#Blogtour #Q&A - She Lies Close by Sharon Doering

Cover by Julia Lloyd

She Lies Close
Sharon Doering
Titan Books, 8 September 2020
Available as: PB, 400pp, e, audio
Source: PB kindly provided by the publisher
ISBN: 9781789094190

Today I'm delighted and honoured that Sharon Doering, the author of Who Lies Close, has stopped by to answer some questions... which makes that sound very like an investigation but it's really not!

BBB: Sharon - thank you for agreeing to answer some questions about She Lies Close. I have to say that (without giving anything away about what is happening to Grace at the start of the book) I think it’s a long time since I encountered such a twist in the first few pages! 

Overall, Grace is a very strongly, well realised personality in a very particular situation. How did you (do you) find your way into that? Does the plot come first, or the person (or the place…?)

Sharon: Thank you so much for having me!

I am a character-driven reader and writer. If I fall for a character in a novel, I will follow them anywhere! I love a strong voice.

In She Lies Close, the basic premise came first, then I focused on character. The plot details slipped into place as I wrote or I hammered them in during edits.

BBB: I like to ask authors about all the arduous travel they must have undertaken in far-flung places for research purposes. Was there much of that? (You say your neighbours aren’t like Grace’s, so I’m assuming this isn’t your neighbourhood thinly disguised).

Sharon: Travel sounds lovely -- in theory, at least! My family vacations are usually a bit of a mess -- but I haven’t travelled for anything I’ve written. I rely on the internet to answer my research questions.

I’ve mostly lived in the city of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. This story takes place in the suburbs, so I’m familiar. She Lies Close is not about my neighbors or my suburb, but it could be! Who knows about any of our neighbors? That’s the lure -- Who knows what goes on next door?

BBB: When you’re writing, do you work it all out in detail first or just launch in – and do you always know how things were going to turn out, or end up surprising yourself? (For example, did the characters change as you wrote the book? Did they take over the story? Or are they as you first imagined them?)

Sharon: I just launch in! I am a pantser, not a plotter. I don’t know exactly where things are headed (though I have an idea). Sometimes the characters seem to take over and evolve on their own, sometimes I push them along. When I edit, I change some of their choices to serve the story.

BBB: Did any other writing (or media) particularly inspire She Lies Close?

Sharon: The inspiration for She Lies Close came from my family’s move to a new neighborhood years ago and finding out that a guy down the street was being prosecuted for a child crime. Within months he was convicted, sold his house, and went to prison. While it was creepy (and I wouldn't let my little boys play near his house), I never felt desperate. I had a good support system in my husband.

It got me thinking though…What if you moved right next door to a dangerous man, a suspect in a child kidnapping (maybe murder), and what if you had no support system, no sounding board? What if you were recently divorced and financially strapped? What if you had secrets of your own and mental health issues complicating your life? What if your sinister neighbor started talking to your little girl, giving her gifts?

I took the premise of a dangerous next-door neighbor and added a big old bag of What Ifs. I wanted to write a psychological thriller that was dark, desperate, and also funny. I wanted to write a thriller where the characters were stretched too far, where we get to witness some of them snap.

The Fever by Megan Abbott influenced my book. In The Fever, Abbott weaves mental and physical health into her story in such a mysterious way. After reading The Fever, I thought I might be able pull off what I wanted to do in my book.

BBB: What were you trying to achieve with the book - beyond writing a great story? (It’s perfectly OK to say ‘I don’t know!’ or ‘It speaks for itself!’)

Sharon: That’s a great question, and yeah, I definitely had controversial themes I wanted to explore with this book in addition to writing a compelling story.

I wanted to explore how close any of us can be to losing our mind - how many things would have to go wrong in one person’s life to push them over the edge.

I wanted to explore how the sheer volume of worrying news stories can make us hypervigilant.

I wanted to explore parenting, how far we’d go to protect our children, and the unintended consequences of that.

I wanted to explore relationships, gender inequalities, and gender roles.

I wanted to explore our differing perceptions of reality, and how some of that reality can be affected by environmental exposures, viruses, drugs we take.

I didn’t have an end goal to answer these questions, I just wanted to throw these questions into the stew and see what bubbled up.

BBB: What inspired you to write in the first place (particular books, something that happened...) and how did you get started writing?

Sharon: It was the late 90s. I was twenty-four, working as a biotech stock analyst (I hated this job), and I started reading fiction as an escape. The most wonderful, eye-opening, mind-altering thing happened to me. I read this thriller and thought, Huh. I could do better. That had never happened to me before. (For the record, in this particular late-90s thriller, the woman sidekick was a bimbo, and the villain was doctor evil-ish.).

When I sat down to write my first short story, I fell madly in love with the process. That was it for me. I knew I would never stop. I have been writing for twenty years, I've had an agent for twelve, and I've written dozens of short stories and seven novels. That's how long it took before a publisher offered me a contract.

Oh, how I wish I was one of those little kids who knew they wanted to write. As a kid I loved Stephen King, but it never dawned on me that I could “be a writer”.

BBB: And what did you expect from it? How does the reality compare with that?

Sharon: That’s such a great question. The trick is, you can’t expect anything from your writing. Expecting publication or financial success will leave you feeling like garbage because the odds are stacked against you and there is too much you cannot control. You have to agree with yourself that you’re writing novels because you love the process (even if there is no award, no publishing deal).

Now that I have a contract, there are deadlines and expectations. It’s exciting and terrifying and strange. Mostly, I’m just so happy to be in the game.

BBB: Which writer(s) do you admire most?

Sharon: When I started writing novels, my favorite writers were Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Gillian Flynn, T. Jefferson Parker, James Lee Burke, George Saunders, Lisa Unger, Jonathan Hart, Richard K Morgan...

I am a deliberate student now, and I read more widely and quickly (and differently). When I’m reading any book, I’m thinking, Oh, look at what they did there. Brilliant idea! Oh, how clever. I love how they revealed that, or that’s an amazing twist.

Now I am in awe of so many more writers. Some of my recent amazing reads…Kimberely McCreight, Mary Kubica, Raven Leilani, Riley Sager, Wendy Walker, Lauren Wilkinson, S.L. McKinnis, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Victoria Helen Stone, Samantha Downing, Victoria Helen Stone, Vanessa Lillie, Jen Pashley, Samantha Bailey. The list goes on.

BBB: What's your writing day/ routine like? And where do you write best?

Sharon: Routine? Ha!

Like so many people who have kids doing e-learning at home, I am going a little nuts with the lack of routine.

I have been writing in short, thirty-minute bursts while wearing noise-cancelling headphones designed for power-tool work. It is not ideal, and my ears hurt.

If I can hide in the car in the garage for two hours while the kids are watching TV/playing video games, I am usually productive enough. The key is non-interrupted time.

I rely heavily on caffeine. 1-2 cups of tea, then 2-4 cups of coffee, and I round it out with 1 coke zero.

BBB: Do you have a book locked away that you wrote when you were 15? If so, is there any chance of it seeing the light? Or will it get the Terry Pratchett steamroller-the-harddrive treatment? 

Sharon: Love this. I started writing short stories in my twenties, novels in my thirties. I wrote one horror, one romance (it was horrendous), one PI novel, and three tech thrillers. I might rewrite one or two of those tech thrillers (or write them as screenplays). Even though they are 5-10 years old, the premises are still pretty cool, relevant. Besides those one or two tech thrillers, I am focused on moving forward and not looking back. We get better with practice so it’s good to let those older manuscripts die.

BBB: Finally… you’re lost in the woods late at night and take shelter in a tumbledown cabin. A rescue party is on its way but will take several days to reach you. You have plenty of food and water, and even better, you have a book with you! Which book should it be?

Sharon: All of my very favorite books are thrillers or horror, but if I were reading Stephen King or Gillian Flynn while lost in the woods, waiting for a rescue, I would be terrified! So, maybe I’d rather have something funny to keep me grounded? A book of short stories—Pastoralia by George Saunders. Maybe a Matthew Quick novel like The Silver Linings Playbook. Or a children’s book—Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.

BBB: Sharon, thank you so much for those answers - best wishes with She Lies Close, may it find its way into the hands of many readers!

You can find out more about She Lies Close at the Titan Books website here or on Sharon's site here as well as the other stops non the tour (see poster below!)

And you can buy the book from your local high street bookshop, online from Hive Books (who support local shops), Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

Blogtour poster for "She Lies Close"

Review and Q&A - The Plague Stones by James Brogden #Blogtour #Q&A

Design by Julia Lloyd

The Plague Stones
James Brogden
Titan Books, 14 May 2019
PB, 416pp

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of James Brogden's latest book The Plague Stones, in which the sins of the past come back haunt a complacent suburb, and for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.  The Plague Stones is out now and you can buy it from your local bookshop, including via Hive books, from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon or directly from Titan Books (where there is also more info on the book).

I'm ESPECIALLY grateful to James himself for agreeing to answer some of my questions. So without any more messing around, let's hear from him about the book and his writing.

After that I'll give my review. (Spoiler: buy this book!)

The Q&A

James - I’d just like to say first how honoured I am that you’re answering some questions for the blog.

You’re very welcome.

I enjoy the way you give your stories so much spirit of place, and make the reader think twice about the past of what might seem like a perfectly ordinary modern landscape (such as the Birmingham of Hekla’s Children). How did you (do you) find your way into that? Is it that something in a place speaks to you – or is it that a plot, idea, or character calls for a particular sort of place?

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg question this; which came first, the setting or the story? Sometimes I’ll get struck by something weird or compelling about a location – for example the initial idea for The Narrows came when I was travelling home from work in the Pallisades (as it was then) to Selly Oak on the train, which stops and starts through a series of tunnels, and during one of the stops I had an image of the door opening and a ragged homeless girl climbing up from the tracks, out of breath and being chased by someone, and the whole story spooled outwards from that. With Hekla’s Children it was a bit different – a load of influences were coalescing in my brain (climate change, Bronze Age bog mummies, school expeditions etc) and I actually had to search for a setting where all of that would make sense, which turned out to be Sutton Park. So it varies from story to story, but the one thing that’s consistent is that yes, it’s usually a place where the skin of the world seems to be thin, and you might poke your way through with a little effort.

I like to ask authors about all the arduous travel they must have undertaken in far-flung places for research purposes… I would have assumed that for The Plague Stones this wasn’t needed, but in your acknowledgements you do mention certain rambles in Worcestershire. Were these actually useful fact-gathering trips?

Oh most definitely. Saint Sebastian’s church in The Plague Stones is lifted pretty much wholesale from St Kenelm’s near the Clent Hills (though I’ve moved the holy well inside the church for Reasons). There’s a bit in Hekla’s Children where the character of Nathan is wandering through a snowy wasteland and comes across a ridge of granite outcroppings, which is the Stiper Stones near the Welsh border. When my editor suggested that we shift the story of Bella to make it more fictional in The Hollow Tree, it was easy to transpose the action to the Lickey Hills. I wouldn’t say that many facts were gathered at the Dodford Inn or the Old Hare and Hounds at the end of one of these rambles, but it’s good to talk through ideas with a mate.

Do you work it all out in detail first or just launch in – and do you always know how things were going to turn out, or end up surprising yourself? (For example, did the characters change much as you wrote the book? Did they take over the story? Or are they as you first imagined them?)

If I’m being left to my own devices I have a set of key scenes or landmarks that I try to connect with a coherent narrative, and see where that goes. That was how I wrote The Narrows and Hekla’s Children, but without an externally imposed deadline the process is quite a bit slower. Since I’ve been working for Titan, my editors like to see a fully realised outline so they can get an idea of how to market it and make suggestions, which is fine with me because I have no clue about marketing and I’m happy to take advice from other professionals who want to make the book as successful as possible. It also forces me off my backside to actually get the thing done in a reasonable time-frame. Sometimes characters will change in the process of writing, no matter how strictly planned they might be; I didn’t know that Rachel Cooper worked for the Highways Agency, for example, but then it made perfect sense given what happens to her in the epilogue of The Hollow Tree.

Mythological themes are a clear inspiration in The Plague Stones (I hope that’s not a spoiler). Did any other writing (or media) particularly inspire the book?

Tons. I’m a total magpie for ideas. Or thief, if you prefer. As cheesy as this is going to sound, a big influence was John Carpenter’s ‘The Fog’, because right at the bottom of everything I’m a child of eighties video horror. I knew I wanted to write something about the dead seeking vengeance on the living for their ancestors’ crimes, but I didn’t want to write a standard zombie fest, and something about the way that the undead Captain Blake was simultaneously both ghostly but could also physically kill his enemies was interesting. So leprosy became the Black Death and Antonio Bay became a privileged city neighbourhood.

What were you trying to achieve with the book - beyond writing a great story? (It’s perfectly OK to say ‘I don’t know!’ or ‘Go and read it if you want to find out!’)

Is there anything beyond writing a great story? I don’t know if me saying anything about the book having a Purpose would be a helpful idea – not so much the whole ‘death of the author’ thing, but as an English teacher I’m wary of encouraging my students to think that there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way of reading a text, because once it’s out there I have no control over what people make of it, and I don’t think I should. I will say, however, that I am very angry about a lot of things that are happening to this country, and in particular the way that the powerless are treated, and anybody who wants to read it as a political book is welcome to do so. But it’s also, I hope, just a bloody good scare.

It is! Now turning away from the "bloody good scare" - what inspired you to write in the first place (particular books, something that happened...) and how did you get started writing?

I’ve always written, because I’ve always read, and the two go together inevitably. My parents made sure that our home was full of books from as early as I can remember. As to how did I get published, the short answer is perserverance and luck. Let’s just say that I had a lot of false starts until Snowbooks picked up The Narrows.

And what did you expect from it? How does the reality compare with that?

When I started, all I wanted was to see my books on the shelf of a bookshop, and if I never published anything again, I could still say that I’d done it. But then I started going to conventions and meeting other writers, and I’ve found everyone to be lovely and friendly and supportive - from the unpublished strugglers to the million-selling A-listers with movies made from their books. Sitting down and having a beer with people whose books you’ve been enjoying for years never fails to be a delight. On a purely egotistical level I never expected to see a book I’d written advertised on the Tube; that was surreal but fun.

Which writer(s) do you admire most?

Graham Joyce and Neil Gaiman, for the revelation that you can unnerve and enchant without having to adhere to simplistic genre tropes. Clive Barker, for the similar idea that you can be disturbing, lyrical, nightmarish and poetic all at the same time. Susan Cooper and Julian May for showing me that myths can take living, breathing form in stories. Christopher Fowler for making me cry with laughter while scaring the pants off me. Stephen King, obviously, for making it look so bloody easy and so much fun.

What's your writing day/ routine like? And where do you write best?

Because I have a mortgage-paying job as a teacher I basically have two types of writing day. During term time, when my brain is thoroughly fried after a day of attempting to hold the attention of nearly two hundred adolescent boys, let alone teach them anything, the most I can do after I get home is maybe a bit of work on the outline, wrangling out plot points, making character notes, details of settings and what have you. Creating actual sentences isn’t going to happen.

By the time the ‘holiday’ rolls around, hopefully I’ve got enough of a structure that I can sit down and bash out the story. Then I’ll work from about 8 in the morning until lunchtime, run errands or go to the gym in the afternoon, watch Tipping Point and have my tea, then aim for another hour or two in the evening. If after that I come away with 3000 words I’ll consider it a good day.

Do you have a book locked away that you wrote when you were 15? If so, is there any chance of it seeing the light? Or will it get the Terry Pratchett steamroller treatment? (I suppose that's a roundabout way of asking—are you on the side of those who always want to know more about the writing process, or do you think a line needs to be drawn?)

I genuinely don’t. I mean it took me twenty years to get The Narrows from start to published, so if it I was going to mothball anything it should have been that, but I suppose I was just too stubborn to let it go.

Where do you stand on genre (every time I look there seem to be more of them) - useful in writing or more of a marketing label?

Genre is the narrow point of an hourglass. Feeding in from the top, writers think more in terms of story and character rather than marketing, while at the narrow point an editor has a very clear idea of how a book needs to be marketed to be sold and so shapes it into a form which bookshops can label for their shelves. Out the other end, readers don’t think of themselves in genre terms but at the same time are attracted by covers designed by publishers to very carefully communicate genre expectations, however unconsciously. Genre is a selling tool, basically. In a nutshell, if you want to read or write books it doesn't matter, but if you actually want to SELL them it's crucial.

Finally... you’ve stumbled into a devious plot while travelling far afield (or at least, into the next county) researching a new novel, as a result of which you’re trapped in a lonely forest tower. A rescue party is on its way but will take several days to reach you. You have plenty of food and water, and you can have one Lego set with you. Which would it be?

I would have a Lego set which turns out to be an exact scale model of the tower I’m currently trapped in. Whereas one would normally build from the ground level up, unusually this starts with the topmost room – where there’s even a little figure of me – and works down through floor after floor until I get to the crypt. Then it gets weird, because the bits that are left seem to make some kind of creature – there are lots of tentacles and teeth, but the bits don’t want to fit together properly, and when I finish the creature it hurts to look at too closely. Then I realise that there aren’t any doors on any of the levels - nothing to stop the creature from roaming freely throughout the tower. Then I hear the slithering noise from outside my room.

James - thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. (I think you may now have written the world's scariest Lego horror story. Perhaps that could be Lego Movie 3?)

The Review

So - what did I make of The Plague Stones?

First I should say that I've simply loved Brogden's previous two books, Hekla's Children and The Hollow Tree. He has a real gift for grafting the present onto past weirdness, creating a shifty, unsettling atmosphere and confronting the oh so rational denizens of the 21st century with truths they just don't want to face.

In The Plague Stones, Brogden puts a further twist on that.

Haleswell - named for its healing spring - is special. Located on the edge of the city (I think, Birmingham) it has its own, semiautonomous status under its own Trust, seemingly plenty of money available, and an idyllic, country-village atmosphere. When Trish Feenan is not only invited to join the Trust but offered a charming cottage to go with it, she sees a chance to get away from the scuzzy area where she, her husband Peter and son Toby live - especially welcome after Toby is beaten up in the course of a burglary.

Of course, we know there will be a catch. Isn't there always a catch? Broaden is upfront about one aspect of this. Interspersed in this story are chapters dealing with a young woman, Hester, living nearby during the 14th century, the time of the Great Plague. Those chapters make grim reading, and really bring home the impact of the Plague, not only medical but societal. (As one character comments here, if you want to know what it's like living in a post-apocalyptic society, that's what we are doing now - only several centuries on). It becomes clear in the first chapter that there is a supernatural threat to Haleswell, a spectral woman who is only kept at bay by a fragile circuit of ancient boundary markers which it is the Trustees' obligation to maintain. Why Haleswell in particular is menaced slowly becomes clear, all I will say is that it isn't an abstract or random thing, the two times and places are linked.

So much for the obvious danger. But it's what Brogden does alongside that which really gives this book its kick. In a very modern take on horror we see services stretched to breaking point, food banks, long queues in A&E, schools ground down, people housed in shoddy, dangerous conditions subject to grasping landlords who treat their tenants like dirt - all while the fortunate inhabitants of Haleswell live in their pleasant bubble. Our guides in this are the Feenans, who have been translated from one world to the other. Resentments fester - as when Toby becomes friendly with a girl whose brother dismisses him as a "little landlord" - and they can last a long time. The two aspects feed on one another, the bitterness giving past hatreds a way into present hearts and minds and blood. Nothing ever really goes away.

The theme here is perhaps that now or then, denial of humanity, of hospitality and rob espect have consequences and that there WILL be a reckoning. In The Plague Stones that reckoning begins to be worked out, in blood and fear, but in a way the most chilling moment of the book is when we realise that what's portrayed here may only be the beginning. And not all evils are ancient.

Intelligent horror which delivers a succession of increasingly shocking turns, weaving the everyday dilemmas of family life and parenting - concern over a child getting into trouble, money troubles, poor housing - with both supernatural evil and the real wickedness inherent in how society is structured.

And it's not at all clear who the real villains in that are.

Strongly recommended.

A reminder that you can buy The Plague Stones from your local bookshop, including via Hive books, from Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon or directly from Titan Books. And you should.

The blogtour continues! See the poster for all the stops...

Ruin's Wake by Patrick Edwards - Blogtour

Today I'm joining the blogtour for Ruin's Wake by Patrick Edwards, published by Titan Books on 12th March. It's a poignant science fiction novel that explores powerful themes of love, revenge and identity - including the search to find salvation in the face of insurmountable odds.

In this post, Patrick generously answers some impertinent questions from the Balloon. So - let's find out a bit more about the author, the book and how they fit together...

The Q&A

Blue Book Balloon: What inspired you to write in the first place (particular books, something that happened...) and how did you get started writing?

Patrick: First, like most writers of any flavour I’m a big reader. I’ll chew on anything – novels of course but also histories, geography articles, astrophysics manuals. My first love was fiction and the deepest part of it was reserved for science fiction. I started writing a schlocky space opera when I was 14 at boarding school – I never finished it but it brought me a lot of joy, knowing I could carve out my own worlds.

Second was my favourite writer, Iain Banks, passing away. As precocious as it sounds I couldn’t get the books I loved from the source anymore so I thought I might as well have a crack at it myself.

And what did you expect from it? How does the reality compare with that?

Writing is the hardest, most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever done. There are so many pitfalls and setbacks, long silences and many, many rejections. But it means something and it fulfils me like no work has before, so it’s always worth it.

Which writer(s) do you admire most?

Past: of course Iain Banks (both with and without the M); Frank Herbert for his obsession with geography; Terry Pratchett for his incredible scope that rivals the classics (though academia will fight this to the death).

Present: Nick Harkaway for his roguish disregard for the strictures of genre; David Mitchell for his sumptuous, moving style; Adrian Tchaikovsky for sheer breadth of vision; Tade Thompson for, frankly, changing the game.

What's your writing day/ routine like? And where do you write best?

When I have the luxury of a full day’s writing, I’ll start work after a late morning cup of tea and often don’t look up for hours. When nothing’s coming (especially when I’m creating new material) I don’t force it: I love video games and there are so many good shows to stream, so I’ll decompress with them for a bit and then go back refreshed. This approach might seem a bit halting but it helps avoid long dry periods.

Otherwise, it’s down to my study after dinner on a work night to get in an hour or two. It might not seem like much, but with a plan and some stamina you can really rack up  the word count.

I'm always interested to ask authors if the protagonists came first, or emerged from the story.  You've a group in the book who seem very much like people you might meet in real life (if you moved in the right circles). Did they change much as you wrote? Did they take over the story? Or are they as you first imagined them?

For me the first book was a lot about convincing myself I could write a whole book, so the characters grew in the telling. Cale started out living on a space station, then for a brief time had fur (Banks’ Chelgrians are to blame); I was talking a lot with other writers and being challenged by my mentors to think big, so I threw lots of ideas into the mix and eventually, around draft two or three, I found the heart of who Cale is.

Kelbee, on the other hand, came almost fully-formed and barely changed from draft to draft. I think the freedom of shedding everything (gender, background, etc.) made it easier for me to get into her head and live her life.

Sulara started out as an experiment, a framing device between acts. When my agent handed her notes in, MORE OF HER was written in bold and underlined. She was most unexpected.

Ardal Syn is the foul-mouthed, machine-enhanced rogue everyone needs in their life. Even when things got serious he was always enormous fun to write.

Did you work it all out in detail first or just launch in – and did you know how things were going to turn out, or end up surprising yourself?

I wish I’d planned it more – since this book I’ve got much hotter on synopses. I wrote my way into Ruin’s Wake – it was more like Cale chipping away at one of his rocks than I’d like to admit! I had a basic plan, but really it was a case of drafting and reviewing, drafting and reviewing. I’m not sure I’d recommend that approach just because of the amount of material that ended up in the bin but, like I said, the first time is about convincing yourself you can get to the end.

I’m interested in how authors make their settings real - some can do that with visits to places and research, with Ruin's Wake presumably that was less of an option! What was your approach to this?

North Korea had been floating around on the edge of my awareness for years; once I fixated on the idea of an adult, realistic dystopia I knew I had a real world example right there. Even with the amount of research I did (which was a horror and a fascination) I knew I couldn’t write with objectivity about a place I’d never visited so I used framing details instead – the idolatry, the iconography, the oppression of the individual by the state. I tried to ask the question – what if everywhere was like this?

There was memory too – the parade scene (barring the mechs) was lifted wholesale from a military march in New Delhi when I was about 9.

Did any writing (or other media) particularly inspire Ruin's Wake?

Iain Banks again – he never shied away from sex and death when it mattered; I also like to think Ardal Syn could be a Culture agent! Frank Herbert was the one who showed me the importance of place in science fiction – rather than lots of worlds shown piecemeal he opted for one with culture, history and climate intertwined.

Also, a lot of this book was written listening to Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack.

Given your answer to my first question... o you have a book locked away that you wrote when you were younger? If so, is there any chance of it seeing the light? Or will it get the Terry Pratchett steamroller treatment? (I suppose that's a roundabout way of asking—are you on the side of those who always want to know more about the writing process, or do you think a line needs to be drawn?)

I wrote the start of a terrible novel when I lived in Paris as a student; it was moody and grey and awful. I don’t know where that old laptop is but when I find it, it’s getting the business end of a drill.
I’m with Sir Terry: novels are the result of a long polishing process. I don’t see what’s to be gained meaningfully – by anyone – from half-baked product.

Where do you stand on genre (every time I look there seem to be more of them) - useful in writing or more of a marketing label?

I’m not a fan of tribalism, political or artistic. I can see the benefits of a community but I think that once it starts to impose hard borders it encourages repetition and imitation rather than creation. The writers I most admire don’t give a toss about genre – why can’t a book about virtual reality be literary? Why does magic have to belong to wizards? Let genre be a way of organizing book shops and let’s get on with writing what we enjoy.

Finally... you’ve stumbled into a devious plot while researching a new novel, as a result of which you’re trapped in a lonely forest tower. A rescue party is on its way but will take several days to reach you. You have plenty of food and water, and you can have one book with you. Which would it be?

Probably Lord of the Rings, because there’s always something new to discover and one day I’ll figure out what the deal is with Tom Bombadil.

That, and the SAS Survival Guide. They have a very good chapter on spike traps, because you never know…

Thank you, Patrick, for answering all those questions (readers should know I said that there were any he didn't want to reply to, I'd happily withdraw them - but he answered them all). Best wishes with Ruin's Wake - may it find many many readers!

The Author

Patrick Edwards lives in Bristol and has never grown out of his fascination with science and the future. In 2014, he decided to give writing a go and graduated from the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA with distinction. His first novel, Ruin's Wake, was inspired by the works of Iain M Banks and modern-day North Korea.

The Book

Ruin's Wake
Titan Books, 12 March 2019
PB, 416pp and e-book

Available from your local bookshop, including via Hive, from Waterstones, Blackwell's or Amazon

The blog tour continues - see below for posts so far and to come!

Blogtour - Dancing on the Grave Q&A

Dancing on the Grave by Zoë Sharp

And now for something a little different - today we're joining the blogtour for the fantastic Dancing on the Grave by Zoë Sharp.

Well known for her series featuring Charlotte (Charlie) Fox, Zoë has also written standalone fiction before and has now returned to this with Dancing on the Grave:

A sniper with a mission… a young cop with nothing to lose… a CSI with everything to prove… a teenage girl with a terrifying obsession…

In one of the most beautiful corners of England, something very ugly is about to take place.

There’s a killer on the loose in the Lake District hills, and the calm of an English summer is shattered.  For newly qualified Crime Scene Investigator, Grace McColl,  it’s both the start of a nightmare and the chance to prove herself after a mistake that cost a life.

For Detective Constable Nick Weston, recently transferred from London, it’s an opportunity to recover his nerve after a disastrous undercover operation left him for dead.

And for a lonely, loveless girl, Edith, it’s the beginning of a twisted fantasy—one she never dreamed might come true.

Zoë has very kindly agreed to answer some questions about the new book, writing and stuff in general. So, over to Zoë.

BBB: Your new book, Dancing on the Grave, is a standalone – coming after a long series of books featuring Charlie Fox. Is it easier or more difficult writing a standalone? (Is it “Yay! Freedom!” or “Where do I even start?”)

ZS: It was both those reactions, really. Writing standalones in third person and being able to use multiple viewpoints does give you a great sense of freedom. By using close-third, it was fascinating to be able to get right inside the heads of the characters rather than just Charlie Fox, which with the exception of a couple of the short stories, I’ve always written in first person, so I’m always telling the story from Charlie’s point of view and hers alone. With Dancing on the Grave, I limited it mostly to four POVs – the CSI, Grace McColl; the young detective, DC Nick Weston; and the other main players in this drama, Patrick Bardwell and Edith Airey.

This allowed me to really look at the motivations of the people involved – especially those you would consider to be the antagonists – and understand why they were carrying out such apparently monstrous acts. Crime fiction for me is more about the ‘why’ rather than the ‘how’. After all, with this book you’re following the actions of the sniper almost from the start. This is not a whodunit where you have to work out his identity (although that comes into the story to a certain extent) but what his reasons are. And especially what drives Edith, the disturbed teenager who throws in her lot with the sniper.

Plus, it’s good occasionally to take a break from a long-running series – I’m just starting Charlie Fox book thirteen now – so you can return to it revitalised and refreshed. I have quite a few story ideas that simply wouldn’t work for Charlie. This gives me the opportunity to write them.

BBB: The book is set in the English Lake District, a traditionally peaceful area. What made you want to set a story of murder in such a place?

ZS: Here I’d have to quote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches: “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” In this case, my sniper is using a very large-calibre rifle with a very long range. Using the open countryside of the Lake District in Cumbria – recently declared a Unesco World Heritage Site – makes that threat more claustrophobic, somehow, than being in a city. The juxtaposition of having sudden death visited out of nowhere in the midst of such tranquillity is, I think, that much more shocking.

BBB: The story was inspired by a series of shootings that took place in Washington DC in 2002 – we’re, sadly, accustomed to hearing about such events in the US, but what was involved in transposing this to the UK?

ZS: I did take as my original inspiration the Washington Sniper attacks in 2002, particularly the aspect of an older sniper and a younger, more impressionable spotter. It was that complex relationship I wanted to explore more fully as I wrote about Bardwell and Edith. These are both deeply damaged people – damage not entirely of their own making in Bardwell’s case.

Sadly, we too have experienced spree shootings in the UK – at Hungerford, Dunblane, and the Cumbria shootings committed in 2010. But when Derrick Bird went on the rampage in the west of the county, shooting twelve people dead and injuring a further eleven before also killing himself, I felt the need to put this project aside for a while. It didn’t matter that I’d already written the story, already set it in Cumbria, way before those events. Bringing the book out immediately afterwards, with a plot based around a gunman on the loose, seemed too exploitative, and publishers at the time shied away from it.

Since Dunblane, gun control has been very strict in the UK. Bird used a double-barrelled 12-gauge shotgun, which is more widely available as a sporting gun here, and a .22 calibre bolt-action rifle, also legal for pest control. Nobody can legally own automatic or semiautomatic assault weapons, or handguns. In Dancing on the Grave, Edith has a small-bore .22 Gaucher rifle, which she uses for rabbits and grey squirrels. (Cumbria is one of the few areas where there are still native red squirrels and great pains are taken to ensure the non-native greys do not encroach on their territory.) Her father, a volunteer policeman, is a gun nut who, in theory, handed in the majority of his weapons collection after the ban came into effect. In practice, however, that’s another story…

The police in the UK are not routinely armed. In Cumbria some of the motorway patrols are also ARVs (Armed Response Vehicles) but the weapons are kept in a locked box inside the vehicle and special authorisation has to be given before they can be deployed. (Or that’s how it worked at the time I did my research and, consequently, when the events of the story take place.) This was never going to end in the kind of armed stand-off you might expect in a US-set novel.

BBB: You’ve also said that the story is about fame in today's society. Without being too spoilery, do you think there is anything uniquely modern about notoriety through crime (I think of 18th century broadsides and celebrity criminals making speeches in the scaffold)?

ZS: There has grown up in recent years what is, for me, a dreadful culture of people wanting to be famous simply for being famous, without any talent or skill involved. This has been largely brought about, I think, through the explosion of reality TV shows. Apparently, kids leave school declaring their ambition to be “a celebrity” without tacking on that desire to any particular profession. For Edith, a dysfunctional dreamer who feels utterly suffocated by her mundane upbringing and her dull parents, the opportunity to do something – anything – to break her out of that world is one she grasps with an enthusiasm bordering on mania. I quote Henry Thoreau: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” to which I add a common, if misquoted, postscript “and go to their graves with the song still in them.” It seemed to sum up Edith’s greatest fear – and therefore her greatest motivating factor – to the letter.

BBB: In a lighter vein, I've always thought it must be fun, though very difficult, writing about a crime-scene investigator. All that science! All that detail! Is it fun? And how do you manage the detail?

ZS: It is fun, and it’s also a hell of a lot of hard work. As with any research, you take in a huge amount of information and then leave about ninety percent of it out. I try to remember that I am not writing a How To manual. But I like technical detail – it’s why I enjoy house renovation so much. It appeals to both my creative side in the designing and planning, and my practical, problem-solving side in the actual construction. If somebody pulls a gun in one of my books, I want to know what kind of gun, and why they chose it – that tells me a lot about the character.

For the crime scene side of things, I’d already done quite a bit of work for my previous standalone, The Blood Whisperer, where the main character, Kelly Jacks, is a former CSI turned crime-scene cleaner. For this book, however, I spent some time talking to CSIs from Cumbria, as well as other experts in the field, and I did a lot of reading of forensic science textbooks of the type that are used to train real CSIs.

When it came to the weapons, I used to competition-shoot with rifle, so I have a pretty good working knowledge of the theory of sniping, but using a .50 calibre weapon – as Bardwell does in Dancing on the Grave – meant I had to learn a lot more about the complexities of shooting at the kind of distances where even the curvature of the earth has to be taken into account. It’s all fascinating stuff, but I tried not to let it overwhelm the story at any point.

BBB: Can we expect any more from McColl and Weston?

ZS: I see Dancing On The Grave as another in my non-series series, if that makes sense? The first of these was my last standalone, The Blood Whisperer, and is linked to this book by having strong female main protagonists, who for one reason or another, are unable or unwilling to go to the police when things start to go bad.

And as with Kelly Jack in The Blood Whisperer, I’m not ruling out another book involving Grace and Nick. I do have more storylines fermenting for those two, but equally I have other characters and stories I’d like to pursue first. I just need to speed up my process, but I’m working on it, honest!

BBB: Now some more general questions… stop me if any of this gets too personal! What's your writing day/routine like? And where do you write best?

ZS: Erm, I don’t really have a writing routine, which is probably a bad thing, right? I like to make notes on paper before I sit down with my laptop. (I call this using my neck-top computer – I’m saving up for an iBrain.) It always helps having something to prompt me. I find I can jot down the main points I want to cover in a scene or conversation between characters, then I can expand on that more fluidly when it comes time to put fingers to keyboard.

When I’m in full-on book mode, I set myself a monthly word target – around 30,000 words. It works out at only a thousand words a day, which may not sound too many, but that’s if you can find time to write every day. As it is, I keep a running total, so my daily target goes up and down according to how productive I’ve managed to be so far that month. If I don’t do this, it’s too easy for a day off to become a weekend off, to become a week without getting anything written, and then I’ve lost momentum altogether and have to spend more time reading what’s come before to get me back up to speed than time spent writing.

Generally speaking, I can write more or less anywhere. Certainly I can make notes anywhere to write up later. When I worked as a photographer I used to write regularly in the car on the way to shoots. I was usually the passenger, I hasten to add, rather than the driver! If I’m at home, I like to plug in an ergonomic keyboard and a big flatscreen to my laptop to give me more thinking space. It means I can have several screens open with research information as well as my writing document.

BBB: Do you work it all out in detail first or just launch in – and do you know how things are going to turn out, or end up surprising yourself?

Zoë Sharp

ZS: I do like to know where the story is going before I start, so I plan in advance. Not necessarily the nitty-gritty of the plot, but certainly the main dramatic events. What I don’t tend to plan are the responses of the characters to those events, so that they react in a more organic way when I reach that point in the story. My outlines tend to have E&OE at the end of them, which you used to get on quotations from tradespeople. (Errors & Omissions Excepted.) Things often change and mutate quite a bit as you go.

Perhaps more important to me than an outline is a summary. As I write, I keep a note of each chapter – the gist of conversations, the main plot points covered, injuries any of the characters are carrying, which day it is, and whether this chapter carries on immediately from the events of the last chapter, or if there’s a time jump or flashback scene. That way, when I’ve finished the book and come to edits, I can make any alterations to the storyline on my summary rather than having to wade through several hundred pages of typescript.

And yes, although I know where I’m going, sometimes things happen on the page that I wasn’t expecting or even that I didn’t see coming at all. Numerous times, a minor character rewrites a cameo into a starring role when I’m not paying attention. It’s a fallacy that writers control the worlds we write about – sometimes I think we’re just channelling them with no control whatsoever.

I think of writing a thriller as making a fast bike journey at night. You’re rushing along darkened roads, clinging on for grim death. You know roughly where you’re going but you’re not entirely sure of the route, or what hazards lie ahead. You can see in detail only the stretch of tarmac directly in front in the beam of your lights. And, throughout, you’re aware you might crash and burn at any moment. It’s a constant mix of fear and adrenaline. Remind me again – why do I do this…?

BBB: Zoë - thanks for that, and best wishes with publication of Dancing on the Grave: may it find many readers!


Zoë Sharp is the author of twelve books (so far) in the crime thriller series featuring ex-Special Forces trainee turned bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox, as well as a joint novella with espionage thriller author John Lawton, numerous short stories, and two (again, so far) standalone novels, of which Dancing on the Grave is the latest. She spent some years living in the Lake District, where she helped self-build her own house. She now divides her time between writing, improvising self-defence techniques, house renovation, and international pet-sitting.

Find out more on www.ZoeSharp.com.

Dancing On The Grave

Zoë Sharp

ZACE

£9.99 mmpb ISBN: 9781909344402 ebook ISBN: 9781909344396

Blogtour - Fox Hunter - Q&A with Zoë Sharp

Today I'm hosting the blogtour for Zoë Sharp's new book, Foxhunter, the latest adventure for her hero Charlie Fox:

Charlie Fox is sent to Iraq to find her missing lover, Sean Meyer, and her mission is clear: to find Sean Meyer and stop him. By any means necessary.

Her boss at the New York-based close-protection agency spells it out chillingly: "If he can't be reasoned with, he must be stopped …"

Zoe has very kindly answered some questions I put to her about her writing and her life. So — over to you, Zoe!

BBB: What inspired you to write in the first place (particular books, something that happened...) —how did you get started writing?

ZS: I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t want to write. I do recall starting an awful lot more stories than I ever finished, though. I suppose there must have been some short stories, but it wasn’t until I was fifteen that I managed to sustain a plot idea to its logical novel-length conclusion. I still have that manuscript somewhere, but am determined it will never see the light of day. I’m grateful, looking back, that there was no real opportunity for self-publishing back then. Some apprentice pieces are never supposed to be widely shown to anyone.

My first experience with the publishing industry convinced me that I ought to seek an alternative way of working with words, so I started writing non-fiction instead. First came reports for a local classic car club newsletter, then articles for the classic car magazines, and then I branched out into freelance writing for the motoring press in general. I seem to remember giving up my day-job to write full-time on the strength of one accepted article and the promise of more work to come. That was in 1988. I haven’t had a ‘proper’ job since.

It was during the years I worked as a photojournalist (the photography rapidly followed the initial words-only commissions) that I received death-threat letters. They were proper cut-out-of-newspaper things, like a ransom note, telling me my days were numbered and they knew where I lived. It was scary at the time—particularly as the police never pinned down who sent them—and my way of dealing with this unresolved threat was to write through it. So, I started on the book that became KILLER INSTINCT. I finished that book in 1999, and by the following year had an agent and a publisher.

I think that in many ways it’s easier to get into writing now—anyone can start a blog, or indie-publish short stories or a novel—but in other ways it’s harder to earn a living doing so. As I said, anyone can do it, and so many people are that it’s difficult to make one voice heard among the many. The arts are an area where the quality of what you do has absolutely no bearing on how successful you might be.

BBB: ... and what did you expect from it? How did it compare with what you expected?

ZS: I supposed I hoped, like anyone, that writing would be self-sustaining. It has never been simply a job for me—it’s a compulsion bordering on obsession. The idea that I might be able to make a living doing the thing I loved best was a very attractive one. And yes, there are days when I seem to have to fight for every full-stop and comma I get onto the page, but these are balanced by the other (occasional) days when the words just flow, apparently channelled from the ether.

While the business side of things has often proved very frustrating, and the amount of criticism an author can face on a daily basis would make a rhino weep, overall I can’t envision a time when writing would not be an important part of my life. The wonderful thing is, it can be done anywhere I can plug in a laptop and access the internet. I’ve just been crewing on a yacht in the eastern Mediterranean, researching a possible book, and managed to get part of the current work written while I was out there. What’s not to love about that?

BBB: I'm always interested to ask authors if the protagonist came first, or emerged from the story. You write in the endnote to Fox Hunter that the idea of Charlie as a "tough, self-sufficient heroine" had been with you for some time—but was it any more specific than that? Did she change much as you wrote her?

ZS: The protagonist came first, definitely. Charlie Fox arrived more or less fully fledged right from the start. I sometimes joke that she walked in out of the blue one day, pointed a gun to my head and said, “I have a story to tell. You’re going to listen. And you may want to write this down …”

I remember writing the very first piece featuring her, years before I started on the first book. It was a scene of her over-reacting to a close-protection training exercise. At the time I had no idea where that scene might be going, or even quite where it had come from. Eventually it made its way, almost wholesale, into the third book, HARD KNOCKS, which is set at a bodyguard school in Germany. Charlie goes in undercover to find out what happened to a previous trainee, and has to try to play down her skill-set in the face of what proves to be overwhelming provocation.

Yes, she has changed over the course of the series—after all, FOX HUNTER is book twelve. Either you choose to let the character evolve as the series goes on, or you try to keep them forever frozen in time, like an insect in amber. I knew right from the beginning that she was going to change, and although I didn’t plan it, the books have fallen naturally into a series of trilogies as her life and circumstances have altered. The first three are her amateur period; the next three have her working for Sean Meyer’s UK-based security agency; then the following three see her and Sean working for Parker Armstrong in New York, and include major upsets in Charlie’s life. The last three have Charlie coming to terms with the aftermath of that turmoil. And, without giving any spoilers, the next book will be the start of a new period, with new challenges up ahead.

BBB: You've written a string of books now about Charlie. Do you ever find her taking over—or are you firmly in control as you write?

ZS: It’s a nice theory that writers are in control of the world we create, but in practise I find I’m usually just along for the ride. I think this is partly down to the way I plan a novel. I don’t write by the seat of my pants, but neither do I try to work out every tiny detail before I begin. I plan the main structure of the story, the dramatic high points of the plot, but I leave the reactions of the characters to those events to coalesce in a more organic fashion.

Likewise, I don’t do complicated character biographies for new characters in each book, but rather I like to leave them to introduce themselves to me on the page. Some have turned out very differently to the way I originally envisioned them—usually for the better, I hope …

BBB: Is it difficult working with a long-running series and characters?

ZS: I think the difficulties with a series are twofold. How to keep presenting fresh challenges for the protagonist is the first of these, but I suppose the same could be said of any author writing standalone crime novels. I’m always trying to think of a new take on a plot—an approach or a scenario that I haven’t explored before.

In the latest book, FOX HUNTER, Charlie’s role is more that of a detective than a straightforward bodyguard. She is trying to protect Sean, certainly, but by finding out who is really responsible for the crimes he is suspected of committing rather than putting herself physically between him and any dangers he faces. At the same time, it contains elements of the hunt the title suggests—before she can protect Sean, first she has to find him. And she’s not the only one on his trail.

The other difficulty is far more closely related to the fact this is indeed a long-running series, and that is how to present backstory in a new and engaging way. For a start, Charlie’s got history—history with Sean; history with their boss in the New York security agency, Parker Armstrong; and history dating back to when she was still in the military. I try to include a slightly different facet of the story so it will build up into a cohesive whole over a number of books.

With each instalment, I need to get all that across for the benefit of new readers, without labouring the point for people who’ve read the previous books. And in this case there’s also explaining Charlie’s relationship with recurring characters who appeared in earlier books and have popped up again now. Plus, I like to insert something in an earlier book that I know—or at least have a feeling—will come in useful at a later date. Nothing too cryptic, but a nod for those who’ve followed Charlie’s story from the beginning.

So, the brand new Honda FireBlade motorcycle Charlie receives for professional services rendered at the end of HARD KNOCKS, for example, enables part of the storyline of book five, ROAD KILL. A character in ABSENCE OF LIGHT returns to play an important off-stage role in FOX HUNTER. Something that happens in DIE EASY: book 10, will return in the next in the series, so watch this space!

BBB: I can see from Fox Hunter that there's more to come—can you drop any hints about what's next for Charlie?

ZS: Next for Charlie is a change of direction. She’s been changing over the course of the series, as we’ve already discussed, but within the world of close protection. Now she’s going to step slightly outside the safety of that zone. She’s going to move from a profession that is, by its nature, re-active, to something that’s a little more on the pro-active side. More than that, I’m not prepared to say at the moment …

BBB: The book reflects your travels in Jordan—do you normally do a lot of research (and travel!) for the books? (That sounds to me like a great perk of being a writer!)

ZS: I try to do a huge amount of research for the books … and then I try to leave as much of it as possible out of the story. Research is necessary for flavour, atmosphere, and authenticity, but at the same time I am acutely aware that I’m writing a book designed to entertain, not to lecture. It’s not supposed to be a travel guide, or a textbook. But, people love to feel they’ve been privy to trade secrets and otherwise hidden bits of detail, so those are the snippets I try to include.

Besides, there’s a limit to how much you can glean from outside sources—sometimes you are in danger of merely repeating the errors of others. Yes, you can do an enormous amount of research from books, or over the internet, but at the end of the day there’s no substitute for being there if you can make it happen.

Q: You mentioned that you have a book locked away that you wrote when you were 15. Is there any chance of it seeing the light? Or will it get the Terry Pratchett steamroller treatment? (I suppose that's a roundabout way of asking—are you on the side of those who always want to know more about the writing process, or do you think a line needs to be drawn?)

ZS: Oh, the steamroller, ever time! I love insider notes—I’m one of the only people I know who loves to listen to the director’s commentary on movies and TV episodes on DVD, and watch the making-of documentaries, but I don’t necessarily want to see all the outtakes where the actors cracked up, fluffed their lines, or tripped over their own feet. I may want to know how the magic is created, but that doesn’t mean I want it destroying before my very eyes.

BBB: Where do you stand on genre (every time I look there seem to be more of them…)—useful in writing or just a marketing label?

ZS: I’m a bit ambivalent about genre classifications, I have to confess. They’re useful as a general guide, but I think these days there are more books that fall outside the traditional boxes than are contained within them. And authors do try to stretch the definitions. Everyone wants to think they’ve written a page-turning story that is hard to put down, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a thriller in the general sense of the word. When asked this question, I usually quote the one category that caused me the most confusion: cutting-edge cosy. Anybody care to explain that one to me?

Readers do want—and deserve—to know what they’re getting, however. If you invest time and money by purchasing a book, you want the confidence before you begin that it’s going to fall within your sphere of enjoyment, on all kinds of levels. If you start reading what seems to be a straightforward police procedural about a serial killer with seemingly superhuman strength who exsanguinates his victims, you want to be able to trust that you’ll be wowed by how the criminal has been carrying out his crimes and how the detective put together the clues to catch him. You don’t want to find out at the end that the killer is a vampire and the detective used their heightened werewolf senses to hunt him down. If you wanted and were expecting a supernatural element, great. But if not …

I understand there have recently had to be more classifications for erotica, in order to make it clear to both retailers and readers what they might be getting into. Books containing certain taboo themes will find very few retailers prepared to stock them, and I can’t say I’m surprised by this. Just because you can now write and publish a book about any deviation under the sun, that doesn’t mean you should do so.

BBB: Finally, a question that isn’t (directly) about the books. You’ve stumbled into a devious plot while researching a new novel, as a result of which you’re trapped in a lonely forest tower. A rescue party is on its way but will take several days to reach you. You have plenty of food and water, and you can have one book with you. Which would it be?

A: Ooh, that’s a tricky one. Besides, I’m already off down the road of wondering what the devious plot that I’ve stumbled into might be, and what the interior of this lonely forest tower might look like or contain, and what perils the rescue party might be encountering on its way to me. And …

Anyway … one book, huh? A dictionary. Preferably a very large and comprehensive one, that not only gives the meaning of words and phrases, but their original derivations and altering usage as well. I love words in all their forms, and strolling through such a dictionary of treasures would keep me occupied no matter what obstacles were put in the path of my plucky rescuers. Maybe even long enough for my hair to grow so they could climb up into my tower? Nah, who am I kidding? Soon as their couple of days was up, I’d improvise some weaponry out of ordinary household items and fight my own way out.

Zoë, thanks for those answers, which shed a lot of light on your writing and on Charlie Fox in particular. Before I go off to ponder what "cutting edge cosy" might be (razor sharp knitting needles?) can I remind you that you can buy the book through Zoë's website (link below) or from various flavours of Amazon - and to catch the other stops on the blogtour (see poster for details).

Zoë Sharp’s criminal tendencies were predisposed when she was born in Nottinghamshire within sight of Robin Hood’s hangout in Sherwood Forest. She opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve and blames her lowbrow sense of humour on spending far too long hanging round with mechanics. She believes life should be lived the same way as riding a motorcycle—with one knee on the deck and the throttle wide open. www.ZoeSharp.com

Chris Ewan - The Good Thief's Guides

Chris Ewan, author of The Good Thief's Guide  series, has just republished his series of adventures featuring Charlie Howard, writer of mysteries and thief. 

Starting from 20 June you can download them individually for Kindle (here's the first, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam) or as a boxset for £6.99.

To celebrate, Chris answered some questions for me about the books, and his writing 

BBB Did Charlie Howard come to you before the plot or did the plot come first?

CE I guess the answer to this is that Charlie came first or, more accurately, the overall concept for the series came first and Charlie slotted very neatly into that. I knew I wanted to write a mystery series that incorporated an element of travel fiction by moving the overall story on to a new city with each new book. I also wanted to write about a crook, because I really enjoy stories that feature antiheroes and that address questions of what really makes us good or bad. A gentleman thief seemed like the ideal fit because it struck me that Charlie could carry out his thefts in all kinds of different environments – and that if something went wrong, he might very well have to move on pretty fast …

BBB Was writing stories about a crime writer… who is writing stories… ever confusing?

CE That was the really fun part! I love the idea of stories within stories and books within books. Making the Good Thief a (failing) hack crime writer who writes about a burglar and who also happens to moonlight as a burglar himself gave me a lot of material to play around with. And if it ever got confusing, I’d just go for a walk, muttering to myself. I tend to do that far too much.

BBB How much control do you have over your characters? Do the books ever take completely unexpected turns?

CE The books always take unexpected turns because I never plan them! I think I’d get bored if I did and possibly the reader would, too. Most days when I write it’s a slog but the days when things feel as if they’re really coming together are when the story takes a turn that surprises me but that also feels authentic and true to the book I’m writing.

BBB What’s it like working again with books you wrote ten years ago?

CE I will admit that I started off reading them through splayed fingers but the truth is I always loved writing about the Good Thief so much that it’s been a real joy to get back into his world. I’m hoping that if the new editions of the books prove a success it will allow me to write more Good Thief books in the future. That’s the dream outcome for me.

BBB Where do you stand on genre (every time I look there seem to be more of them…) - useful in writing or just a marketing label?

CE I think the most important step before I start work on a new book is figuring out exactly what kind of story it is I want to write. What should the tone be? What effect do I want the book to have on a reader? Where do I see it being shelved in a bookshop? Genres and sub-genres help me to make those decisions so I think they’re a good thing for writers and for readers. I’m all for more labels!

BBB What inspired you to write in the first place – and how did you get started writing?

CE Two books really inspired me. The first was Jack Kerouac’s On The Road but the book that made me want to write crime fiction was Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye (which is still my favourite novel). I started writing my first novel when I was twenty. Then I wrote another three books and eventually got my break just under a decade later. Fast work, right?

BBB And how did it compare with what you expected?

CE I still love everything about writing. I love coming up with new story ideas and shaping them over the course of a year into a complete book. I take enormous satisfaction from the process. In terms of publishing, I’ve had some wins in my career and I’ve taken some losses. None of it has really matched up with my (very naïve) expectations of the industry but the good far outweighs the bad. I know I’m very lucky to make my living as a writer and I’m enormously grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given.

BBB Finally, a question that isn’t (directly) about the books. You’ve stumbled into a devious plot while researching a new novel as a result of which you’re trapped in a lonely forest tower. A rescue party is on its way but will take several days to reach you. You have plenty of food and water, and you can have one book with you. Which would it be?

CE Well, that’s easy! It would be the next book on my To Be Read pile, which at the moment happens to be Michael Connelly’s The Last Coyote.

BBB Chris, thanks for answering those questions, and here's wishing you great success with the republication - and hoping it might lead to new adventures for the Good Thief!

Blogtour - Don't Wake Up Q&A

Today, I'm honoured to be joining the Don't Wake Up blogtour, host some Q&A with author Liz Lawler.

Alex Taylor wakes up tied to an operating table.

The man who stands over her isn't a doctor.

The offer he makes her is utterly unspeakable.

But when Alex re-awakens, she's unharmed - and no one believes her horrifying story. Ostracised by her colleagues, her family and her partner, she begins to wonder if she really is losing her mind.

And then she meets the next victim.

So compulsive you can't stop reading.

So chilling you won't stop talking about it.

A pitch-black and devastatingly original psychological thriller.

A suspenseful and gripping start to a book, I think - so I wanted to hear a bit more about Liz and how she writes.

And here she is...

BBB: Did the character of Alex come to you before the plot or did the plot come to you first and suggest her?

LL: The plot came first, but Alex’s presence was always there from the beginning. She was simply waiting to be named. I tried calling her other names, but she didn’t answer until I called her by her name, Alex.

BBB: How much control do you have over your characters? Did the book ever take completely unexpected turns?

LL: I think I only have control of my characters until I try and get them to do or say something that doesn’t suit them. I kind of know it immediately if I try and force them into a situation that they’re unhappy with, and until I rewrite what they want to do or say, they go silent and moody.
In answer to the second part of the question, yes, the book did suddenly take an unexpected turn. I found at one point I had this character that kept appearing, trying to muscle into the story; a really interesting old man who kept following Alex and I really enjoyed meeting him, until I realised that this wasn’t the story he was meant to be in. He has his own story to tell at another time.

BBB: Your book opens with a brilliant premise – right in the middle of things, then carries on at breakneck speed. Was it always going to be that way or did it take time to get it right?

LL: Well firstly, thank you for that lovely praise! When I wrote the first draft of this book I felt as if I had run a marathon in the character form of Speedy Gonzales, desperate to get to the finish line to know the ending. There was no let-up day or night as I ran with the story and then when I got to the end I had to return to the very beginning and run the same route again, only much slower. I think in the final drafts I was crawling through it, a bit like in a search and rescue mission, looking for anything hidden or dropped along the way. But I must confess, I always do things at breakneck speed. It’s a wonder that I’m still standing. As a child I was frequently called Dizzy Lizzy.

BBB: The book’s being called a psychological thriller – would you agree? Would you place it somewhere else? Or are these all just labels?

LL: I’ll only agree if the readers agree. But I am pleased that it’s been placed in this genre. I do think genre labels direct the reader in the direction they want so that when they see the word crime, thriller, romance, they know what they’re getting; that what’s on the label is what’s inside the cover.

BBB: What inspired you to write in the first place – and how did you get started with your writing career?

LL: The simple and most truthful answer would be life. What we see, hear, experience affects each of us differently. We can all look at the same thing, but not see it in the same way. I am always imagining scenarios that take me away from reality, sometimes to a kinder world, very often to a sunny beach with delicious cocktails at hand, but more often it is to a dark place where I then have to search for a light, a way out. Writing allows me to find the light if I want to. Or else – I’m just a complete fruit loop.

Writing started for me very unexpectedly, on a morning after I’d just dropped the kids off to school at the end of the summer holidays. It was never something that I imagined doing. Writing a letter or an essay would have emitted a groan from me. But on this day, almost compelled; I picked up a pen and began to write. Since that door opened, even when I try, I can’t shut it.

Liz Lawler

BBB: I know it’s early days, but how has it been so far – how does it compare with what you expected?

LL: Terrified. Exposed. Waiting for the axe to fall. Shocked that someone liked it. Shocked that someone loved it! Embarrassed that someone didn’t like it!! On the whole a bit of a rollercoaster, my least favourite thing to be on. A couple of weeks ago I went on a children’s rollercoaster; you were allowed on it if you were 1.1 metres, which is three foot seven inches. As the ride began I looked back at a very small boy, who had been refused entrance and was crying, desperate to get on it and wished I could change places with him. Then cutting through all my worries and fear I hear the voice of my darling mum, telling me to pack it in and be thankful that I didn’t get stopped from going on this ride – that there were many more willing and less afraid people wishing to take my seat.

BBB: And what comes next?

LL: Alone time again with just me and the characters inside my head waiting to tell this new story. They are waiting for me to put back on Speedy Gonzales’ sombrero to start the beginning of the race all over again. Hopefully I will tell their story strong and true.

BBB: Finally, a question that isn’t (directly) about the book. You’re trapped in a lonely mountain cave and the rescue party will take several days to reach you. You have plenty of food and water, and you can have one book with you. Which would it be?

LL: Firstly, it would have to be a very big book as I know how quickly I read a story. Secondly I would choose a book I haven’t read before. So without hesitation I pick War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. So very many people in years gone by have strongly recommended that I read this book and I am ashamed to say that I still haven’t. So please show me to this cave in this lonely mountain. My bags are packed and I’m ready to go.

BBB: Liz, thanks for answering these questions, and best of luck with Don't Wake Up (and with your future projects!)

Don't Wake Up is available now, published 18 May by Bonnier Zaffre in e-book with the paperback coming in August. You can get the e-book here or pre-order the paperback here.

Blogtour - Forsaken Skies

Today I'm honoured to be joining the blogtour for Forsaken Skies, Book 1 in author-of-mystery D Nolan Clark's sequence The Silence. Forsaken Skies was published by by Orbit on February 23rd, and the author agreed to answer some questions here.

Commander Lanoe is one of the Navy's greatest heroes, but the civil war left him with nothing but painful memories. When a planetary governor is murdered, it falls to Lanoe to hunt down the killer and bring them to justice.

Yet his pursuit will lead him towards the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.

An unknown armada has emerged from the depths of space, targeting an isolated colony planet. As the colonists plead for help, the politicians and bureaucrats look away. But Lanoe has never run from a fight - and he will not abandon thousands of innocents to their fate.

An intriguing setup, I think... so without further ado... over to you, D Nolan Clark!

Q: How did you get started with writing?

When I was six years old I saw Star Wars for the first time. I saw it about half a dozen more times. Then came the inevitable realization: there wouldn’t be any more of it to see for years. This was even before VCRs were available—once a movie was out of the theatres, that was it. I started reading SF books, devouring them really. When I finished the shelf at my local library I realized that if I still wanted more science fiction, I would have to make my own. My first projects were pretty terrible, but I could never get enough. It’s a process that’s never stopped.

Q: How long were Lanoe and Valk in your mind and when/ how did you “find” them?

Those two pretty much created themselves. I knew I needed an embittered hero, someone who had literally seen everything but still had a good heart. Somebody who would take on a risky mission because it was the right thing to do. Valk came next, because Lanoe needed someone who would balance him out—a good-natured, self-effacing kind of guy. Traditionally you would give the hard-boiled veteran the tragic backstory, but I figured I would change it up a little. Valk was injured during the war and now he’s in constant pain, unable to take off his space suit because it’s the only thing keeping him alive. He should have been a real miseryguts, but instead he’s the heart of the team, the one who complains the least. The rest of his story surprised even me, but it felt so right when it came to me that I had to run with it.

Q: Do your characters come to you before the plot or does the plot come to you first?

It wasn’t really that concrete. The characters shape the plot, but the plot also demands a certain kind of character. The two kind of grew around each other—Valk’s story, as I mentioned, wasn’t in my first preliminary outline at all, but it became central to the story. Lanoe’s need for other people (and his constant rejection of them) gave me Maggs, and Zhang, and Ehta—all of whom added something of their own to the plot.

Q: How much control do you have over the characters? Did the book ever take completely unexpected turns?

Yes, but most of them happened in the development process. By the time I actually started composition, I knew how the story ended and what would be left of the various characters. The biggest surprise that happened during the actual writing was that I discovered just how human these characters were, that their actions weren’t just based on heroism or abstract character motivations, but changed over the course of the story. It was a lot of fun getting to know these people, even as I tortured them and constantly threw them into peril.

Q: I’m interested in how authors make their settings real - with real world set novels you can visit actual places or places that might resemble or inspire locations. This could be difficult for space opera! How do you approach this?

It’s tough, but it’s crucial. A big part of Forsaken Skies is that the characters are defending a specific planet, a place that means something to them. I had to put a lot of work into shaping Niraya, the backwater world. The key is to find small details, things that don’t matter at all to the plot, and question how they shape the day to day lives of the people there. For instance, I knew Niraya was a dry, canyon planet with one big city and then lots of farms tucked away in remote places. I started thinking about what was happening on those farms (which never appear in the book!) and I did a little research and realized that the best livestock for a place with no real atmosphere would be large birds, like ostriches and emu. The idea of cowboys rounding up herds of emu really tickled me, and it shaped how I saw the planet. I also knew that the people who lived on Niraya had gone there for religious freedom. I needed to create a bunch of futuristic religions for those people to follow—some for comic relief, some that I wanted the reader to find respectable. That shaped all kinds of things, from the architecture of the churches to the clothes people wore to the opportunities available to the children of the emu ranchers. It’s a process that takes a lot of time, but it’s ridiculously fun!

Q. Which writer(s) do you admire most?

Science fiction writers like William Gibson and Ian McDonald, Richard Grant. I am a total fanboy for Terry Pratchett and Iain M. Banks. More recently I’ve really enjoyed Scott Lynch, Jonathan Howard and Felix Gilman.

Q. Did any writing (or other media) particularly inspire Forsaken Skies?

The book is directly inspired by Seven Samurai, and to a lesser extent the American version, The Magnificent Seven. I’d be lying if I said otherwise! I like to think I didn’t just copy Kurosawa, though, and added my own dimension to the story.

Q. What were you trying to achieve with the book (beyond writing a great story!) (perfectly OK to say “go and read it if you want to find out”!)

I wanted to write the book that I thought I was going to write when I was six years old. The book I tried to write when I was thirteen. Back then I didn’t have the skill as a writer, but also I lacked life experience—it’s something you just can’t fake. You have to be burned by life a bunch of times before you begin to understand it, before you can write about real human beings. It’s taken me almost forty years to learn how to write this book, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

Q. You’ve got two more books in The Silence sequence coming so it’s safe to say the story isn’t done yet! Can you say any more about what’s coming up?

Not without spoiling the ending of Forsaken Skies, which changes everything. But I can say that the story doesn’t end at Niraya. That the alien fleet which menaces the backwater world isn’t done with humanity, not by a long shot. It’s fair to say that the collision between these two species—us and them—is going to complete reshape both, and alter their respective histories forever.

Q. Finally, a question that isn't directly the book. Your ship has been damaged crossing an asteroid field and you’re sealed in an escape pod. You were able to grab one book - any book - as you fled. Which would it be?

Jeez. The longest one available. I would hope, if I was living that far in the future, I would have access to a whole library of ebooks! But, honestly, that’s kind of the story I’ve already lived. The answer is I would read anything I could get my hands on—and then I would make up my own stories, for as long as it took.

Thank you so much for answering those questions.

Forsaken Skies is out now and you can buy it from your local bookshop or here, here, here or here.

As you've heard, further adventures await so keep your scanners online...