J.F.Penn

Thrillers, Dark Fantasy, Crime, Horror

author interviews

Action Adventure, Demons, And Traveling For Research. Meet the Thriller Author with J.F. Penn

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I was recently interviewed on Meet The Thriller Author with Alan Petersen about the ideas behind my thrillers and my writing process.

Meet JF Penn, Thriller AuthorClick here to listen to the show, or subscribe on iTunes.

Transcript of interview with J.F. Penn

Alan: Hey everybody, this is Alan Petersen with Meet the Thriller Author. And in this episode of the podcast we're gonna be meeting with J.F. Penn who is a a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Thriller Author. So we're really excited to have her on the podcast. How are you doing today, Joanna?

Joanna: I'm great. Thanks for having me on the show, Alan.

Alan: First, I want to thank you so much for agreeing to be on it, I really appreciate it. I'm excited to talk to you.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background for our listeners, please?

Joanna: First of all, I'm English, as you can probably tell from my accent, and I live in Bath, which is in the south-west of England. And it has 2,000-year-old Roman baths in the center of town, so very interesting place.

I have a degree in theology from Oxford, and that sort of religious aspect does come through in my books. I love walking, reading, and traveling, and I travel a lot. And that obviously comes through into my thrillers. I'm a cat person, and I like nice gin and tonic. So there you go, there's a few things.

Alan: Good stuff, yeah. Cats and gin and tonic, can't go wrong with that.

Joanna: Very relaxing.

Alan: Yeah it's very relaxing, yeah. I can just see the cat on your lap as you're having a gin and tonic.

Joanna: Exactly. I should say also, I am a full-time writer now, but I spent 13 years implementing accounts payable into large corporates. So I was a cubicle slave, in the corporate world, if people are wondering what I did before. I was a bit more creative with my life.

Alan: That's an interesting coincidence. I used to be IT support for the Accounts Payable department for a big corporation.

Joanna: There you go.

Alan: Wow, small world. So I know how exciting that was.

Joanna: I was probably phoning you all the time!

Alan: Yeah, exactly. So, can you tell us a little bit about your books? You have several series out.

ARKANE 9The ARKANE thrillers are probably your best-known thrillers. Can you tell us a little bit about those books?

Joanna: Yeah sure. The ARKANE series has nine books now, and I say they're Dan Brown meets Lara Croft. The religious thriller with an edge of the supernatural and adventure around the world, stopping global conspiracies and always lots of thrilling stuff. But also a good dose of history, and interesting religious stuff, and myth, and I love all that. So that's cool.

London Crime ThrillersAnd then I have the London Psychic Crime thrillers, which I describe as Stephen King meets Tess Gerritsen. They have a British detective but a supernatural edge and she works with a psychic researcher at the British Museum. So that's set in London, obviously, because London's in the title. But ARKANE is set all around the world.

And then I have a couple of standalone's. Risen Gods is set in New Zealand, with the ancient gods rising as the earthquakes shake the land and very much based in living in New Zealand and what actually happens there. So those are my main series and I'm working on something else now, but you know how it goes. You start writing and you get more and more ideas.

Alan: Oh yeah, probably can't keep them from coming in sometimes.

What's your latest book that you have out now?

SacrificeJoanna: My most recent book was actually co-written with three other authors. We got on the train in Chicago and took the Amtrak down to New Orleans, and the four of us wrote a book called, American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice.

Alan: Oh wow.

Joanna: It's totally fun. It's a dark fantasy thriller and it's set on the train. The book opens when the characters get on the train and the book ends when the train arrives in New Orleans. A lot of bad things happen along the way, and the four characters meet and have to stop the demons destroying America.

That's the latest book, but I didn't entirely write that one. Obviously, that was co-written.

end of daysMy latest ARKANE book is End of Days which is based around the various snake mythologies in history and religion.

The serpent in the Pit of Revelation and the serpent in Eden and the demon Lilith, and when an ancient sarcophagus is found in the deepest part of the ocean, there's a hunt for the seven seals of revelation that can open it. And Morgan and Jake from the ARKANE Agency must stop the apocalypse before the blood moon rises over Jerusalem. Very exciting stuff. All my stories are a little bit dark fantasy, end of the world type stuff, but good triumphs. That's my important thing.

Alan: Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.

You had mentioned that you studied theology, so that must really come in handy then when you're writing your thrillers.

Joanna: Yeah, it is really interesting because I am fascinated by the supernatural. When people say, “Oh what are the themes of your book?” and I think at the end of the day it comes down to the question of good versus evil, which I see Stephen King tackling.

mansfield college oxford
Mansfield College, University of Oxford, where I read Theology 1994 – 1997

The fact that there's good versus evil in the world. Bad things happen but hopefully, good people stop them, and there is something more than the things that we see.

It's not like I've fought demons on a train or, stopped the snake of Revelation destroying the world, but it's so fascinating when we take mythology and religious sort of text. And what I tend to do is, in the ARKANE books, the beginning of most of my books there's a quote from the Bible or from some kind of scripture, and then I take that and turn that into a story.

The books are 95% based on truth and real places, like in End of Days there's a cistern under the western wall between the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim side and the western wall, the Jewish side. And if you put something down there, there's gonna be trouble.

So, you know, things like that. I actually went down and visited the cistern and thought that this would be a very cool location for something in my thrillers. The theological aspect comes through but they're not Christian books. I want to state that. I'm not actually a Christian, but I'm very respectful of all religions. In fact, my Destroyer of Worlds, which is set in India, is based in Hindu religion. I'm so fascinated by something more than the physical world, I guess.

Alan: What's the background of your main characters? Are they soldiers or cops or theologians?

Joanna: Morgan Sierra, who is my main character of the ARKANE series, she's actually an Oxford University psychologist, but she's ex-Israeli Defense Force, so ex-military.

But her mother was Christian and her father was Jewish. So I bring in that religious aspect. Yes, she has some special skills from the military. She has Krav Maga and things like that. And she works alongside Jake Timber, who is also ex-military.

Like many thrillers, you have to have some kind of special skills that your characters have, or they can't fight. I'm definitely heavier on the myth and the places and the setting and the character than I am on guns and fighting. There are some guns and fighting but don't expect Clive Cussler or Dirk Pitt thrillers.

In the London Psychic Crime Thrillers, Jamie Brooke is a policewoman. So, again, some special skills there. But you know, I love researching this stuff, and I did try and go to a Krav Maga class, but I got kicked a lot and came home and cried and went, “You know what, I think I'll stay in the books.”

Alan: I was just gonna say, wow, that's pretty hardcore doing those courses. Preparing for the interview, I was looking at your website, and you had an article of when you were visiting Israel, and I remember seeing also a video where you were in a firing range testing different weapons.

You put a lot of research into this. You took that class and then you got kicked all over the place.

Joanna: Well, I think part of this is, 10 years ago I looked at my life when I was in Accounts Payable, and I was so miserable. I had a great job and everything, according to society, but I was really miserable. I thought, “What do I want to really do with my life?” and I really love reading, and I like writing, and I like being on my own a lot.

But I also love to travel and learn new things. So being a writer is a fantastic job and living and life for me because I basically go around doing things and then writing books that are set in those places or bringing those things into my stories. It is really cool.

That shooting range was in Budapest. I've got a book called One Day in Budapest which is based around the rise of the right-wing in Hungary, which is true, it's kind of awful. And we visited the mass grave. And my husband's family are Jewish so we went there and saw the grave of his ancestors and things. So it was really pretty amazing. And then we went down to the Soviet Bunker and shot a load of guns.

[You can watch a video about the Budapest research here.]

Now, obviously I'm British, we don't have guns generally, in our society. I mean, obviously in the criminal end, but not really in the law enforcement even. So guns are just not normal around Britain. So you have to go to Budapest to shoot some, but I figured I should.

Alan: What was that experience like?

Joanna: I enjoyed it for many reasons. I enjoyed it because I think it's good to understand how these things work and to have a healthy respect. Obviously, guns are a difficult topic, but I think handling guns with respect.

And as a thriller writer, I think it's very hard to avoid guns. I mean, it's something that is pretty fundamental in a thriller, to have some kind of fighting some point and it would be disingenuous not to have any weapons. Although often Morgan does fight with her hands, and Krav Maga is much more of a martial art.

But, yeah, I think it was really interesting. I haven't shot a gun since, to be honest, but it was fascinating from that point of view and good for research purposes. And a lot of Americans do this more regularly.

Alan: Probably a little more than in England.

Joanna: Exactly.

Alan: Or most parts of the world.

When you decided to start writing or try to write in fiction, did you choose thrillers and action? Was that a genre that you enjoyed as a reader before you tried to write a book in it?

Joanna: Yes. And I think that's so important. I don't know how you could write a book in a genre you don't love because if you want to do this for a living you have to write a lot of books and so you have to really enjoy it.

When I used to work that day job, and you'll know this, I would be there at my desk and then I would be just hanging out for a break, and when I went on lunch break I would be reading, and I would always be reading thrillers. And for me, it was escapism from my day job, my miserable day job. And then I'd spend my lunch hour in a thriller somewhere else in the world.

joanna penn writingAnd so when I write now, obviously from a selfish reason I write for me because I look at all the cool places I get to travel to, but then I also am writing that book for the person who was trapped in that job and any readers who want to escape their life just for a few hours.

What we offer with our stories is a chance to escape and experience the world without leaving the armchair.

And also, I like to think I bring more than just the stories, so like I said, the question of good versus evil or whether there really is a supernatural. Because I always try and keep, obviously apart from demon hunters on the train, but my ARKANE series is very much…you could see this as scientific, you could see this as supernatural.

So I try to stay on that knife edge of is this real or is this something else, which is what I'm really interested in. I definitely write from my own love of thrillers and I read a lot of thrillers still but I also write for those people who need to escape.

Alan: And were you always writing when you were younger? Or did it just start when you decided to write these books?

Joanna: I always wrote journals, the angsty journals you wrote when you're a teenager. And I would write pen friend letters and, of course, I did English exams, A-levels they're called over here. I always read, but I never thought that I could be a writer, really, until the world changed with the advent of the Kindle, 10 years ago now, amazingly.

Alan: Incredible.

Joanna: I know, as we talk now, so 2007, 2008 as the ebook revolution started, I really saw that that could revolutionize what being a writer could be and it made it possible to make a living as a writer, and that's kind of when I made that decision. And also, I guess the other thing, I should be grateful for Dan Brown, because before Dan Brown my favorite book was really Umberto Eco's, “The Name of the Rose”. And actually that book is, I read it again recently, and it's really hard. It's a hard book to read.

bloodlinerollins
I love James Rollins' books!

The film is awesome but the book is not that fun to read. And then Dan Brown took that kind of religious thriller genre and revolutionized it in The Da Vinci Code, and then, of course, Steve Barry, James Rollins, and a whole load more authors sprung up in his wake. And I see myself as part of that group who sort of… If you can write a story about things that you're really interested in and that you're curious about, then there will be readers who are curious about the same stuff you are.

Alan: That's a good point, yeah, it's not like you're alone.

If you're interested in it somebody else is gonna be interested in it too. Never thought about it that way.

Joanna: And what's lovely about the international markets now and being on Kindle and Kobo and iBooks and all these places, is that even if, in your country, there aren't people who like that stuff, there are probably people in the world who like that stuff. You can actually reach readers all over the world, which is super exciting. And as a reader, you can read books by authors from all around the world which is also cool.

Alan: That is really cool. I've read books from British authors, but I really didn't know anything about the British police or anything like that until I started reading Indie books about British cops. Before that, nobody was really writing those. So it's really cool to see that happening in the last five, six, ten years.

What is your writing process? Do you like outline everything before you start writing or do you go by the seat of your pants?

Joanna: I tend to get an idea and then think about it for quite a long time. At the moment, I'm thinking about a new series I'm going to write which is based on maps and cartography and some really interesting ideas around immigration and stuff like smoke and bonethat, but within the realm of a sort of fantasy world. If people have read Laini Taylor, who wrote Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and she's amazing. I want to write something that flips between two different worlds.

So I'm thinking about this, and I have the idea, and I've started to think about some of the characters, but I'm more of a pantser when it comes to writing. And a lot changes when I actually start writing. So I'm a bit of both, but certainly nowhere near someone like Jeffery Deaver, who writes a 200-page outline for a 400-page book.

Alan: Yeah, that's crazy.

Joanna: You know what I mean. And someone like James Patterson, I think, does outline a lot and works with co-authors. But then someone like Stephen King or Lee Child write just from the seat of their pants and I'd say I'm nearer the pantsers than the plotters but I have a dash of plotting.

Alan: I know this is kind of a hard question because it can vary so much.

When you're in the zone and you're writing a book, what's your writing day like?

Joanna: When I am ready to write that book…so I'm writing a non-fiction at the moment, but with fiction, as soon as I say, “Right, I'm starting the book on this day,” it's usually a Monday, because that's a good day to start.

I go to a cafe. So I have, and I totally recommend this if people want to write, I wear noise cancelling headphones and I go to somewhere away from my desk because at my desk I do things like this, and my admin, and things like that.

noise cancelling headphones
I love my noise-cancelling headphones, even though I look like a bit of an idiot 🙂

So I go to a cafe, I block out time in my diary, and I'm a morning person, so I write in the morning. I'll do a two-hour block at one cafe…and you really only need to buy one black coffee an hour to sit in a cafe. So I do my two coffees in one cafe and then, depending on how it's going, I'll have a walk, and then walk to another cafe and do a second session.

By lunchtime, I'm pretty much dead. So probably four hours of actual writing and I try and get that first draft done as fast as possible. So, you know, try and get it done within a month basically. So a month to six weeks to do the first draft.

And then, obviously, there's the editing phase, which can take awhile as well. But really that first draft is the only time when I will go to the cafe every single day and write. And then, obviously, then it's the editing and other things. And I do that at the cafe as well, but I listen to rain and thunderstorms through my noise-canceling headphones and that's what keeps me in the zone and it definitely helps.

Alan: That's interesting.

I've had a hard time with music because I get distracted, but that's interesting to try out nature sounds.

Joanna: Yeah, it's enough of a noise and also with the noise-cancelling, you basically shut out all the external noise and it just really helps you concentrate and get into that first draft writing phrase which can be, obviously, hard.

Alan: And what do you use? Are you a Scrivener user or do you just use Word?

Stone of FireJoanna: Absolutely Scrivener. I wrote my first novel, Stone of Fire in Word and I would never, ever go back. I love Scrivener. I don't know many writers who don't use Scrivener, at this point, because it's so useful. And I don't write in order as well which is why Scrivener makes it even better because I can write different scenes and then move them around later. So yeah, I totally love Scrivener.

Alan: Yeah, it's a great product. I'm the same way too, I love to be able to drag the folders around.

I really like your covers, and I remember noticing that a lot of authors like yourself and Russell Blake, you change your covers every now and then. Is that just because you noticed changes in the market and you decide, “Oh, I'm gonna change it.”

I was curious about that when I see an author's changing covers.

Joanna: First of all, changing covers is completely normal. All traditional publishers will change covers on older books. If you look at something like “To Kill A Mockingbird” there will have been myriad covers on a book like that because they re-release it every now and then with a new cover.

But in terms of my covers, some of it has been re-branding. I think when you first start to write you don't really know what you're writing.

For example, Stone of Fire the original title was “Pentecost” and I wrote Pentecost, Prophecy and Exodus, which to me, because I'm a theologian, the words had a lot of meaning. But people thought they were Christian novels, but they're not Christian novels, they're just based around Christian myth and history. And so I re-branded as Stone of Fire, Crypt of Bone, Ark of Blood, and that's, you know, End of Days, and these are my ARKANE titles now.

So I did different covers when I re-branded…sort of re-branding to more of mainstream thriller look and feel which, you know, the couple running away from certain things. There are genre conventions.

desecrationAnd then my London Psychic series is a lot darker, so the covers are dark. But again I tried, like, three different covers on that first one, “Desecration”, because I hadn't really worked out where that book fit in the market. And this is one of the pros and cons of being an indie author, is that you might not really know exactly where your book fits. But one of the amazing things is, of course, all you need to do is upload a new cover and move it.

“Risen Gods” is another good example. I put a cover on that and we thought it was a horror novel. It does have demons in but it's not horror, there's no gore, well, there's a bit of gore but not very much.

So we've changed it to sort of a dark fantasy, urban fantasy, with a male character on the front with a sort of the look of volcanoes and magic around it. And it's almost not even magic, it's that kind of mythology of the Mauri people. So, changing that cover actually has made a huge difference and more people have picked up that book when it has a different cover.

I think it's very important to write your book from your heart. I mean, some people do write to market, but I write from my heart. Which means I might not know exactly where it fits, but over time we find our market.

Alan: Yeah. Well, your covers are beautiful. I'm looking at them right now. They look great.

Joanna: Thank you.

destroyer nominationAlan: I saw on your website Destroyer of Worlds has been nominated, it's a finalist for the ITW award for Best E-Book Original, that's so exciting.

Can you tell us a little bit about that and that award?

Joanna: The ITW is the International Thriller Writers and it has some really big names in, so people like Stephen King and Lee Child, and Clive Cussler. I do love Clive Cussler, and I met him the other year and I was just so thrilled. Authors of any age can submit their work or the publishers will submit work to these awards every year.

They are judged, not on sales but on the quality of writing, so they're judged by other thriller authors. And so, yes, I'm a finalist in the final five for “Destroyer of Worlds” which is set in India and is a fun romp through India and Hindu myth.

That will be announced in July. And even if I don't win, which I hope I will obviously, but if I don't win it's still validation from my peers that my writing fits into that thriller genre. And I think, for a lot of writers, having other writers judge their work it's very scary but it can also be the most rewarding thing.

Alan: Yeah, especially making it as a finalist. All the big name thriller writers are a part of ITW.

Joanna: Well, hopefully, I'll win 🙂 Fingers crossed.

Alan: Yeah, exactly. Fingers crossed. It's an honor to be a finalist though.

Joanna: Yes, exactly. That's what I think.

What are you working on now? What's your current work-in-progress?

Joanna: Well, two things mainly. One is this new series around maps and cartography but I think when you're thinking about a new series, you do have to think about more than one book. I'm waiting until I have the full sort of ideas in my head before I write it down. I know the first scene. So I keep.. I'm like, aha, gotta write that scene down, but I'm almost waiting until I can't wait any longer on that.

one day in new yorkBecause we traveled on the train from Chicago to New Orleans, and then we spent a week in New Orleans writing, but that demon hunters book is set on the train, so I have all this stuff around New Orleans that I want to write. I'm actually going to start a spin-off series which will be, United States of ARKANE. The first book is going to be set in New Orleans and probably Haiti and will be around Voodoo.

Because I learned a lot about Voodoo and, you know, what they call Voodoo versus Hoodoo, and Hoodoo is all the occult stuff and Voodoo is the actual religion. So it's really fascinating.

I want to write another ARKANE book set in America. I have one already, One Day in New York, but this will be the start of a new spin-off and then the maps book. I'm hoping to have lots of that out this year, and also short stories and… you know how it goes, there's always more to write.

Alan: Oh yes, absolutely.

Do you have a set goal that you try to publish every year?

Joanna: Well, not so much. I mean, last year I only published one novel, “Destroyer of Worlds”. This year I put out “End of Days” in January and then “American Demon Hunter: Sacrifice” and I'll definitely have one… maybe even two more by the end of the year.

I feel like this is a good year for me in terms of writing. So, no, I don't have a set number per year. Because I'm quite a pantser, I don't necessarily say, “Right, I have to have everything done at this time,” and that type of thing. Because I write non-fiction as well.

Alan: Okay. All right. Well, Joanna, I'm not gonna take up too much more of your time, it's been so awesome talking to you.

Before I let you go, is there anything that you would like to tell our listeners?

Joanna: Yeah, sure. So if you would like to try one of my books “Stone of Fire” is a free ebook on all platforms. So you can always check out “Stone of Fire” by J.F. Penn. And also you can get a free book on my website jfpenn.com/free and that's “Day of the Vikings” which opens in the British Museum and is sort of a combination of both of my series, it has characters from both of my series. So that's a pretty fun valet if you like Vikings set in the modern era. Lots of fun.

Alan: All right. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for being on the podcast. It was nice talking to you.

Joanna: Thanks so much, Alan.

Alan: Thanks, bye. Okay…

Exploring The Inevitability of Fate With Crime Thriller Author, Clare Mackintosh

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Exploring the Inevitability of Fate with Clare MackintoshClare Mackintosh’s debut novel, I Let You Go, was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller for 12 weeks, and was the fastest selling title by a new crime writer in the UK in 2015. It also won the Theakston Old Peculier crime novel of the year award for 2016. Translated into more than 30 languages, it has sold over 500,000 copies.

clare-mackintoshClare’s latest book, I SEE YOU, is for sale now.

USA Today bestselling thriller author J.F.Penn interviewed Clare for The Big Thrill. This article first appeared in The Big Thrill on 31 August 2016.

You were in the police for 12 years. How does that experience shape your crime writing?

I loved my police career, particularly the variety. I spent time as a community beat officer, a detective, a custody sergeant, shift sergeant, and operations inspector, including qualifying as a public order commander. I worked in communities I would never otherwise have had experience in, which gives me much more breadth of knowledge for my writing. Working in the police obviously also gives me a head start in terms of building authentic police characters and settings, as well as feeling comfortable writing about police procedure and forensics—although there’s still a lot I have to check.

More than anything, I think that there is a commonality between being a police investigator and being a storyteller. In the police my job was to get to the truth; to write down witness accounts and victims’ statements, to interview suspects, and to present as full a picture as possible to a court. I go through the same process as a writer; I pull together all the different threads of a story, and present them to my readers. It’s their job to get to the truth, just as a judge and jury have to. I Let You Go was inspired by a real-life case—a hit and run in Oxford, England—although the story that unfolds is pure fiction.

You’re British and much of I Let You Go is set in Wales. How did the landscape shape the story ideas?

iletyougoA huge amount. My main character, Jenna Gray, is traumatized by the hit and run that happens at the start of the book. She is grieving for her son and runs to a rural village in Southwest Wales to try and put her life back together. This part of the book is set in a real place called Three Cliffs Bay. It’s the most beautiful sandy beach, encircled by three high cliffs, with a caravan park at the top. Jenna feels safest and happiest when she is outside, anchoring herself with bare feet on sand, or hands against rock, and she builds an income by taking photographs of messages written in the sand. In this way the setting is an integral part of the story, and as Jenna’s past catches up with her the landscape becomes much more threatening.

You’ve had tragedy in your life. What aspects of you are in your characters? How has writing helped you?

[Read more…] about Exploring The Inevitability of Fate With Crime Thriller Author, Clare Mackintosh

London Detectives, Psychometry and Crime Thrillers. Interview On It’s A Mystery Podcast

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Interview with JF PennI was recently interviewed about the London Crime Thriller trilogy on It's a Mystery Podcast with Alexandra Amor. Click here for the full audio interview.

Transcript of Interview with J.F. Penn

Alexandra: Hello mystery readers, I’m Alexandra Amor and this is It’s a Mystery Podcast. I’m here today with J.F. Penn. Hi, Joanna.

Joanna: Hi, Alexandra. Thanks for having me on this show.

its a mysteryAlexandra: Oh, you’re so welcome. It’s so great to have you here. So for the uninitiated, I’ll just tell them a little bit about you.

J. F. Penn is the New York Times and USA today bestselling author of thrillers with a supernatural edge. Oxford educated, British-born J.F. Penn has traveled the world in her study of religion and psychology. She brings these obsessions, as well as a love for thrillers and an interest in the supernatural, to her writing. Her fast-paced ARKANE thrillers weave together historical artifacts, global locations, a kickass, protagonist, and a hint of the supernatural. The London Psychic series, which is what we’re going to talk about today, features British detective Jamie Brooke alongside psychic researcher Blake Daniel as they solve dark crimes around London.

We’re going to talk mostly about the London Psychic series today. I’m a big fan of police procedurals, and so these were the books of yours that I wanted to read the most. I finished “Desecration” a week or so ago.

Tell us a little bit about Jamie Brooke. You know, it was kind of heartbreaking to read Jamie’s story, and I was curious about what drew you to her.

Desecration-Cover-EBOOK-LARGE-360x570Joanna: It’s funny. I wanted to write a straight crime novel. That was what I went into this, because my ARKANE series is kind of action adventure.

I moved to London when I started writing this, I’ve moved from Australia. I was back to London after I think it was 11 years. And I wanted to do something in London, so that was kind of the first thing. I wanted to write a crime novel.

Then, and it’s a bit of a little longer story, but I’ll do it anyway. Back in London, I’m excited about getting to know the city again. And I went to the Royal College of Surgeons, along to a medical specimen museum. And you’ll know from the book, the opening few scenes are set here as a dead body is found in the Royal College of Surgeons surrounded by all the medical specimens. And when I visited that museum, I felt very disturbed by the whole atmosphere, and I decided that this visceral feeling was what I wanted to capture in a crime novel.

I really started with a setting, which is how I often write. What would be the weirdest thing here? It would be a dead body, although it was surrounded by body parts, it would be someone who’s actually been murdered. And then the interesting idea of all those — who are the body parts in the jars anyway? Where did they even come from, and kind of thinking along those lines.

Once I have the setting, I was like, “Okay, so I need a policeman or a policewoman,” and that was when I started thinking about Jamie. I write strong female characters. It was probably always going to be a woman, and I didn’t even know how it happened that she had she had a child. I think because I was thinking about bodies and the idea of the physical self versus the real self, and it’s not a spoiler at all to say that Jamie’s daughter has a very severe illness and is in basically terminal care, because of her genetic issue. So then you think okay, what does a career woman who is now a single mom to a really sort of dying daughter? That sets the scene for all kinds of stuff.

I don’t really know where she came from, except that she rides a motorbike, and I don’t but I would love to. You know she’s kind of a kickass female character is what I always write. So yeah, that’s where she came from. And I don’t have a daughter, dying or not. I don’t really know where that came from, but I think it’s very important for the book, that the daughter is there and there’s a lot of the plot that has to do with the daughter.

Alexandra: How do you think Jamie is different than Morgan Sierra? Because Morgan Sierra is quite kickass too, and one thing I noticed about Jamie is that because of what she’s going through in the book, her walls are really up, and as the book progresses, they go up even further. And she says, in the book, in fact that when people are trying to express sympathy to her at one point that she can’t even let that in.

What are the differences or similarities between Morgan and Jamie?

Joanna: Well, I think partly, I don’t know about other people, but I write as a sort of alter ego, to the main characters, to try and figure out what I think about the world, and things, topics like the meaning of the physical body. I could only tackle that through writing a story about it, and actually thinking.

For me, Morgan Sierra was always more like James Bond, you know, less emotional resonance really. She has a twin sister and niece who she cares about, and a mentor and friends that she cares about, but she has sex in my books. You don’t see it. She has sexual encounters, as in Morgan Sierra is much more separate, I guess, and a sort of action figure.

Whereas Jamie has a real job, she’s more real life, I guess. She’s a single mom. She smokes. She’s got acquaintances, but it’s really hard to find time to have friends when you’ve got a daughter in care and a job as a Detective Sergeant and everything.

There is a very magic element to her relationship with Blake Daniel, but they both are very scarred people, so that’s a longer story over there the three books. I think Jamie is, as you said, much more vulnerable, although yeah, she grows over the books. But I do really do bad things to Jamie. She has really a tough time. It’s a tough role to play.

Alexandra: You mentioned Blake. Let’s talk about him a little bit too. I was really intrigued by that character. And in the author’s note at the end of the book, you talk about the idea that sparked Blake’s talent; he’s a reluctant clairvoyant, and he can touch objects and feel or see a bit of their history.

Tell us a bit about him and what sparked that character.

Joanna: Again I really wanted to write straight crime novel, because everything I’ve written before has a supernatural element. And what was so crazy, you know, I knew I needed a sidekick character, someone for Jamie to spark off. And I just couldn’t get this psychic idea out of my head. And I go to the British Museum a lot and had been visiting a lot, and I’m fascinated by the fact that all the objects in the museum, like If you were a researcher and he could somehow see the past of an object, that would make you a really cool researcher.

And also my sister-in-law is Nigerian, so my brother, who’s white, British like me, married in Nigerian, and so I’ve been thinking about mixed race characters, and wanting to bring the essence of London, which for me, is mixed race. London’s just elected a Muslim mayor, first European Muslim mayor, which is to me, the melting pot of London. So a character like Blake, who’s half-Nigerian and half-Swedish, so it’s a mixed race character, I kind of say he looks like a disheveled boy band. He’s quite hot really.

The idea of a psychic often in fiction, on TV as well as books, is a woman. And it’s mainly portrayed as a woman, and so I wanted a male character as a psychic.The problem is there isn’t really a good word for it, but as you say, clairvoyant, but he really doesn’t want to have this ability to touch things, and he’s kind of jolted into the past. But what it gives me as an author is a chance to write historical chapters without writing a historical novel. So as a plot device, it’s actually really good.

And then what I wanted to do is bring in that what can he see in the past of the object associated with the crime that could give Jamie clues, even though you could never use it in evidence, because the police can’t do that.
I guess he was born from a sort of sense of wanting to include the museum, wanting to think about these objects. And also this antique ivory figurine which is like an anatomical Venus was used to teach anatomy, back in the 16th, 17th century. You could take the little body parts out, the little miniatures. It’s quite weird, really.

Day-of-the-Vikings-Cover-LARGE-EBOOK2-360x570It’s starts with that, but over the books, his ability to read the history of objects plays into the story. In “Day of the Vikings,” which is a novella that spans both series because Morgan Sierra goes to the museum, and meets Blake Daniel. We get the history of the Viking attacks on Britain in a modern thriller.

[The London Detective books] are a trilogy, “Desecration,” “Delirium,” “Deviance”. I had thought I was going to write an ongoing crime series with Jamie. But what happened by the third book is she’s actually left the police. She’s a private investigator. The arc, her arc pretty much winds up, but Blake, I think, will go on to be his own separate thing. And readers have said, “Are you taking Blake north,” because there’s stuff about his father and his history in Scandinavia. I have this whole set of new possible series with Blake, because I find his ability quite addictive myself. It would be something I would love to have, and some people have it.And in fact, I have had psychics email me and say, “How did you know how that felt?” And I was like, “Well, I imagined it a bit like I imagine killing people and stuff like that.” You know, it’s called imagination. But it was great to get that right, because that’s important.

Alexandra: Yes, exactly. That’s fascinating. Nice to have that kind of feedback. And then you anticipated one of my questions. I was going to ask if the books would carry on. It’s fantastic to know that Blake might take the books off in sort of another direction.

I can see that his talent would be such a good fit for you, because you’re such a history buff, and you love research so much.

Joanne: Yeah. And it’s funny because I… I was actually thinking in the day, why don’t I write a historical novel? But I think, for me… Have you ever read any Barbara Erskine?

Alexandra: No.

Lady of HayJoanna: There’s an author called Barbara Erskine, whose book “Lady of Hay” was the first one I read, and I think I read it when I was a teenager, it’s quite you know is quite old now because I’m quite old. But she has this similar time track where she has one story in the present, and one story in the past.

I don’t think I ever want to write pure historical. But as you say, I love having the modern day based on history in some way. And to me, the research process is kind of what I love most or a part of the process is finding out all this cool information and doing that research in, like the three London psychic books. Getting to know London at a different level was part of what made it so interesting.

Alexandra: I learned so much about London that I didn’t know just from reading “Desecration.” So the caves under the city, I mean, I thought you must be making this up. And then when I read the author’s note, no, you weren’t.

I know how much fun research is for you, and now that you don’t live there, do you go back? Or do you do most of it your research online now, do you find?

destroyer of worldsJoanna: Yes, so my latest book, “Destroyer of Worlds” is set in India and we were in India a while back. I’ve been writing other things. For Blake going north into Norway and maybe Iceland, I will plan a trip there. London, I finished the trilogy, so I finish the cycle of those three London books, specifically. Although in “Destroyer of Worlds,” I blow up Trafalgar Square in the first scene. The ARKANE headquarters is in London, so I will always bring London in a bit, but I feel like I’ve exorcised some kind of London addiction that I had with those three books.

The last one, “Deviance,” is about the whole history of London being built on the sex trade, which is just fascinating. How much of it is on the backs of those women who are basically buried in a graveyard that’s unconsecrated, because even though the bishop took the money from these women, they weren’t allowed to be buried in consecrated ground. So these scandals the lie beneath London are so fascinating.

Now, I’ve moved west, so I’m living in the West Country, there’s a real sense of pagan England, out west. I’m quite near Glastonbury, which is a big, kind of weirdy place. It’s quite near Wales, Stonehenge. In fact, the other day, I went to a church service. I took my cousin’s children to church for a thing, and we had this ancient ceremony where we circled the church and hugged the church. And it’s called clypping the church. And I was like, “I have never heard of this before.” This is some kind of ancient pagan ritual that has been incorporated into the Christian service.

Alexandra: Wow.

Joanna: I know, and I was just like, “Okay, that’s going in my list of things to look at.” So I’m actually thinking, and I’ve got another character in mind completely, a man this time, who will somehow investigate pagan mysteries that I’m starting to research. That’s kind of like what I’m looking at next. So I think where I’m living now will spark this whole different series of books. It will have some kind of mystery aspect, a thriller aspect, a supernatural one. This pagan England, which you think should be dead is not dead.

Alexandra: And so speaking of research then, there are a lot of themes in “Desecration” that were quite dark and things that go on that were disturbing. Do you ever have trouble letting go of what you’ve learned or seen?

So for example, you talk about Torture Garden in “Desecration,” which is a real thing, a fetish club. And so when I was preparing for the interview, I went to the Torture Garden website. There’s a big warning on the front page, and so I actually backed away. I thought, I’m a little bit vanilla myself, and I thought… you can’t unsee stuff.

What’s it like for you? Are you ever troubled by what you learn?

Delirium-360x570Joanna: It’s a really good question. And let’s just be clear, Torture Garden is a sex fetish club. It is not actually a place where people are tortured. I just want to make it clear to people. It’s an act of lifestyle choice to be able to go. Let me also say I never went. I did that one online. And also like my tattoo stuff, and the skin trade that goes on in your “Deviance” and the sex trade, I don’t do everything that’s in my books, really important to say.

But yes, so I think the thing that sparked the whole series, this feeling of being disturbed when surrounded by specimens in a museum. That visceral feeling of being disturbed is kind of what I wanted people to feel and then question why. And that’s, I think, the whole point of the book is to say, “Why are we disturbed when there is a body part, say, someone’s leg in a jar?” Because I think most of us know that when you die, your body is not you. Whatever you believe religion-wise, faith-wise or nothing, I don’t think we believe that we are the dead body.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Joanna: The person is not left when the physical body is dead. So why therefore are we disturbed about what people do with the dead body. And I’m a donor, so I’ve basically said, “When I die, take anything you want.”

So why then do we still feel disturbed by babies in jars, for example? And it’s sad in one way, but also, the whole basis of our medical society is based on this type of research of doctors cutting into bodies and learning, so that we can have an operation on a live body.

In terms of forgetting what I’ve seen, I think I almost wanted to try and go so deep into the process that I unlearned the feeling of being disturbed. It’s like, “Okay, now I really understand why the body part is in the jar, how that helps me, how that helps everyone, but also to fathom why we’re disturbed that way.” I use the Bodies Exhibition in New York which are plastinated corpses. Corpse Art, for example, which is a site that’s really weird and kind of disturbing.

But the other thing is, I would say, just generally as a writer, for me, as soon as I’ve written it down. It’s out of my head.

Alexandra: Okay.

Joanna: I’ve interviewed quite a few horror writers. I don’t think “Desecration” is horror. It is crime thriller. There are some aspects of it, as you say, are a bit disturbing, but many crime novels have disturbing aspects, and there’s no torture porn as such.

But when I talk to horror writers who do write a lot more graphic stuff, they’re the nicest people, they really are, and the most psychologically healthy. I actually think that when we exorcise our thoughts onto the page, they disappear. And now I actively choose to visit specimen museums, that I really love all that. Anatomy stuff and anatomical history is just so fascinating. So that’s kind of how I do it. I sleep very well at night, and I am fascinated by the macabre, I guess.

Alexandra: One final question I just wanted to talk about, because these books are police procedurals, and you do mention in the author note at the end of “Desecration,” that book is a little bit light on the whole procedural side, because Jamie actually is removed from the case partway through. But what was it like for you as an author doing research about how the police departments work? I’ve talked to other authors, an author recently, Darryl Donahue, who was a police officer, and so he’s kind of got it made when it comes to writing about that kind of work.

<h3?what research=”” did=”” you=”” do=”” to=”” find=”” out=”” how=”” an=”” investigation=”” takes=”” place?<=”” h3=””>Joanna: Well. So I wouldn’t say that they’re police procedurals. Basically, there is really only one scene that’s kind of a crime scene, and that’s the beginning. I did research that. You can just do your on Google, like how does the police work, and how do they say… warrant card and all this, the type of language.

I also got a policewoman to beta read the books. She told me things link you don’t have enough people in your police team. There would be a lot more people. And I was like, “You know what? I don’t want…” That’s why true police procedurals have a lot more people who are police in them, whereas I wanted a lone detective who’s tackling the world on her own, therefore I almost removed her quite quickly so that she’s not even within the investigation aspect, although she them goes off and investigates on her own.

I didn’t want to necessarily create this whole sort of police force setup, because then it’s often about interrelationships between various police officers, and I wanted her to be a lone figure dealing with a lot of the stuff she had to deal with in the book. So that’s probably why by the end of book two, she is leaving the police. And that would be a spoiler, I see why, but then she is a private detective in the third book.

Deviance-Cover-LARGE-EBOOK-360x570I started off thinking that I was going to write this standard crime police procedural. As an author, you have to be true to what your muse wants, and my muse can’t get away from the supernatural. So essentially, that aspect of Blake’s psychic ability and in book two, “Delirium,” we go much more into his mind and is he mentally ill or is there…? He starts to see demonic things in these other realms and… I really explore his aspect as well.

That’s why I moved away from the idea of a police procedural. Also because it’s not what fundamentally interests me about it. The books are crime thrillers, because essentially, at the end of the day, a crime book is about justice. It’s about some crime happening, and justice being served to the people involved. And that to me is done over the periods of the books. Justice is done, therefore it is a crime book. There was a policewoman, but it’s not really a police procedural.

Alexandra: Right, yeah. And really, that suits Jamie’s character so well, because she seems like such a kind of a lone wolf, very independent, and thoughtful about what she’s doing.

I just think it makes perfect sense that she would eventually leave the police force, really.

Joanna: Yeah, and again, it’s funny, just saying where do the characters come from, both Jamie and Morgan and this new character I’m thinking about, this male character, this lone wolf figure, I think, is just characteristic of my work. My book “Risen Gods,” which was a dark fantasy, kind of a bit different, does have two people, but each of them have their own journey until they meet.

I think that’s just to do with me. I’m not a team player. I haven’t worked in the police. I’ve worked in jobs where I’ve been part of a team, but I think I’m much happier with these lone wolf characters. I really like Jack Reacher. I like that kind of figure. So yeah, maybe that’s why I keep writing them.

Alexandra: I bet it is. Well, this has been fantastic, Joanna. Thank you so much for being with me here today. Why don’t you tell our listeners where they can find your books.

Joanna: Sure. So most of my books are on E-book, print book, audio book, and on all the usual places, or you can go to JFPenn, F for Francis, dot-com, JFPenn.com, and you can get a free E-book, “Day of the Vikings,” if you go to JFPenn.com/free.

Alexandra: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with me here today.

Joanna: Thanks for having me, Alexandra.

Alexandra: Okay. Bye-bye.

Joanna: Bye-bye.

The Context Of Death. Interview With Alex Dolan, Author Of The Euthanist

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the context of deathSome book titles are designed to appeal to certain types of people.

I saw The Euthanist by Alex Dolan and bought it immediately! It's definitely my type of book, and in this interview, I ask author Alex Dolan about some of the controversial topics that underlie the story.

Tell us how you got into writing.

My father worked for Houghton Mifflin, so I grew up around books and I’ve written since I was young. My dad typeset and bound my first story when I was six. It was called The Jewel, and essentially an Indiana Jones rip-off.

Part of why I like to write is because I like to read. And I’ll read anyone. Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume remains one of my favorite books because of the imagination he poured into it. My literary crush is Joyce Carol Oates. Michael Faber intrigues me these days because he seems to tackle a different genre with every new title, and he nails it—sort of like a literary Ang Lee.

So, I try to read as much as possible, and every time I read a fresh voice, it inspires me to keep writing, to see if I can add something to the conversation.

Why did you decide to tackle the topic head-on by titling the book The Euthanist?

I’d always had an academic interest in the death with dignity movement, but when my father passed away a few years ago, I started to seriously consider end-of-life decisions, and how much power we all have over those decisions. That’s what made me dig a little deeper into the subject.

Once I started researching it, I was fascinated, and the story evolved from there. I knew going into it that I was writing about delicate subject matter, and I thought it made sense to be clear from the title what the book would be about. Either this is going to interest someone or not, and I wanted a title that let readers know what they were getting themselves into.

dignity in dyingI support the charity Dignity in Dying and I campaign for the right of terminally ill but mentally sound patients to choose their own means of death, in their own homes, with their loved ones. I believe sick and dying animals are treated better than sick and dying humans – so I am your target audience!

[For a powerful argument on this topic, check out fantasy author Terry Pratchett's book, Shaking Hands with Death. Terry died of early onset Alzheimer's in March 2015 and was a passionate campaigner for the right to choose his own death.]

How do your own opinions and feelings on euthanasia come out in the book?

I think people should have more choice in end-of-life decisions.

That being said, I don’t preach either side of the argument in the book. It can be a divisive issue, and I try to respect others’ opinions. We’re at an interesting time in this country, where 27 states are currently debating death with dignity legislation, and yet the media seems to avoid covering the issue. I think we should have a very public discussion about it, and my hope is that the book might help ignite that discussion.

My readers love strong female characters and Kali is definitely strong. What parts of you are in her character?

Thank you! There’s not much of me in Kali. She’s largely based on a collection of people I interviewed, which included paramedics, EMTs and firefighters, as well as some personal friends who shared similar characteristics. I wanted to create someone physically formidable, strong-willed and courageous, and my research fed into a composite that became Kali.

How did your research for the book and what kinds of reaction did you get along the way?

Whenever I can, I try to interview people face to face, or at least by telephone. There’s so much I can draw out of a real person that I can’t get from a secondary source. Given how sensitive this material is, I forced myself to limit these kinds of interviews. As I mentioned, I interviewed a number of paramedics, EMTs and firefighters, but I avoided speaking with anyone directly involved in the death with dignity movement, because I didn’t want anyone to feel like they were getting themselves into legal jeopardy by talking to me.

euthanistAlso, I didn’t want anyone who was considering their own end-of-life decisions to feel like I was exploiting their illnesses for the sake of the book. So where it felt inappropriate to talk to people in person, I relied on secondary sources.

One of themes of the book for me was a consideration about what murder really is and who is a murderer.

Can we define murder based on who is killed and what the motive is? How did you consider and explore that theme in the book?

It’s a good question, and one that I asked myself quite a bit while I was writing this. I leave it an unresolved question in the book, because it’s such a gray area.

One of the aspects of death with dignity that compelled me was that the drugs used in mercy killing are often the same drugs used in capital punishment, which means two people can be killed in the same way and have it considered both compassionate and punitive, depending on the scenario.

The context of death is important.

But the definition of murder can also come down to personal values and biases. If you kill someone in self-defense, you can still think of yourself as a murderer depending on your own morality.

When I was researching the book, a few of the paramedics repeated a saying, “No one dies in an ambulance,” which stems from a law that you need an MD to call a time of death. So there’s some gray area around the difference between biological death and legal death. And if it’s that hard to come up with a tight definition of death, it’s that much harder to come up with a universal definition of murder.

What's next for you?

The next book is another literary thriller set in the art world, where a mysterious painting surfaces and sparks a blood feud between a rich and poor family. It was inspired by the real world relationship between a German painter named Rudolph Bauer and his primary benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim.

alex dolanWhere can people find you and the book online?

You can find The Euthanist on Amazon here.

http://www.alexdolan.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24514903-the-euthanist

https://twitter.com/alexdolan

https://www.facebook.com/alexdolan4

Traveling For Research, Love Of Snow And Writing Thrillers With Tom Harper

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love of snowI interviewed fantastic thriller author Tom Harper for The Big Thrill magazine. There's a transcript below and you can also watch the video below or on YouTube.

Tom Harper is the international bestselling author of 11 historical thrillers, including his latest, Zodiac Station, which is published in paperback in the US in May 2015.

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing

Tom HarperIt's something I'd always wanted to do. I remember being eight years old and telling my teacher that I wanted to be an author when I grew up. By the time I finished university, I hadn't shaken that idea and I knew it's what I wanted to do. I also knew that it was incredibly unlikely.

So I went to work for an actuarial consultancy for a while, which was a really boring job, but at an interesting company. Then I decided to have a crack at writing seriously. I saw an advert for a crime writing competition, the Debut Dagger Competition, run by the Crime Writers' Association in the UK. It was one of those moments that changed my life.

It was just an advert in the Sunday Times one weekend. If I hadn't bought the paper or if I'd not read that section, or it had gone into the recycling, I shudder to think how my life would be different. They wanted a first chapter and synopsis of a crime novel, and the deadline was several weeks away. I sent mine off to the competition, trying to think no more of it, but it turned out that I had come runner-up, which was amazing and then I started getting contacted by the judges who were editors and agents.

I took a sabbatical from work and blasted out that book as fast as I possibly could, signing up with an agent who judged the competition. She was able to sell the book very quickly once I'd actually finished it. So it was all very fast and it's one of the real good luck stories in publishing.

Zodiac StationTell us a bit about Zodiac Station and who might enjoy the story.

All my other books have had some kind of an historical angle to them but Zodiac Station is a bit different. It’s a contemporary thriller set in the Arctic on the fictional island of Utgard. If you go to Svalbard and then up and right a bit, that's where it would be if it existed. It’s a completely deserted island in the high Arctic and the only population there is a research base with a dozen scientists in it.

It’s the story of a guy in his early 30s who has had a scientific career, and then lost it in a scandal. He gets a second chance when his old PhD supervisor calls him up and invites him to Zodiac Station. He goes up there, and the day he arrives, his PhD supervisor has gone missing and is subsequently discovered dead at the bottom of a crevasse. So it's his story of trying to discover what happened to his PhD supervisor because the top brass at the base want to explain it away as an accident. Of course, there's a bit more to it than that.

There's a whole genre of Arctic thrillers actually. There are people, and I'm one of them, who just love ice and snow and cold and these really wild places.

There is a line in Zodiac Station: ”For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of the north.” It’s in the voice of your main character but how much of that is from you?

That is exactly from me. It’s straight from the heart, because as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved snow. I love ice, I love winter. I think it's because these places are so otherworldly. It's as far as you can get off the planet while still being on the planet, if that makes sense. As a writer, I think you're naturally drawn to these places. For me, the joy of writing and reading these sort of books is being taken away from normal life. And I'd say the Arctic is about as far from normal life as you can get while still remaining on planet Earth.

Tell us about the research for the book. You went to the ice, didn’t you?

For every book, I visit the places I'm writing about. I find it very difficult to write about a place I haven't been to. So obviously when I started doing Zodiac Station, I knew I was going to have to go and visit the Arctic, which was absolutely fine with me!

I went to Svalbard, which is an archipelago belonging to Norway. It’s about 800km north of continental Norway and on the same latitude as northern Greenland. It's about as close as you can get to the North Pole without actually having to put on skis. It's this amazing set of islands with a land mass that's the area of Ireland but with very few people. I think their slogan is, 2,500 people, 3,000 polar bears. There's one main town there, originally a coal mining town, and now turning to tourism.

I based myself there and took various snowmobile and snowshoeing trips, going up glaciers. I went into a glacier cave which was incredible. You're on your belly with a tiny space between your back and the roof. And the roof is 30 meters of solid ice except a glacier is not actually solid, it's more like a river of ice and is always moving. I was hoping not to be under it when it started to move. That was pretty cool.

We went on these long snowmobile drives across sea ice, and we got lost in a white out once, which was pretty scary. You cannot even see your hand in front of your face. It's just cloud, and snow, and more snow, and ice. All those experiences went straight into the book.

What are the other thrilling and exciting things you've done for research for your books?

It's one of these paradoxical things, that in order to write a thrilling book, you have to lead a very un-thrilling life most of the time. But in between, there are these bits that are just brilliant and thrilling.

The next book, Black River, which comes out in the U.K. in September, is about a group of treasure hunters going up an uncharted tributary of the Amazon looking for a lost city. And so obviously I had to go up the Amazon! I was looking for these petroglyphs, rock carvings that are on this ginormous lump of rock in the middle of the Peruvian jungle.

No one knows who put them there or what they mean, and it takes about four days just to get there. You're wading through swamps and portaging your boat up the river, and cutting your path through the jungle and stuff. It's just incredible. It was one of those moments where every so often you just had to stop and look around and think, “Yes, I am really doing this. This is me and I'm here.”

Certainly for me, the excitement of being a writer comes from finding out new stuff. Some of that's historical, but a lot of it is geographical and new places, the cultures and the people, the landscapes. I find it incredibly exciting to learn that stuff, and it's that excitement that I'm trying to put into the book. If it's exciting for me, then it's going to be exciting for the reader. And that's really what fires me up.

I wonder if you ever get the experience of synchronicity, as I often do in research. When you think you’re writing fiction and then you discover there’s something real behind it. A coincidence of research, perhaps.

Yes, it does happen. In fact, it happened on the Peru book. I’d read a lot of stuff about different expeditions into various jungles and researched the huge area of the Amazon which is many billions of square miles of forest covering 11 countries or something. I couldn’t decide where my lost city was going to be. So eventually I had to get a big map of South America. I plotted where all the different expeditions that I'd read about had gone. Then I thought about what my lost city would have to be like.

The real lowland, central Brazilian rainforest is out because there weren't any particularly advanced civilizations there that we know of. It would have to be built out of stone because obviously it's got to survive. That means that you basically have to put it up against the Andes, and it's going to be some kind of Inca or proto-Inca civilization. Almost the moment I made those decisions, I discovered that there is indeed a legend of a particular lost city called Paititi, which I'd never ever heard of before, which is supposed to be in exactly the place that I'd decided it should be. Amazing!

You've written widely in the conspiracy and historical thriller genre. What are the themes that keep coming up over and over again in your work?

Travel is in most of my books. Zodiac Station is quite unusual in that it's quite claustrophobic. It all takes place on this one island and you can't get on or off. It’s almost a locked room mystery in that respect. All my other books have a chase element where people move quickly from place to place, often internationally. I like moving. I like keeping things in motion. I have a restless imagination.

Another thing that I realized after I'd written about eight or nine books, was that a lot of the people I write about are involved in the quest for perfection. It's about the gap between what they're trying to achieve and what they actually achieve.

So I wrote about the emperor Constantine, who was trying to achieve this perfect empire. I wrote about Johannes Gutenberg, who was trying to create the perfect book that can be replicated perfectly without any scribes messing it up and making mistakes.

As a writer, when you start writing a book, you have this vision in your head about how perfect this book is going to be. As you write it, it's a series of compromises, and inevitably it’s never quite as good as that initial, pure dream you had. But you do the best you can and then you try again. You try to make it more perfect the next time. And I think a lot of the people that I write about are doing the same thing in their different fields.

You’ve lived in a number of places around the world, but now you’re based in York in England. What is so awesome about York from a historian and thriller writer’s perspective?

It is an amazing town going back to Roman times. It's still got its city walls intact, surrounding almost the entire city, built on the foundation of the Roman walls. There’s a beautiful city center that's a mix of medieval, Georgian, Victorian, and more recent architecture. Then there’s this incredible 15th century Minster, a huge gothic cathedral right in the center of town. York is quite a small town and then you've got this massive cathedral in it. The first time I saw it, it was like an alien spaceship that landed in the middle of the square. You saw it almost as the medieval people must have seen it, as this very otherworldly thing that is just beyond scale or comprehension.

You can tour the Undercroft, which is basically a basement. The 15th-century church stands on top of the Norman church, which in turn stands on top of a Saxon church, which in turn stands on top of the headquarters of the original Roman fortress. And you can see the different layers of stone, one built on top of the other, as you go down.

To me, that's just like this beautiful, perfect metaphor for history itself. It’s not that one era finishes and then you're done with it and then you move on. Everything is actually built on top of the last, seamlessly integrating. It’s also a great metaphor for York, because everything is built on the past. You can do a 360 degree turn on a York street, and you can see buildings built in every century from the 1500s through to the 21st Century. And all still are in use. That's what's amazing.

Moving away from the serious topics now. You made a very cool Lego trailer for Zodiac Station. Tell us about that.

It was just too much fun not to do! I love film, I love movies. Like most writers, I would love to see my books turned into films. I had a really vivid, visual idea of how Zodiac Station would look as a film. And of course, I would've loved to do a full-on cinematic trailer for the book. But unfortunately, that would involve helicopters, and ships, and being in the Arctic and probably would cost millions of pounds.

I've got two boys, who are 7 and 4, so I'm quite up on what's happening in the world of Lego. The story opens with a coast guard icebreaker battering through the sea, and last year Lego released a coast guard ship set which my son wanted for Christmas. Then six months later, they released a whole set of Arctic Lego.

So I bought a couple of those sets and re-purposed them slightly. I've got this friend who works for a big visual effects company in London. So he came up, and between us, we built these models and animated them and made a film. It was just an absolute blast.

Who are the authors that you read for pleasure, whether in the thriller genre or more widely?

I'm a big fan of John le Carré as a classic in spy thriller. I love his ‘Smiley' books. He tells you very little, and has these really obscure and oblique scenes. You really have no idea what's going on and yet, you're completely hooked and you have to know what happens next.

Neal Stephenson is really interesting. He started out as a science fiction writer, and then he turned to historical fiction. He did a big book called Cryptonomicon, and then an even bigger trilogy called “The Baroque Cycle,” set in the 17th century. He writes historical fiction unlike anyone else I know. Coming from a science fiction background, he's just got this really anarchic, freewheeling, swashbuckling way of writing about history. He’s writing about the very early roots of computing and some of the really interesting stuff that was going on in the 17th century with Isaac Newton and Leibniz. It's just got this tremendous energy about it. So I love Neal Stephenson.

I love Dan Simmons on the Arctic theme. He wrote a book called The Terror, which reimagines the last days of the Sir John Franklin expedition where they get stuck in the ice for two-and-a-half years and were never seen again. I thought that was an amazing book.

Robert Harris. l like both his contemporary thrillers and the historical stuff he's done, particularly with Cicero. And in the more contemporary vein, I like Chris Ewan, who writes these really nicely put together, beautifully written thrillers that I just can't get enough of.

So where can people find you and your books online?

The books are available at all the usual places online. My website is Tom-Harper.co.uk and I’m on Facebook/TomHarperAuthor and Twitter/TomHarperAuthor.

Joanna: Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time, Tom. That was great.

Tom: Thank you, Joanna.

The Writing Life: Research, Ideas, Genre And My Writing Process

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I recently did a wide-ranging and fun interview on the Genretainment podcast with Marx Pyle and Julie Seaton.

The writing lifeWe talked about how I got into writing and why I write supernatural thrillers, the challenges when first starting out, the details of my writing life and how I get ideas and research books.

You can listen to the interview on this page or download the audio mp3 here. Or you can read the transcript below. [Read more…] about The Writing Life: Research, Ideas, Genre And My Writing Process

Thriller Author Interviews: Boyd Morrison, Author Of The Roswell Conspiracy

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I'm a huge reader and love to devour action-adventure novels as well as lots of books in other genres (you can check out my Goodreads reviews here).

Boyd MorrisonI also love to talk to authors about their writing process and what inspires them so I'll be sharing more interviews with authors I enjoy, so you can discover them too.

Boyd Morrison is the author of the Tyler Locke action adventure thrillers as well as two stand-alone novels. His latest book, The Roswell Conspiracy, is out now. Boyd is also a professional actor and a Jeopardy Champion. The video interview is embedded below or you can watch on YouTube here.

boyd morrisonIn the video, you will learn:

  • How Boyd became an author. He is an engineer by training and made a pact with his wife. He would support her through 9 years of medical training and when she was a full-time doctor, he would get the same number of years to pursue writing. It took him about 4.5 years to become a published author.
  • How much of Boyd is in Tyler Locke, his hero? Boyd was an engineer and they're about the same height but otherwise Tyler is quite different. Boyd wanted to make an engineering hero in the same way that Indiana Jones made archaeology cool. It's not just nerdy Dilbert types, but a lot of adventurous people e.g. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Boyd also comes from a family of engineers and he recently realized that Tyler Locke is based on his own father, who died when he was young. He was in the army and went to MIT and had that kind of adventurous spirit.
  • Traveling is a love of Boyd's and he has traveled for research. In Roswell, there is a chase on the jetboats in Queenstown which we have both done. As a writer, you're always looking for new things to incorporate in the writing. It's partly an excuse to go do research e.g. driving fast on the autobahn in Germany. We also talk about writing about places we haven't actually been, using Google maps and YouTube as well as other online resources. On writing fight scenes, based on movie knowledge and workshops, like the ones from Thrillerfest. Raising the stakes is more important than the detail of the fight e.g. if he doesn't land this blow, the bad guy will shoot the girlfriend etc.
  • roswell conspiracyWe also talk about scuba diving as we're both huge fans. Boyd recommends the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, as well as St Lucia in the Caribbean. I mention Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia which is less visited than the Barrier Reef and spectacular. We talk about organizing a thriller writer's scuba diving trip, and inviting James Rollins and Clive Cussler amongst others. It would be a lot of fun!

You can buy The Roswell Conspiracy on Amazon and at other bookstores.

You can find Boyd at BoydMorrison.com and on twitter @boydmorrison