An interview with crime thriller author, Adrian Magson...

I've been looking forward to picking Adrian's brains (especially since watching Hannibal!), as Mr Magson is one of those writers who's been there, done it 'n' got the T-shirt. He recently showed that hard work and perseverance does pay off with a well-deserved double two-book deal.

Q1) You have a reputation of being one of the nicest and most supportive authors around. Having had the pleasure of meeting you a few times, I can firmly concur. But for the people who haven't had this pleasure, could you give us a potted history of how you got into writing, and your early successes and failures?

You trying to make me blush? Potted history: I started writing short stories when I was in my teens, and sold the first one - a crime caper called 'Hole in One' - to a London newspaper when I was 19. Decided I'd got it made... but it was three years before I sold another one! I think that's what's called a reality check. After that, I spent years writing in my spare time while holding down a variety of day jobs. My early sales were mostly to women's magazines, and that's how I continued. It was the most active market for selling short fiction at the time - and still is - and a really good apprenticeship in learning how to write for a specific market, which was romantic and relationship stories (I even wrote under a female pseudonym for some years). I also wrote several novels which didn't sell, probably for good reason. Apart from shorts, I wrote features for magazines here and abroad, wrote some comedy material for Roy Hudd, a short play which was performed at the Oxford Literary Festival, and in between that wrote slogans for t-shirts and scripts for greetings cards (both for companies in the US). In short, I was a writing tart, picking up work wherever I could while still adding to my world-class collection of rejection slips.

Q2) You do a regular slot called 'Beginners' in Writing Magazine, and another interviewing debut authors ... how did these come about?

Luck and circumstance. My name was put forward by Liz Smith of My Weekly when someone else dropped out. I'd written a lot of different things for Liz by then, so she knew I could turn my hand to it and meet deadlines. By then, I had some insights to share both as a beginner and a more experienced writer, and knew what worked. But I also knew that writing is as much about getting your bum on a seat and doing it, not simply talking about it or having a fluency with the language and grammar. And that's the way it's been ever since. It also led on to me teaching creative writing, which was another string to the bow. The profiling of debut authors came later.

Q3) Before your recent double success, you had a few novels out. How did they do?

That was a series of five books between 2004 and 2008 (the Riley Gavin/Frank Palmer crime novels) based in and around London. The two main leads were a woman reporter and her sidekick, a former Redcap. They did reasonably well (I was described by the publisher as their best-seller), and I got some great reviews here and in the US, where they did well in libraries.

Q4) So how does it feel to get TWO 2-book deals after years of trying?

Even better than one two-book deal! That was down to luck and a good agent (David Headley). I decided in 2008 that I wanted to switch genres to write a contemporary spy series (always supposing I could sell the first book, anyway). That was 'Red Station', featuring MI5 officer, Harry Tate. I completed the book and gave it to David and continued writing, this time a French police thriller - basically to see if I could, as I didn't normally write procedurals. By the time David sold 'Red Station' to Severn House, I'd finished 'Death on the Marais', which features Inspector Lucas Rocco, and he promptly sold that, too, to Allison & Busby - all within 48 hours. It was a lesson I'd learned writing for magazines: don't ever stop writing because you never know if someone will say "What else have you got...?" (see also with an early manuscript below). Fortunately, Severn House have just asked me to sign a contract for two more books in the Harry Tate series, so that takes me into 2012. I was particularly pleased to be with both publishers because Severn House are very strong in the library and trade paperback markets here and in the US, and A&B have a very strong crime list - the best of both worlds for me. And they're both such a pleasure to work with.

Q5) Give us a blurb on Red Station and tell us about Harry Tate?
Red Station is basically a 'what if' thriller. What if a character who usually follows orders is put in a situation where he finds himself at odds with his employers? In this case, Intelligence officer Harry Tate finds himself betrayed and marked down for termination because of departmental expediency. Harry is a former soldier, loyal Security Services (MI5) officer, and when a drugs bust goes bad and two civilians are shot dead, he's hustled out of the country to avoid embarrassing media questions. His new posting is called Red Station in Georgia, and he's under a No Contact Rule, which means he's off the radar and being watched closely. What his bosses haven't told him, though, is that Red Station is a punishment posting for washed-out spooks from MI5 and MI6... and Harry won't be coming home again.
Of course, in the best tradition of thrillers, Harry decides to fight back. While writing this, incidentally (and to show we can't make anything up, no matter how hard we try), I'd just written the scene where Harry arrives at Red Station and asks his new station chief what he's supposed to be doing there (it's a remote spot with little obvious strategic interest). He's told to keep his eyes and ears open because the Russians are coming (well, they're always good for a threat in a spy thriller, aren't they?) Three or four days after writing this scene, I turned on the television to find that the Russians had marched across the border into Georgia. Surprised is putting it mildly, because it threw me into a spin. This was now old news. Do I carry on or junk it? I decided to carry on, mainly because I hate throwing anything away, and just because Vlad Putin was feeling spitty, why should I dump a good story? In the end, it actually helped fasten the story more firmly to a specific place and time, and gave Harry a greater reason for breaking out and having what my wife Ann calls his MacGyver moment.

Q6) Lucas Rocco is a French cop. Cool name, by the way. Why did you choose this location and was there a lot of research involved? Plus, did it conflict with the very different spy novel starring Harry Tate, or were they written years apart?

I was partly educated in France (my parents lived there for 20 years from the late 50s), so a lot of the research was more in the way of cross-checking and reminding myself of facts. 'Death on the Marais' - the first book in the series - is set in the 1960s, which was a period of huge upheaval and change in France, so a volatile pot for me to write about. The central character, Lucas Rocco, is a French police inspector. I chose the name because I wanted one that English-speaking readers could relate to, and one which fitted the character. Rocco has a tough sound and Lucas is a French-sounding name, too, although mostly pronounced locally without the 's'. As a character, he's tall and dark, dresses impeccably in imported clothes and for all sorts of reasons stands out from the pack. The Plot: As part of a new nationwide policing initiative to spread investigative resources throughout the regions, Rocco is sent from his base in Paris to Picardie in rural northern France. He has to cope with totally different circumstances, different procedures and people, and his new boss, Commissaire Massin, was his former commanding officer in Indochina (France's own Vietnam), whom he last saw having an attack of cowardice and cowering in a foxhole, and had to drag to safety. This places Rocco in an awkward position with plenty of potential conflict between them, but that's part of the plot. Rocco is not only dealing with new situations, but is now faced with the worst one - that of a boss who'd rather see the back of him. And when he finds the body of woman in a British military cemetery, and she turns out to be the daughter of a highly-placed industrialist and former SOE officer with a big secret to hide, his situation worsens because Rocco is not one to back down when it comes to solving a case. It's a very different book to and was written straight after I'd finished 'Red Station'. I simply put on another head and got on with it. That sounds a little glib, maybe, but after years of writing all manner of different things, I've got used to compartmentalising and focussing on the current job in hand.
For various reasons 'Death on the Marais' involved more research and fact-checking than 'Red Station', but maybe that helped me NOT get the two confused. Mind you, I'm not saying I didn't wake up now and then and wonder who the hell I was writing about.

Q7) Akin to our mutual friend Matt Hilton, it seems your best successes to date have sprung from your creation of 'series characters'. Did you have this in mind from the outset, or was it a conscious change of tack?

A: Absolutely. I like writing series characters, because if it works well, it's a great way to build a core of readers. As you know first-hand, Matt Hilton can certainly attest to that, and he's building a very extensive and loyal following for his Joe Hunter series. I like reading series novels, anyway (Lee Child, Robert Crais, John Sandford, Matt H, Tony Black, to name a few) so I understand the pleasure in getting the latest instalment, to see where the characters go next. I still have people asking when the next Riley Gavin will be out, which is very flattering (the answer is, they're on an extended break) and now have readers asking when the next Lucas Rocco or Harry Tate book is due. That is a real buzz.

Q8) Clearly persistence has paid off in your case, but have you any advice for all the wannabe authors out there?

A: KEEP WRITING. That's the main one. You never know when something will happen, so don't sit on your laurels and wait for your one writing project to be bought, whether it's a short story, feature or book. The moment the completed one hits the mailbox, start another. I once sent off a thriller many many years ago to a big publisher and got a 'Not this one - but what else have you written?' rejection letter. Trouble was, I was away from home a huge amount at the time, and when I was able to write, was working on a typewriter (that's a mechanical device rather like a PC but without electricity or memory) and hadn't got anything else to show them. By the time I did have, the editor had retired. That was really tough, because what he'd been saying was, 'I quite like your style and would like to see something else'. A lost opportunity? Possibly. I certainly thought so. So I got working. Before I got my first novel published (2004) I wrote all those others things, and often had up to 40 short stories circulating in the market here and overseas, as well as trying out comedy scripts, plays, gags - even drawing cartoons. It probably comes from my sales background, where I learned the art of accepting rejection as a 'not this time' rather than a 'never', and worked on the basis that the more I did, the more likely I'd be successful one day. For me, that still holds true . Luck is a core ingredient in any creative job, but someone - I forget who - was right on the button when they said "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

Q9) So what's next for Adrian Magson?

A: I'm currently writing what I call 'Rocco 2', as well as thinking hard about 'Harry Tate 3' (Harry 2, called 'Tracers', comes out in March). I also have some short stories on the boil and a non-fiction book in mind. That sounds like a recipe for mental implosion, I know, but it's the way I work. Coffee helps.
In the meantime, thank you, Col, for kindly giving me this opportunity.

Adrian, it was an absolute pleasure, and thank YOU for providing us with your inspirational words of wisdom.

Adrian's website.

Interview with new mystery novelist, Michael Robert Gordon...

There's a new novel out in the crime genre: Killer Commute by Michael Robert Gordon...

1) So tell us a bit about Mike Gordon n how you ended up writing.

I'm a married man with four wonderful children and a beautiful wife. I feel like I just wrote the lyrics for the Talking Head's song, Once in a Lifetime. Anyway, I work in sales for a logistics company. My past life includes freedom, stints in the Merchant Marines, construction, painter, and fraud investigations for a bank. Writing has always been a part of my life since childhood. It's something I need to do to maintain any sanity; it's a safe nonaddictive escape from the world.

2) I recall publishing your short last summer on Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers. It featured Detective Mick Doran. Was this his first tentative step into the big wide world?

Actually it was. I appreciated the response from some of the readers, if I remember you felt there could be more stories coming. I'd like to work on a serial.

3) Killer Commute, give us a blurb.

Mick Doran, a hypochondriac is a veteran detective for the MTA, Metropolitan Transit Authority leads an investigation into the deaths of two attorneys. The problem is he has to work with his ex-wives husband. His investigation leads him to a former conductor, Mitchell Richards. The novel utilizes lyrics from REM's Mr. Richards (from their last album) and captures what the average commuter experiences on their ride on the Long Island Rail Road, but there's so much more. Here's a blurb... just to be clear, Reggie Sanders is Mick's new partner and Kevin Elwood is the first victim.

"Don’t be an asshole all the time. Just once try to control yourself.I know it’s difficult for a prick like you. What happened was a long time ago.
"Reggie laughed. "Right, that’s exactly how I feel. What happened was along time ago. You were under a lot of stress back then. Let it rest,water under the bridge and all that. Right? So, what do you say, let’s work together on this case. Is that cool?"
"Sure, sure."
Mick didn’t care what Sanders thought; his main concern was convincing the DA that he should lead the investigation. And yet Mick knew the reasons were purely superficial. Sanders had stolen Mick’s wife—he didn’t want the asshole leading the case.
Mick’s stomach was killing him. He stepped into the aisle and kneeled on the seat next to Elwood, carefully leaned over to move the corpse's head to check the other side. He saw where the cord had cut off the air. There was a small maroon bruise close to the Adam’s apple.
Slowly, Mick rolled the coat sleeve up the left arm and moved his handover Elwood’s cold flesh, carefully inspecting the veins. There was nothing.
"What are you doing?" Sanders asked.
"Pay attention and learn. I’m determining if he was injected with anything. I’m looking for small punctures. Do you remember that unsolved case back in ’88? A victim was found on a train with a needle-mark in his arm, but he was not a drug user. We couldn’t solve it; spent weeks chasing after false leads. Then another victim showed up. Something like this. The train just pulled into the last station and the victims were found DOA. That was a mess. Passengers were scared of sitting next to one another. We had a letter from the killer. He wrote to Newsday saying he wanted to wipe out anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Turns out it was a hoax."
"Don’t remember. Guess that was before my time."
Sanders moved his immense body into the row of seats behind the body.He looked over Elwood’s neck, and made a note in his book. "It looks like the killer came behind and reached down with a cord or something and strangled him. He was an attorney,you know."
"No shit. Anyone with a brain can tell he was an attorney from the case on the rack. What else do you know about him? Married? Where did he work? Does he have partners? Did we check for a cell phone? Hey,what’s that?"
Mick shined the light onto a piece of paper on the darkened floor.
"What?" Sanders asked.
"It’s a punched ticket. Why would that be on the ground?" Mick inspected the one-way peak-time ticket and noticed the distinct diamond-shaped hole punch, but did not pick it up.
"What do you mean?" Sanders asked.
"If it’s a one-way, most conductors keep the ticket. There’s no reason to give it back. Unless it was used as a receipt or a marker on the seat and it fell down. Mick carefully leaned over the victim and picked up the ticket.
"This is interesting, see the hole in the ticket? Every conductor has their own punch. So there’s no confusion if you transfer from one train to another. Where’s the conductor?"
The ticket was to Port Jefferson. Mick placed the ticket in one clear plastic bag and leaned over Kevin Elwood’s stiff leg and picked up a crushed 16-ounce can of Bud and dropped it in another clear plastic bag.
Mick sighed since Reggie hadn’t answered. "Sanders, is the conductor still here?"

4) So how did the publication become reality n enlighten us about Champagne Books.

Publication was the typical series of queries and rejections to agents and publishers. I would say there was an interest in most of them. One agent suggested I rewrite the novel from first to third person. I did. I thought it would be represented, but they still rejected it. I was looking for a press that would publish books not just e-books. If you're a commuter you want to hold a paperback in your palms. Champagne appealed to me and I noticed there were a low percentage of acceptances. This is important since it tells the writer this publisher is serious about their projects. There are a lot of e-book publishers that will accept your work quickly so be wary of those. I’ve been very happy with the support from the writers and the staff from Champagne, especially the editorial work Cyndi Davis provided. She pulled this book into shape.

5) Any tips, or advice, for aspiring novelists?

Write. Write more often than before. Set time aside each day, you can do it. Learn from your mistakes, make writing a craft, and write more often, but write. Share your work. Believe in yourself. It’s a lonely gig and no one is going to make you write except you. Don't assume you need a quiet place. Killer Commute was written on the train, since I have little time to write. The hour and half each way is a blessing. Be the master of your destiny, I heard that before, but it’s true. We have this gift each day to create a day and fill it with life and what we want. Set a reasonable deadline; write a novel in three weeks. Bang the keys like a maniac. Find a writers group. Do not pay to have your work read or represented or published. There are too many predators that will suck the life and money out of you. If anyone requests a fee, tell them to go fuck themselves.

6) So what's next for Mike Gordon - retirement, putting yer feet up?

Now it's promo time, getting the book out there and trying to line up interviews, reviews, and meet some interesting readers and write whenever and where ever I can.

Cheers, Mike, and good luck with the novel.

Suspense/Mystery novel, Killer Commute, will be published by
Champagne Books July 5th 2010.

To find out more visit him at his blog, http://trainwriter.blogspot.com/ or at http://champagnebooks.com/

(Photo, copyright of Emma Tess Gordon. Cover art, copyright of Trisha Fitzgerald.)

An interview with debut crime novelist, Nick Quantrill...

Nick Quantrill's debut novel, Broken Dreams, is released by Caffeine Nights this week and I had the pleasure of meeting up with Nick at the Trafford Centre in Manchester recently where we chatted about crime fiction, our aspirations, Nick's road to publication and, of course, football! (I can hear the sarcastic comments already about my Caribbean blue jumper... and don't worry, am not squeezing Nick's hand too tight - that's the normal expression of a hardened Hull City fan!).

So tell me about this unassuming bloke, Nick Quantrill from Hull. How did you become a crime writer?

I think I became a crime writer first and foremost as a consequence of a being a big reader. As I child, I loved mystery stories and read anything I could get my hands on. As an adult, I worked my way through Steinbeck and Hemingway before moving onto more contemporary stuff like Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh, but the love of mystery had got under my skin. I was also reading the likes of Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard and I could see links and overlaps between all these different writers, and joining the dots lit a path for me to follow.

Many people probably haven't heard of Hull, so please enlighten us and why did choose it as a setting for your novel?
Hull’s an isolated sea port out on the east coast of England. The reason people probably don’t know the city too well is that it’s not the kind of place you pass through by accident, or on your way to somewhere else. You need a reason to visit. What strikes me in terms of it being different to other cities is the curious inward looking mentality of the place. Sometimes it can be a strength, like during the floods of 2007 when the city looked after its own, but sometimes it breeds an air of cynicism and wariness of new ideas which really drags the place down. Why write about Hull? Because it’s home.

Tell us about your previous successes, be it short stories, articles and the progression up to writing Broken Dreams.
So why a PI and not, say a procedural or a straight crime novel?

Before writing novels, I tried a few different things. I started out by writing reviews of CD's, restaurants, anything I fancied, for a local website. Once I made the decision to write fiction, there was no looking back. My first short-story, ‘Punishment’, won the Harper Collins Crime Tour competition back in 2006, which really was the definition of beginner’s luck! After writing a fair few more shorts, I had a crack at a novel, ‘Black and White’, and although it had some elements I liked, it turned out to be more a vehicle for learning how to actually write a novel, rather than something I seriously thought I might get published. I’ve messed around with a few different characters, police, PI, assorted low-life, but nothing felt completely right until Joe came along. I wrote a proto-type PI story and the reaction to it was far, far better than it had been for the others, so I knew I was out onto something. Without the nagging doubt of trying to get police procedure right, I was able to get under Joe’s skin a bit more easily than with some of the other characters I’d created.

How did the acceptance from Caffeine Nights come about and did you try other publishers or agents first? And how did it feel to see your name on front of your own novel?

I’ve always posted short-stories on my website http://www.hullcrimefiction/ and had pages on MySpace and Facebook, so I was networking from day one. The pay-off was that when I was ready to punt ‘Broken Dreams’ about, I had a good feeling of what was out there. I had a wish-list of independent publishers I liked the look of and I was very fortunate to agree a deal with one of them. It’s taken about a year to get from signing the contract to publication, and there’s been some great moments along the way, but seeing the cover and holding the final product in my hands – brilliant.

Give us a quick Bio of Joe Geraghty.

Joe’s a former rugby league player, turned PI, once he learns the hard way that he has an aptitude for the work. He works in the Old Town of Hull in a small office with his colleagues, Don and Sarah Ridley, who are father and daughter. When Joe’s wife died in a house fire, it was Don who took him under his wing, and with Sarah’s help, he started to put his life back together. Joe’s an ordinary man trying to do a difficult job. He’s nothing special, he’s not hard, he’s just trying to make a living the best way he can.

Give us a quick blurb of Broken Dreams.

How about the blurb from the back of the book? I’ve also started to think, rightly or wrongly, that’s it’s the story of a neglected city’s past, present and possibly its future:

‘Joe Geraghty, Private Investigator, is used to struggling from one case to the next, barely making the rent on his small office in the Old Town of Hull. Invited by a local businessman to investigate a member of his staff’s absenteeism, it’s the kind of surveillance work that Geraghty and his small team have performed countless times. When Jennifer Murdoch is found bleeding to death in her bed, Geraghty quickly finds himself trapped in the middle of a police investigation which stretches back to the days when the city had a thriving fishing industry. As the woman’s tangled private life begins to unravel, the trail leads Geraghty to local gangster-turned-respectable businessman, Frank Salford, a man with a significant stake in the city’s regeneration plans. Still haunted by the death of his wife in a house fire, it seems the people with the answers Geraghty wants are the police and Salford, both of whom want his co-operation for their own ends. With everything at stake, some would go to any length to get what they want, Geraghty included.’

Any tips for aspiring crime writers?

I have two tips, neither hugely original, which probably means they have some value. Firstly, reading is a necessity. I love crime fiction and I’m as likely to pick up a Lee Child novel as I am the latest from, say, George Pelecanos. The trick is not only to read for pleasure, but to work out what you like and what you don’t like about a particular author’s style. The other tip is to not hide your work away. Now’s a great time to putting stories out on the Internet and beyond. There’s great websites like http://thrillskillsnchills.blogspot.com/, http://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/ and http://bykerbooks.co.uk/default.aspx, to name but three, and they’re all hugely supportive of new and emerging writers. It’s a great way to learn.

Do you think Hull City will stay up!!?

You’re asking me this on the back of a massive thumping at the hands of Everton! It’s always going to be tough for a small club like us to compete with the biggest clubs in the world, but I think we’re making a decent fist of it, despite what the detractors may say. I’d be gutted if we were relegated at the end of the season, but ultimately it doesn’t matter too much. I’ve been a pass-holder for a number of years, and like most sports fans, Saturdays are about the excitement of the game, catching up with friends and having a laugh. The opposition is secondary. What I’ve learnt over the last couple of years is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s Everton or Exeter who thump you 5-1, it still hurts the same. Will we stay up? I think we will. Just. But don’t quote me on that.

So what's next for Nick Quantrill?

The main aim is to get a decent draft of Joe’s next story, ‘The Late Greats’, in my hands over the summer. It’s coming on nicely, but there’s still work to do. I’m starting to think about the book after that and have a couple of things in mind, so I’m fairly happy with what I’ve got in the pipeline. I’ve also had some interesting offers come my way, so it’s just a case of working out what there’s time to do. I’ll also be doing my best to promote ‘Broken Dream’. It’s taken a lot of hard work to get to this stage and I don’t want it to stop just yet.

Thanks for the interview, Nick, and good luck with Broken Dreams. Let's hope it's the start of something big for you.

Check out Nick's cool website here and order Broken Dreams here.

I'll be reviewing Broken Dreams in the not too distant future on this blog.

Ps. Hull have sadly parted company with manager, Phil Brown (pictured)... but, hey, at least Nick's got his novel out!!!