Tonia Brown writes steampunk and zombie fiction. Her book Badass Zombie Road Trip is getting some great reviews. She blogs at The Backseat Writer, where she claims to be making sex and violence fun since 1869. She met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about subjectivity and DNA conditioning.

What happened to sex and violence before 1869 and do you think steampunk is a revolutionary genre?

I love the tagline “Making sex and violence fun since 1869” for two reasons. I like poking fun at this popular notion that the Victorians were a bunch of innocent babes. While its true they weren’t as open with their indiscretions as we are, the folks of the late 1800’s weren’t quite the naive prude we make them out to be. I think the notion arises not just from the fact that the Victorians put up a good front, but also from the idea that every generation thinks they invented sex. The gods only know why that is true. I mean, you and I are living proof our parents had some notion about how it all works, but still we like to believe our conception was by osmosis.

The second thing I love about the tagline is, I have to admit, a bit childish. I chose 1869 simply because I like the numbers. I wanted something in the 1800’s because I find myself writing a lot of fiction in that era, and 69 is a good number for someone of a filthy mindset. Yeah, I said it was childish, didn’t I?

As for steampunk, I don’t know if I’d say it’s a revolutionary genre. I’m not sure steampunk is changing anything, though it is shaking the literary world up a bit with its increasing popularity. I think refreshing is a good word for it, though I’m sure there are those who would argue that.

If you consider sexually motivated crime, what do you think the differences are between pathological female sexuality and pathological male sexuality?

I think the first conclusion folks would like to leap to, and I know I do, is that the female would lean toward emotional reasons for their crimes (dominance and control of an emotional situation using sex as a tool or weapon) while men would lean toward physical reasons (pure animal instinct of dominance with pleasure and sexual release). This, interestingly enough, is a notion we can thank the Victorians for. Victorian theorists such as Herbert Spencer and Patrick Geddes created a series of polar opposite traits for males and females to explain their psychological differences. Males were considered active and aggressive while females were thought of as sedentary and nurturing. This birthed the notion that women weren’t interested in the physical acts of love, but rather the emotional fulfillment, but men were in it only for the orgasms. This ultimately led to the concept that women were frigid, and men were animals.

Realistically, however, I believe the opposite is true. Female sexual predators (the few there are) have been known to be very aggressive and their crimes are often about pure physical dominance, while the male predators find their aggression stemming from emotional issues, often to do with pleasing daddy or trying to cut ties with their mother.

But in the end its always about dominance, either way.

Do you think the internalised Freudian imago of the father is what lets us down or do you think it is gender specific?

I must admit, I’m not a big Freud fan. (We all become ‘daddy’s girls’ because we can’t forgive our mothers for not having a penis? I mean really?) Freud’s theories were based upon the Victorian notion that women were incapable of contributing to relationships (and by extension, society) in anything more than a supporting role. I think that as a result, a lot of his theories were gender biased. He was a man, understood men, and thus wrote about how men worked. Then he applied theses same concepts to women by, in most cases, reversing all of his ideas. (i.e. Castration Anxiety became Penis Envy.)

Personally I think we have a pair of internalized parents, reflecting our dualism of spirit. (Yes, I am a sucker for Jung!) We might lean on one more than the other, depending on our shifts in mood. And, quite frankly, I think they both let us down all the time. (Or at least mine do!)

In relation to the previous question, I think that men have more trouble ‘letting daddy or mommy down’ because we as a society don’t allow men to have feelings. Love is a four letter word to some guys, and weeping is a weakness that is almost expected in women, but frowned upon in men. This manifests in some psychotic breaks as a physical out lash for emotional control through sexual dominance.

Bear in mind I am not a professional psychotherapist, and as far as theories go these words are as about as substantial as smoke. These are just some wild observations made after a lifetime of reading and watching horror and thrillers, living with a husband who fancies himself a bit of a learned man, and sharing my likeness (I’m an identical twin) with a serial killer ‘buff.’

Given the fact that you are an identical twin what do you think of Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious?

My short answer to this is, Jung was right on!

My long answer is that not only was Jung onto something, he had it by the throat. I am a firm believer in the concept of collective unconscious, both as a tie in to our psychology and as a spiritual conduit to our soul. (I hope that dosen’t sound as flaky as I worry it does.) I think it is important to our spiritual and mental well being that we understand how the different aspects of this collective effect both our conscious and unconscious states. Jung’s hypothesis of how we pass down ancestral memories and ideals through anything from sounds to shapes to colors goes right alongside one of human being’s most natural instinct: pattern matching. And to me, pattern matching explains a whole heck of a lot about our metaphysical and mental functions.

In relation to my being an identical twin, I can honestly say that yes, we share a ‘collective unconscious’ of sorts. I have lots of stories about us sharing feelings, both emotional and physical, both within sighting distance of one another and over several states. For instance, I caught a face full of softball at age 12 while playing catcher during a ball game and as a result broke my nose. She was at bat when it happened with her back to me, but dropped the bat, grabbed her nose and started screaming blue murder. Everyone crowds her to see what is wrong, while I stagger about with gallons of blood gushing from my aching proboscis, to dazed to squeal. It wasn’t until she revealed that nothing was wrong that someone finally took notice of me. To this day she maintains she felt her nose literally blow a seam, the same feeling I got when the ball hit my face.

And yeah, we do that kind of stuff all the time.

Based on the strength of your DNA conditioning do you believe we have free will?

In the grand scope of things, yes, I believe we have free will. DNA conditioning only guides us so far. If we have a shared consciousness that connects with all of the generations past (and future?) you would think that our actions would just become automatic based upon our past ‘experience’ with situations. But I think it’s that very shared connection that encourages free will. The need to gain more data input to shape and foster future generations by continual trial and error.

Do you think most human beings define themselves by the people who are around them and do you think that involves an unwritten lie?

Yes, all human beings are influenced, both in deed and thought, by those around them. One’s personality is shaped by those they interact with, from babies repeating their parent’s words to full grown adults smoking because ‘everyone else in the department smokes.’ Personally I am a walking quote book of movies, books and my husband’s adages.

But does this art of mimicry inherently involve an unwritten lie? About what? That this isn’t who you really are just because your behavior is similar to others? Just because something derives its meaning from context, doesn’t make it a lie. We often set ourselves up with undesirable behavior patterns based on social acceptance, but it’s this same society that will judge us harshly later for this same behavior. Aye, there’s the rub.

To what extent do you think reality is a shared collective subjectivity?

Whenever someone mentions the subjectivity of reality I immediately think of my current job. I work as an Emergency Department receptionist for a hospital that deals with a lot of mental health patients. As a result I get wide perspective of possible realities. Is it the one where we are all either angels or demons? (and make note only demons need to wear clothes) Or is it the one where the government implants cameras in our eyes at our birth to control the things we see? Or maybe it’s the one where taking tons of drugs is a really good idea?

This said, I realize that it’s easy to dismiss these examples as over the top, or signs of mental illness, but how far should that dismissal go? When does reality separate itself from mere opinion? When does your reality trump mine?

I think that it’s hard to believe in a collective consciousness and not believe in a certain level of shared reality. How much of it is shared, I really can’t say. I used to think the existence of gravity or physical manifestation or even death was enough to form a reality. Then I read Richard Bach’s JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL and from that point on I wasn’t so sure. Here, years later, I try not to worry or think too much about it, for fear everything I am fairly sure is real won’t be. Good or bad.

You are given a large sum of money to carry out a hit. How would you do it to avoid detection?

It is my sincerest belief that crime novels and television have made a fantasy land out of forensic sciences. I don’t doubt that we have come a long way in our criminal detection capabilities, but I think fiction wins out in most depictions, lending to a notion that cops are super heroes capable of locating a serial killer from a single cell of blood. It’s all about entertainment of course. The boring reality is most criminals either slip up because they get haughty or partners turn them in. So we as authors feel we must create all sorts of elaborate plans to kill someone without being caught or else it will be dullsville.

In reality, I think it would be pretty simple to kill someone without detection. The only trouble with your question is that it breaks the cardinal rule of not getting caught: do not involve anyone else in your plan. As Ben Franklin said, “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

That said, if I was sure the boss man would keep his trap shut, I think the best way to off someone is fairly simple. Lure them to the countryside, shoot them and bury the body. I live in what we refer to as the sticks, and folks in the city do not realize the absolute vastness of the real country. Places so remote you can scream and shout all you like and never be heard. Gun shots are a regular business out here, with hunters hunting and farmers killing livestock. The woods are dark and deep. Very deep. Deep enough to swallow your worst sins, and you too if you aren’t careful.

What is the remotest place metaphorically or literally you have ever been and why?

Oh! Finally, an easy one! The astral plane.

Okay, before you mark me down as a complete fruitcake, allow me to expand on that answer.

As an insomniac with a new age bent I have tried all sorts of holistic methods to cure myself of my sleeping woes. (Slow to fall asleep accompanied by sleep tics and periodic waking.) One of these methods was to engage in a bit of astral travel. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean flying about the astral plane, playing peeping Tom on everyone I know. No. The idea played upon the concept that part of insomnia was due the inability to still the mind. Which, by the way, is entirely true. Thus, through guided meditation using visualization techniques you were supposed to design and build a temple dedicated to the blessed act of sleep. Once this building was concrete in your mind’s eye, you were to project your overactive unconscious self into that place, thus allowing your physical body to relax and get much needed rest.

This didn’t go well for me. Oh, sure I dropped right off during the soft spoken monotone recording, but I always managed to fall asleep in the initial phases of my so called building. And of course, because I never got quite past the beginning part, I felt far too guilty to move on down the series of recordings and listen to the other sections such as decorating your temple, or projecting yourself into said temple. I tried playing the tape from the middle, around where I would always fall asleep, but it never seemed to matter. Again I fell asleep but always dreamed of unfinished masterpieces. It did little for my self esteem and even worse for the astral environment.

I suppose the astral plane is still littered with half built piles of rubble, all bearing a sign that says something like, “Coming Soon! Tonia’s Sleep Temple! Watch your head!” If you happen to travel the astral plane, and see my various works in progress, just turn aside and ignore them, please. After a month of trying to complete just one temple I grew tired of the effort and abandoned the method. I turned to Benadryl as a sleep aid and have been popping 50mg a day ever since.

In the literal sense of the question, I spent part of my youth in Okinawa, Japan. (My father was military.)

Which is better, crunchy or smooth peanut butter?

I show a preference for smooth in my adulthood, but only for pragmatic reasons. My husband doesn’t care for crunchy, and atop that I have an impacted molar that gets bits of hard foodstuff stuck in it if I’m not careful. (A very uncomfortable feeling, to say the least!) Therefore, we stick to smooth in the Brown house. However, I was raised to love the crunchy stuff. My father used to dote on crunchy. So much so that if he ended up with a jar of smooth by some unhappy accident, he would put bacon bits on his sandwich to simulate the crunch.

Yes, I said bacon bits.

After a few years of this he forewent the crunchy altogether, and just started buying a jar of smooth peanut butter and a shaker of bacon bits like they were some magical gourmet duo one couldn’t live without. He also started putting vanilla sandwich cookies on his peanut butter sandwich, but that’s a whole different story.

Thank you Tonia for a smart and entertaining interview.

Links:
Tonia’s website and webserial Railroad!

Tonia’s books on Amazon:
‘Badass Zombie Road Trip’ – US and UK
‘Zombie Kong – Anthology’ – US and UK
‘Railroad! Volume One: Rodger Dodger (a steampunk western)’ – US
‘Railroad!: The Three Volume Omnibus’ – US and UK
‘Lucky Stiff (An Erotic Zombie Book)’ – US and UK
‘Anthology of Steam Punk’ – US
‘Eyewitness Zombie’ – US
‘Steampunk Tales: Issue 5’ – US
‘Steampunk Tales: Issue 9’ – US
‘Hell Hath No Fury’ – US and UK
‘Probing Uranus’ – US and UK

A lifelong freelancer with three hundred articles and short stories published in national magazines, Phil Bowie writes suspense novels set mostly in North Carolina. His series novels Guns, Diamondback, and Kllrs are endorsed by top best-sellers Lee Child, Ridley Pearson, and Stephen Coonts.

Phil has a new collection of his short stories out, Dagger. In them you can read about an ingenious hit man, a vicious biker gang, a threat from space, and a mischievous voice. Several of these yarns have been published previously in national magazines.

He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about the E Book and working as a freelancer.

Why do you think people want to read about crime?

Crime fiction is a study in good versus evil–a fundamental human conflict–so it’s of interest to most of us. But more than that, I think we’re fascinated by those who live on the edges of society–the outlaw bikers, the old West bandits, the pirates (Blackbeard still lives in the imaginations of eastern North Carolinians), the lone avengers, the heroic cops, the crime bosses with all their money and power (witness the enduring popular interest in the Godfather series). Reading crime fiction lets us vicariously experience life out there on the edge, and gives us glimpses of how humans can confront and overcome evil. While the conflicts in thriller/mystery stories are extreme, each of us faces a constant series of conflicts in daily life, and how we resolve them is largely the measure of us.

Who are you literary influences?

Ernest Hemingway for his clean, powerful style. Mickey Spillane for his hard-boiled yarns. John D. MacDonald for his humanity and clarity. Harlan Ellison for his great Sci-Fi. And I like so many contemporary authors, including Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Wilbur Smith, Janet Evanovich, Nora Roberts, Stephen King, Gregg Hurwitz, Ken Follett, David Levien, Harlan Coben, and Elmore Leonard to name just a few. For the past three years I’ve served as an awards judge for International Thriller Writers, and that has introduced me to many fine authors I never would have enjoyed otherwise. I’ve read thousands of novels over the years, and usually have two or more going at a time.

Tell us about Dagger.

Dagger and other tales is a collection of my short stories, several of which have been published in magazines, such as my award-winning version of the Stephen King yarn, “The Cat from Hell” (with King’s first 500 words published herein with his kind permission).

The stories run the genre gamut from suspense to horror to humor to Sci-Fi. There’s even my version of a romance tale. I’ve included a few brief words about how each of the 17 stories came to be. Dagger is available as an Amazon e-book ($4.99) or in autographed print form directly from me ($8 to Phil Bowie, 814 Neuse Dr., New Bern, NC 28560, free shipping)

How do you think the rise of the E Book has affected the market?

The Internet has, of course, profoundly changed publishing, as it has many other enterprises, and authors must be willing to adapt to the continuing industry changes. The e-book is currently a blessing and a curse. It opens publishing to anyone and allows almost instant uploading to sites like Amazon for exposure to a worldwide reader base, but therein also lies the curse. Traditional publishing (a publisher purchasing a book under an advance/royalty contract) is a time-consuming, frustrating, and difficult path for an author, but because the publisher must fork over good money to an author, both to purchase a book and then to promote it, that publisher is going to be quite sure a book is of good enough quality to sell. E-publishing, on the other hand, involves no financial outlay or risk to the publishing site, so there is no longer any quality control, and as a result good e-books get buried under an absolute avalanche of poorly conceived and poorly written books. I think the Internet is slowly correcting that major flaw, for example with review sites that readers can access to discover the worthwhile books out there. So I think the new publishing industry will sort itself out, but it’s going to take time.

What are you working on right now?

I’m working on a stand alone novel about a yacht delivery captain who’s taking a yacht from Houston to Miami when he gets embroiled in a murder mystery. The story revolves around big oil and the lofty realm of the super rich. (One of my pleasant sidelines is captaining a trawler for NC State University, and doing occasional yacht deliveries. In 2010 I helped take a yacht from Houston to Miami during the height of the Gulf oil spill.)

How much do you think the environment has been corrupted by the interests of the multinationals?

Big question. With seven billion of us now trying to share the planet, environmental degradation has been inevitable, I’m afraid. Air and water pollution, with resultant health issues, are major concerns in China and India, of course. There’s a patch of plastics and other refuse concentrated in the Pacific that’s the size of Texas. Our thirst for oil only grows. Even the space around our planet is increasingly littered with dangerous debris. But those are obvious problems. There are insidious consequences of trying to feed many more people cheaply, for example. Where I live in eastern North Carolina, there are ten million hogs being raised in high-density factory operations. Aside from deplorable humane issues, the hogs are fed steroids to make them reach slaughter weights faster, and their feed is laced with antibiotics so whole herds don’t fall sick. These compounds linger in the meat and have long-term effects on our health. The animal waste washes into our waterways, increasing nitrogen and phosphate levels, which fuels massive algae blooms, which in turn robs the water of oxygen and can result in massive fish kills. For several years I’ve been involved with an environmental group, flying a light plane over pollution sites to document conditions with photos and video, so I’ve witnessed many of these sad effects. But we have good people working on such problems around the world, so the future is not so bleak as it might appear. As an author, I try to do a small part by working some societal issues into my stories simply to remind folk (without, I hope, becoming preachy or boring about it). Pollution is an issue that should transcend politics. And I don’t think we can simply blame the large companies which, after all, are only trying to meet our demands (I don’t see how BP, for example, could possibly have done or spent more in their cleanup efforts after the Gulf spill). Each of us is a polluter, and it’s going to take significant changes in our attitudes and habits to attack pollution issues, but I have faith we’ll do it. We really don’t have much choice.

If you were to give advice you yourself as a young man what would you say?

You come up with some good ones, Richard.

I’d say, Phil, have more faith in yourself and renovate your dreams to make them much, much larger. There’s a river of opportunity flowing past and you have but to dip your hands into it to enrich your life, so why don’t you? Stop the drinking and smoking and carousing and endangering the only body and brain you’re going to get with super stupid sports and abrasive encounters with high-speed blondes. You damn sure don’t want to be looking back several decades from now and saying “I wish I had” about anything.

How has working as a freelancer helped you as a novelist?

Freelance writing is great training. I’ve met a wide variety of people and interviewed them in depth, which has helped me breathe life into fictional characters. Writing magazine articles and short stories within fairly restricted overall word lengths, and working to deadlines, I’ve learned to write clearly and concisely and on some kind of schedule. For many of my articles, I also took the accompanying photos, and that has taught me to scrutinize the world around me, helping to bring my fiction alive with accurate details and an occasional lyrical comment.

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

It’s a curious statement. Maybe he meant writers can emotionally detach themselves enough to objectively analyze the world around them, to imagine the world from even the point of view of a mad person, for example. Or maybe he meant that when a writer is experiencing something intense in her or his own life–witnessing a disaster, or going through a car accident, or making love–a segment of the brain remains aloof enough to record everything for possible use in subsequent prose. And I think all of that is true. But I also think readers experience our work with only some fraction of the passion we must invest in it to elevate it above the commonplace. Great writers, like great artists and great musicians, seem to give everything they have to what they do, and that essence comes through to those they’re trying to touch. We can only try to emulate those great ones.

Phil, you have a series of three suspense novels out, GUNS, DIAMONDBACK, and KLLRS. Your protagonist goes under the witness protection alias of Sam Bass and then under the alias of John Hardin. You never do reveal his real name. Where did this character come from?

I believe in the old advice to write what you know. So Sam/John is partly me and partly the man I’d like to be, I suppose. He flies a light plane, rides a motorcycle, and has a lady who is part Cherokee. All that is true of me. But he has more courage, more ruthlessness, and more cunning than I. Anyway, when I have him climb into his Cessna, gather speed down a runway, and break free of the earth, I know what that shot of euphoria feels like, so maybe I can convey some portion of it to the reader, and thus make my fiction more alive. Or when I have him fire a Colt .45, I know what the kick feels like in the hand, what the sound does to your hearing, what the gunsmoke smells like, and just how difficult it is to hit a target at any distance at all despite many hours of practice. I can weave some of that into a gunfight scene and make it a bit more real. We have to write largely out of our imaginations, augmented by research (thank the Lord for the Internet), but we also need a degree of realism that sometimes can only come from personal experience, I believe. I say this full well knowing that many fine writers never have actually experienced much of what they write about, and all I can say of them is they must possess a hell of a lot of talent.

Speaking of experiences, this interview has been a good one. Thank you, Richard, for taking your time to do it.

Thank you Phil for a refreshing and informative interview.

Links:

Author website http://www.philbowie.com/

Phil’s books on Amazon US and UK:

‘Dagger and other tales’ US and UK
‘Kllrs’ US and UK
‘Guns’ US and UK
‘Diamondback’ US and UK

Kerry Wilkinson is Amazon UK’s No.1 author for the final quarter, selling 250,000 copies of his Jessica Daniel series. This week he agreed a six-book deal with publisher Pan Macmillan for the rights to the series. Locked In is the novel that made his name. He met me at The Slaughterhouse where we talked about traditional publishing and the rise of the E Book.

Do you think there is a specific plot-driven reason for the outstanding success of your novel Locked In or do attribute its sales to other factors?

Not really because people only know the basics about the plot when they buy – or sample. I do think the success of the sequels is down to the characters in the first book, however.

People will give a book a go for many reasons – because it is cheap, because they like the blurb, or the cover or even the title. But they don’t return to buy and read the follow-ups unless they engage with the characters.

There was a very large word-of-mouth movement with Locked In. I still get emails from people who say, “My son/daughter/niece/nephew, etc, recommended it”, or “Someone in my book group was talking about it” and so on. There’s no better advertising than a mate or a family member telling you they enjoyed something because you naturally trust them over a poster campaign or anything similar.

Having complete strangers telling other people you’ve never met about you is a pretty amazing thing.

That all then feeds into Amazon’s own marketing system because, if people are buying your book and they are already keen readers, you’ll get the “Other people who bought this book…” option. Then it snowballs further.

Tell us about Locked In.

Locked In is, on the surface, a straightforward crime novel. Not that I can remember it completely because it seems like an age ago that I wrote it!

Dead bodies are showing up in locked houses, with the police slightly baffled by why they are being killed, who is doing it, how they are doing it, and how they might be connected.

What it’s really about is Jessica Daniel. She a woman in her early thirties struggling to know what she wants from life. She fell into a job and doesn’t know if that’s what she wants to do with her life, let alone if she’s any good at it. On the surface, she’s abrasive and tough but that is largely her way of asserting authority because, behind that, she’s pretty vulnerable and perhaps even immature.

Growing up fascinates me. When you’re a child, you look up to your parents and teachers and assume they know what they are doing. When you become an adult, you realise there is no manual and you pretty much have to make it up as you go along. I find that dynamic enthralling, largely because I am that age. I drive past parks with kids playing football and think, “Yeah I fancy a kickabout” – because there’s that part of you that still feels 15 and remembers having no responsibilities of mortgages, or people relying on you and so on.

So, it’s a crime book with a mystery that will hopefully draw you in but, at it’s heart, it’s about a young woman growing up.

To what extent do enclosures and prisons feature in your writing?

Not so much in Locked In – but there is a lot about prisons in book two (Vigilante) and a smaller amount in the as-yet unpublished – but complete – book five (Playing With Fire).

I have actually visited prisons and hated it. The reasons are something that is hard to explain but it felt very claustrophobic, which I guess is the point. Even the forced politeness – “boss” and “Ma’am” sounded more sinister than simply being abusive.

Do you think there is a future for traditional publishing with the rise of the E Book?

I honestly have no idea. For one, this isn’t “my” industry. I’m a journalist who writes books in my spare time. I simply do my own thing and concentrate on myself.

The only thing I would say is that I’m a consumer as well. I read books and enjoy them, so if the publishing industry going away meant that stopping, then I really would not want to see that.

I do think the industry should learn lessons from places like the music business or companies like Kodak. No-one is too big to fail and, if you don’t keep up with what your readers want, then you’re probably going to struggle.

There is a traditional snobbery inherent in publishing based on certain assumptions, such as the reviewers dictate what to read. To what extent do you think technologically driven economic factors have broken that static situation?

Reviewers still dictate to an extent – but it’s the opinions of other “normal” readers, not the large media conglomorates. I really think people pay more attention to 10 reviews from their peers than they do to one from a national newspaper. On Amazon, that’s apparent – but there’s a wider issue too with everything from video games to movies. If you look at the popularity of sites such as metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, it’s clear people look as much to each other as they do attention to professional reviewers.

That goes back to the whole word of mouth thing. If someone you know and trust tells you something is good, you’ll probably listen.

Is there a particular event that has changed your life and influenced your writing?

Sort of. I had been feeling for a little while that I was basically coasting through life. I had a job that paid me pretty well and worked with people that, in general, I liked. But I wasn’t going anywhere. I had been promoted about as high as I was likely to get, I hadn’t had a pay rise in three years and it was all a bit too easy.

That had been going on for a while and, when I turned 30, I just thought it was about time I did something worthwhile. I’ve always thought I was capable of creating something – not necessarily a novel – then I had the idea for Locked In which I just moved with.

Lots of people say “I can write a book” and you see all those ridiculous stats about what percentage of people think they have a book in them and so on. I’ve always been a doer. I thought I could create something – so, instead of spending months and years crowing about it, I just did it.

I’ve been reviewed by many, many people. Quite a lot of them are good, some of them aren’t. Broadly I’m perfectly fine with readers who don’t think it’s for them but the only reviews that genuinely annoy me are the people who write “I could do better”. I always think that, if they can, why bother going on the internet to say you can instead of just doing it? The opportunities that devices like KDP give you are completely equal opportunity. So if you can write a better book, do it – and you’ll have the exact same chance to sell it and market it that I did.

As for what has influenced my writing … I guess an adult lifetime of being a people-watcher. I’m pretty good at it. Lots of the interactions or off-central themed parts of the books are based in one way or another on something I’ve witnessed in real life. Maybe not exactly but sometimes you will see a minor incident, then you imagination can expand it out into a “what if” scenario.

Do you think that the love of writing is born from understanding there is no ceiling, that it is a process in which you keep on developing and that commensurately the ‘I can do better’ reviewers do not understand the necessary distance from yourself that is implicit in the process?

Honestly? I don’t know and I don’t try to analyse myself too much. I largely work on instinct in what I think would work in a story and how I think the best way to tell it is. I know I’m not the most literary of writers but I’m not sure that really matters because I’m not trying to win a Booker Prize, though it’d be nice to be nominated (That’s a joke which any Alan Partridge fans should get).

Seriously, I’m not trying to write the perfect novel. I only try to create things that interest me. Before I started writing, I thought about the things I want as a reader – even simple things like short chapters. So I stick to a relatively straightforward set of rules. But then you have to understand the format too. Readers can get the first 10% of your work for free as a sample – so I adapt to that. I hate slow-starting books/TV shows/films and so on anyway – but for an ereader it’s even more of a concern.

So I focus on the plotting. End of chapter one: Cliffhanger. End of chapter two: Cliffhanger. End of chapter three & sample: Big cliffhanger. If you want to know what happens next, buy it.

Maybe that’s how writing novels will develop? I don’t know but that’s how I plot the start of books because, as a reader, that’s what I would want. I certainly wouldn’t be buying titles when the sample is free. I’d get the sample, see what I thought, then buy. Simple.

Why do you think people want to read about crime?

Probably because it’s something that feels broadly real while, at the same time, gives the reader access to thoughts and feelings that are generally supposed to be suppressed during everyday life.

Most crime stories also make it very easy to have a “good guy” and a “bad guy”. That takes everything back to the simplest of stories. Regardless of which way they are dressed up, the morality of a crime book is usually pretty clear with the hero trying to catch the villain.

I think beyond that, people want a character they can like and get behind. My favourite thing about the success I’ve had isn’t the number of copies of Locked In I’ve sold – it’s the numbers of Vigilante and The Woman In Black which have been shifted. People may try your first book because it’s cheap, or the cover or title is interesting. Perhaps the blurb or your name might draw them in? But they will only come back if you’ve given them a believable character they can enjoy.

Why do you think Jessica Daniel is so appealing?

I think, for a lot of people, Jessica feels real. Most people have different personalities to a degree. Your workmates see one side of you, while your childhood friends see another. Your parents might get another version, while your partner perhaps sees more of the real you. I’m not sure I’ve ever really read or watched too many things that get that across.

With Jessica, I’ve tried to show those different sides. There is a clear difference to the way she talks to strangers and colleagues than friends. Then you get moments when she’s alone and struggling. Some of it is subtle, some more obvious. I also know that some readers simply don’t see it – they read Jessica as the brash, aggressive person she can be while not reading between the lines and seeing the rest. Whether that’s my fault as an author, I just don’t know. It probably is.

But enough people get that to come back for more. I’ve had emails from 14-year-old girls and 17-year-old lads who have read the three books, then others from people who have retired – and everyone else in between. That’s quite a broad spectrum but I think most people generally share the same worries in their lives.

For a teenager, it might be “What will I do with my life?”. For someone who has retired, it could be “Have I wasted my life?” They are basically the same concerns – just at different ends of the cycle.

One of the things I get asked the most, except for “When is the next book out?”, is why I write a female character when I’m a male. The truth is, it didn’t even occur to me as an issue. Most people in life have the same worries. They think about money or their jobs, their girlfriends/wives/boyfriends/husbands. They are concerned for their families and so on. They wonder what the future might have in store for them. Those issues cross gender, racial and sexuality boundaries.

So ultimately, beyond anything crime-wise, I think that’s why people like Jessica. There’s a lot that people can relate to with her.

You’ve just signed a six book deal with Pan Macmillan. What do you think has been the single most decisive factor in such a staggering success?

Undoubtedly reader reaction. I’ve had at least one email from a reader every day for about four months talking about Jessica, speculating about what comes next, asking about when the next book is out and so on. If people like something, they pass it on. So many people have
told me a relative or friend has put them on to the books. It doesn’t matter how good any formal advertising campaign is, you can’t beat word-of-mouth.

Essentially, if it wasn’t for any of that, I wouldn’t be here. It is down to the public and their support of Jessica.

Thank you Kerry for a lucid and informative interview.

Links:

Author website

Follow Kerry on Twitter

Pick up books 1 through 3 at Amazon UK and US:
‘Locked In’ – UK and US
‘Vigilante’ – UK and US
‘The Woman In Black’ – UK and US