Actually there are two latest books: Staying Power, the hardback from Hodder, is the second in the new Kate Power series. Like all my other novels, it's set in Birmingham, and the house that Kate lives in is actually my house. It's probably the grimmest I've written - fraud and domestic violence, set against a background of sexism and racism in the police. A laugh a minute. Seriously, I think it's my best so far. Sometimes I get so carried away with my characters, Sophie Rivers especially, that I can neglect the plot. Not in this one. I've really tried to make it as tight as possible, without, I hope, neglecting characterisation. The second book is the paperback of Dying to Score, the latest of Sophie Rivers' adventures (also set in Birmingham), in which she witnesses a particularly unpleasant murder, and falls in love with the prime suspect, a top flight cricketer. Alas, this part is all too plainly fiction - when did England last produce a batsman capable of scoring a century before lunch?
Who's your literary muse?
Where do I start? When I was a child, I was very sickly. I didn't go to school till I was ten, so you can imagine how lonely and isolated I was. But there were always books at home, and the library was a constant oasis. In those days, remember, you weren't allowed to borrow fiction without borrowing non-fiction. (And, my God, you were silent while you were choosing it!) There was a big hoo-ha when I wanted to read adult books when in theory I was too young. But I'd already read everything, fiction and non-fiction, in the junior section. God knows how racist and sexist some of the stuff was - Arthur Ransome, and so on. In the Adult Section I got on to the great classics of crime fiction. (I gather this still happens today: there's a great up-take of Agatha Christie by teenagers whose parents are happy that there's no sex or violence. OK, racism, sexism - but no sex or violence...) What they make of the class attitudes, I don't know. I was horrified when I re-read a wonderful Ngaio Marsh the other day - how could she be so snobbish? I also fell in love with all Georgette Heyer's handsome heroes at about that time: I wasn't keen on Heyer's crime fiction but loved (still love) the historical fiction - pace, characterisation, humour. But there was more "literary" stuff as well: Richardson, Fielding, Austen, Eliot, Hardy, James, Lawrence... And I ended up reading English at university, though I'd say that was one of the worst mistakes I ever made. It gave me fifteen years of writer's block. Yes, honestly.
When I was still in my teens, you see, I had started to get published. I won, among other things, the Critical Quarterly short story prize. So I must have been quite good. I even had an agent approach me, though it was thirty years before I gave his agency a novel that was publishable Thank you, Murray Pollinger, for being so patient and so loyal to me. But I lost it completely when I was an undergraduate. Since my style was by then heavily influenced by the late Henry James novels, perhaps it's fortunate.
So, a ragbag of influences in the past. But a major one more recently. Sarah Paretsky. What magic. A tough investigator with a private life, inner-city poverty - yes! I wanted to write like Sarah Paretsky. I wish I could say I'd managed it
Do you recycle?
I'm a strong believer in recycling. Not just bottles and paper, but ideas. Sophie Rivers' cousin Andy, the pop star who featured in Dying for Millions, originally appeared in the first novel I tried after my return to writing after fifteen years in the wilderness. The second unpublished novel? Well, as it happens, I've just re-hashed it with great affection as a romantic novel - watch this space. The third - well, I didn't have the skills to do the ideas justice then, and I'm not sure I have them yet. But in another ten years, who knows, I might tear it apart and start again.
Editors: love or horror stories?
The first editor I worked with was Kate Callaghan, who in those days was with Piatkus and is now freelance. She was delightful and supportive, as are the editors I work with now, Andi Sisodia at Headline and Carolyn Mays at Hodder and Stoughton. And there's my writing mainstay, my agent Sara Menguc, who cared for me while she was with Murray Pollinger, took me to David Higham, and is now flying solo. Is it because they're women they can make improvements to your work while letting you think it's all your doing? Thank you, all of you. I had only two really bad experiences with publisher. One wanted me to erase all racist remarks I'd put in police officers' mouths (although Sophie had pointed out they should be ashamed of themselves) and make all my villains white; another publisher wanted me to ditch Sophie Rivers and start a series set in the retail trade. A sort of Are you being badly served?, I suppose.
Are you happy with the way your books are sold?
I wish someone would go to town on packaging and selling me! Give me the advertising hoardings, dump bins, the tours of the States! Would I moan? Would any mid-lister? My one big gripe about publishing seems to be shared by most of the writers I know: that a very few have huge budgets thrown at them, while the rest of us languish with overworked publicity teams with no money. I heard of a new writer recently whose publisher had allocated a £30,000 marketing budget. Most of the rest of us seem to have £30 between us. And the huge advances some authors get must mean there's less in the pot for the rest of us...
Seriously, we'd all like to be independent artists, writing what we want and getting appreciated for it. Perhaps literary novelists manage it. Perhaps they don't have deadlines to meet... Perhaps they've got private incomes..
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My work, I'm afraid, is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. So the first part is getting the inspiration.
As a creative writing teacher I do exercises with my students to help them develop that strange part of the brain that throws up ideas. I encourage them to day-dream, to play around with situations and characters. So that's what I do myself. I used to find mowing the lawn a good time for getting ideas from nowhere. Now I have no lawn, I do various relaxation and visualisation exercises, and encourage my mind to drift in that strange time between sleeping and waking. I've got whole short stories and indeed a whole novel that way. (Keep a notebook and pencil handy - it breaks the flow if you have to get up and go into the office to find one.)
Then comes the perspiration. How do I work? I work hard. When you are writing two books a year, you work hard. After all, it isn't just writing the things, it's line editing and proof-editing and marketing for one, while you're researching for the next.
I work roughly office hours, starting soon after nine. Lunch at one. Start again about two. Maybe a break to go to the shops at about three. Stop to prepare supper for me and my partner about 6.00. Probably another hour or so after that. Weekends I reserve, if I can, for writing short stories, ideas for which still pop up, and which can be pleasantly lucrative.
To survive as a writer you have to have other jobs. I'm the Secretary of the Crime Writers' Association; I teach part-time for Birmingham University; I lead workshops for writers' groups; I do library readings. All of these are enjoyable and rewarding, and even if I could afford to give them up, I probably wouldn't. But sometimes it's hard to remember that the real job is getting words on the page. The trouble is, I don't get time to do the things I ought to do. Clearly I'm not in an ivory tower (unlike a major literary figure, I certainly don't have to keep in touch with the human race by sitting on the Arts Council literature panel); but I don't have the time or energy to lead what I'd call a fully rounded life. I don't have the Guardian every day, and most weekends I don't bother with a Sunday paper. Thank goodness for Radio Four and Today. I hardly watch TV. I manage an occasional theatre, an occasional gallery. Music has always been one of my major passions. I'm on the committee of Birmingham Chamber Music Society and I'm a trustee of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's Benevolent Fund, so I try to go to as many concerts as I can. Not enough. I've also got a mound of CDs. Unfortunately I have to work in silence - sorry if that sounds affected: I can work anywhere and everywhere so long as I've got silence - so I hardly ever listen to them. Reading? Well, I'm never without at least three books beside the bed, but I simply can't read everything I want - not to mention everything I ought. I do feel I ought to know the work of my fellow CWA committee members, and the other leading lights in crime writing. But what about all the non-crime I want to read? And the classics I've forgotten... And that's just fiction. What about all that vital non-fiction?
How would you feel about being censored?
I've got a horribly sore bum from sitting on the fence where censorship is concerned. Seriously, I get totally enraged if another person tells me what I can read or watch. Or what I can write. But I still have this nasty paternalist feeling that there are vulnerable people who should be protected from extremes of sexual or violent behaviour in books or on film. I am seriously unhappy with sex mixed with violence. My Baptist background reasserting itself, perhaps. Personally, I wouldn't want some sicko wanking himself off while reading one of my books. I treated the issue of paedophilia very carefully in Power on Her Own for precisely that reason. I'm more interested in the effects violence has on people than on the violence itself. Perhaps it's that, having been attacked myself, and not having found it a pleasant experience, I don't want to write about it purely to amuse people. But if it educates people, that's a different matter, and if you can write about it well, fine. The same applies to sex - except crime writers aren't really in the business of writing erotic literature, are they?
So if you've got no sex, no violence, what is the principal appeal of the kind of fiction you write?
I have both, but they're neither prominent nor gratuitous. I like to think that both Sophie Rivers and Kate Power are both women you can identify with. Both get thrust into the sort of situation that any of us might have to deal with. OK, Sophie's incorrigibly nosy and Kate incorrigibly conscientious, but both have homes to run, clothes to wash and collect from the cleaners and relationships with other people to worry about. I suppose I see my average reader as a Guardian reader, feet up on the sofa on a Friday night, a glass of red wine to hand. But I'm happy if they read some other paper and prefer white...
Why does Birmingham get your creative juices flowing?
Because it has to. When I started to write, I was working full-time, I had a big house and big garden to run, and I had a child. I simply didn't have time to swan off somewhere else to research for what was in those days "only a hobby" - my ex's term. And why not write about Brum? Hardly anyone else does. And these days it's becoming more like a city by the hour. I've also started to set work in the Black Country, where I was born, because I'm fascinated by it - all those fiercely independent villages packed together. The downside of all this is you don't get coverage by the nationals, and it could well be the accent that's deterred any radio or TV adaptations. (I'll be the dialect coach, honest!)
What can you tell me about your next book? Or should it be books?
Yes, I've two in the pipeline. I'm currently working on the third Kate Power novel, Power Games, in which Kate will have to pick her way through extensive corruption to find why a woman was murdered after a game of tennis. The next Sophie Rivers novel appears next May, Dying by Degrees. Sophie's on unpaid sabbatical from William Murdock College, studying for an MEd at the University of the West Midlands. But she isn't enjoying herself. Is it because it's so long since she tried to study? Because she's lost her touch teaching? Or because her tutor's not very supportive? All three, plus the fact she's missing her new boyfriend Mike, who's trying to stop England losing yet another Ashes series. He fails, of course, but she manages to uncover a neat little scam loosely based on one actually carried out some years ago at a college in ... No, I don't want to get sued.
Any advice to a would-be writer?
Do it! Join a good class or a supportive circle. And write. Writing's what gets me up in the morning, what kept me going through difficult personal times, what drives me for the future. There is no more wonderful thing than to open a new book and inhale. And imagine, if that new book is yours...
Titles
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