Blog Archives

A chat with author Erin Kelly

Posted on April 2, 2012
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Joining me today is the wonderful Erin Kelly, author of the critically acclaimed The Poison Tree and The Sick Rose. Erin has just completed her third novel, due for publication by Hodder & Stoughton in early 2013, you’ll have to read on to exclusively discover the name of the third book ……

Erin, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Did you get one of those pivotal moments in school or did it come later?

All I did was read as a child – most people’s childhood summers were spent cycling, swimming and playing with their friends. I just remember a succession of books, and can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to create them myself. When I was very young I wanted to be Enid Blyton, and even developed a signature that was shaped a bit like her famous one.

I wrote my first book when I was eight. It was called Stowaway, and was about a foundling called Cotton Porter, who posed as a cabin boy and went to sea on the Mary Rose because she was bored at school. (If I was aware that 16th-Century girls were unlikely to be in full-time primary education, I blithely ignored this fact). It was about ten pages long. I remember enjoying working on it, but I didn’t write another book for 23 years.

What books/authors have most influenced you most and why?

Many of my favourite stories have a similar theme; they deal with people who have a dark episode in their history, sometimes a whole lifetime ago. The narrative usually begins just as the long-buried past is rising up to threaten the future.

A few off the top of my head: The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Atonement by Ian McEwan, The Likeness by …

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Interview with author Emlyn Rees

Posted on September 13, 2011
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Joining me today is Emlyn Rees, author of the action thriller title Hunted (reviewed here). Set in and around the streets of London it tells the story of Danny Shanklin, former CIA operative who struggles to clear his name in a frenetic game of cat and mouse. Welcome Emlyn:-

Thanks for having me on the site.

Emlyn, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Did you get one of those pivotal moments in school or did it come later?

In true Adrian Mole style, I got into reading (mostly good) and writing (mostly bad) poetry when I was a teenager. As well as thinking it would impress girls (it didn’t), I had an absurd fantasy that one day I’d get asked by a bunch of other revolutionary young poets to get involved in something epic like the Spanish Civil War (I never got the call).

What books/authors have most influenced you most and why?

In terms of thriller writing, I’d have to go for James Clavell, who I think is hard to beat in terms of technique and sheer scale. I think one of the chase scenes in SHOGUN comes in at nearly 200 pages. For style I’d cite Cormac McCarthy. He conveys a huge amount with a very few words. A lot of people describe him as lit fic, but I’d say he’s a pretty much perfect thriller writer too.

A fairly random question for you now… Given the chance to go back in time and spend two weeks either with an historical figure or event where would you travel and why.

I’m quite fickle with my enthusiasms, meaning I tend to get into whatever I’m reading at the moment, which right now is: London Calling: A Countercultural History of London Since 1945, …

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Interview with Casey Hill

Posted on August 4, 2011
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Casey Hill is the pseudonym of husband and wife writing team, Kevin and Melissa Hill. Melissa is a bestselling author in  her own right with her hugely popular novels about contemporary women’s lives. A deserve to delve into the darker side of fiction led her to team up with Kevin to write TABOO, the first in a series of forensic thrillers featuring Californian-born investigator Reilly Steel.

TABOO is published by Simon & Schuster in the UK, Ireland & Australia, and translation rights have been sold to Germany, Holland, Italy, France, Russia and Poland.

What books/authors have most influenced you most and why?

We’re both huge fans of the thriller genre generally, but in terms of writing influence, it has to be Jeffery Deaver for his corkscrew plot twists, and Stephen King for amazing characterisation.

What do you find the hardest part of writing a novel – research, ideas, and characters?

Well, we always have lots of ideas (too many sometimes to which our editor will no doubt attest) and a very clear idea of who we want our characters to be and how we want them to act, namely that they are interesting and engaging enough to carry a story through. While not difficult per se, research is certainly the most time-consuming part of the writing process.

Given you both work as a team could you explain how a book is created. Do you both sit down in the same room and throw ideas around or do you work apart only coming together to compare notes for example? Who plays the piano and who writes the lyrics?!!

The process was different for TABOO because it began as the bones of idea Melissa had some time ago, I’d always loved the idea and kept on at her to finish it, but …

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A chat with author Alison Bruce

Posted on July 30, 2011
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Joining me today for a cozy one on one chat is none other than author extraordinaire Alison Bruce. Drink in hand, real fire lit and her husband’s band playing an assortment of tunes in the background; the pub is buzzing! Celebrating the release of her third novel in the DC Gary Goodhew series – set in Cambridge – Alison took time out of her busy schedule to talk Elvis, her family, Cambridge and writing at an early age.

Alison, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Did you get one of those pivotal moments in school or did it come later?

I had an odd childhood; disjointed, illogical and weird in many ways.  Of course, I didn’t really appreciate that at the time and it took many years to piece it into something that made sense.

Now I’ve said something that sounds frustratingly like the opener of the story when I’m not going to go into any more detail… although I could up the ante and add that it all dates back to the 1920s…

Anyhow, trying to understand motivations and read the subtext of conversations was a constant factor in my childhood and I was drawn to stories that gave an insight into the darker side of people’s personalities.

My dad read constantly, whereas my mum would watch TV shows.  He disapproved of her choice of English murder-mysteries and US crime drama but later I realised he was reading Conan Doyle, Patricia Wentworth and buckets of America crime, Ed McBain in particular.

I started reading his books but between ‘lights-out’ and going to sleep there was often a period of several hours and it was during this time that I began to invent characters and stories.  My best subject at school was maths and …

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A chat with author Brett Battles

Posted on July 30, 2011
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Joining me today is Brett Battles, born and raised in southern California. His parents, avid readers, instilled the love of books in him early on.

Brett, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Did you get one of those pivotal moments in school or did it come later?

I have wanted to be a novelist since I was in fifth grade here in the states, which means I was probably 10 at the time. I loved reading so much I wanted to write the stories myself. I was very clear from the beginning that I would write books, and I maintained that love and desire right through the present day. Sure, there were years when I wasn’t writing much of anything, but in my mind I was still a novelist, and one day my books would be out there.

What books/authors have most influenced you most and why?

This is always a tough question because I think I’ve been influenced by many writers, and continue to be influenced. Some that come to mind from when I was younger were Alistair MacLean, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Issac Asimov. I was big into sci-fi back then thanks to my dad’s love for the genre. Later, though, some of my influences were Robert Ludlum, Jack Higgins, and John le Carre. But probably the most influential writer during my adult years has been Stephen King. Just love the way he can tell a story.

Check out The Silenced Review

What do you find the hardest part of writing a novel – research, ideas, characters?

Well, if you told me I had to sit down and write you a detailed outline before I started on a book, that would be the hardest…which is why I don’t do detailed outlines. …

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Interview with author Tess Gerritsen

Posted on July 21, 2011
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Joining me today is the wonderful Tess Gerritsen, author of the Rizzoli & Isles series, The Silent Girl, released today, is the ninth book to feature the crime busting duo.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Did you get one of those pivotal moments in school or did it come later?

I knew when I was 7 years old. That’s when I wrote my first “book”, and the urge to write has never left me.  It took another two decades before I was able to return to writing (as I became a doctor in the interim) but I always knew I’d be a storyteller.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had while waiting for that breakthrough moment?

I don’t know if I’d call it the ”worst” job, but  it was certainly a stressful time, working as a doctor while being the mother of young sons.  The day I got the call that my book was going to be published counts as one of those high points in my life.

Having served your “apprentice” as a romantic thriller writer, what made you change genre and write your first medical thriller Harvest?

It was the premise that captured me.  I heard rumours of children vanishing from the streets of Moscow and sent to the Middle East as organ donors.  That so horrified me that I knew I had to write a novel about it. Clearly it wasn’t a romance novel, but it was the book I wanted to write.  HARVEST was a big bestseller in the US, and I’ve continued in the thriller genre ever since.

How do you feel TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles compares to the books and do you have any say in the production? I guess you couldn’t ask for a better lead …

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A chat with Karin Slaughter

Posted on July 7, 2011
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Joining me today for a brief chat is No 1 bestselling author Karin Slaughter – Blindsighted, Fractured, Broken – resident in Atlanta, Georgia. Celebrating the launch of her latest book Fallen today – the third title in the Georgia series and featuring Agent’s Will Trent, Faith Mitchell and Dr Sara Linton – Karin took time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Do you relish the writing procedure or are you prone to distractions and when you finally sit down to write do you have some idyllic writing location to while away the hours?

I relish it, but like any writer, I can get distracted.  Over the years, I’ve had to figure out whether it’s a good distraction or a bad one, as in: am I just being lazy or is there a reason my brain isn’t clicking into the story.  If it’s the latter, then I need to think about what I’m doing and why it’s not working.  And I do actually have an idyllic writing location–I go up to the North Georgia Mountains and stay in a little cabin my daddy built for me ten years ago.  It’s great to get away from life and just concentrate on the book and the story.

I haven’t been to Georgia for quite a while and long to one day make it to Augusta for the golf! (it’s on my bucket list!). Given Fallen is set in Atlanta, your home city, how hard do you find writing fiction set in a real city?

It’s harder to write in a real city than a made-up one.  In Grant County, I could make things up as I went along.  I need a skating rink on the outskirts of town?  Here it is!  When I’m writing about Atlanta, I …

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A chat with author Will Carver

Posted on May 29, 2011
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Joining me today for a chat is Will Carver, author of Girl 4 – his debut crime thriller:

Will, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? Did you get one of those pivotal moments in school or did it come later?

I wanted to be a painter until I was about fourteen. There were two pivotal moments I can pinpoint which changed all of this for me. The first was a great English teacher who felt I had a certain aptitude for poetry at the time. She was more than a teacher of the curriculum, she would suggest books that I could read at home or poets I may be interested in – she told me I might enjoy Edgar Allan Poe and she was absolutely right. I suppose it was her confidence in me that made me want to write poetry every day and I found I could express myself more clearly with words than I ever could with paint.

The second moment came after reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. It blew me away. I loved it but, more importantly, I was completely gutted that I hadn’t written it. I’d never felt that way about a book before. From that instant, my love affair with the novel form was born and poetry joined painting as a hobby I enjoy when I’m not writing a book.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had while waiting for that breakthrough moment?

I had quite a few jobs while trying to kick down the door of the publishing world. I worked at a Starbucks for a while and a Blockbuster Video – both of which I quite enjoyed. I had some long shifts in a pub, which was really hard work. Then I suddenly found myself on the …

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Interview with author Steve Berry

Posted on April 12, 2011
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Steve thanks for joining me today on milorambles.com – even before I began reading “The Emperor’s Tomb” I had a strange feeling I would have a ball reading and I was right. There was something about the storyline and the Terra-Cotta army that just fires up the imagination

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer and how much of a struggle did you initially face to bring Cotton Malone to the masses?

My road to publishing was a long one.  Twelve years passed from the day I wrote my first word, to the day I sold my first word.  Along the way I wrote 8 manuscripts, 5 of which were rejected by publishers a total of 85 times.  Finally, The Amber Room was bought, then The Romanov Prophecy, then The Third Secret. Those three were stand alone novels.  Cotton Malone came along in Book 4, The Templar Legacy, which was actually my 9th manuscript.  I wrote two other Cotton books (part of those previous eight) that never made it to print, which turned out to be a good thing since, in The Templar Legacy, he was a much different character than in those earlier incarnations.

Given that “The Emperor’s Tomb” is Cotton Malone’s sixth adventure – how has Cotton’s character changed since you first introduced him in “The Templar Legacy” and have you enjoyed the journey?

That’s the thing about a series, the characters have to evolve.  Otherwise, it gets dull real fast.  Cotton has changed quite a bit over 6 novels, as had his relationships with the other characters.  He and Cassiopeia Vitt started out as enemies but they have been exploring their relationship for several books now.  Finally, in The Emperor’s Tomb, there will be a shift.  I can’t say if that’s good or …

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Interview with author James McCreet

Posted on April 12, 2011
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Joining me today is James McCreet, author of “The Incendiary’s Trail”, “The Vice Society” and his third novel “The Thieves’ Labyrinth” due for publication next month.

James, what drew you to the crime genre?

From the very beginning, in Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the detective story has offered writers a kind of narrative laboratory – a compelling structure on which to build. The momentum of clues and deductions drives a relentless plot, leaving the writer free to play with any number of themes or ideas. It becomes a puzzle whose rules are accepted by writer and reader. Think of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, GK Chesterton’s Father Brown stories, or the literary games of Jorge Luis Borges – they all play with the genre. I was attracted to this idea of the game between writer and reader.

So how did you choose Victorian London as your setting for the Newsome/Williamson books?

You know, the possibilities of the genre are endless. It’s remained popular for almost 200 years and throws up new forms all the time. But it struck me that modernity can detract from the elemental pleasures of detection. DNA, GPS, mobile phones, PCs and databases – the modern investigator has so many aids. I wanted to get right back to the beginning and look at the first detectives whose only advantage was their brain. What makes it even more interesting is that we can’t help but read these stories through a modern sensibility. A blood pool is found on a street, but there’s no way of knowing if it’s animal or human . . .

Would you say you’re doing something different in the genre?

Any writer would like to think so, although there are many other …

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An interview with Michael Koryta

Posted on March 29, 2011
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Michael Koryta (pronounced ko-ree-ta) is the author of seven novels; two of which have been published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton. He has won a multitude of awards including the LA Times book prize and Great Lakes book award and continues to go from strength to strength with his latest standalone novel “The Cypress House” – set in 1935. Welcome Michael …

Michael, when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I realized I wanted to be a writer at essentially the same time I became a reader. It really was instantaneous, or at least seems that way in my memory. I was dictating stories to my mother before I could write them myself. You can imagine what a treat that must have been for her. The first time I ever attempted to make money – 8 years old, selling lemonade – was in order to buy some out-of-print children’s books that I’d tracked down at a used bookstore in Michigan with the help of a librarian. So, books have been a priority in my life for as long as I can remember.

The Cypress House is the second book to be published in the UK and I wondered how long did it take you to write compared to “So Cold the River”?

Length of writing is strangely difficult for me to recall because each book goes through so many drafts. The Cypress House [Review] was approximately eight months in first draft, I believe. So Cold the River [Review] was written with what was for me real speed – it was the quickest, and yet the longest by page count. That story was intended to be a novella, and it just grew legs and ran away from …

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An Interview with Robert Goddard

Posted on March 28, 2011
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Robert, welcome to milorambles.com, given your long and distinguished career as a novelist when did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I first realized I wanted to be a writer in my childhood, probably around the age of nine or ten. Reading other people’s stories made me want to create my own. Later, I went through a long period of disregarding the ambition as unrealistic. But it never went away.

How long did it take you to write Blood Count?

Blood Count took me about fifteen months to write from first conceiving the idea. There was a lot of research to be done before any actual writing, of course, but that’s part of the process.

What books/authors have most influenced you most and why?

I’ve often said my greatest inspirations before I started writing were Wilkie Collins and John Fowles and that’s undoubtedly true. You could say I tried to combine their storytelling styles.

What was the hardest part of writing Blood Count and do you find it hard, now that you have had over 20 books published, to come up with ideas and keep things fresh?

I’d have to say foot-slogging round Belgrade in grim February weather was the hardest part of writing Blood Count, but it gave me lots of ideas and illustrates how the flow of ideas can be maintained. You have to put yourself where the ideas are likely to be found.

Check out the “Blood Count” book review here

With that in mind do you find it hard to motivate yourself during the writing and ideas stage and what is your work schedule like when you’re writing?

I enjoy the whole process of writing a novel, so motivation really isn’t a problem. For the same reason, I’m pretty relaxed about maintaining a …

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An interview with Andy McNab SAS & Author

Posted on February 16, 2011
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Joining me for a chat today is author extraordinaire and former SAS operative Andy McNab. He came to public prominence in 1993 with his groundbreaking account of the failed eight man British Army SAS patrol in Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991. He talks about Iraq, being tortured and the enjoyment of a cup of tea:-

Welcome Andy:

Abandoned in what I believe was a Harrods carrier bag on the steps of Guy’s Hospital you were adopted at five years old – do you feel this shaped your life and how tough was it growing up in London knowing you weren’t wanted by your real mother?

I don’t really think about it. I was lucky with my adoptive parents and any mistakes I made were mine and not theirs.

Have you ever considered looking for your biological parents? – I’d guess it’s a case of finding that healthy balance of not wishing to upset your adoptive parents.

No

Given that you had a tough time in school and your dalliance with petty crime, what led you to enlisting in the British Army?

I was in the borstal system at the age of 16 and the army was a way out of it. They were looking for boy recruits and we all thought we’d join up and be helicopter pilots. On the basis that we could barely tie our shoelaces that wasn’t going to happen, so i ended up in the infantry, joining an infantry junior leaders battalion. Short haircuts and lots of being shouted at!

Three years after joining the Royal Green Jackets you were in Northern Ireland, how tough was that tour and did it have an effect on your life and career? I understand you killed your first man at nineteen while on patrol in Armagh?…

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A chat with Linwood Barclay

Posted on February 8, 2011
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I caught up with Linwood Barclay last week for a quick chat and I’m delighted to say he took the time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions:-

Linwood Barclay is married with two children and lives near Toronto. He is the author of three acclaimed Zack Walker mysteries, a former columnist for the Toronto Star, and is the author of the Richard & Judy 2008 Summer Read winner and number one bestseller, NO TIME FOR GOODBYE

Linwood, given that many of my readers are aspiring writers I was wondering when you first realized you wanted to be a writer and did you always have that “one” thriller in your head?

Around Grade 3 I started wanting to write stories. But I’ve never had that “one” thriller in my head.

When I reviewed “Never Look Away” back in October last year (7th in my top 15 of 2010 titles) I remember telling you then how much I enjoyed the novel – how long did it take you to write Never Look Away?

First draft, about eight weeks. Add another month or more for revisions.

What books/authors have most influenced you most and why?

Single biggest influence was probably Ross Macdonald, who wrote the Lew Archer novels. The Chill is a classic. I read everything of his in my late teens and early twenties, and was privileged to know him.

What would you say was the hardest part of writing “Never Look Away” and was it harder to write your first standalone thriller “No Time For Goodbye”?

I couldn’t say what the hardest part of Never Look Away was to write without giving something away. But No Time for Goodbye just went up onto the screen as fast as I could type  it, and …

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