Do you participate in writing challenges on social media? Do you recommend any?
Not for a few years now, but I can recommend Nanowrimo. It doesn’t sound like very much – just 1,667 words per day – but if you’re a busy person that can be quite a lot. It forces you to take the time whenever you can to reach the target. “I am doing this.” At that pace, you’ll break 50,000 words in a month. I finished one full novel for Nanowrimo… it’s in the trunk and may never see the light of day, mind you!
Nothing is wasted. It was great practice.
Do you prefer ebooks, printed books, or audiobooks most of the time?
Any format, any time. I’m one of these people who has about a dozen books on the go. I’m a dipper! I’ve got apps on my phone, I listen to audiobooks, I’ve got a Kindle and Kobo, and good old paper sandwich books, too.
Does writing energize or exhaust you? Or both?
It always energises me. I may start off tired, but I’m alert when I finish.
Have pets ever gotten in the way of your writing?
Ha – I used to have a cat as kid. Whenever I wrote longhand, she’d always find a way to sit on the pages. I still miss that moggie. I can imagine her, at this very second, taking a seat on the keyboard while I am trying to type.
Have you ever killed off a character your readers loved?
I don’t know that people loved the character, but in The Hunted I killed off the most likeable person. This was pure manipulation, a calculated act. After she dies, no-one is safe. I wanted to put readers on edge.
I regret doing that to her. She really didn’t deserve it, and I felt a sense of treachery because I liked creating her. A couple of readers pointed out that it was mean of me, and they were right. I still can’t decide if this was a good or a bad thing to have done. Probably bad.
How do you celebrate when you finish your book?
No time to party at the moment! I start looking forward to the next one.
How long did it take you to write this book?
To Pay The Ferryman took a while – a bit longer than usual, up to six months. I can turn out a draft of a book in about 12 weeks. I hope to get that down to six weeks, in time. It’s all about time, tick-tick-ticking away.
If you could spend a day with another popular author, whom would you choose?
I would spend a day with Agatha Christie while she was at that hotel in Harrogate, having gone to ground. I’d pretend I didn’t know her, try to find out what was going on in her life. That incident may have been a genius publicity stunt (it’s still helping to sell books today; it may have been a deep personal crisis that she was trying to escape from. Maybe she was just tired of being Agatha Christie.
I’d reach out to her, provide a friendly ear, see what was going on. I think I would have an impeccable centre parting, maybe a wee moustache.
If your book were made into a movie, which actors would play your characters?
I can see Martin Compston or James McAvoy (a fellow Drumchaplian) as Lomond. Maybe Sam Heughan for Slater, but he’d need to shave his head. Kelly Macdonald for Smythe.
What advice would you give to a writer working on their first book?
Get it all down. Keep going. Visualise the end point, the goal. The old saw is: “Don’t get it right, get it written.” So much of a book is a product of editing and redrafting, so just get it down, worry about the finesse later.
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