They had just finished my book, The Pink Herring and asked for a "Meet The Author" session on Skype. It was an absolute pleasure and I was genuinely humbled by the feedback about my book - it makes it all worthwhile. I made a note of some of the questions and answers...
"Where did you get your inspiration for the character?"
I've always been a lover of the darker crime genre but after a while even I tire of the endless dourness of Rebus, Holmes and Wallander. I wanted my central character to be more upbeat but still capable of darker moments, hence Shaun Young and his struggle with a bipolar disorder. Most of the time he has the darker side under control, but occasionally he stops taking his meds or 'forgets' and we get the more visceral, edgy side of the man. Extended periods without the lithium, however, can be catastrophic for him and those around him. He loses all sense of the notion of acceptable behaviour, something he is not aware of until it is too late and the damage is done. It is something that Young constantly struggles with; take the meds and the edge off his vibrancy to be socially acceptable or come off them to be truly alive.
The chemical wiring that brought this lifelong dilemma also gave him an eidetic memory, in his case the ability to photographically recall images and documents. This allows him to process vast amounts of data, picking out the wheat from the chaff to assist in deductive reasoning when looking for clues and leads. All of this wrapped around his criminal psychology pedigree, makes him a valuable resource in complex police work.
"Why use Pink Herring?"
The term pink herring is my play on the literary device of a red herring, in that it is supposed to represent a very subtle piece of misleading information. In the prologue for the book, I quote a piece from Shaun Young's degree thesis, where he explains the (totally fictitious) smoking process to produce pink herring kippers, which I use to set the expectation that there will be many such subtle twists and turns in the book. I always had a series of books in mind when I started writing and my original idea was for each book to be a play on such literary devices. The working title for the sequel was originally called The Elusive MacGuffin and I had other titles lined up such as The Ticking Clock and The Poet's Justice but I abandoned this approach as too much of a gimmick.
"How do you come up with the storyline?"
There is a previous post on my blog that answers this question in detail, but as I explained in an article I wrote for LinkedIn, after a lifetime in the corporate world, I am now driven to work in a way which lets me express myself far more creatively. I like to think that I have always approached my technical writing such that I am telling a story rather than regurgitating the results from a piece of research, or bidding for funding, or even procuring products or services. To garner people's interest a story will always work better than plain facts, my humble opinion.
When it came to The Pink Herring, I simply started by presenting a mystery that needed an answer i.e. DI Angie McDowd's supposed suicide which didn't add up. I spent some considerable time developing the characters that would appear in the story (more were added during the writing process), developed numerous sub-plots and then basically just started writing. If you read my blog post you will see that I have vastly understated the process, but what I'm trying to say is that story-telling for me is an open-minded process that is largely intuitive and grows organically as the story develops through character.
"Why is The Pink Herring set in Norfolk?"
How many crime novels do you know that have been set in Norfolk? There's the forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway mystery series by Elly Griffiths set around the fictional Norfolk town of Saltmarsh. The P.D. James book, Devices & Desires, tells of Scotland Yard's Adam Dalgliesh involved in a mystery set in the fictional Norfolk sea-side town of Larksoken. But that's about it. Like Domenica de Rosa, Elly Griffith's real name, I spent many years on holiday in Norfolk coming to love it's flat but expansive landscape and the characters that choose to live there. It has, arguably, one of the most attractive coastlines in the UK. As a friend who lives there said to me when he found out I was using his homeland as the setting for my crime novels, "You could hide a thousand bodies in and amongst the salt flats and waterways; no-one would have a clue." So, what better place for a setting?
"Will there be any sequels?"
The Pink Herring is the first in a series of Shaun Young novels, all centred around the Norfolk constabulary and it's cast of characters. I am currently working on the next book in the series The Nor'easter involving Young tackling the unexplained death of an investigative journalist set amongst the turbulent world of offshore wind farming. This is due for publication in September 2017. I am also 40,000 words into the third in the series The Lost Clause where Young looks into a number of deaths within a little-known cult set in the depths of rural North Norfolk. This is due for publication in December 2017. The storyline for The Pink Herring progresses in real time, spanning just over a month from start to finish. Interlaced with the developing storyline, the victim's backstory is covered in a series of flashback chapters which explain how and why certain aspects of the story are relevant. This style of writing will continue with all subsequent books in the series.It was a wonderful experience to be able to interact with some lovely people who appreciated my work and wanted to know more about how the story came about. My heartfelt thanks go out to the Blackrock Blackies for selecting my book, buying it and then giving me a face-to-face review. Thank you all very much.
Please feel free to share this post - go on, hit the button of your choice...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think...