In 2001 Ricki Thomas took a gamble and gave up her day job to follow her dream. She’s been writing full time since then in many formats and genres. Her breakthrough came in 2009 with her novel ‘Hope’s Vengeance’.

‘Unlikely Killer’ was published next in 2010 and was a runaway success, remaining top of the Kindle psychological thriller charts for over eight months, and in the top ten for twelve. It was the 29th bestselling book for Kindle in 2011.

‘Bloody Mary’ is Ricki’s latest release.

She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about genre and crime.

Do you think genre holds an author back?

Yes, I do, very much. I find it very restrictive, especially now my name is associated with thrillers. I love writing in every format and genre, and am very keen to release some of the comedic writing I’ve done, especially the feature scripts, but I’m aware that dark and mysterious is perhaps what is expected from me! However, I’ll keep writing whatever I feel like at the time, in whichever genre, and hope that the work stands for itself, even if I have to write under a pseudonym.

Tell us about your latest novel.

My latest novel, I’m not sure whether to tell you about the latest published or the one awaiting publication, so I’ll tell you a little bit about both: Bloody Mary was released in November last year, and is a very dark thriller concentrating on the very different lives of a family re-united after thirty years. As is probably expected of my novels now, there are a few deaths along the way, culminating in a dramatic and unexpected ending. I know many readers prefer a happy ending, but when I’m writing the characters decide their journey, and what happened to them shocked me when it poured out onto my keyboard, but it felt right.

Bonfire Night is still with the publisher awaiting a decision, but I’m hoping it’ll be out in time for Christmas. In a copse on the outskirts of a small village the body of a young mother is found, shot. The police soon find that another woman, elderly Dot, whose life revolves around gossip and scandal, is missing. Links are soon made to a series of three murders from the early 1980’s, and both cases are investigated concurrently, leading to some dirty revelations from the past for one of the officers involved. Jeff is desperate to keep his family name untarnished, despite being dropped from the case due to the family link, but his boss is convinced that two members of the family committed the murders. When Jeff is injured his devoted wife takes up his work, and the tale she reveals tells a vastly different story to the conclusions the police have arrived at….

I’m currently writing Black Park, another dark thriller, and loving it!

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

It’s been a phenomenon, the past couple of years have changed millions of peoples’ reading habits! On a personal level I’m from the old school, I love the feel and smell of a paper or hardback, and I don’t own a Kindle (or similar), but I can understand the appeal to the many readers who use them. I saw yesterday that the latest statistics (from Amazon, I believe) show that over 50% of book sales are now electronic, so this reading revolution is obviously here to stay. The downfall for the authors is that the royalties shrink because of the lower prices, but to know that so many people are now reading more because of the convenience and cheaper price makes that worthwhile!

To what extent do you think the class system is still prevalent in the UK and reflected in its literature?

What an unusual question – I like that! I think that, despite efforts to equalise the ‘classes’ over the years, there is still a divide, but I would suggest it’s more of a financial divide as opposed to high, medium and low class. The current recession has had a detrimental effect on most people financially, but the good thing is that people are remembering (or learning) to cope on a budget and be more resourceful, both with time and money. My own experience has shown that there is an amount of snobbery within the writing business, yet that’s not a class issue, possibly more of a hangover from the days before the independent publishers began to appear – they’ve made publishing accessible to more writers. The face of publishing has changed beyond recognition since I began writing 14 years ago and, on the whole, I believe that’s a good thing. So, summing up, no, I don’t think class is so much of an issue any more, but willingness to accept all genres (amongst the traditional publishing houses) definitely is.

Who are your literary influences?

In all honesty I’m not really sure anybody has influenced my writing style, but the dark genre probably manifested in childhood. I loved reading as a child, especially Agatha Christie, which is probably where the love of mystery came from. As a young teen I read Steven King and James Herbert, then discovered Sidney Sheldon, and I adored the way his books were so fast-paced. Since then, although I do occasionally read novels (currently Black Shadows by Simon Swift, he has a wonderful writing style), I’m more into factual books, be it forensics, true crime, psychology, that kind of thing. My publisher, Wild Wolf, isn’t afraid to take risks, which often makes for some amazing novels, so I’m enjoying getting through their catalogue, albeit slowly as I don’t want to take the risk of somebody else’s work influencing my own voice. That said, I can’t praise Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones enough, the book was tremendous, and the film beautiful, poignant, and both happy and heartbreaking – I think I could read the book and watch the film constantly and not lose the sense of awe it gives me!

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

In context he’s describing the way he was emotionally unaffected at the age of ten when a boy died in the hospital bed next to his own, because it was more important to hear the reactions to his death, and the outpouring grief. I think it’s a hugely personal statement, not a generality to all writers, and it’s just his perception of what he believed was his own ‘coldness’. As a notoriously depressive man, he was probably beating himself up a bit! In contrast, the many wonderful writers I’ve been lucky enough to meet over the past few years have mostly been compassionate, kind, and humorous people, way too warm to have a trace of ice anywhere inside!

How would you like to be remembered?

For being able to say ‘one beer, please’ in 100 different languages… I would say just kidding but….! Seriously though, it’s important to me that my work isn’t forgotten, it feels like I’ve spent my whole life preparing for the stories that are tumbling out, and I’ve had hard knocks in the process that I hope have made my writing real, not only from a storyline perspective, but also an emotional one for the reader. I see every bad experience (and good, of course) as another area to develop and explore. I hope that my work is good enough to not fade when I eventually do.

What are you working on at the moment?

It’s all quite intense at the moment, which is good, keeps me busy! My last novel is with the publishers and has been for a while, and I wanted to wait until I had a definite yes (or no) before I began the next, so I took on a thriller/horror feature script (One Long Night), but now that’s completed and in the revision stages, I’ve decided to start on the next novel, Black Park. It’s been in planning for about a year, so I’m quite excited about it, but also eager to finish it as the planning for the next one is already underway, and I hope to have them both completed by the end of the year. 2012 has been busy, work-wise, which is just how I like it, but when Christmas comes I want to be project-free for a couple of weeks! Then on to novel seven next year…

How would you define crime?

I think the definition of crime is simply a person/persons breaking the law, but the treatment of crimes and their individual punishments is more an aspect to comment on. I have no statistics to use, but I think that many ‘criminals’ are over-punished for actions that seem irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and in contrast some crimes seem (to me) to be under-punished. One of my bugbears is rape and child sexual abuse. These often don’t come to court in the first place due to lack of evidence, but the victim can never recover from having suffered from these dreadful, and unfortunately commonplace, crimes. I find it ludicrous, some of the petty crime that leads to custodial sentences (non-payment of council tax, TV licence, shoplifting), and yet some dreadful crimes (stabbings, manslaughter etc) receive a pathetically inadequate sentence. I have spent the majority of my life (yes, I was a weird child!) studying the psychology of criminals, particularly murderers, and the very nature of their personalities – is it an illness? – it can lead to them being very confident, and very smooth-talking, which, if well-trained personnel aren’t brought in to analyse the way their minds work, can lead to them literally getting away with murder. Personally I think the judicial system in our country is useless, because criminals who are known to have done the crime often ‘get off’ on technicalities. I don’t believe I’m the only person who doesn’t feel safe walking the streets, and I certainly won’t let my 8 year old out to play alone, as I used to do freely as a young child. But to define crime in itself, it’s a given: if you break the law, it’s a crime.

If you were paid a sum of money to carry out a hit how would you go about doing it to avoid detection?

Tempting as it may be in these frustrating financial times, I’d have to say you could never pay enough for me to kill someone. Avoiding detection, that’s the real tough one in writing nowadays, now that forensic testing is so advanced – merely a trace of DNA is enough. If you’ve never had your DNA tested that’s a good start as it won’t be on any files. A victim who has no link to you. Commit the crime somewhere obscure ensuring you have an alibi. In all fairness, only a psychopath with a desperation to fulfil his/her torturous dreams would follow those rules, and luckily they are few and far between!

Thank you Ricki for an insightful and great interview.

Links:
Ricki’s website
Bloody Mary 2011 at Amazon UK and US
Unlikely Killer 2010 at Amazon UK and US
Hope’s Vengeance 2009 at Amazon UK and US

Leigh Russell is the author of numerous critically acclaimed novels, among them Cut Short (2009), which was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award for Best First Novel, and Road Closed (2010), which was listed as a Top Read on Eurocrime. With Dead End (2011) Leigh’s detective Geraldine Steel was Number 1 on amazon kindle’s bestseller chart for female sleuths, and reached the Top 50 Bestsellers List on kindle for 2011. Stop Dead will be out in print in 2013, and available as an e-book in December 2012.

Leigh met me at The Slaughterhouse were we talked about hard scenes and sexual pathology.

What is the hardest scene you have ever had to write?

At the risk of sounding glib, it’s always the one I’m writing. A scene is in my head as I’m typing this, so please forgive any slips of the finger as with the siren blazing they made their way through the busy streets… Sorry – what was the question again? Oh yes, I was just explaining that the blow would have crushed a human skull… But to answer your question seriously, I find it most difficult writing final chapters, perhaps because it signals a kind of letting go. While you are writing, the narrative is yours. You can experience the world of the book in your head, and imagine readers doing the same. Once you’ve finished, the story flies up above the parapet and you can only hope it isn’t shot to pieces. Meanwhile, as the author, if you are like me, you will probably already be lost in another world as there was a loud crack, like a window breaking, and he slumped forwards…

Tell us about Death Bed.

Readers often ask whether my books are based on personal experience. Of course I wilfully misunderstand in replying that I have never killed anyone! But perhaps the reason my writing “takes the reader into the darkest recesses of the human psyche” (Barry Forshaw reviewing my work in Crime Time) is because my writing is driven by my fascination with people. What is it leads an individual to behave in such an extreme manner? There is always an element of insanity in the act of murder, but could any one of us be driven to kill, in the ‘right’ circumstances? And what drives serial killers? In my books I explore the motivation of my killers, while following murder investigations through the eyes of my protagonist, Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel. In DEATH BED, Geraldine relocates from Kent to the Met, specifically North London . Once again, the murder case develops into an urgent hunt for a serial killer.

Who are your literary influences?

As a rule, I try to read UK authors as procedures differ in the US, but I have to mention the great and brilliant Jeffery Deaver who is a fan of mine! And I admire Lee Child – who is about twice my height, as are Ian Rankin and Mark Billingham, two more favourites. I am drawn to Frances Fyfield, who writes quirky characters that I love. But there are so many great crime writers, including the brilliant Peter James who describes my next book, STOP DEAD, as “taut and compelling, stylishly written with a deeply human voice”. Outside of the crime genre, my tastes are quite eclectic, from Dickens to Ian McEwan, Austen to Kazuo Ishiguru, Edith Wharton, F Scott FitzGerald, the Brontes… all of them write so beautifully. My one all time favourite, if I had to choose, would be Shakespeare.

I’ve strayed from identifying authors who have influenced me to listing writers I love reading. I can’t really claim that my writing is influenced by Shakespeare (I wish!) although he did create the most moving crime stories ever written – Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Lear… I’m off topic again, aren’t I?… You can see why I need to plan my crime novels so thoroughly!

To what extent do you think sexual pathology motivates men and women to kill and how does it differ between the genders?

This is an interesting question (as the politicians say when they don’t have an answer…) As this isn’t an area I’ve researched, I can only talk about my own experience – my experience of writing fiction, that is! In two of the five crime novels I’ve completed so far, the murderers are sexually motivated, driven by extremely warped impulses. One of these killers is male, the other female, so I’ve been quite even handed about this. For the killers in my other three books, sexual pathology isn’t overtly a factor at all. I have no idea whether this reflects the incidence of sexual pathology in real murder cases, although I have contacts who could provide that information if I ever needed it for a book.

If you were to give advice to yourself as a younger woman what would it be?

It’s surprisingly liberating being too old to be described as “a younger woman”. I wouldn’t want to turn the clock back. I’d happily settle for stopping it right now though. As for advice – what you want is out there, somewhere, but no one is going to hand it to you on a plate. If you know what you want, work for it, maybe fight for it, and above all else be lucky. It worked for me!

What do you make of the E Book revolution?

Amazon reported recently that sales of e-books (excluding free downloads) exceeded sales of print books (paperback and hardback combined) by 114 to 100. Waterstones will be selling kindles in the autumn and the shift to e- reading will receive a boost at Christmas. Opinions on e-books are divided, but like them or loath them, their rise is inevitable. E-readers have many advantages over print publication. They facilitate access to books. A reader can finish a novel at ten o’clock in the evening, and be reading the next in the series five minutes later without stirring from his chair. No more travelling to a bookshop only to find they have sold out of the title you want. Thanks to this easy access, e-readers are encouraging people to read more than they did before.

So do we need print books? In a world where everything is becoming increasingly technological, and virtual, and ephemeral, a print book embodies more than a physical counterpart to an e-book. It is tactile and permanent, connecting us to our culture and our history. With the rise in popularity of e-books, physical bookstores face a growing threat. When Ottakars and Dillons folded, they were taken over by Waterstones, in 1995 and 2006. By the time Borders folded just three years later, their stores were taken over, but not by bookshops. Now our only remaining bookshop chain is no longer financially viable, but survives only with the support of a Russian billionaire. My experience is the same as most authors, with e-books selling tens of thousands more than print books. As authors we have little to gain from the survival of bookshops. But I passionately believe that we all have a lot to lose.

Graham Greene said writers have a piece of ice in their hearts. What do you make of his observation?

As an author you must strive to remain objective throughout the writing process, recognising that a scene you personally find deeply moving might not have that effect on readers. It’s fine to be self-indulgent if you are writing only for yourself, but if you intend displaying your writing in a public arena – and expect other people to invest in your work – you have to be aware of them when writing. Crime fiction is plot driven and I have cut many phrases and passages that I loved writing, because they didn’t serve the story. The book was better for it. As an author you cannot allow your self to be self-indulgent, and must guard against falling in love with your own prose. Other people may not share your view. Graham Greene must also be commenting on how an author travels through life partly as an observer, storing up feelings to be exploited when writing. It makes authors sound rather callous and detached from their own experience. Perhaps this inspired the opening line of Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ “Aujourd’hui maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier.” (“Today mother died. Or perhaps yesterday.”) I like to think authors are not generally as dissociated from experience as Camus’ existentialist anti-hero!

What are you working on at the moment?

The fifth book in the Geraldine Steel series, STOP DEAD, will be available to download for Christmas 2012 and I’m hoping it will be on a special Christmas offer on kindle. STOP DEAD will be out in paperback in 2013. So right now I’m working on the sixth book in the series and have written nearly 50,000 words. It’s good to be ahead of schedule. It gives me space to do other things. I’m very excited that my publisher has asked me to write a second series to run alongside the Geraldine Steel books, and I’m also working on that. And I’m busy co-ordinating the CWA’s new manuscript assessment service for aspiring crime writers, preparing workshops for the Society of Authors, university visits, and I’ve been invited to run a creative writing course on a Greek island in 2013. It’s enough to be getting on with!

Do you think genre is limiting?

I don’t think the crime genre is limiting in the slightest. Quite the opposite. Crime fiction explores moral issues and human motivation, both of which offer endless variety. Characters in crime fiction range from virtuous and heroic to flawed, damaged, deranged, evil, and any other term that can be used to describe human behaviour. Many people read the genre not just for thrilling plots, but for what the stories say about human nature.

What do you see as the future of publishing?

No one knows what is going to happen with publishing, even in the immediate future, so speculation is rife. Stories are going to continue, in one form or another, but who can say whether traditionally published print books will survive when enough people have changed to e-readers. One problem with e-books is that anyone can make their own writing available, without any recourse to publishers, editors, proof readers, or any other control of quality. With fewer and fewer people buying print books we will eventually reach a tipping point where books are no longer financially viable. It may not take very long. Stories predate written books, and it looks as though they may be going to survive them. But once most people have switched to e-readers, there will be no need to actually read them. Why not listen to stories instead? E-readers could become like ipods, as we develop into a post-literate society. With the technology we have at our disposal, we don’t actually need to be literate any more. And I don’t think that will make the world a better place.

Thank you Leigh for an informative and great interview.

Links:

Find Leigh Russell at her website, Faceboook, and Twitter

Leigh’s Geraldine Steel series:
Cut Short (2009) at Amazon UK and US
Road Closed (2010) at Amazon UK and US
Dead End (2011) at Amazon UK and US
Death Bed (2012) at Amazon UK and US

Valerie Laws is a crime novelist and artist who received an Arts Council grant to spray paint poetry onto live sheep to create over 80 billion poems, to celebrate the principles of quantum theory, and was the subject of a media frenzy as a result. Her novel The Rotting Spot is a crime novel about skull hunting. She is Writer in Residence at a Pathology Museum in London.

Valerie met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about William Blake and British Art.

Do you think everyone’s little bit pathological?

To borrow an old joke, everyone except you and me, and I’m not too sure about you! It’s one of the reasons crime fiction is so enduringly popular and fascinating to so many readers: murder is the worst crime, and yet it can be committed by someone who isn’t a ‘criminal’ if the pressure, temptation or motivation is strong enough. This is the kind of crime fiction I like best as reader and writer, where the characters aren’t gangsters or drug lords whose business includes killing, but people who could have lived fairly blameless or at least outwardly respectable lives and then something makes them cross that line. Become a ‘murderer’, forever marked as outside human society. It’s also the crime that can’t be put right, at least not for the victim or their family. Irrevocable.

What is or isn’t pathological, or ‘normal’ varies from person to person so it’s easy to judge another person as weird or pathological. Some of my interests and activities could seem that way to others and have attracted those kinds of comments. Anyone seeing me on the beach hacking the head off a big dead and rotting bird and taking it home with me might well think I’ve got something dark going on! I rot them down in the garden and then boil in bleach and there you have a skull for your collection. They are beautiful things, as are live birds and animals, and I think it’s wonderful that something beautiful survives death. Not really morbid at all – though anyone looking at the skulls, stuffed birds, human spine, and similar relics in my house might think otherwise! Similarly, my reaction to witnessing the deaths of my parents within a shortish time was to become Writer in Residence at a Pathology Museum in London, and a University brain institute in Newcastle, with access to human specimens, human dissection sessions, human brains… that might seem morbid or strange, to spend several years working with top scientists to learn the science of dying, dementia, brain function and malfunction. This work and interest has fed into my crime fiction and my science-themed poetry too. It’s just I have a powerful urge to know all about things and why they happen, it’s the scientist side of me, and that’s how I deal with things like the great mystery of death, and the loss of loved ones. So perhaps yes we are all a bit pathological in different ways, on the other hand we’d need to know why someone does things to understand how normal their behaviour is.

William Blake features in your writing. Do you think his poetry celebrates the physical or tries to transcend it?

I think he does both. Blake, considered mad in his own time, believed that a true poet was a prophet, and he was. His writings contain many truths and ideas scientists of many disciplines and psychologists came up with many years later. I first loved Blake as a teenager, because I loved the revolutionary ideas in his work. He railed against the restrictions and suppressions of free thought by the established churches. He praised instinct, freedom and respect for nature. He believed the destructive power of the state and churches together ruined human relationships, making people feel guilty about natural feelings, and that the growing power of ‘reason’ led to industrial wastelands, environments which put money and power above human beings: the ‘dark satanic mills’ of ‘Jerusalem’. He believed that suppressing human instinct, emotion and sexuality warped and poisoned them. Much of this emerged later on as psychology and psychiatry developed.

My favourite quotation from Blake is this: ‘How do we know but ev’ry bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five.’ This is an amazing piece of prophecy and insight. Blake was able to imagine back then that our five senses perhaps only perceive part of reality, there might be a great deal more – this, centuries before scientists seriously posited the existence of multiple dimensions of reality. (Of course people believed in invisible ghosts, angels, spirits etc, but Blake was saying something we CAN see might be just the part of it our senses can perceive.) Yet amid his prophetic sayings and poems, there are many simpler poems which celebrate nature, in all its forms. He also rails against cruelty of any kind, sometimes protesting at horrible practices of his time such as selling little children into what was slavery and hideous suffering under the control of men who sent them up chimneys to sweep them. The children didn’t live long. Respectable rich people happily let this go on in their own houses. Blake was years ahead of his time. I appreciate him even more now, as I have degrees in both English, and in Maths/Theoretical Physics, and can more clearly see how he ‘knew’ scientific truths before scientists did.

I use Blake’s symbolism in my crime novel THE ROTTING SPOT partly because my protagonist Erica Bruce is a version of aspects of me and she too loves his work. But also because what he said applies to crime fiction. Murder, abuse, dark secrets, caused by past cruelty or indifference. He said a lot about the danger of suppressing true feelings or emotions, causing terrible warped feelings to grow. These are just the kind of emotional pressure cooker situations that result in murder!

How would you explain to the layman Blake’s line: ‘sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires’?

Ah yes, this one is involved in the plot of the novel, and Erica’s thinking at a crucial point. It’s a great example of Blake’s insight. At first glance, it’s shocking – taken out of context, it looks as if he’s saying act out your desires regardless of what they are, killing a baby is worse than not doing what you want. I don’t believe that is what it means. Blake’s work is all humanitarian, and his concern for children’s feelings and well-being is unusual for his times. But he asserts elsewhere the danger of unacted and un-dealt-with powerful emotions. For example, anger expressed, he says, goes away. Anger kept inside, brooded over, fed by negative emotions, grows into a massively destructive force, a ‘poison tree’. He’s not saying it’s ok to murder infants, he’s saying feeding (‘nursing’ in its meaning of breastfeeding, nurturing) unacted desires leads to something even worse than that. Nowadays we have examples of people who’ve brooded over wrongs real and imagined, obsessing over being mocked or frustrated, suddenly going on the rampage with guns and killing people at random. Our desires should be acted on, if appropriate, or dealt with in some way – acknowledged, talked about, shared, not ‘watered’ as if they were seeds within us until they grow into something monstrous. That very ‘nursing’ of resentment, jealousy, hatred, is exactly what can lead to murder, and is often behind a killer’s motive in crime fiction.

How would you elevator pitch The Rotting Spot to someone with a morbid fear of skulls?

We read crime fiction largely to enjoy fear at one remove – most of us would be scared of being murdered! The same applies to skulls in your case. But also you’ll learn a lot about them, which may give you another viewpoint – empathy for the person whose thoughts lived in it, appreciation for the beautiful architecture of the brain’s house.

What has pathology taught you about human behaviour?

It’s taught me more about human anatomy and its wonders. But also a lot about attitudes and how people cope with adversity. My studies of brain dysfunction such as dementia led me to spend time with dementia patients as well as scientists, listening to them talk and writing for them, for a book Newcastle University published challenging ageism (CHANGING AGE, CHANGING MINDS). I’ve learned about ageism and stereotyping and how wrong it is. I’ve worked with older people in their nineties, independent, using computers, funny and creative, sharp as needles. There are far more of them than people think. But even those with advanced dementia have a great deal more awareness and intelligence than people generally give them credit for. People tend to make assumptions and then inflict those assumptions on other people without bothering to actually look and listen to find out the truth. Spending time in a pathology museum and human dissection classes is fascinating too. Not just because of the bodies, but the young medical students, who nowadays are being encouraged to retain empathy with the dead instead of making themselves callous and cold. This older tendency has led to a lot of distress caused by doctors and surgeons who don’t see patients as people at all. I’ve had personal experience of this as someone disabled in a car crash but also heard a lot of stories. Much of this crops up in my crime fiction! For example a character with dementia could say something really important and nobody would take any notice, assuming they are talking rubbish! Cruelty is sometimes sadistic and sometimes the result of being unable to connect: these can lead to murder or be involved in motivations for murder. I’ve spent time with a Home Office Pathologist looking at a lot of death scene photographs and discussing them which has taught me there are a lot of lonely people dying sad unnecessary deaths out there through alcoholism and similar causes. There are bizarre suicides and horrific murders in real life. I also have encountered great courage and warm positive attitudes in people who have had terrible tragic lives yet have come through with endurance and determination. I have allowed myself to connect emotionally with not only living people I’ve met through these studies but also with the specimens. I’ve written about them, poems and a BBC radio play, and I connect with them as people, including cadavers in dissection and dead babies with extreme syndromes which are in jars in the museum. So I don’t see them as ‘grisly’ but as people with personalities who deserve respect. The same applies to murder victims in fiction.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve just completed a new crime novel so will be finding a new agent to explore publication options, always now being aware that there is e-publishing of course! I’m touring giving readings and performances from my newest poetry book ALL THAT LIVES, and also from my crime novel THE ROTTING SPOT, at various literature festivals and events, which I love doing! I’m working on new poems too several of which are newly published in or will soon be published in, anthologies. I’m giving writing workshops at my residency in the Physic Herb Garden, for poetry and for crime fiction (poisonous plants!) and continuing to explore new avenues of research. I shall be promoting and marketing my two ebooks, The Rotting Spot crime novel and my historical comedy LYDIA BENNET’S BLOG. Ideas for the next crime novel are taking shape… I always have lots of projects on the go at any one time!

Do you think Damien Hirst has been a good or a bad thing for British Art?

Well as someone who received an Arts Council grant to spray paint poetry onto live sheep to create over 80 billion poems, to celebrate the principles of quantum theory, and was the subject of a media frenzy as a result, I suppose I’m in no position to huff and puff about non-representational contemporary art! I believe Banksy stencilled symbols on sheep but I think I got there first with my QUANTUM SHEEP which invented a whole new form of poetry, the quantum haiku, into the bargain! I’m all for people pushing boundaries in the arts, and conceptual art is an important movement for that. There has been a partial movement back toward representational, (shout-out here for the sublime George Shaw, genius), but even that strand has been changed in various subtle ways by Hirst and friends. Of course the prices paid for a few shells on a shelf or such like are unbelievable but nobody forced them to buy the works. Some conceptual art is playful and exciting and some is pretentious dreck, but that doesn’t matter. Of course Hirst used dead critters like sharks but then still life artists for centuries painted shot stags and bleeding pheasants, so it’s quite traditional really. Generally I think he’s been a good thing regardless of whether you like his stuff or not.

Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message”. How important do you think framing and context are in visual art as well as fiction?

In both cases the medium is a large part of the message, in fact it’s impossible to ‘see the join’. However this near-identity is a natural process in literature as well as visual art of all genres: certainly for me, ideas for poems, crime or comedy novels, plays, come along and bring their medium with them rather than it being a conscious choice. I imagine this works for other creative artists too. My crime plots also explore themes like, for example in THE ROTTING SPOT, what happens if someone is getting away with murder, what does that do to them and their surroundings and society? Or relationship tensions between siblings, lovers, friends. My plays celebrate local historical characters who have been neglected by history, my poetry explores death, sex, pathology, and the mathematics of quantum theory using the medium of live sheep. In all cases the context and the form naturally arises. I suppose the medium is the form of delivering the message effectively, in the way that I can write about pure science in creative fictional or poetic terms to make it accessible to a wider audience than the specialist one originally served. In visual art too the forms change with the times as do the preoccupations, now we have photography and graphic art, the skill of creating an accurate representation is not so vital, so it’s concepts and ideas being explored through arresting or surprising forms or media. Oscar Wilde, whose house I visited yesterday in Dublin (sadly he was out) said ‘Style, not sincerity’ is the essential in all art, and this shocking statement (at the time, when the ‘moral’ was supposed to be paramount) is really saying much the same as McLuhan.

How would you like to be remembered?

I’d like to be remembered by readers as a writer who made someone laugh or cry, or feel something or understand something in a new way: with all my work, including genre fiction like THE ROTTING SPOT, I like to get the language right as well as plot and pace. I’d like to be remembered by my children and friends as someone who was there for them as support and help: and by my boyfriend as hot!

Do you think death is the end or a transformation of energy as physics seems to postulate?

I don’t know. I’ve seen people die, and I’ve learned a lot from pathologists and neuroscientists. I’ve learned how each brain cell dies and how the body dies. I’ve done a lot of research on NDEs (Near Death Experiences) and co-authored an article with Professor Elaine Perry in Neuroquantology about them. I’ve had experiences of a supernatural kind and so have many other people I’ve met. On the other hand, the brain plays tricks and wishful thinking is very powerful. I’d like scientists to seriously study the possibility of survival after death, which I feel would require the possibility of consciousness outside the physical brain, as in NDEs or out of body experiences. It’s very hard to find any cases which stand up to any scrutiny and during researches I found that scientists, who are kidding themselves if they claim to be impartial observers, tend to be either close-mindedly sceptical, or so wishful that they accept dubious reports or worse, change reports to make them seem more convincing. Quantum physics has changed our view of the universe, and so many strange things happen that disembodied consciousness seems not so weird. So while the physical body may well stick to the old Newtonian style ‘transformation of energy, matter not created nor destroyed’ schtick, consciousness might be able to go on and evolve. Or not! It’s part of the endless fascination of death, and at least we will all find out in the end. And if there is nothing, we won’t know we don’t know!

Thank you Valerie for giving a refreshing and insightful interview.

Links:
Find Valerie at her website, on Twitter, Facebook, and her blog.

Her crime novel THE ROTTING SPOT: on Amazon UK 99p & Amazon US $1.55 or paperback via Amazon or from the publisher, Red Squirrel Press or via her website, signed.

Valerie’s science poetry book on pathology, sex and death, ALL THAT LIVES: contact her via website or via Red Squirrel Press.

Her historical comedy novel LYDIA BENNET’S BLOG is also on Amazon UK for 98p and Amazon US for $1.55

Any requests re performances, festival and events appearances and signings, contact Valerie via website, as she is between agents.