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london psychic

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

June 22, 2016 By J.F. Penn

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.

Filed Under: Interviews with Thriller Authors Tagged With: author interviews, london psychic, podcast

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

September 16, 2015 By J.F. Penn

tattoos and londonIf 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.

smalldevianceStephen: 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

octopus
The picture that inspired O's tattoo. Man with Octopus Tattoo II by Richard Learoyd

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
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.

crow
Crow. Flickr CC Hartwig HKD

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.

the shard
The Shard behind the Tower of London. Ancient and modern city.

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.

ARKANE Books x 7Stephen: 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

Sagrada Familia in Barcelona
Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

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.

pastrixWhat'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?

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

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

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Start reading online

Click here to start reading Chapter 1 of Deviance.

 

Filed Under: Book Research Tagged With: deviance, london psychic

How Does The Physical Body Define Us In Life … And In Death? My Research For Desecration, London Psychic Book 1

August 13, 2014 By J.F. Penn

DesecrationIn this video, I go through some of my research for Desecration, London Psychic Book 1. You can also see it in slideshow format at the bottom of the article.

Death isn’t always the end.

Desecration3DResearch and Inspiration behind Desecration, London Psychic Book 1 by J.F.Penn

The idea for Desecration came from a visit to the Hunterian Museum in London, where anatomical specimens line the walls. It made me wonder about how the physical body defines us in life … and in death.

Jamie Brooke is a British police detective who struggles against the rules and yet remains passionate about bringing justice to the dead. Jamie’s escape into tango comes from my own obsession with this ‘vertical expression of a horizontal desire.’

Blake DanielBlake Daniel, the reluctant psychic who helps Jamie on the case, works at the British Museum as a researcher. My writing always has an edge of the supernatural …

The anatomical Venus figures, like the one found at the crime scene, were popular teaching devices as well as pieces of art.

Teratology is the study of ‘monsters,’ abnormalities in physiological development, often caused by genetic or environmental factors. The Victorian ‘freak shows’ were made up of people born misshapen and the medical museums are full of their remains. But what if they were created deliberately?

The Bodies exhibition in New York gave me the idea for Rowan Day-Conti and his macabre corpse art sculptures. Researching that alternative world led me to body modification and the Torture Garden nightclub. It’s fascinating to see how people use the body as a canvas to define themselves.

This tattoo was the inspiration for the exotic dancer, ‘O.’ Seen at the National Gallery, London, Seduced by Art Photography exhibition.
Richard Learoyd's Man with Octopus Tattoo II, 2011

A visit to the Hellfire Caves of West Wycombe, rife with rumours of Satanic ritual and sexual depravity, inspired some of the climactic scenes.

Desecration is available in ebook, print and audiobook formats. More images at pinterest.com/jfpenn/desecration/

Sample or Buy Now in Print or Ebook formats

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Desecration research from J.F. Penn

 

Filed Under: Book Research Tagged With: desecration, london psychic, research

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