J.F. Penn | Thriller And Dark Fantasy Author J.F.Penn

Behind The Scenes Of My Book Research For Gates of Hell In Granada, Spain

May 25, 2016 By J.F. Penn

On a recent trip to Granada, Spain, we visited the Alhambra which I use as a setting in Gates of Hell. In this short video, you can get a taste of the atmosphere at the Nasrid Palace along with some Spanish guitar music (which I love!). Below the video, I have included an excerpt from the scene. You can also see all my pictures from the trip here.

Excerpt from Gates of Hell. ARKANE thriller #6

The taxi sped through the city and Morgan gazed out at the streets, busy even at this late hour. Granada sat at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Morgan was thrilled to be back. Her father had brought her many years ago, a teenager keen on discovering more about her roots. Her name came from this area, and her ancestors had roamed these craggy mountains, only an hour from the ocean in the southeast corner of Spain. This was Andalucia; the word conjured its past, the soft fullness of the Arabic Al-Andalus, a melting pot of influences from ancient Greeks, Romans and Byzantines through to Muslims, Sephardic Jews and the Catholic Church that still dominated here.

Morgan thought for a moment of her sister, Faye, back home in England. A twin in blood, but so different in looks and personality. Faye's daughter, Gemma, looked like a Sierra, with darker skin and almost black hair, more like Morgan's child than her blonde sister's. Her own family was so mixed in origin that this multicultural area of Spain would always feel like home.

They rounded a corner and caught sight of the Alhambra, the fortress on the hill a forbidding welcome to new arrivals. The eleventh-century palace had been constructed by a Moorish emir, and even though the Reconquista of Spanish Christendom had taken the city, the Islamic architecture still remained.

They pulled up to the gates and bought tickets for the flamenco event, heading in through the wide entrance.
“Where's the dancing?” Morgan asked the ticket seller.
“In the Court of the Lions,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “The last set has just started, so you'll have to hurry.”

Morgan led Jake quickly through the terrace of the western-style palace towards the Moorish buildings beyond. The mournful sound of flamenco guitar floated on the balmy night air, and Morgan breathed in the scent of flowers from the extensive gardens. She could see across the valley to the narrow winding streets of Albaicín, where she had stayed with her father so long ago. She heard his voice telling her stories of how the cave dwellings of Sacramonte had sheltered their ancestors as blood was spilled on these streets.

They reached the Court of the Lions, surrounded by the stunning arabesque architecture of the ancient Moorish kingdom. Slim pillars in cool ivory-colored marble led towards soaring archways intricately designed with filigree geometric shapes and Arabic calligraphy. The overwhelming sensation was light and delicate, as if the stone palace was constructed of magically spun air.

The Court of the Lions was open to the night air, a courtyard surrounded by one hundred and twenty-four white columns topped with decorated archways. In the center of the courtyard, a great alabaster fountain supported by twelve marble lions spouted water, sparkling in the subtle lighting that only seemed to enhance the otherworldly atmosphere. The courtyard was filled with people, eyes riveted on the scene before them.

A young man sat on the edge of the fountain, plucking his guitar while next to him stood two older men and a woman, singing a song of the gitanos, the Romani people of Spain. In front of them, a young woman danced with the proud stamps and hand claps of flamenco. Her scarlet dress with full ruffled skirt accentuated her dark skin and her full eyebrows arched as she turned, arms raised.

Morgan saw her face in profile and recognized the young girl in the picture in Santiago's room, the granddaughter he was estranged from. Her dance mesmerized those watching, the embodiment of duende, the soul of Andalucia that undulated through her hips and the arch of her back. Morgan had heard that true duende resonated with a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical, and there was truly an edge of darkness as Sofia moved. The shadows at her feet were almost living things that she stamped back into the depths of the earth. The wail of the older woman's song grew louder, a desperate lament for the loss of their homeland. Sofia whirled, her steps faster and faster until she stood motionless at the crescendo, the guitar silenced by the applause.

She held the pose as the noise died down, waiting for quiet again. She turned and gestured to the guitar player, and Morgan caught the look that sparked between them, recognizing an intimate knowledge. This was Sofia's boyfriend, perhaps the cause of the rift with her family. He had the look of a Moroccan-Spanish Arab, his long dark hair worn loose about his face – a Muslim, perhaps, or a gitano, a man Santiago may have considered beneath his pure-blood Jewish granddaughter. The young man began to pluck the strings and one of the other men from the group stepped forward to dance with Sofia, stamping with fast heels.

A figure stepped from the crowd, standing poised on the edge of the open ring. He wore the black shirt and tight trousers of flamenco and his strong features brought to mind a toreador, a bullfighter in his prime. He had been wounded in battle, his right eye scarred and sightless, but Morgan's gaze was drawn to his wide chest, muscled arms, and his posture of dominance. She tensed at his entrance, aware of the imminent danger Sofia was in, but perhaps this man was just a member of the troupe, a plant for dramatic effect.

The man stepped forward, raising his arms, commanding attention as he stamped rhythmically towards Sofia. She turned in the dance, away from the man in her troupe, indicating her acceptance of his challenge. The man began the dance of the bullfighter, and they circled around each other as the music soared. There was a chemistry between them, and even though the man was old enough to be her father, he was attractive, a dark intensity in his gaze as he danced closer to Sofia, calling his olé as he clapped. She spun in his circle, tilting her body towards his. Morgan saw the guitar player's eyes narrow at this rival. The taut strings of attraction held the pair at arm's length, but as the music reached a crescendo and the song ended, the man reached out and pulled Sofia to him.

The young woman's eyes widened, her mouth opened in a gasp. Morgan stepped forward, suddenly realizing the threat. Then the spotlights flicked off and the fire alarm rang out, its piercing shriek echoing around the Court of the Lions as the whole area was plunged into darkness.

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My Creative Writing Process

January 5, 2016 By J.F. Penn

I am often asked where my ideas come from and how my creative process works. I recorded this for a podcast, so you can listen to the audio or read the transcript below.

Today I am talking about my creative process because I am about to start Destroyer of Worlds, ARKANE book 8, and really, I love, love, love, love, love, love this part of the process!

I wanted to talk about it because so often, I’m reductionist. I like processes and steps and I like how-to stuff. Most of the non-fiction I write is very practical and pragmatic.

But this year (2015) one of my top recommendations for books was Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is excellent. I think magic is probably the wrong word, but the idea that it’s less reductionist, that the creative process has that edge of something almost supernatural is definitely what I find. I’ve called it synchronicity in the past in that as I delve deeper, things happen which were unexpected and that is definitely part of my process.

I’ve just written down a few notes, so we’ll just talk through them, so apologies if this is out of order. Buy hey, it’s New Year, so I hope you’re relaxing as you listen to this.

I get lots of ideas from my travels.

I travel a lot. I have always traveled a lot. I particularly like going to places with a rich cultural history.

The very first scene of Stone of Fire, my very first novel, opens in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges in India. I went there back in, I think it was in 2006 and I saw them burning the bodies on the burning ghats. The idea that sprung then started that first scene in Stone of Fire, when a nun meets a fiery end. What’s interesting is the idea for that came years before the actual book

I tend to find that in the stories I write, the original idea often came from years ago, unless it’s something unexpected. For example, One Day in Budapest.

We went to Budapest because my husbands’ family originally is from Hungary and we visited the synagogue where we saw his family’s name on the mass grave, and at the same time the government had just called for a registration of all Jews in Hungary and that shocked me so much that that was happening.

I decided I had to write a book about the rise of far-right extremism in Eastern Europe, that turned into One Day in Budapest, which is action/adventure with those themes. That idea was unexpected and I hadn’t thought about it before we actually got there.

But generally, going back to India, Destroyer of Worlds, I remember very distinctly seeing a statue of Shiva Nataraja in India again, in Delhi, same year I visited Varanasi. If you Google Shiva Nataraja you’ll see the exact image. It’s a Shiva dancing in this ring of fire and it’s the destroyer of worlds and the re-maker of worlds, a fascinating myth. I remember seeing that image and just really loving it, and that is what sparked this story.

So I have this kernel of an idea, and then from there, I start to research.

For me, research is going places, obviously, and visiting museums, visiting the kind of iconic places of that city or that region and soaking that up. For all of my books, the setting is incredibly important. Then I just start to find things that are more interesting.

I follow my curiosity into what I will research next. That may come from other places and other things.

I read the Guardian newspaper in the UK, and I just saw this article about the lack of vultures threatening Mumbai’s Towers of Silence. And the Towers of Silence are based on the ancient Zoroastrian tradition of disposing of dead bodies by putting them out in the air and then the carrion birds eat them. This also happens in Tibet, in Nepal, and many of these older civilizations.

It is completely natural, but it’s really interesting that in the middle of Mumbai would be these Towers of Silence. That’s really cool for me, that just makes me go, “Oh yes, that’s got to go in a book.”

So I start writing down the things that catch my eye. Mumbai is a fascinating city. I actually haven’t been to Mumbai, but I’d really like to go. I do write about places I haven’t been, but I do try and ground them in things I have. That is just one thing. That is like shopping for settings as such.

Then I will dive deeper.

Shiva Nataraja, for example. I know a surface level of information, but what I will then do is research that a lot more – research Shiva and the various temples associated with Shiva, because my books generally have multiple locations in. That curiosity drives a deeper research period, and this is what I really love, because I’m such a research junkie and find out really fascinating stuff.

At this point, I tend to read books on my Kindle and I do a lot of highlighting. I then transfer the highlights just into either a Pages/Word document or Scrivener. At this point, I generally just keep it in a general document, just layers and layers of notes on random stuff. I do write notes in my journals which I’ve got here in front of me. I also write notes as I watch DVDs or stuff on TV, TV shows.

Actually, I just watched one on the Kumbh Mela, which is incredible, the biggest gathering of pilgrims of people in the whole world. I think, I’m trying to figure out how many millions of people are there, but it’s a lot of Hindu pilgrims who meet in one place. There’s four different places where they meet and it really is crazy.

When I’m watching programs on things, I’ll just be taking notes, handwritten notes in my Moleskines.

I won’t just be writing down facts. I’ll actually be writing down colors and different things like that. For example, when I think of India, I think of the women wearing bright colors, far more bright colors than we do in the west, and how clean everybody always is. Some people have this image of India as a dirty place, but to me, it’s super clean because everybody is always washing. There is a lot of washing that goes on as part of all the religious faiths really.

That’s where I start and that’s where I am right now with Destroyer of Worlds, which is why I wanted to talk about it now.

I don’t have a plot. I do have an opening scene and I’ve had an opening scene in my head for a while, and that’s going to be in London.

That will then spark the story, but I do know that I will have these various aspects that will go into it. And the title Destroyer of Worlds obviously gives that Hindu aspect to it. Then, of course, also, the first thing people think of when they hear “Destroyer of Worlds” is Oppenheimer, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” which actually is a quote from Bhagavad Gita.

Then it’s like, okay, so Oppenheimer, nuclear bombs, obviously, the links with Nazis and some of Himmler’s fascination with some of the Hindu myths, even the swastika for example, the original symbol. Those are all the things that start going into the ideas for the book.

Then what happens is synchronicity.

As I said, this is the ‘magic’ aspect that I find happens when I’m researching is that something will come up totally unexpected that makes the story work.

For example, with Stone of Fire, that first novel, it really made my jaw drop the day it happened. I was reading Carl Jung’s Red Book, which had been

Stone of Fire picture in Jung's Red Book

hidden for years by his family, it was basically a diary of his breakdown and he did all these paintings. And my book Stone of Fire has a lot of Jungian psychology in it. Morgan Sierra, my main character specializes in psychology of religion which Jung was highly into.

What I found in the Red Book, this hidden book, just shown to the public, was a painting that exactly matched my story. That painting is in Stone of Fire and I include that as part of the plot. But when that happened, I was just gob smacked.

And that synchronicity of story emerging from fascination and research still just makes me shiver a little bit, because it happens every time.

Stephen King talks about the emergence of the story. That story is a ‘found thing.’ I believe that. I think I go looking for a story in the real world and then I will twist part of the reality into the thing that’s fiction.

Stone of Fire is based on the stones of the apostles and the search begins where their bodies are buried. The places that are mentioned, the churches and resting places of the relics are true. There are bones in those places and relics, but the power of the stones, obviously, is made up. That’s what I like doing best is taking real stuff and then twisting it a little bit.

I’ll give myself quite a lot of time, depending on how much I’m into it, but a couple of weeks at least of just delving deep and following rabbit holes on the internet. But usually I will have had the idea in my head for months or even years before that.

For example, I will Google things like Nazis + Shiva, and see what comes up. I’m not going to give some stuff away, because I found some amazing cool things already that just make me go, “Ah, seriously? That is just wow.” Those are the things that happen. Of course you find a lot of conspiracy theories sites, which are for thriller writers just awesome!

Then I just let it all percolate.

Because I’m writing in the existing ARKANE series, I already have my characters – Morgan and Jake.

What I don’t have is my antagonist, because I generally kill them off at the end of each book. For this one, I obviously need a new baddy and I do have in mind who the baddy will be, and pretty cool and quite happy with this baddy.

There’s a spin-off, I’m thinking of, I want to it to be ARKANE Black Ops spin-off. What I want to do in this book is also introduce briefly a tangential character, so that when I do this next book, which I’m already thinking about…and this is the other thing, now I think about more than one book at the same time, but I will never write more than one fiction at the same time. That’s really important for me, because otherwise I get confused.

Some fascinations bleed into several books.

Those of you who read some of my books will discover my fascination with tattoos, for example, come up in several books. If you read Risen Gods and Deviance, there is some crossovers there as well with the Maori mythology.

These things can come up in multiple books. We all know that and we all have our fascinations.

Anyway, I have my characters and I pretty much know the beats of how an ARKANE thriller works. I know that there will be some kind of cool object and someone will want to destroy the world or kill loads of people, and Morgan and Jake will have to stop them. That is the essence of a thriller in general.

So we know that that will happen and there will be lots of different places they have to go and they’ll find cool things and it will be lots of fun and fast paced. But equally, I also like to have an underlying theme and often in my ARKANE books, it really is faith versus unbelief and good versus evil, really big themes.

But the main thing is that after I’ve done this research for a couple of weeks, I use The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne to create a one page outline.

You can go back and listen to the podcast with Shawn, January 2014, episode 208 with Shawn Coyne. The Story Grid is my favorite, number one writing book for fiction authors, so I now do The Foolscap Method for an outline.

I’m not someone who outlines like a crazy person, although I might be doing that more as I get into dictation in 2016, but mainly I do a foolscap one-pager. It’s essential a one-pager with the main beats of the book, the main highlights, the main twists, the main reversals, that type of thing.

From there, I start writing.

I’ll write about 20,000 words, 30,000 words, and then I will re-plot the next bits. Normally I know the beginning, I know the ending. Right now I don’t know the ending. I have an idea. It would depend on how the rest of the research goes, but I normally know the big climatic scene, but I don’t know the middle bit. So I write 20 to 30,000 words and then I will do re-plotting around the rest of the book.

As I’m doing the research, I start a book page on Pinterest.

If you go to pinterest.com/jfpenn, I have boards for most of my books. I started doing it around book four, so I have a number of boards for different things.

At the moment, my Destroyer of Worlds board has some really cool pictures of Shiva Nataraja and India and Kumbh Mela and some of the cool things associated with that, and you can also have a look at the boards for all my other books.

I always do an author’s note at the back of my books, and I include the links to those Pinterest boards at the back, and people really love them and I share them as I write the books as well.

Looking back, it’s amazing, because I’m a very visual person. Setting is super important to me in descriptions of where people are and what they’re seeing. I will be writing some screenplays this year as well, because I really would like to see these done on the big screen. Wouldn’t we all?!

But I do like having the images, because they really help set the scene as I am writing. So what I’ll do, if I’m about to write, I will spend some time really looking at pictures of the people like the Sadhus at Kumbh Mela are just amazing. Some of them are wearing ash and marigolds and the long dreadlocks and these really just fascinating things that are so different to a western church.

Compare the Church of England service with, as my husband calls it, Christian droning, because English people don’t really sing with enthusiasm, versus these Sadhus at Kumbh Mela where there’s millions of people, it’s just brilliant. I love having these images to work from as I am writing.

And with Scrivener, you can have a split screen so you can view your research as you write. So I’ll often even have these pictures up or I’ll watch YouTube videos as I am writing the scene, to bring that to life.

Then I will basically just see what emerges as I write.

One of the many things I have on my wall, is “Trust Emergence,” because what I found is sometimes things will just arrive on the page or in your brain as you are doing stuff. You don’t necessarily know that before you start writing. That trusting emergence is so important. I think that’s an important part of the creative process.

I trust emergence from the research, in that there’s so many interesting things that I could write about. I have to write about the things that my curiosity draws me to. Then, as I am writing, I have to trust in the emergence of an idea from the massive possibilities and the chemistry of what happens on the page.

Once your characters are fully fleshed out, and my antagonist will be fleshed out based on my research. He or she will be Indian. It’s so important to me to do that, and also, as I said, it is the most fun part for me. I love it.

It’s one of the reasons that I am a writer. I spent time thinking about what my ideal life would be like, and I think that’s a very important thing to do.

If you want to decide what to do with your life, consider what you want your life to look like, what would your days look like.

I wanted to spend my time learning, so I love learning and also traveling and creating things I’m proud of. Those things together do come up with writing.

I also like helping people, which is why I like doing the podcast and the blog and everything, and why I write non-fiction. I guess I’ll talk about non-fiction another time, but my creative process for fiction really does revolve around this type of deep dive into research.

I also take a lot of pictures on my journeys, and they will often spark ideas.

skulls — Sedlec ossuary, near Prague, used in Crypt of Bone, ARKANE #2

So for example, we, as I record this, we are going to Prague. We haven’t been yet, as I record this, although I’ve been to Prague before, so I know, for example, I know the Jewish graveyard there, which Hitler didn’t have destroyed, because it was meant to be a memorial to a dead race. That is a place that I remember very, very well, because it’s a very powerful thing, that it’s not a memorial to a dead race.

In going there, you remember what could have been. I absolutely know that I would be taking pictures there that somehow, ideas will come from that, and things will happen because of going to that place.

But it doesn’t have to be traveling to faraway places. It can just be around your house.

I went for a walk the other day, through the fields nearby, I’ve been training for this Race to the Stones, which is 100 kilometers over two days, and so I’m going to be doing a lot of walking.

While I was walking, I got a lot of ideas about a character that I’m thinking, the spin-off, as I mentioned, the ARKANE Black Ops thing. The character who that will be around is a man and I got a lot of ideas about him as I was out walking, just looking at various things. And I’ve some ideas as to how I want a trilogy of books to be set around this particular character and what role he plays in the world as such. And so that was just walking out from my house for a couple of hours.

That’s the thing. I don’t want you to think that you have to travel to faraway places in order to get these ideas. For me, that’s how I write, that’s what I love to write, but especially if you write family drama, you can write that close to home.

I think the important thing is that we get ideas from anywhere.

I don’t think I mentioned that I use my Things app on my phone. I don’t always have my Moleskines, because I have the A5 size Moleskines. I also like Leuchtturm notebooks.

On my phone, I have the Things app, which is a to do list app, but I also have a folder for fiction ideas. So if I’m watching TV with my husband, for example, watching a show or if I’m reading, I’ll often read on my phone, I’ll put a note in.

For example, I’m just in the folder now as we are talking, I found an article on the abandoned libraries of the Sahara, and I just put the link there into the phone. I don’t know when that will come up again, but the abandoned libraries in the Sahara is something that makes me interested. I want to know more about that.

Here’s something I saw on the website for Bath Abbey nearby. So I’ve just written a short story about Bath Abbey for a Stephen King competition and I saw this on their website, so it’s a direct quote. “The adviser on the paranormal can be contacted through the Diocesan office,” and this is on a Church of England website, so I think I just thought that was really cool.

So I just write down different things as I see them and I put links to articles. Here is another one, Cordyceps, fungi that grows inside live animals. That’s really cool. I just write down things.

Who knows when this stuff will come back into my conscious mind?

Or it might not, it might just emerge on the page and I discover later that I’d actually written a note about something and forgotten it, but it came up back into my head.

I guess what I’m saying, and I’m rounding up now, before I just waffle on for hours, is that my creative process does have that touch of magic or that touch of something that’s not quite in my control, even though I’m somebody who is quite controlling in many ways, which is probably why I’m an Indie author.

I like the control we have over publishing and book marketing and all that, and I like being able to write whatever captures my curiosity. That really is how I write fiction. It has to be something I’m personally fascinated with. I pretty much assume that if I’m fascinated, then there will be other people who are interested in it and that will want to read this type of book.

There you go, that is my creative process for fiction and how I get my ideas and how I work them into a book. Thanks for listening and I will see you next week.

From the East End of London to Poland. Talking Crime Thrillers With Anya Lipska

November 13, 2015 By J.F. Penn

Anya Lipska is the critically acclaimed author of the Kiszka & Kershaw crime thriller series, set in the underworld of London's Polish community. Her latest book is A Devil Under the Skin.

This interview was first posted on The Big Thrill in Nov 2015. You can watch the video discussion below or watch the video here or read the edited transcript below.

So who are Kiszka and Kershaw and what can we expect from the books?

My main character, Janusz Kiszka, was born in Poland, but came over to London in the '80s, when Poland was still under communism. Older readers may recall the Solidarity years when Poles were fighting for their freedom. He was caught up in all that and had some terrible experiences so he came to London, like many did, in the '80s.

To begin with Janusz did various jobs, worked in the building trade and did other casual work. Eventually he became a kind of private eye/tough guy/fixer, sorting things out for the Polish community in London.

In 2004 we got quite a big influx of Poles into the UK, when Poland joined the EU. Janusz has an ambivalent attitude to this new influx. On the one hand, he absolutely loves the fact that he can buy kielbasa, Polish sausage, and all his favourite treats in the Polski shops that are popping up on every street corner in the East End. On the other hand, he used to be an exotic rarity, and now he's just one of the crowd, another immigrant. He finds that a bit difficult to cope with.

Natalie Kershaw is my second character. I thought it was important to have a British character through which we could view the Polish, the slight strangeness to the UK audience of Poles, what they're about, and this different culture and history. She's a sharp-elbowed, very ambitious, young, female detective who's a born-and-bred East Ender, a Cockney. The whole series really is about their shifting relationship. When she first comes up against Janusz, he is a suspect in a murder case, and she thinks “typical dodgy Eastern European, he's probably a gangster”. But then she goes to his flat in Highbury, he bought it in a nice part of London when London was cheap, way back. And he's cooking jam and she just doesn't get it, because he's actually an educated guy, even though he's a big rough, tough, brick-outhouse-looking guy, he's also got this very sensitive side.

The books are fast-paced thrillers, with a lot of humour in which people learn a bit about the Polish community in London. Janusz and Kershaw come into contact with each other during various investigations, sometimes he's asking for her help, and sometimes she needs his help with an investigation that might have something to do with the Polish community or the wider Eastern European community in the East End of London. They have a growing relationship, essentially antagonists with an uneasy alliance. By book three, they are becoming friends.

Tell us about A Devil Under the Skin.

A Devil Under the Skin is book three in the series, and it finds Janusz Kiszka at a very important time in his life. He's a guy in his 40s, with an ex-wife and a kid back in Poland. It was a disastrous marriage, although he stays in touch with his kid and looks after him, of course, because he's an honourable man. But his main relationship in the UK has been with a married Polish woman called Kasia who is a devout Catholic but has finally agreed to leave her husband in opposition to the advice from her priest and despite her reservations. Janusz has lived on his own for 20 years so he's a little bit freaked out about this. His best mate Oscar, who's sort of his comedy sidekick, takes the mick out of him about what it's going to be like.

Janusz is a little bit uncertain, but broadly speaking, he's pretty excited to be starting again. Then a terrible disaster strikes. Kasia goes missing. Janusz becomes convinced that her ne'er-do-well Cockney husband has kidnapped her – because he too has disappeared.

As he begins to investigate, all is not quite what it seems. There's a lot more going on and they get entangled with East End gangsters and gangsters of another extraction that I won't give away. Soon enough there are bodies all over the place.

Janusz asks for help from his almost-mate, Natalie Kershaw, to try and help find his girlfriend because she has the resources as a cop. She really shouldn't be doing it, she's using the police computer when she shouldn't be, but she's trying to help him out.

You’re not Polish, so why write about the Polish community?

I live in East London, which is a great place but also very gritty and there's a lot going on here, a lot of crime. But there are lots of detective thrillers set in London and I wanted to do something different. Then I realized that the answer was staring me in the face. My husband is Polish, was born over there and came over here in the '80s, during the Solidarity years when Poland was communist.

So I had a great “in” to the history and culture and I thought that would be a great idea for a character, someone who's come here with an awful lot of baggage, whose past casts this giant shadow. Someone with a passionate connection to justice yet also anti-authoritarian, because you don't trust the cops in a communist state.

It was also a happy coincidence that Poles started coming to London in quite big numbers. Everyone knows a Pole now, whether it's just as a builder or their kids might go to school with Poles. It's become part of the fabric of cities in the UK. I also love to read books where I learn something about something I didn't know and I think many readers share that with me, so this seemed like a great opportunity. People might want to know about the Poles that they're working and shopping alongside. You know, what's it all about? What's their history, what's their culture?

What are some of the places in Poland that come up in the story that people might like to hear about?

Although the books are set in London, Janusz does, from time to time, have to go back to Poland to pursue various lines of investigation. So I had the chance to go on holiday there as well, which has been great. My husband comes too as my translator.

Warsaw is the capital city but Kraków's the historical city and a very beautiful place. Wawel Castle is very pretty but becoming quite touristy now with visitors from all over Europe. The great thing about Poland is that wherever you go, there's extraordinary history. So in Kraków, it's an older history perhaps, with the castle and beautiful Hapsburgian architecture. Reminders of the past are always close at hand.

Just outside Kraków there's a place called Nowa Huta It was a giant new town that the Soviets built to house 100,000 steel workers to serve the V. I. Lenin Steelworks. That's quite a spooky place. It's socialist realist architecture, a kind of vision of their heaven, but a lot of people's hell.

Perhaps my favourite place in Poland is Gdańsk, which is the Baltic seaport on a lovely river leading out to the sea. It has a great mixture of beautiful ancient history there and the Hanseatic architecture which you see all down the coast, right down to Amsterdam; beautiful curvy tops to the buildings, also medieval architecture and a fabulous cathedral. Then you come across the shipyard gates, which have been preserved, and that's where the Gdańsk shipyard strikers, led by Lech Wałęsa, began the uprising against communism from the late '70s up until 1989 when they won democracy. There's an absolutely terrific museum there as well, which covers the communist past and the impact of communism on Poland very well. So I love how the place combines the old and the new.

I think many people associate words like “communism” and “iron curtain” and “Eastern Europe” with the color grey. But you're describing something a lot more colorful.

When I went to Gdańsk the first time with my husband, I asked him, “Well, look, you know, you are Janusz, you're that age. What's it like coming back here?” And he said exactly that. He said, “What I remember is a complete lack of colour. The only colour you saw in the streets was occasionally outside of an official building. The red flag of communism or the Polish flag at the time.” And he says now that it's absolutely filled with colour because it's like every other western European city. Of course that comes with a downside, and when Janusz goes back to Poland, he bemoans the fact that his generation, and generations before his fought for freedom, and now young people are interested in McDonald's and Ikea and that kind of materialism. But that's freedom.

There's a lot of negative press about immigration these days. How do you cover this hot button topic in your books?

I hesitate about generalizing. I mean, obviously I can't be a mouthpiece for Polish people. I'm not even Polish! But I think that there is an increasingly hostile attitude to immigrants, migrants in general in this country, and that's a shame to see. I have heard some Polish friends say that they feel less welcome here than they did originally. I've also heard some of them say that, on the other hand, they can understand why some people are unhappy to compete with lower-priced Polish tradesmen.

But when it comes to prejudice and xenophobia, the most important thing is to understand other people. It sounds trite, but it is absolutely true. Lots of people who may dismiss Eastern Europeans as they're like this or like that, I hope that in some small way, when they read the books, they get a bit more of a grip of what Poland's like. It's not just ‘another Eastern European country that's emerged from behind the Iron Curtain’. This is a country that used to be at the heart of Europe, alongside France and Germany. And I hope that by understanding all that and with just a little knowledge of the culture, of what they eat, what they like to do at Christmas, that things become a bit less scary.

What is your favorite Polish food?

Probably bigos, which is the national dish of Poland. It might sound a bit horrible to non-Poles because it does feature quite a lot of sauerkraut, and I'm not generally a fan of sauerkraut. But it's all cooked down in an amazing stew with lots of game and pork ribs and flavourings and it's absolutely delicious.

Obviously Poland is one theme, but what are the other themes that come up in your writing?

I like the idea of outsiders and writing from the outsider's point of view. All writers have to do this, put ourselves in someone else's shoes, and it's more rich, more liberating to do that. Even Natalie, who's a Londoner, is a bit of an outsider in a man's world. It's only quite recently that women have been rising up the ranks as police detectives. So she, particularly early in her career, has had some struggles with that.

I guess the other thing, and this is perhaps why I was drawn to having a Polish hero, is that I like exploring ideas of honour. What it is to be an honourable person. Janusz is a mixture. He's an educated man, he's quite a sensitive soul in many ways, he likes to cook, but on the other hand, he's quite happy to dish out some judicious violence to the bad guys. So he has a code of honour, a very strong one, a distinctive one, and I often have him come up against moral dilemmas where he has a choice between doing the right thing and doing the comfortable thing. That's particularly true in the third book where he has a really, really tough dilemma at the end.

You have an interesting day job as a TV producer. How does your work in TV influence your writing, and vice versa?

I was a journalist first and then I became a TV director and producer and now I'm still a TV producer part-time. The two things that have spilled over into the writing are first and foremost, the journalism and the research. I'm very inspired by real world events and by the research that I do. I am genuinely inspired by all those books about Poland and I find that it's a rich source of ideas and twists and turns in the story. So that's one way.

And the other thing is that lots of people have said, very kindly, that they think the books are very visual and cinematic. And I think that is a result of me having been a director. Or maybe I was a director because I've always had a very strong visual sense. I always start my books, my scenes, my chapters, everything, by seeing it. Then I do the hard work of getting it down. But I'm always really keen to choose places that I can strongly visualize, so whether it's Janusz beating up some guy on a snowy night time airport on the edge of eastern Poland, or being chased through the Greenwich foot tunnel under the Thames, I love to find evocative, visual settings. Happily, the BBC has optioned the series as a possible drama, so who knows, fingers crossed.

What other thriller authors and books do you love to read? What are you reading now?

There are so many that it's really hard to boil them down. The last thing I read which was absolutely fantastic and slightly left field, was a book called “The Bees,” by Laline Paull. It's set in a hive of bees and the heroine is a worker bee. It sounds just extraordinary, but somehow she pulls it off. It's basically a thriller, but with all the rules and the science of how bees operate, but with, obviously, a newly imagined inner life. It's absolutely brilliant, a really gripping thriller and one of those books where I learned something about bees and I now know the right plants to put in my garden to encourage the bee population.

In the UK, the names that come to mind would be Ian Rankin, who is my absolute hero, and Val McDermid. I also read quite a lot of European crime fiction. I like French crime fiction, I like Fred Vargas, who is actually female, and Pierre Lemaitre, who won the international book of the year a couple of years ago with a fantastic book called “Alex.” And I can't not mention, of course, the Polish writer Zygmunt Miłoszewski. Under communism, they didn't have crime fiction in Poland. They had enough going on, but now it's a democratic society, so they're getting a bit more like the rest of Western Europe. Crime fiction is a really burgeoning genre, and Zygmunt Miłoszewski is probably one of the top guys.

We have a lot of crime fiction in the UK but we also have one of the safest countries with very little violence. Do you think that's why crime fiction is now emerging in Poland? As soon as your country becomes more settled, you start writing violent things?

I definitely think that crime fiction is a product of a very settled society. People are so keen to read crime fiction because it's to do with the bogey man, essentially. Going right back to when we sat around fires in the mouths of caves and told each other stories about the sabre-toothed tiger and the storms and the spirits and the devils that were out there. We want to dramatize the threats, and then overcome them in some way or find some resolution. That's what happens in crime fiction. We still have these fears but our fears are now just different. There are very few things to fear in a modern, developed society, but there's something in us there that fears the lights going off at night. When you're home, it's not a sabre-toothed tiger anymore but it might be a serial killer knocking at your door. There's something about us that still has that atavistic fear of the bogey man, of the outside, and I think that crime fiction, in all its forms, is a way of coming to terms with that.

Where can people find you and your books online?

My website is http://www.anyalipska.com, there's all the links and information about me there. The books in the UK are available through Amazon and all the other e-outlets, and in the shops at Waterstone's, and various independents. In America, at the moment, it's only Amazon.com.

Templars And Supernatural Thrillers With Joseph Nassise

September 20, 2015 By J.F. Penn

I love supernatural thrillers and if you add some kick-ass Templars into the mix, I'm a happy reader! Today I talk to Joseph Nassise about his Templar Chronicles series.

Where did your fascination with the Templars come from? Have you visited Jerusalem or some of the European Templar churches?

Originally, I became fascinated with the Templars when I began investigating the history behind the superstitions surrounding Friday the 13^th. Why was that day considered bad luck? I wondered. Why not some other day?

As it turns out, it was on Friday, October 13, 1307 that King Philip IV of France sent troops against the Templar strongholds, arresting all they could find, and eventually trying them for crimes against the crown and the church. That information prompted further exploration into the Templar Order and, liking what I found, I decided to use them as a key plot element in my series.

Your latest book in the series, Fall of Night, features Gabrielle, who has only been a peripheral part of the Templar series so far. Tell us a bit more about the book as my readers love a kick-ass female lead!

Fall of Night is the sixth book in the ongoing Templar Chronicles series, which features modern Templar knights acting as a secret combat squad for the Vatican, protecting mankind from supernatural threats and enemies. The earlier books center around the character of Cade Williams, a former Boston SWAT officer who gets attacked by a fallen angel known as the Adversary. That same creature “kills” Cade’s wife, Gabrielle, or so he thinks.

We find out pretty early on in the series that Gabrielle isn’t actually dead, but held prisoner by the Adversary in a kind of limbo-like plane of existence known as the Beyond. Cade spends much of the first several books trying to rescue her from the Adversary’s control.

In Fall of Night, Gabrielle at last takes center stage. Due to certain events that play out in books 4 and 5, Infernal Games and Judgment Day, Gabrielle returns to the world of the living carrying information that is vital to the safety of not just the Templars but all mankind. She needs to get that information to her husband, Cade, but he’s gone missing right at the point he’s needed most. Fall focuses on Gabrielle’s attempts to find him while safeguarding the information she is carrying.

All your books all have elements of the supernatural. What drives your obsession with what's beyond the physically real? How do your own beliefs/experiences weave into the books?

This is a tough one to answer, because I’m honestly not sure. I’ve tried to write other things, but keep coming back to supernatural thrillers/urban fantasy as my primary genre. The idea that there is something else out there, something more, is an intriguing one and I like adding that element to the stories that I tell.

Almost all of my fiction has it, from the Templar Chronicles to the Great Undead War to the Jeremiah Hunt series. Maybe one day I’ll break into some other genre, but for now, I’m happy where it am!

What are the themes that keep coming up in your work? What links the series' together?

Almost everything I write deals with the theme of redemption in some fashion and this comes out quite strongly in the Templar Chronicles. Cade is first determined to avenge his wife’s death and then, when he realizes she isn’t actually dead, he vows to give her back the life that was stolen from her.

Cade’s journey takes him deep into the heart of darkness – not just the darkness created by the supernatural creatures around him, but the darkness in his own heart as well. Darkness spawned by his belief that he has failed both his wife and himself in not protecting them from the Adversary in the first place. The entire series traces his fight to restore himself to the light, so to speak.

Where are you in the world and what does your writing space look like? Give us a hint of behind the scenes

I live in the heat of the desert in Phoenix, Arizona and my writing space is a dedicated office on the second floor of my home. I do most of my work in that room, though I will sometimes head to the local Starbucks when I need a change of scenery. I have several dogs and cats and they will often keep my company during the day while I am working.

I write full time, so my routine is pretty fixed. After taking the kids to school I’ll be in my office writing by 7:30 each day and will do so until about noon. I’ll take an hour or so for lunch and then be back at the keyboard until about three. Later afternoons and early evenings are spent doing all the other stuff that a writing career requires – answering emails, marketing and promotion, prepping for the next release, etc.

What are a few of the books you love and that you'd recommend readers check out?

I am a huge fan of John Connolly’s Charlie Parker novels, detective fiction with a touch of the supernatural. Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole and Joe Pike books are right up there as well. In terms of straight up genre fiction, I’m a fan of Kat Richardson, Richard Kadrey, Steven Savile, Caitlin Kittredge, Carrie Vaughn, Jonathan Maberry, Kelley Armstrong, Seanan McGuire, Chris Golden – hell, the list could go on and on!

Where can people find you and your books online?

People can find information about me and my work at my website – www.josephnassise.com – or on my Facebook page – www.facebook.com/joseph.nassise

Tattoos And London. Behind The Scenes Of Deviance, A Crime Thriller.

September 16, 2015 By J.F. Penn

If you love crime fiction, then you'll love CrimeFiction.fm, which is a great show where Stephen Campbell interviews authors about their books. I was on the show talking about Deviance recently.

You can listen to the show here, and you can read the transcript below.

Stephen: Welcome back to CrimeFiction.FM, where we bring the authors of today's best novels directly to you. I'm your host, Stephen Campbell, and I'm here with New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, J.F. Penn. Her latest work, Deviance, the third in her London Psychic Crime Thriller Series was released last week. Joanna, welcome.

Joanna: Hi Stephen. Thanks for having me on the show.

Stephen: It's always a pleasure to hear your voice. Before we get into Deviance, could you tell us a little bit about Jamie Brooke and Blake Daniel, the characters that make up this trilogy.

Joanna: So Jamie Brooke starts in the first book in the series, Desecration, as a British detective. It's set in London, and so basically we're solving murders, but Jamie ends up working with Blake, who is a researcher at the British Museum. He also has a psychic ability, so he can touch objects and he can read the emotional resonance and the history of that object. So Blake helps Jamie solve the crimes in the book, so Desecration, Delirium, and now Deviance.

By the third book, Deviance, Jamie has actually left the police, she's a private investigator, and once again calls on Blake to help when a friend of theirs goes missing. At the same time, lots of bodies are being found around London with tattoos filleted from their skin.

Stephen: Tattooing is one of the themes that you explore in this book, and you always seem to dig into a specific theme with each of your books. So why tattoos with this one?

tattoos — Tattoo art at the London Tattoo Convention

Joanna: Well, it's funny when I wrote Desecration, which is very much about the physical body while we're alive and when we're dead. So I was really fascinated by tattooing because while we're alive tattooing on our living bodies is like an art. There are many people who now go quite mad with tattoos. So that was the first book. Delirium was about the mental world and exploring bedlam and madness and that kind of thing.

And then in Deviance I revisit a character from Desecration.

Her name is O, and she has this full body tattoo of an octopus, like really amazing. Which is

actually a picture I saw in the National Gallery and it sparked the whole idea.

So for me, it was almost revisiting a topic I started on in Desecration, which is the kind of body modification movement, and people with implants, things that are quite extreme for many of us. And I know you are going to ask, but I don't have a tattoo. I don't have…

Stephen: You pre-empted my question!

Joanna: Personally, I'm very vanilla but I'm absolutely fascinated by people who go through this kind of thing. And the research was so interesting, because they say because of our mainly secular Western society that people are craving spiritual experience. The right of passage of tattooing is ancient. In many tribes, tattooing marks a rite of passage and the pain you go through, the blood and the sacrifice of a bit of yourself can really have a powerful effect.

So I read stories of people who'd undergone awful operations, terrible scarring, you know, mastectomies and they reclaimed their body by tattooing with a powerful image. I read a lot around the psychology of that and to me, that's just fascinating. And in Deviance, the murderer is cutting tattoos off people. Tattooing is quite common in London, so there's quite a lot of people to target.

And O goes missing, she has a full-body tattoo so things don't really bode well for her. So how do we find her?

And I found so many really interesting characters as I researched this. For example, you can actually now hire somebody so when you die, your body gets sent to them, and they will preserve your tattoo after your death. Which is like, wow, that's pretty hard core!

Stephen: That's out there!

Joanna: Yes! So I think why I write books, why I write fiction, one of the reasons is to go deep into things that I'm fascinated with, and things that might make me feel a little bit weird, you know.

If there's a physical reaction to a topic, that's something I want to explore in my writing …

because that really is the edge of what we consider acceptable. That's really why the book is called Deviance.

But the question is about the deviants in the book, you know, who is the sinner and who is the saint? You know, who really is deviant in a world where bankers who wear suits and ties can be the biggest criminals and tattooed people on the street are actually the good guys. So that's the stuff behind it.

Cabinet of Curiosities from the Tattoo Convention

Stephen: Now, as a reader I'm a little older than you. I'm considerably older than you. I'm considerably older than most people, but I've never really understood the whole tattoo thing. I see it, and it puzzles me. But I understand it better now in reading your book, and I'll bet there are lots of other people that understand it a little bit better as well.

Joanna: Oh, good. You know, I really think part of it is investigating a topic that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, with the aim of potentially changing your mind about judging people.

The other thing I found very fascinating was that many people who have tattoos, including facial tattoos and, who we would potentially look at and think, ‘oh, avoid that person because they look weird or they look different.' Most of those people are chronic introverts.

They often use tattooing or body modification as a way to keep people away from them because they're either really shy or they're just people who might have a difficult self-image and the tattoos mean certain things.

It really is a fascinating topic. I learned in my research that you shouldn't judge a person by what they put on their skin. And also, the other thing I learned is that you shouldn't ask people what the meaning of their tattoo is, because often they don't even know.

[You can see lots of the tattoo images and more pictures that inspired the book on my Pinterest Board for the book.]

Follow J.F.'s board Deviance on Pinterest.

The powerful totem figures that people put on their skin, they often don't realize why they've chosen that. Which I also found crazy weird, because, you know, I've thought a lot, and, in fact, the cover of Deviance has a woman with a crow tattoo, like flying crows, and I love that tattoo. I think it's actually gorgeous.

The crow is an image in the book. The Morrigan, the Celtic goddess is the crow goddess of death and war.

In London the crows are a kind of totem figure. So for me that crow tattoo, and the sort of flying birds became a bit of a motif for the whole thing. So if I was to get a tattoo, it would be similar to that.

Stephen: And how big would it be?

Joanna: Oh, that's under discussion 🙂

Stephen: All right, you mentioned research several times while you're describing your work, and from following you and your work over the years I know that you're sort of a research geek. It's just something that you love doing, and it's something that really fuels your writing.

What kind of specific research did you do for this book?

Joanna: I get my story ideas from the environment and from places.

I live in London and one of my favorite walks is to come out of the London underground at London Bridge for Borough Market. And from Borough Market, which is a very old, like a thousand-year old market.

You can look up and see the Shard, which is one of the tallest buildings in Europe. It's this gorgeous glass shard going up into the sky. And it actually has offices and things in it.

Also around there, there's the Old Operating Theater. That's one of the oldest hospitals.

It's the area where Chaucer set off on the Canterbury Tales. It's a very historical area. It's right by Shakespeare's Globe. It's right by the Tate Modern, which is a big art museum. It's an incredible area.

What's so interesting is during the Medieval Period it was outside the City of London, it was the red light district. Southwark Cathedral used to run the brothels on Southbank. This is all historical. So the church was running the brothels at the same time as it was a sin to go to a prostitute.

Then there's a graveyard that's under dispute called Crossbones, which is full of the bodies, the bones from 500 years ago, women and children.

The Outcast Dead, as they're known, are buried here in unconsecrated ground.

ribbons — Ribbons tied to the gates of Crossbones in memory of the Outcast Dead, Southwark, London

The church, even though they ran the brothels, did not allow the women and their illegitimate children to be buried in consecrated ground. And now that land is incredibly valuable, so the developers want to take that land and make luxury flats.

So for me the story was, oh my goodness, the church used to run the brothels, which is like wow, there's definitely a story there.

So who is the sinner, and who is the saint?

Is the prostitute the real sinner here? Or the city men?

And then the second thing is that this land grab of Crossbones graveyard by the developers just made me go, wow that's kind of crazy and this is all real.

So you can go to Crossbones, you can see what I describe it in the book. The ribbons on the gate in memory of the Winchester Geese, the prostitutes. And it's just a fascinating area. So much of Deviance is based on real London and I'm actually going to build a walking tour of the London sites from the series.

Stephen: Oh how fun!

Joanna: So you'll be able to walk the different places because every single place is real.

And the tattoo convention that I describe in the book, we actually went to as well. Probably all of my books, both the London Psychic Series and my ARKANE series, probably 90% of the books are truth.

Then I just make up some characters, but it's as close to real life as I can possibly make it.

Stephen: Now one of the things that you do consistently in your books is while you're researching you spend a lot of time in a given area, and then you describe it just beautifully and perfectly so that the reader can really get a sense of where the characters are in the book. And then occasionally you'll try and blow it up.

Joanna: I can't help but blow up things! I do that more in the ARKANE Series, to be fair.

Stephen: But you did a little bit of it in this one too.

Joanna: Well, you know, I can't help it … No spoilers.

Stephen: Let's talk about the ARKANE series for a little bit. That's where I first became familiar with your work as an author.

Why the two different series?

Joanna: Well, I think, as an author, it's very easy to fall into a rhythm of writing the same series that people enjoy.

So I love the ARKANE books. They're action-adventure, based around religious and supernatural mysteries and Morgan Sierra goes around the world having fun.

Then I wanted to write something that was more British and crime focused. And so I really set out to write a British crime novel with a British detective, but I really didn't intend it to have any supernatural side. But then as I started writing it, I had the experience in the Hunterian Museum that opens in Desecration.

I came up with Blake Daniel, who's psychic. It's normally a woman who is a psychic in stories, but Blake is a man. He's mixed race, half Nigerian, half Swedish. He just came to me fully formed.

I wanted to write something set in London specifically.

budapest synagogue — Grand Synagogue, Budapest which features in One Day in Budapest

And one of the things that marks out the ARKANE thrillers is the international side. They pretty much flit from place to place, except for my ‘one day' novellas for example, One Day In Budapest is just set in Budapest, for example.

But the ARKANE books are definitely more international, whereas the London Psychic series really is very densely about London. You can't walk a meter without finding so much history. It's just crazy. I wanted to test myself both on a creative level, but also the London Psychic Series is darker than the ARKANE books.

They really are just an action-adventure romp, based on the Clive Cussler type of books, Dan Brown, you know. Whereas the London Psychic books I really feel are probably more intelligent thrillers, you know. They have an edge of deeper meaning and it's been a real challenge to write them, but absolutely fascinating. And I've got to know London a whole lot more. So it was both a creative challenge and also a desire to offer something else to my readers.

Stephen: It seems to me, that you select things to write about that you're deeply interested in.

The ARKANE Series, you mentioned, it's globetrotting. You're a globetrotting person. You do a lot of travel.

You love to travel. You seem to love history. You love doing research.

Is this like a big circular thing for you, where you just keep feeding all of these interests that you have? Or does one feed the other?

Joanna: Oh, you busted me, Stephen!

When I thought about my dream job, when I was still in my corporate job a number of years ago and was really looking for another life, I was like, what do I want to do with my life?

I want to travel. I want to read. I want to write. I want to learn things. I want to create new things in the world.

And for me the life I have now is exactly that. I said to my husband, Let's go to Budapest – I'll write a book in Budapest. So I did: “One Day in Budapest“.

And then we moved back to London from Australia, and that's when I started the London Psychic Series because it's my life here.

The opening scene of Gates of Hell is at La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and I wrote that just after a weekend there. We're planning a big trip to Japan because I specifically want to research these particular Japanese mummies and so it is actually a circular process.

“Destroyer of Worlds”, which is the next ARKANE book has got a lot of India in it, and a few years ago we cycled through southern India.

So it's both. I get ideas from the world, and then when I want to

write a book about something, I look at somewhere I want to go, and then have a tax-deductible trip. So I have like the best life!

Thank you to all the readers listening who fund my travel addiction! But honestly, we laugh about that, but I do think that one of the most important things with a story is to take the reader out of their current situation.

I used to read thrillers when I was in my miserable day job. I hated my job, so at lunch time I would go and buy a book and generally it was an action-adventure thriller, so I could be somewhere else in the world for half an hour. And I would read on the train, and I would actually live in this other world for a time.

So for me now, my whole aim with these books is to help other people escape their lives just for a little while.

I'm hoping that everybody has a wonderful life, but sometimes we all need escape. I'm a readaholic and I love escaping mentally. I obviously do sit at my desk a lot, so I love escaping daily life to live in somebody else's world. As much as I laugh and say that I travel a lot and have a lot of fun, I also work really hard to give the reader a good experience.

Stephen: And you're also one of those people who I'm fairly certain can work while you're on the road.

Joanna: I'm always taking pictures and I use Things app on my phone. I've got a folder for fiction ideas and I'm always writing down ideas.

What's so funny is reading back one of my books and remembering where I got that idea from. Like in “Deviance”, one of the main characters is called Magda, she's an urban shaman. There is actually a guy who is an urban shaman in London and then I read a book called “Pastrix” by Nadia Bolz-Weber. As soon as I saw the picture of her, I knew she would be the model for Magda, at least physically.

A “Pastrix” is a female pastor, and I read her autobiography, and she became a real sort of character for me. Obviously I changed a lot of things about her, as with any character but she was the inspiration as a strong woman.

So definitely, I find inspiration everywhere. And it might take years to end up in a book, but I believe in emergence, that if I just write down my ideas when I'm writing a book, it will somehow come out of my brain again. It will emerge from my subconscious at the right time.

Stephen: What a wonderful skill.

Joanna: Well, I don't think it's a skill. I mean, I'm a little bit semi-spiritual in that sense in the same way that Steven Pressfield is in “The War of Art” for example. He talks about the Muse with a capital M. So does Stephen King, actually. It's all quite mysterious. I do read back some of what I've written and go, where the hell did that come from?

Stephen: Joanna, where can people find “Deviance” and the London Psychic Series?

Buy now in ebook and print formats. Coming soon in audio.

Start reading online

Click here to start reading Chapter 1 of Deviance.

From French Citadels To The Arizona Desert With Simon Toyne

September 6, 2015 By J.F. Penn

I loved Simon Toyne's Sanctus trilogy, so I was really keen to read the first in his new series, Solomon Creed in the UK, released as The Searcher in the US.

This interview was first released on The Big Thrill, the magazine for the ITW, International Thriller Writers.

You can watch the video discussion below or here on YouTube or read the transcript below.

Simon Toyne is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Sanctus trilogy. The books have been translated into 28 languages and published in 50 countries. Simon's latest book is The Searcher, the first in the new Solomon Creed series. All the details on Simon’s website, SimonToyne.net.

So first of all, just give us an overview of Solomon Creed/The Searcher so that people have a sense of what it's about.

Solomon Creed is a man on an epic journey of redemption. He arrives at the beginning of this first book, clueless as to how he's got there, walking down the middle of an Arizona Road towards a town called Redemption. Behind him is a burning plane and he's got emergency vehicles screaming towards him.

He knows nothing about himself at all. All he has is this sensation that he is there to save a particular man, whose name he knows. But as the police cars pull up and they start to check him over, he mentions this guy and says, “I think I'm here to save him.” And the Chief of Police says, “We buried him this morning.” So that's how the book kicks off and the central mystery is how do you save a man who is already dead?

I’ve read the Sanctus trilogy which I absolutely loved. That series featured the town of Ruin and now you have Redemption. How important is sense of place to your writing and tell us a bit more about Redemption?

Sense of place is hugely important for me because environment forges character. So if you don't have a sense of the environment, then you are missing a lot of tricks, really, as regards character and setting. With Ruin, it was kind of accidental. I really tried to find a place that would fit the story and I just couldn't find one. There was nothing that quite worked and I felt really bad about taking a real place and taking too many liberties with it to try and make it fit my story.

So in the end, I just decided to create this new place which was really hard. Because you have to create a whole history and mythology. You have to make sure it looks right, that the food is right, everything. So you're grabbing bits from lots of real places to create this fantasy and make it feel real. Which is what you do with all of your fiction, really. Your characters are figments of your imagination but you do whatever you can to make them feel real.

So this time around, the whole notion of Solomon Creed is that you're not quite sure who he is, or indeed what he is. Whether he's delusional, whether he's reincarnated, whether he's an angel, whether he's a devil, whether he's just some drifting genius loser because he has enormous knowledge about the world but none about himself. I genuinely wanted to set it somewhere real. I thought, particularly if I've got this cipher of a character, it would be really good to put his feet on the ground somewhere real. And I loved Arizona and I liked that elemental walking out in the desert in the spirit of great Westerns. And so I went to Arizona.

I've been to Arizona before but never specifically looking for this kind of town. So I went there on a trip and spent a good couple of weeks going around taking pictures, really trying hard to find this very specific town. I thought I would because I did lots of pre-research and I had a hit list of places to go, ghost towns, ex-mining towns, all of which I knew needed to be part of the story. And again, none of them were quite right. They were all near misses.

And I started feeling these pangs of, “if I take such liberties with a real place, I'm going to get into trouble. I'm going to feel bad.” And also crucially, I would know it wasn’t real. So in a way, cutting myself loose and allowing myself to have total free rein in inventing a place snatched from lots of these bits, felt like the right thing to do. And it was in the end.

Ruin was a huge city with thousands and thousands of years worth of history. And Redemption has just got about 150 years worth. It came about at the time when Arizona stopped being a territory and started being a state and at the time when the copper came in. That is tied in with the story as well. It was quite nice to deal with history in recent memory, which was a change.

But place is hugely important for me. With the books you write, you need to place these things in very vivid environments. Otherwise, the fantasies we're spinning just spin away a bit too much. You have to anchor it in something solid. So, it's definitely crucial. And I spend as much time, if not more, on place, as I do on the characters.

You mentioned that environment forges character. So I wondered about your own environment and how that forges your character. As we’re talking, you’re in an unusual place, aren't you? Tell us about that.

I’m in France, but that’s not that unusual. But perhaps how I got here is more interesting. I worked in television and I always wanted to write a book. But TV was fairly full on and I was an exec so I was quite high-level with lots of stuff to do. And I just didn't have any free time. As I was approaching 40, I had a minor midlife crisis. I thought, “What am I doing? What happened to that novel that I thought I was going to do?”

So I quit. But I couldn’t just go in the spare room and try and bash out a book. I decided with my family that we would just go on an adventure. Because then if the book failed, at least we would've had an adventure, and I could sweep the book failure under the carpet of the adventure that we'd had.

Because we spoke a bit of French and because France was handy and we could drive to it, we decided to hire somewhere in France. So we just picked a place, rented it, hired out our place in Brighton, and we moved here for six months. And I wrote a big chunk of what became Sanctus here. Ever since we ended up coming back here on holiday every summer. Even though we could've gone anywhere, we always ended up coming back here. And I always ended up being very inspired here and writing. I live in a little place called Cordes sur Ciel, which means Cordes on the sky.

It's so cool because it's a hill town in the middle of a valley. And in the morning the valley fills with mist and the top of the hill is just visible. So it looks like it's floating on clouds. And whenever we came on holiday, I always have loads of ideas and I'd write loads. It was a very inspirational place. And so ultimately, what happened was we bought the place and I'm in it now.

My wife's an interior designer so we always buy total wrecks and when we bought this, there were about 50 pigeons living in the roof because the roof was like a colander and the electrics were lethal. Because I'm a full-time writer, we come here during all the kid's holidays. I just carry on working, so we're here for six weeks in the summer which sounds like the most brilliant holiday ever except they have six weeks of a lovely time and I just lock myself away in my room. So it's just hotter, as far as I'm concerned, and the food's nicer when I stop work.

It's gloomy here at the moment, not because the middle of the night, but because I'm sitting by an open window to get a bit of breeze and the shutters are shut because is 98 degrees, or something, out there at the moment. It's just boiling hot. The kids are off down the road at a pool cooling off and being quiet and letting me work.

The opening scene of The Searcher is a plane crash and there are lots of flames in the middle of the Arizona desert. So maybe that is shaped by your writing environment?

Actually, when I was thinking about the different books right from the beginning, I was considering how I could differentiate each book. At the moment it's going to be a five book series, but it's kind of open ended. I know who Solomon is, but when that is revealed is up for grabs, which is part of the fun of it because I don't know where it's going. I have waypoints that I know I want to reach with the stories. I thought one way to differentiate the first four books at least would be for the first one to be fire as an element, then water, earth and air. Just those little things to give a tonal difference to each one of them in a color palette and all of those things.

The character of Solomon Creed is an old-fashioned Ronin, almost a samurai. He's going to these places to fix something that's out of kilter and then he can move on. And so he can go anywhere. So in the second book, he's in France. Around here, actually. You write what you know and, as I said, it's very inspirational for me here. It's so beautiful and dramatic and it's got lots of history, like the Albigensian Crusades flowed through here, made famous by Kate Mosse with Labyrinth, and it's the Vichy area for the second World War and capitulation. So there’s tons of history.

The name, Solomon Creed, is fascinating in itself. How did you come up with that name?

It just came to me. I struggle with names because names are really important and I often change the name of characters loads of times. And sometimes I might be having trouble writing a character and if I just really think about their name and change their name, it becomes easier because I had the name wrong. So it's really important.

When I thought of the main idea for The Searcher, the name, Solomon Creed, just came with it. And it was one of those things that just seemed so familiar that I was convinced I must've read it somewhere. So I looked it up and Googled it and checked stuff out but it didn’t exist. It was one of those things that just came ready formed. I like names and symbolism. And it's got good connotations because Solomon's an old name and the name of a wise king and creed means belief system. I think I've moved away slightly with this book from the more overtly religious underpinnings of the Sanctus trilogy. I mean, they're there, but they're not so overt. Whereas the trilogy was about relics that were the mysteries, in this book, Solomon is the mystery which was a whole different challenge. Actually, as a writer. I’ve discovered it’s difficult to write an enigmatic character on a page.

How much of you is in the character of Solomon Creed?

Especially with main characters, you spend such a long time with them and inevitably, bits of yourself bleed into them. But I think bits of yourself bleed into all of your characters, good and bad, in order to make them real.

I would say he's more removed from me than most of my other main characters, just because he's so otherworldly. I'm very chatty and he doesn't say much. He's a strong silent type. He keeps his own counsel and he's very watchful. And again, that's really hard to write. It was a real challenge. It was probably the hardest book I've ever written. It's partly just because it felt like starting again. But also just because normally you know the center of your main character, you know what their core is. Even if they've moved away from it and they're trying to get back to it, you know who, fundamentally, they are or if there's a bit missing, what that bit is. So that that kind of dictates the narrative.

And with Solomon, he has no idea who he is. He knows literally nothing about himself whatsoever. He just arrives walking down the road, no shoes on his feet, wearing a nice jacket, walking away from a plane crash that he has no knowledge of being on, towards the town that all he knows about is that there's this guy in there he needs to save. That's all he knows. And yet he looks around and everything he looks at, like a cactus, he knows the Latin name of it, the medicinal properties, what the Hohokam Indians called it. He knows everything about everything. He has this deep medical, legal and historical knowledge. He knows tons of stuff but he has no idea how he knows it. And yet, when he thinks about himself, it's just a black hole. So that's what he's trying to fill in. He's very far removed from me, I think.

Part of the challenge was making someone so other and so uncentered feel real. The solution was by looking at him through all the other characters’ eyes. They make their own minds up based on their own situation. And so you get lots of different perspectives of him. And some people think he's good, some people think he's a troublemaker, some people think he's an angel. Some people think he's a double agent. It's for you, the reader, to try and second-guess it.

You mentioned that The Searcher isn't as overtly religious as the Sanctus Trilogy, but there is still a religious history in the book and the church is very important. What other aspects will your current fans particularly enjoy?

There are more modern crime elements going on. It's also written mainly in the third person with short chapters and a constantly changing point of view. It's very cinematic. I did a degree in English but I studied screenplays as much as books. And that cinematic technique of having short chapters and changing points of view and third person so that the reader knows as much knowledge as possible is the best engine for telling a thriller and propelling the story forward.

There are lots of twists. There are lots of characters who you're not quite sure whether they're good or bad, they’re morally ambiguous so that you know they're bad but somehow you like them because they are doing noble things. They're doing bad things for good reasons. I love all that moral fog because it's real. There are no really good people and there are no really bad people in the main. There is good in everyone, there is bad in everyone. That's what makes it real. It's also got a big twist reveal ending.

There is a difference between the UK and the US cover and title. Just talk a bit about that so people don't get confused when they look for the book.

In America and Canada it's called The Searcher and has a very different cover – a man running down a road in Arizona. In the UK and Commonwealth countries, it's called Solomon Creed. The cover is a black and white image of a man walking towards you. But it's just one book. It's not like I've been super productive and produced two books that are coming out within a month of each other! They’re both very great covers and the story's the same. So hopefully it will find readers everywhere.

It’s a very visual book. Is there a chance of it being on TV?

The Sanctus trilogy remains un-optioned and is unlikely to turn into anything visual. But The Searcher has been attracting lots of attention, various American studios, Hollywood studios, and it's been one of those things where I've been dying to talk about it, but I haven't been able to until now. I can reveal that The Searcher/Solomon Creed has been optioned by Leonardo DiCaprio's company, Appian Way for a TV series in conjunction with E1 which is a big producer of lots of fine dramas. So that's very exciting. I've literally just signed the contract, but these things often take ages or go nowhere. It's a very serpentine path to getting anything made. But I do think The Searcher, would be a really good TV series. I know I would say that but it's just very episodic and it's split into 10 parts as well. So it's almost ready made as a TV series.

What other thriller authors do you like reading?

I love Steve Berry. He's really good because I don't know that much about American history. You can read Steve Berry books and learn tons about American history because it's so well researched. At the same time, he's got this brilliant central character, Cotton Malone, and they're really good thrillers that move along and twist and turn.

Greg Isles is a brilliant writer. His Natchez Burning is the first of a trilogy which is brilliant. It dots around in recent history but it's still in the south and that whole ‘sins of fathers surfacing in the present’ kind of stuff. He's a very elegant writer, a very powerful writer.

I read a lot of Cormac McCarthy. Not strictly a thriller writer but No Country For Old Men has shades of thriller and crime. A lot of the deaths happen off the page. You gear up to it and then you cut to the aftermath with the Marshall, which is brilliant. It’s a very original way of doing it, because he's more interested in the aftermath, the consequences of violence rather than the violence itself.

You can find The Searcher and all Simon’s other books at SimonToyne.net and at all bookstores.

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Excerpt from Gates of Hell. ARKANE thriller #6

Buy the book now in ebook, print and audiobook formats.

I get lots of ideas from my travels.

So I have this kernel of an idea, and then from there, I start to research.

I don’t have a plot. I do have an opening scene and I’ve had an opening scene in my head for a while, and that’s going to be in London.

Then what happens is synchronicity.

And that synchronicity of story emerging from fascination and research still just makes me shiver a little bit, because it happens every time.

Then I just let it all percolate.

Some fascinations bleed into several books.

But the main thing is that after I’ve done this research for a couple of weeks, I use The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne to create a one page outline.

From there, I start writing.

As I’m doing the research, I start a book page on Pinterest.

Then I will basically just see what emerges as I write.

If you want to decide what to do with your life, consider what you want your life to look like, what would your days look like.

I also take a lot of pictures on my journeys, and they will often spark ideas.

But it doesn’t have to be traveling to faraway places. It can just be around your house.

Who knows when this stuff will come back into my conscious mind?

So who are Kiszka and Kershaw and what can we expect from the books?

Tell us about A Devil Under the Skin.

You’re not Polish, so why write about the Polish community?

What are some of the places in Poland that come up in the story that people might like to hear about?

I think many people associate words like “communism” and “iron curtain” and “Eastern Europe” with the color grey. But you're describing something a lot more colorful.

There's a lot of negative press about immigration these days. How do you cover this hot button topic in your books?

What is your favorite Polish food?

Obviously Poland is one theme, but what are the other themes that come up in your writing?

You have an interesting day job as a TV producer. How does your work in TV influence your writing, and vice versa?

What other thriller authors and books do you love to read? What are you reading now?

We have a lot of crime fiction in the UK but we also have one of the safest countries with very little violence. Do you think that's why crime fiction is now emerging in Poland? As soon as your country becomes more settled, you start writing violent things?

Where can people find you and your books online?

Where did your fascination with the Templars come from? Have you visited Jerusalem or some of the European Templar churches?

Your latest book in the series, Fall of Night, features Gabrielle, who has only been a peripheral part of the Templar series so far. Tell us a bit more about the book as my readers love a kick-ass female lead!

All your books all have elements of the supernatural. What drives your obsession with what's beyond the physically real? How do your own beliefs/experiences weave into the books?

What are the themes that keep coming up in your work? What links the series' together?

Where are you in the world and what does your writing space look like? Give us a hint of behind the scenes

What are a few of the books you love and that you'd recommend readers check out?

Where can people find you and your books online?

Stephen: It's always a pleasure to hear your voice. Before we get into Deviance, could you tell us a little bit about Jamie Brooke and Blake Daniel, the characters that make up this trilogy.

Stephen: Tattooing is one of the themes that you explore in this book, and you always seem to dig into a specific theme with each of your books. So why tattoos with this one?

If there's a physical reaction to a topic, that's something I want to explore in my writing …

The crow is an image in the book. The Morrigan, the Celtic goddess is the crow goddess of death and war.

What kind of specific research did you do for this book?

The Outcast Dead, as they're known, are buried here in unconsecrated ground.

So who is the sinner, and who is the saint?

Why the two different series?

I wanted to write something set in London specifically.

You love to travel. You seem to love history. You love doing research.

Buy now in ebook and print formats. Coming soon in audio.

Start reading online

So first of all, just give us an overview of Solomon Creed/The Searcher so that people have a sense of what it's about.

I’ve read the Sanctus trilogy which I absolutely loved. That series featured the town of Ruin and now you have Redemption. How important is sense of place to your writing and tell us a bit more about Redemption?

You mentioned that environment forges character. So I wondered about your own environment and how that forges your character. As we’re talking, you’re in an unusual place, aren't you? Tell us about that.

The opening scene of The Searcher is a plane crash and there are lots of flames in the middle of the Arizona desert. So maybe that is shaped by your writing environment?

The name, Solomon Creed, is fascinating in itself. How did you come up with that name?

How much of you is in the character of Solomon Creed?

You mentioned that The Searcher isn't as overtly religious as the Sanctus Trilogy, but there is still a religious history in the book and the church is very important. What other aspects will your current fans particularly enjoy?

There is a difference between the UK and the US cover and title. Just talk a bit about that so people don't get confused when they look for the book.

It’s a very visual book. Is there a chance of it being on TV?

What other thriller authors do you like reading?

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