would be) and how far the oppressed would go to survive? I realized I had the ingredients for a thriller.

What’s the secret of a gripping psychological thriller?

For me the interest is in watching someone I can relate to go down an unwise path, due to some personality flaw or obsession. It has to have that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ feel to it.

What’s your writing process? What comes first – plot or character?

Character is enormously important to me although I find it often takes a whole first draft of a novel before I really feel I know them. It’s like getting to know a real person, until you’ve seen them in a variety of situations you don’t know what they are really capable of. I am not someone who can plot out a whole novel in advance, I have a premise, characters and, often, an ending, and then the rest falls into place as I write.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I get up and see my son off to school then stick my laptop in my bag with any notebooks, research or editorial notes, and cycle to the station. (Good thinking time!) I take the train to town and cycle to a café where everyone is on laptops and the music is gentle background classical or jazz rather than intrusive, and I write in there until about 2.00pm.

I then get back on my bike and go home again. Although he’s a teenager I like to be there for my son when he gets home. I catch up on admin, and domestic jobs and often visit my mum, then once we’ve eaten, write again in the evening if we’re not going out, or sometimes in the middle of the night. Once I’m on a roll I’m quite obsessive about it.

Who are the authors or you love, and why?

At the moment I love Louise Doughty, because Apple Tree Yard is a book I wish I’d written. I love big name literary writers like Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Bery Bainbridge (who does dark domestic like no one else in my opinion!) and in the crime/psychological thriller field I like Barbara Vine, Julie Myerson, Nikki French, Julia Crouch, Kate Rhodes, Karin Fossum, Erin Kelly, the Italian crime writer Gianrico Carofiglio, and of course Graham Greene.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

That you have to draft and redraft and redraft, and when you think you’ve finished, you have to redraft again. It gets to a point where you think, NO MORE, but still you have to push on. I liken it to the last stage of childbirth. You’re exhausted and beginning to wonder if the whole thing was such a good idea after all, but there’s no turning back at this stage, so you summon that last burst of energy from somewhere!

How do you deal with feedback?

I have about two or three ‘ideal readers’ who I trust to give me honest and helpful feedback after draft two. I listen to their ideas and responses and take them on board. It’s essential as you can’t put yourself in the shoes of a reader when you’ve been working on something for months. I’ve learned not to ask for too many opinions, however, as this can drive you crazy – one person will inevitably contradict another.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

I’m interested in relationships, families, growing up and growing older and I put personal experiences about these things into my writing. I also have a strong attachment to certain places (South East London and the Thames is one), and lived in Italy and Morocco so use these in my writing too. When I feel strong emotion I try to record this. I may need to remember how someone would feel in a particular situation, and the physical manifestations of those feelings, anxiety or anger or love, for example.

Give me some advice about writing…

Go for a long invigorating walk, run, or bike ride with your characters in your mind and let them show you where they are going to take you. Exercise is crucial for ideas.

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace?

Be true to yourself and write what you feel passionate about. Don’t try to second guess the markets.

What’s next for you?

My next novel about a woman who becomes convinced she’s caused a hit and run accident and gets tangled up in a web of deception, ‘The Road Behind Me’ comes out in August.

***

I’m happy to say Crime Thriller Fella will be reviewing Darkening Hour later in the week. Look out for that!

The Intel: Andreas Norman

Photo: Caroline Andersson

Andreas Norman’s debut novel Into A Raging Blaze has earned him extraordinary reviews in his native Sweden – and the movie version is on its way. It’s a white-hot thriller about the vast surveillance networks being put into place in the name of counter-terrorism, tapping into our increasing concerns that our every move is being watched.

Andreas, a former Swedish Foreign Ministry official, gives us The Intel on the intelligence agencies, mass surveillance and how writing is like running a marathon.

Into A Raging Blaze is a hugely prescient novel about the erosion of civil rights in the name of counter-terrorism – tell us about it…

During 2007-2009 I worked in Swedish Foreign Ministry as part of the Counter-Terrorism Unit. This was in the heyday of the global war on terror, and we worked closely with the the Swedish intelligence community and foreign agencies – especially EU-members and American ones. I was an analyst and project manager, and I clearly saw the growth of Islamophobic tendencies, the use of vast surveillance, extrajudicial methods and ”enhanced” methods, all the things that existed in parallel and formed the basis for much of the work of white-collar guys like myself. It was disturbing and fascinating and I just knew I had to write about it.

In my job in the Foreign Ministry, I had the opportunity to see for myself how signal intelligence agencies were organised, their methods, their technology. I then asked myself, where will these vast capacities be in a couple of years, bearing in mind the pace of technological intervention and the never-ceasing ambition of the sig-int agencies to collect more and more data? I then put an ordinary, junior Swedish diplomat and her boyfriend in the centre of the story, where they are being subjected to the full force of directed surveillance. It turned out to be chillingly close to reality.

The recent Edward Snowden revelations about the US’s extensive surveillance networks didn’t really cause huge outrage here in the UK – do you think we have become deeply complacent about our privacy?

It’s true, really, that the Snowden leaks have not caused a huge reaction anywhere, except in the media. The problem is, for ordinary modern individuals, there is only one internet, and we are completely dependent on it. There is no way for us to show our disgust about the mass surveillance of NSA and GCHQ by opting out of the internet and choose a different way of digital communication. Since we can´t change our behaviour in any real way, I think we rationalize the ever-present surveillance by telling ourselves that the surveillance doesn’t really affect us, that it’s for the greater good, or similar.

On the other hand, Snowden’s revelations have certainly changed some things. There is now a global debate about mass surveillance, and it’s impossible for politicians to ignore the issue. The legality of several of GCHQ’s, NSA’s and other agencies’ activities is being questioned, and this will probably result in a stronger judicial oversight of their activities. Having said this, I think that the Snowden leaks will not change much in the longer term. His revelations have not really led to a major shift in how intelligence services conduct their business. We’re still in the same paradigm today as we were before the Snowden leaks.

This won’t change until we come to a point where the situation becomes unacceptable to the private enterprises that own the infrastructure and services that make the internet what it is today, like Google, Microsoft, the banks and telecommunication companies. Two things will remain the same: clandestine services will always dream of total information awareness, and will always strive towards this goal and there will always be advocates of citizens rights struggling to rein in these ambitions. This tension will always be there. Secondly, the discussion on surveillance will always be influenced by dramatic events that catch the imagination of politicians and the public, that’s how politics works. A new London bus bombing or a new Snowden revelation will always shape the public debate.

What kind of response did Into A Raging Blaze get in Sweden?

I’m happy to say, my book got rave reviews. It was called things like “dazzling” and “a feat”, and “the next big thing” in the Swedish press. I found myself being dubbed “thriller debutante of the year”. The book immediately attracted a range of major film producers, and is currently being adapted for the big screen for release in Spring 2016. It all took me by surprise, really.

Tell us about your protagonist Bente Jensen…

Bente Jensen is a typical professional woman, tough-minded, analytical and wholly dedicated to her work in the security service. She is unsentimental and prides herself on good skills and the ability to put a wall of silence around her work as head of a Swedish undercover office in Brussels. Her loyalty to her work also turns out to be her weakness, as she acts out of loyalty towards her organisation and its higher goals bend her personal ethical standards until they break.

How have your own experiences working in counter-terrorism shaped your writing?

Well, I had the luxury of having ten years of research, simply by going to work. For me, it became natural to stay close to reality. I let my experience influence my language, using the jargon of diplomat and spies to give the reader a sense of being on the inside of these closed organisations. After writing my first draft I read it from a strict legal point of view – was the text in breach of any secrecy acts? – and when I felt that the text was moving into a grey area, I slightly modified some details, in order to avoid any unintentional leak of classified information.

Take us through a typical writing day for you

Into A Raging Blaze was written while I was a diplomat in the Swedish foreign service, which is a hectic more-than-fulltime job. You would find me writing on the morning flight to Brussels, on weekends, in short, in any available free-time. Today, I write full-time. My working day is a brief, intense affair. After the hustle of having breakfast and cycling with my two-year daughter to kindergarten, I return to our apartment, prepare a cup of coffee and start work. I like these small routines, they make me focused. To approach work in a relaxed, concentrated state of mind is my ideal. No fuss, no waiting for inspiration and such silliness. I usually reread the part where I stopped writing the day before, and pick up from there.

On a good day I have a strong sense at this point of what I’m about to write. I have my own unspoken goals, such as developing a scene or finishing a certain chapter. I immerse myself, write steadily until lunchtime, then take a short break and rummage through the fridge for something edible or head out to a nearby street kitchen to pick up falafel or shawarma. I love the solitude and don´t want to interrupt my thought processes too much, but I usually check my emails, Facebook and Twitter on my phone, then head back to do some more writing. Around five o’clock, my wife and daughter come home, and I transform from a writer back to being a dad and husband.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

I find it hard to embrace the fact that you can’t rush certain things. I have no problem getting started, and I’m disciplined. But to write something that really touches the reader, really has an emotional impact, you have to take it easy sometimes, let ideas grow, and I have a hard time accepting that.

How do you deal with feedback?

I enjoy feedback immensely – when I get it at the right time in the writing process. I hate it when the timing is bad. Getting feedback too early can be really detrimental to my ideas. As a rule, I write the first draft more or less with a closed door. My wife is the only person I discuss ideas with at this stage, and she´s the first person to read my early drafts, her comments are often spot on. With the first draft finished, I open the door to my writing process, and listen carefully to all comments from a group of trusted readers: my publisher, editor, agent, my wife and a couple of friends. When they object to something in the text, they’re usually right about doing so. I’m grateful to all these bright, sensitive people for helping me out.

Who are the authors you admire, and why?

I always return to Graham Greene, for his deft story telling and lovely melancholy. And John le Carré, of course, for his energetic way of depicting the tedious and lethal workings of diplomats and spies. Both of them had stints in the foreign service and intelligence, as I have, and it’s inspiring to think about the various ways they turned their experiences into great fiction. Kerstin Ekman, and her novel Blackwater, is a great read too, with its intense tone and beautiful, harsh language.

Give me some advice about writing…

Start writing, stay cool, be persistent and accept your crises as part of your working process. Getting started is sometimes hard, and usually somewhat disappointing. Words are unforgiving. When I start writing, I know that I will have a crisis and sooner or later reach a point when I question the whole project, get stuck and become worried. This is normal. It usually means that there’s a flaw in the story or a character needs to be reshaped. It’s just a signal that you probably need to find a new perspective to your text, be persistent and not just tear the whole thing apart.

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace…

Well… I guess, having a publisher that I really trust is key. Then I guess you have to be politely persistent with your ideas and write the best you can. Don’t bother about trends, but stay focused on what is important for you, personally. I enjoy long-distance running, and I usually think of writing as a form of marathon, but I assume that analogy doesn’t work for everyone.

What’s next for you?

I’m about to start writing the sequel to Into A Raging Blaze. In parallel, I’m working on the final draft of my next book, 9,3 på Richterskalan (9.3 on the Richter Scale), and looking forward to its Swedish release in autumn. It’s a rather different story, a harrowing eyewitness account of the tsunami catastrophe in Asia on Boxing Day 2004. As a junior diplomat, I was sent to Thailand by our Foreign Ministry as a member of the first response team, and worked there in the weeks following the tsunami.

Into A Raging Blaze is published by Quercus and is available now in hardback and as an ebook.

 

The Intel: Paul Gadsby

Crime Thriller Fella this week reviewed Paul Gadsby’s novel Chasing The Game, about the true-life disappearance of the World Cup trophy – and it knocked our socks off. As a result, Paul has earned himself another free kick from a dangerous position. We immediately dug out the Intel Interview he did about the intriguing unsolved mystery surrounding the theft of the Jules Rimet Cup, and about his writing regime, and present it here for your enjoyment one more time.

Paul is a journalist and writer. Having worked in sports, news and trade journalism for 14 years, he’s the co-author of the seminal snooker book Masters of the Baize. Chasing The Game is his first crime novel, and you can buy it right here.

Chasing The Game is based on the true story of the disappearance of the World Cup trophy in 1966 – what happened?

It’s a fascinating story – one that has a dose of crime, shame, desperation and intrigue in roughly equal measures. The World Cup, or Jules Rimet Trophy as it was known, was on display in Westminster Central Hall in March 1966, three months before the World Cup tournament was due to begin. The stakes were high because the Football Association (FA) wanted the event to go very smoothly, it being the first – and so far only – time England have hosted the World Cup.

But one Sunday lunchtime the trophy was stolen from its display case. A few days later a ransom demand was made to the FA, and a note later delivered setting up a rendezvous where the trophy would be exchanged for the cash. But the plan fell apart, the switch never took place (despite coming tantalizingly close) and the thieves were never identified. The trophy, for reasons unknown, ended up under a bush in a London street where it was discovered by a dog named Pickles a week after the theft. Pickles briefly became a national hero, praised for sparing England’s blushes and saving the reputation of the World Cup tournament as a brand.

How closely is your novel based on true events?

Pretty closely in many ways, which is why I didn’t go into too much detail above! I always wanted this project to be a work of fiction, though, so certain elements – the nature of the theft in particular – were dramatised in order to drive the narrative. I kept certain characters such as the chairman of the FA (although I changed his name and created my own persona for him) while the gang of thieves was entirely down to my imagination. I’ve always felt the theft had an organised criminal element behind it, but not a large scale one, so it was fun creating a ‘firm’ who could carry out the raid but were under real pressure to collect the ransom because they desperately needed the cash.

Pickles is the only character that maintains his real-life name. In 1966 there was also a replica of the trophy made, commissioned by the FA but against FIFA’s wishes, and I exploit this conflict in the story. I’m a big fan of blending fact with fiction (David Peace and James Ellroy being the masters at this) and have always felt authors should be encouraged to use fiction as a vehicle to enhance intriguing factual narratives and sharpen the motivations of characters or historical figures.

What drew you to the story?

The curious nature of the theft, the bizarre discovery of the trophy, and the fact that the crime remains unsolved. Who were the gang of thieves? What went wrong between them to result in the trophy, worth a significant amount of money, ending up under a suburban hedge? I was surprised that no one had taken the Pickles story and done something exciting with it, so I thought I’d jump in there and weave my own narrative.

I also tied this in with a theme I’d been toying with basing a crime novel on for a while – leadership, and the pressures that come with fronting a criminal enterprise or firm. I’ve always been fascinated with the internal struggles and conflicts that crop up within a systemised criminal set-up, and seeing people try to take on the skillsets required to fill certain roles. So the tense and complex professional relationships that exist between members of the gang make up a central theme of the book.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I wish I had more of them! I write around a day job (I write copy for a marketing company) and am married with a three-year-old son, so my blocks of time for creative writing can be varied and unpredictable. On the occasions when I have a few hours to write, I begin by (and most writing guides advise against this) doing a light edit of what I’d written previously. I trained and worked in journalism for a few years and the editor in me just can’t resist, but I do enjoy ploughing on with a first draft knowing that the product behind me is a strong one.

Obviously the second draft stage is always an extensive one, but I don’t want a major re-structuring job at that point; I’d rather fix problems and enhance areas as I go along. I’m also a big fan of Stephen King’s theory of ‘write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open’ so I’m very much in my own head when unleashing a first draft, then liaising with friends and fellow writers for feedback on the second draft.

Chasing the Game is my first published novel but I wrote three crime thrillers before that; I’ve been writing seriously since about 2005 when I had a non-fiction book published and got the bug for writing full-length works.

Who are the authors you love, and why?

I adore Elmore Leonard’s dialogue, Adrian McKinty’s action sequences, Ken Bruen’s humour, the powerful prose of James Sallis, Jake Arnott’s deep characterisation, Patricia Highsmith’s ability to build drama, James Crumley’s sense of time and place and Graham Greene’s story structure. James Ellroy, David Peace and Don DeLillo do a glorious job of mixing fact with fiction while I also love Ian Fleming’s Bond books. As remarkable standout thrillers I really enjoyed Eddie Bunker’s No Beast So Fierce (which apparently inspired Tarantino to write Reservoir Dogs) and The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing? 

Probably the fact that it’s incredibly difficult – and increasingly rare – to make a full-time career out of it. At a recent writing event I had a chat with an established, award-winning author who’s terrifically talented but told me how many copies her last book had sold and how many other things she had to do in order to supplement her time to write, and I thought that was a shame. The less time an author has to write, the fewer chances we have to enjoy them.

On a technical point, I like writing a synopsis but find it bizarre, frustrating and amusing that every agent and publisher appears to have a different idea about what they want to see in one. It’s an area that takes subjectivity to a new level!

How do you deal with feedback?

I embrace it during the editing stages of my writing. An interesting point is what to do with all the feedback you collectively receive. I know some writers who literally change everything that is recommended from all sources, but the danger of this is that the focus of the manuscript can then fragment and before you know it you have several half-realised themes and sub-plots going on.

I don’t think an author should ever lose sight of the initial purpose they had at the onset of the project. I think it’s best to take all feedback on board, apply a great deal of it if necessary, but to always consider that this is your book and the reader has to be convinced that it has come from one soul.

As for feedback from the industry, rejections are a familiar tale and for me have always been tempered by the fact that you know thousands upon thousands of writers are going through the same thing. Many writers collect their rejection letters but I’ve never really gone in for that. Positive responses from the trade, meanwhile, are obviously fantastic; it’s great to spend time speaking with agents, publishers and authors, and when you’ve had your work praised by such people it comes as a relief as well as a joy.

Give me some advice about writing…

Tough one. Any advice given by writers is obviously going to be very personal to them, but I’d say the most valuable way to spend your time is to focus on both finding your own distinctive voice (there’s no better way to make an impression on your first page) while at the same time reading as much of other writers as you can. If you’re writing a full-length novel you need prose worming through your brain pretty much all the time. The passion to write can only be driven by the passion to read.

What’s next for you?

I’ve written a first draft of another crime novel, which I’d like to polish and edit in the near future. It has another sports link, and is about the physical and mental struggles of a recently retired boxer who gets dragged by his former manager into a murky world of crime and an underground bare-knuckle fighting circuit, while also struggling to deal with his Alzheimer’s-stricken father. It’s called When the Roar Fades.

Who’s going to win the World Cup this summer?

All World Cups previously held in South America have been won by a nation from that continent, and I can’t see that pattern changing. It’s hard to see past the hosts, Brazil, but Argentina could be handy. I think England might sneak through their tough group but I’d be surprised to see them go beyond the quarter-finals.

The Intel: Richard Butchins

If you like your crime fiction graphic, disquieting and biliously humorous, then Pavement by Richard Butchins may, er, be right up your street. Butchins is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has also been an advocate for disabled people’s rights, a war-zone photographer, and a music business and concert promoter. Richard’s new novel takes us into the recesses of a diseased mind – and, guess what, he’s giving us the intel on Pavement…

Pavement is a disturbing novel about an unnamed protagonist who pounds London barely noticed by those around him – tell us about it…

Pavement is set in a near future London, a bleak alternate city where everything is familiar, yet ever so slightly different. The book explores themes of alienation, disassociation and oppression. It depicts a society where a person’s value is gauged only in socio/economic terms; a society viewed from the bottom up through the eyes of the hero; one where he empowers himself through murder; his actions are logical and rational, albeit a tortuous logic. It examines what happens when someone has nothing left to lose.

The story reveals that he possesses knowledge about the limits of our world, revealing the difference between what men are – and what they pretend to be. It also illuminates that given the necessary circumstances, all humans are capable of actions they would prefer to think they aren’t.  And although his actions are terrible, he still remains human and my intention is for the reader to retain sympathy for him, in spite of what he has (or hasn’t) done.

The book contains vivid dream sequences that cloud the nature of his reality and create conflict in him as he struggles to disentangle reality from illusion. I have chosen to portray acts of unequivocal violence in precise detail. Thorough research was undertaken to make sure these scenes are accurate and the reader may find the process of imagining them unsettling.

It must be difficult spending time inside the head of such a damaged protagonist – what were the particular challenges of writing Pavement?

Strangely it wasn’t. I found it cathartic to write this character after a while he just took over and I would wonder what he had been up to, what weird dreams he’d had – where his travels had taken him. I would sit down and write and it was like I was listening to him telling me what to write and what to say. He had an alcove in my mind in which he did his thing.

Why are we so intrigued by serial killers?

Because we don’t ever really get to understand them we’re told all about the terrible things they do and some salacious personal details are revealed but the media always plays to the gallery and we are never allowed to see them as anything other than monsters, some kind of other being, outside of the human race, when, in fact this is nonsense. They are humans the same as the rest of us, they crossed the line that most of us never will, but I think in our subconscious, deep down we all know that given the right set of circumstances and so on – we all could cross that line and that’s why we are fascinated because we are all serial killers.

Is the novel inspired by your own observations of what’s happening to London?

To a large extent, yes it is, although it is actually set in a slightly parallel London, even less equitable and more dystopian than the real city. There’s a real push to sanitise London, to gentrify everything and to remove large sections of the population out to the invisible edge – the non places around the periphery of the City.

Take us through a typical writing day for you…

Oh my, it involves avoiding writing as much as possible, by any possible means. Washing up the dishes three times, cleaning the house, anything to avoid setting pen to paper (I don’t actually use pens and paper – sounds better than finger to keyboard though) I usually do this avoidance for as long as possible. I like to call it thinking time…Then I sit down and write like crazy until it’s done. I try to set a target for each day – 1000 – 3000 words and then struggle through it until I get there.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

The story won’t write itself –annoying that !

How do you deal with feedback?  Hmmm – the same way other people do – with disdainful acceptance.

Who are the authors you admire?  

This could be a very long list. I admire different writers for different reasons but amongst the constant companions are: Kafka, because of his utter brilliance. Beckett for his the sheer magnificence of his language – the same goes for TS Eliot. Murikami, I love his creation of alternate worlds that feel familiar but aren’t. I recently read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote again and its brilliant, particularly in the way it presents the killers as human beings and as for genre writers Le Carre is a very fine writer and Graham Greene is superb (what do you mean he’s not a genre writer – he sure is).

Have your own experiences shaped your writing?

Entirely, there is no possibility of any other answer. We all write from experience whether we know it or not.

Give me some advice about writing…

I’ll quote Hemingway: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace…

Gosh, the best thing would to be closely related to a publisher, failing that – don’t copy fads or trends, be politely persistent and set your standards so high you think you’ll never meet them.

What’s next for you?

A jolly nice cup of tea and I’m writing a screenplay and co-writing the biography of a famous actor.

***

Richard’s novel Pavement is available in paperback and on kindle, and you can buy it right here.

The Intel: Paul Gadsby

We love writers with synchronicity. Paul Gadsby’s novel about the true-life disappearance of the World Cup trophy is released with the 2014 tournament just round the corner. Paul is a journalist and writer. Having worked in sports, news and trade journalism for 14 years, he’s the co-author of the seminal snooker book Masters of the Baize. Chasing The Game is his first crime novel, and you can buy it right here. Paul gives us the lowdown on an intriguing unsolved mystery – and, of course, his writing regime.

Chasing The Game is based on the true story of the disappearance of the World Cup trophy in 1966 – what happened?

It’s a fascinating story – one that has a dose of crime, shame, desperation and intrigue in roughly equal measures. The World Cup, or Jules Rimet Trophy as it was known, was on display in Westminster Central Hall in March 1966, three months before the World Cup tournament was due to begin. The stakes were high because the Football Association (FA) wanted the event to go very smoothly, it being the first – and so far only – time England have hosted the World Cup.

But one Sunday lunchtime the trophy was stolen from its display case. A few days later a ransom demand was made to the FA, and a note later delivered setting up a rendezvous where the trophy would be exchanged for the cash. But the plan fell apart, the switch never took place (despite coming tantalizingly close) and the thieves were never identified. The trophy, for reasons unknown, ended up under a bush in a London street where it was discovered by a dog named Pickles a week after the theft. Pickles briefly became a national hero, praised for sparing England’s blushes and saving the reputation of the World Cup tournament as a brand.

How closely is your novel based on true events?

Pretty closely in many ways, which is why I didn’t go into too much detail above! I always wanted this project to be a work of fiction, though, so certain elements – the nature of the theft in particular – were dramatised in order to drive the narrative. I kept certain characters such as the chairman of the FA (although I changed his name and created my own persona for him) while the gang of thieves was entirely down to my imagination. I’ve always felt the theft had an organised criminal element behind it, but not a large scale one, so it was fun creating a ‘firm’ who could carry out the raid but were under real pressure to collect the ransom because they desperately needed the cash.

Pickles is the only character that maintains his real-life name. In 1966 there was also a replica of the trophy made, commissioned by the FA but against FIFA’s wishes, and I exploit this conflict in the story. I’m a big fan of blending fact with fiction (David Peace and James Ellroy being the masters at this) and have always felt authors should be encouraged to use fiction as a vehicle to enhance intriguing factual narratives and sharpen the motivations of characters or historical figures.

What drew you to the story?

The curious nature of the theft, the bizarre discovery of the trophy, and the fact that the crime remains unsolved. Who were the gang of thieves? What went wrong between them to result in the trophy, worth a significant amount of money, ending up under a suburban hedge? I was surprised that no one had taken the Pickles story and done something exciting with it, so I thought I’d jump in there and weave my own narrative.

I also tied this in with a theme I’d been toying with basing a crime novel on for a while – leadership, and the pressures that come with fronting a criminal enterprise or firm. I’ve always been fascinated with the internal struggles and conflicts that crop up within a systemised criminal set-up, and seeing people try to take on the skillsets required to fill certain roles. So the tense and complex professional relationships that exist between members of the gang make up a central theme of the book.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I wish I had more of them! I write around a day job (I write copy for a marketing company) and am married with a three-year-old son, so my blocks of time for creative writing can be varied and unpredictable. On the occasions when I have a few hours to write, I begin by (and most writing guides advise against this) doing a light edit of what I’d written previously. I trained and worked in journalism for a few years and the editor in me just can’t resist, but I do enjoy ploughing on with a first draft knowing that the product behind me is a strong one.

Obviously the second draft stage is always an extensive one, but I don’t want a major re-structuring job at that point; I’d rather fix problems and enhance areas as I go along. I’m also a big fan of Stephen King’s theory of ‘write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open’ so I’m very much in my own head when unleashing a first draft, then liaising with friends and fellow writers for feedback on the second draft.

Chasing the Game is my first published novel but I wrote three crime thrillers before that; I’ve been writing seriously since about 2005 when I had a non-fiction book published and got the bug for writing full-length works.

Who are the authors you love, and why?

I adore Elmore Leonard’s dialogue, Adrian McKinty’s action sequences, Ken Bruen’s humour, the powerful prose of James Sallis, Jake Arnott’s deep characterisation, Patricia Highsmith’s ability to build drama, James Crumley’s sense of time and place and Graham Greene’s story structure. James Ellroy, David Peace and Don DeLillo do a glorious job of mixing fact with fiction while I also love Ian Fleming’s Bond books. As remarkable standout thrillers I really enjoyed Eddie Bunker’s No Beast So Fierce (which apparently inspired Tarantino to write Reservoir Dogs) and The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing? 

Probably the fact that it’s incredibly difficult – and increasingly rare – to make a full-time career out of it. At a recent writing event I had a chat with an established, award-winning author who’s terrifically talented but told me how many copies her last book had sold and how many other things she had to do in order to supplement her time to write, and I thought that was a shame. The less time an author has to write, the fewer chances we have to enjoy them.

On a technical point, I like writing a synopsis but find it bizarre, frustrating and amusing that every agent and publisher appears to have a different idea about what they want to see in one. It’s an area that takes subjectivity to a new level!

How do you deal with feedback?

I embrace it during the editing stages of my writing. An interesting point is what to do with all the feedback you collectively receive. I know some writers who literally change everything that is recommended from all sources, but the danger of this is that the focus of the manuscript can then fragment and before you know it you have several half-realised themes and sub-plots going on.

I don’t think an author should ever lose sight of the initial purpose they had at the onset of the project. I think it’s best to take all feedback on board, apply a great deal of it if necessary, but to always consider that this is your book and the reader has to be convinced that it has come from one soul.

As for feedback from the industry, rejections are a familiar tale and for me have always been tempered by the fact that you know thousands upon thousands of writers are going through the same thing. Many writers collect their rejection letters but I’ve never really gone in for that. Positive responses from the trade, meanwhile, are obviously fantastic; it’s great to spend time speaking with agents, publishers and authors, and when you’ve had your work praised by such people it comes as a relief as well as a joy.

Give me some advice about writing…

Tough one. Any advice given by writers is obviously going to be very personal to them, but I’d say the most valuable way to spend your time is to focus on both finding your own distinctive voice (there’s no better way to make an impression on your first page) while at the same time reading as much of other writers as you can. If you’re writing a full-length novel you need prose worming through your brain pretty much all the time. The passion to write can only be driven by the passion to read.

What’s next for you?

I’ve written a first draft of another crime novel, which I’d like to polish and edit in the near future. It has another sports link, and is about the physical and mental struggles of a recently retired boxer who gets dragged by his former manager into a murky world of crime and an underground bare-knuckle fighting circuit, while also struggling to deal with his Alzheimer’s-stricken father. It’s called When the Roar Fades.

Who’s going to win the World Cup this summer?

All World Cups previously held in South America have been won by a nation from that continent, and I can’t see that pattern changing. It’s hard to see past the hosts, Brazil, but Argentina could be handy. I think England might sneak through their tough group but I’d be surprised to see them go beyond the quarter-finals.

The Intel: Karen Long

You know we love the kind of writers who really throw themselves into their work. Karen Long began her working life as a secondary school teacher but took up full time writing ten years ago. She has written numerous screenplays and is currently working on the second novel in the DI Eleanor Raven series. Her first novel, The Safe Word, was published on kindle and in paperback last month, and was inspired by several stays in Toronto, Canada.

Karen lives in rural Shropshire with her filmmaker husband, three children, three dogs and a small disabled crow.

Tell us about Eleanor Raven.

Eleanor is a complex creature. She is contained, independent and confident in her abilities but the opposite is also true. She carries a burden of guilt from her childhood, which manifests itself in her masochistic sexual practices. She lives by the mantra that she never ‘judges’ yet she has judged and condemned herself for not recognising the ‘signs’ that could have saved her school friend Caleb. I believe that this is essentially the human condition and why every central character’s struggle should essential be with him/herself. Her journey is, and hopefully will be in future novels, to come to terms with her guilt and forgive the child’s mistake. Essentially Eleanor is a modern woman. She is sexually liberated and proactive, physically aggressive and defines herself through her career and not through family.

How would you describe The Safe Word to a potential reader?

It’s modern crime fiction set in Toronto featuring a strong but flawed female lead, whose personal life becomes dangerously entwined in the unfolding action.

Would you describe The Safe Word as a ‘whodunnit’?

The Safe Word’isn’t about the sudden revelation of the killer from a pool of potentials or misdirects. Don’t get me wrong that can be very exciting. My favourite example of a sublime ‘whodunnit’ is Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, which I’ve read three times now. What I am more interested in is the gradual uncovering of the motivation of the ‘who’, which is inexorably linked to the ‘why’. My killer has a very clear vision of why he does what he does and I want to learn why his thought processes are so different to mine.

However, that’s not to say that one of the most important aspects to writing crime fiction is to supply frisson at regular points in the narrative. Characters should be imperiled; there shouldn’t be a formula as to who can die and who can’t or as to what can happen or when. Crime fiction should be a roller-coaster ride; don’t allow your reader to become complacent because that’s one stop away from bored. The ‘what if’ you asked yourself before you started typing the first sentence should be asked after every scene.

What’s your writing process? What comes first – plot or character?

It’s a close run thing for me.  I was browsing the Toronto Sun newspaper and chugging coffee when I read an article about police being called to save a woman who appeared to have been kidnapped off a Toronto street and bundled into a van. When police swooped in to arrest and save her they were stunned to discover that the woman had arranged to have herself kidnapped as a sexy treat. There was the material for a ‘what if’! Eleanor Raven followed on pretty closely and I started to outline the plot.

Take us through a typical writing day

As I only have one daughter left at home now and my husband works abroad for most of the year the day starts when the front door slams shut, the dogs/crow/ferret have been fed and watered and the biohazard that is the kitchen is tidy. I have to be very determined to keep myself on track, as there are so many domestic distractions that break my concentration. I also have to write in total silence (no music or radio) and without anyone else being in the house. If I know someone is popping in for a coffee it can make it impossible to write for the whole day. There’s no sitting in coffee shops and putting out a couple of thousand words for me, sadly!

I see the story I’m writing as a film that can only be played linearly. I can rewind a couple of chapters but invariably I read from start to finish once a week.  I really envy writers like Stephen King who have such an organised, methodical and productive approach to writing. My husband, a writer himself, frequently sends me links to pages on ‘The rigours of writing’ but I guess there’s just the way that works for you.

 Who are the authors you love and why?

 I love the Scandinavian writers, in particular Karin Fossum, Arnaldur Indridason and Yrsa Sigurdardottir. Their intellectual, complex lead characters set against a dour, unforgiving backdrop and intricate plots have me hooked. I particularly love Denis Lehane, who conjures up period and texture that finds a life in my mind as I read. Perhaps the most influential novelists for me are Graham Greene, William Golding and Joseph Conrad. They write about redemption and the human condition, which is for me the most interesting and important theme literature can tackle. Please don’t think I am comparing myself to the great writer’s mentioned above, but sub genres such as crime fiction should be open to incorporating layers of meaning and texture into less august subject matter. Never assume that your reader will be satisfied with a series of events culminating in a twist. Every novel should be satisfying on many levels.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

That it always takes longer that you thought to complete. That your choice of language, character and event is frequently not as entertaining or clear as you thought it was. That when people pay money to read what you have written they are entitled to an opinion. The most valuable lesson was given to me by a wise bird who said, ‘Show Don’t Tell’ and that is a mantra I run with every time I write. Don’t tell a reader how they should interpret an action or judge a character. That’s their job not yours so butt out! 

How do you deal with the feedback?

Not always with good grace, sadly. But I have always held to Oscar Wilde’s belief that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. So provoking a reaction that merits comment and opinion is, in itself, rather flattering. I have also found that after shrugging off my initial outrage most people make very valid comments about my writing. I do believe that you have to be honest with yourself. If a comment reminds you that you had considered that question before then go back and deal with it but by the same token just because someone has a thought on a plot point or character or line of dialogue it doesn’t mean that they are right. Be flexible but believe in what you wrote. Eventually the sales will tell you if you were right. 

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

My husband is a movie director and I have spent the last ten years lurking around film sets and edit suites. I love to watch hours and hours of film being trimmed, compressed, enhanced and structured so that the story is exciting and satisfying. I want a reader to ‘see’ the story, as a film playing out in front of them and that means no flab!

I believe that every biological event that appears in your novel should be researched and accurately presented. I’ve spent many blissful hours consuming textbooks on forensics, toxicology, epidemiology and post mortem practice because if you don’t present forensics truthfully then you’re writing science fiction not crime fiction. I arranged several years ago to complete a work experience in a hospital morgue. It was an incredible experience. I was able to watch as a human body was dissected and reduced to plastic bag of organs, tissues and viscera. Perhaps the most seminal moment was when the face of the elderly woman was pulled away from the skull and left hanging, bag-like while the calvarium was opened and the brain removed. All the time the pathologist tutted empathically at the injuries sustained during her final moments in a road traffic accident.

What kind of research are you doing for the series?

 In my second book in the Eleanor Raven’series I need to have a good working knowledge of embalming techniques, including plastination. Luckily the Internet provides loads of written material and Dr. Gunther Von Hagens has been no slouch when it comes to explaining his life work in documentary form. I’ve been to view the Body Worlds Exhibition twice now but I need a more proactive experience. I’ve spoken to embalmers and read the course work and now I’m going to watch an embalming procedure take place. Then the smells, the process the weights and texture will come through in my writing, hopefully enriching it.

Give me some advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace…

Self-publishing is now a real possibility for every writer that wants to get his/her novel out there. The process, though complicated is manageable even for a  ‘non-techie’ (idiot according to my daughter) like myself. What this doesn’t give you is the experienced voice that an agent brings. I’m particularly lucky with mine; they like my writing, aren’t afraid to nag me to change elements and work alongside me to make my book a commercially viable enterprise.

A marketplace demands that you publicise your work effectively, keep abreast with all of the websites that could bring you an audience and that’s time consuming and not everyone is suited to it. I surprised myself by actually enjoying the whole social media/publicity process. It’s all about winning hearts and minds, generally one at a time! However, this is just the way I wanted to do it. Some writers are out there self publishing, self promoting and making thousands of pounds as a result. Judge yourself wisely and if you need an agent then it’s time to get yourself a copy of The Writers And Artists Yearbook, several spare cartridges for your printer and a bumper book of stamps!

What’s next for you?

 I’m a good third of the way into my second novel in the Eleanor Raven series. It’s called The Collection, and follows Eleanor’s challenging return to the crime scene six months after the end of The Safe Word.

The Intel: Penny Hancock

We love writers here, and like nothing better than to find out about how they go about their writing business. Penny Hancock’s new book The Darkening Hour is a tense and topical tale of slavery in contemporary London. It’s the follow-up to her debut novel, Tideline, an equally sinister tale of abduction, and a Richard & Judy Bookclub pick.

Tell us about The Darkening Hour – where did the idea come from?

A news story about a doctor who kept another woman slave in her London home. I was baffled as to how one (highly educated) woman could abuse another in this day and age, and wanted to explore the dynamics between the women. I wondered how far one woman go to maintain control over the other, (and what her motivation would be) and how far the oppressed would go to survive? I realized I had the ingredients for a thriller.

What’s the secret of a gripping psychological thriller?

For me the interest is in watching someone I can relate to go down an unwise path, due to some personality flaw or obsession. It has to have that ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ feel to it.

What’s your writing process? What comes first – plot or character?

Character is enormously important to me although I find it often takes a whole first draft of a novel before I really feel I know them. It’s like getting to know a real person, until you’ve seen them in a variety of situations you don’t know what they are really capable of. I am not someone who can plot out a whole novel in advance, I have a premise, characters and, often, an ending, and then the rest falls into place as I write.

Take us through a typical writing day for you?

I get up and see my son off to school then stick my laptop in my bag with any notebooks, research or editorial notes, and cycle to the station. (Good thinking time!) I take the train to town and cycle to a café where everyone is on laptops and the music is gentle background classical or jazz rather than intrusive, and I write in there until about 2.00pm.

I then get back on my bike and go home again. Although he’s a teenager I like to be there for my son when he gets home. I catch up on admin, and domestic jobs and often visit my mum, then once we’ve eaten, write again in the evening if we’re not going out, or sometimes in the middle of the night. Once I’m on a roll I’m quite obsessive about it.

Who are the authors or you love, and why?

At the moment I love Louise Doughty, because Apple Tree Yard is a book I wish I’d written. I love big name literary writers like Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Bery Bainbridge (who does dark domestic like no one else in my opinion!) and in the crime/psychological thriller field I like Barbara Vine, Julie Myerson, Nikki French, Julia Crouch, Kate Rhodes, Karin Fossum, Erin Kelly, the Italian crime writer Gianrico Carofiglio, and of course Graham Greene.

What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?

That you have to draft and redraft and redraft, and when you think you’ve finished, you have to redraft again. It gets to a point where you think, NO MORE, but still you have to push on. I liken it to the last stage of childbirth. You’re exhausted and beginning to wonder if the whole thing was such a good idea after all, but there’s no turning back at this stage, so you summon that last burst of energy from somewhere!

How do you deal with feedback?

I have about two or three ‘ideal readers’ who I trust to give me honest and helpful feedback after draft two. I listen to their ideas and responses and take them on board. It’s essential as you can’t put yourself in the shoes of a reader when you’ve been working on something for months. I’ve learned not to ask for too many opinions, however, as this can drive you crazy – one person will inevitably contradict another.

How have your own experiences shaped your writing?

I’m interested in relationships, families, growing up and growing older and I put personal experiences about these things into my writing. I also have a strong attachment to certain places (South East London and the Thames is one), and lived in Italy and Morocco so use these in my writing too. When I feel strong emotion I try to record this. I may need to remember how someone would feel in a particular situation, and the physical manifestations of those feelings, anxiety or anger or love, for example.

Give me some advice about writing…

Go for a long invigorating walk, run, or bike ride with your characters in your mind and let them show you where they are going to take you. Exercise is crucial for ideas.

What’s your best advice for an author looking to get into the marketplace?

Be true to yourself and write what you feel passionate about. Don’t try to second guess the markets.

What’s next for you?

My next novel about a woman who becomes convinced she’s caused a hit and run accident and gets tangled up in a web of deception, ‘The Road Behind Me’ comes out in August.

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I’m happy to say Crime Thriller Fella will be reviewing Darkening Hour later in the week. Look out for that!