Stuck in the genre with you

I know this blog’s called Murderous Musings and I’m also aware that sometimes my own musings here aren’t very murderous. But that’s because (like many of my colleagues, I suspect), the genre thing sometimes feels restrictive. At the same time, I know full well that publishers (and probably readers) prefer us to stay within the genre they associate with us.

When my historical novel, The Figurehead, was published, it was well received but, as well as being crime-based, it flirted with the romance genre, and some readers and reviewers commented on the fact. In a different way, The Sparrow Conundrum was also a departure, being a satirical novel on the spy genre which was all black humour and near-farcical situations. It’s crime-related but my main aim in writing it was to make readers laugh.

I’ve been told I should think of using a pseudonym but if that’s the case there’d be three of me already – the police procedural guy, the historical guy, and the funny man.

On the other hand, if a reader spends $X or £X on a book of mine because he/she enjoyed a previous one, I’ll be disappointing them if it’s totally different. But on the other other hand, should writers be condemned to keep on producing the same book over and over?

My plan is to write just one more in my procedural series, featuring Jack Carston. So far there are five books and he’s been changing through them. I anticipate that the final one will actually end with him leaving the police force. I had no overall plan when I wrote the first, but as the books appeared, I began to sense the bleakness accumulating underneath the killings and suspected that an empathetic person (such as Carston) might be seriously affected by having to deal with constant examples of man’s inhumanity to man (and especially woman). Carston’s at the stage where the satisfactions of solving mysteries are being outweighed by the cruelties he’s witnessed.

I’m not suggesting that I’ll stop writing crime altogether. The sequel to The Figurehead is well advanced, and the romance element is even stronger, but it’s still about a crime. And I’ve already sketched out some scenes for the sequel to The Sparrow Conundrum because that’ll be great fun to write.

And this posting sums up two opposing functions of blogging. Here, I’ve expressed my misgivings about being stuck in a genre but I’ve also warned readers what to expect by spelling out what each new title will deliver. At the same time I’ve, perhaps foolishly, articulated in public my plans for future books. Whenever that happens, the written word becomes a fixed, irretrievable truth. Which means I seem to have committed myself to writing the damn things.

On the other hand (again), I could have a Damascene moment and leap to an entirely different genre – something like ‘The Wordless Novel’. I could manage that.

My Writing Process

by Bill Kirton

Whenever I’m asked questions about my writing, I always seem to find out something new for myself. Here are my answers to some questions I was asked by a blogger friend.

What am I working on?
This is embarrassing because I’ve been working on it for such a long time. It’s the sequel to my novel The Figurehead. That was set in Aberdeen in 1841 and featured John Grant, a figurehead carver, and Helen Anderson, the daughter of a shipowner. It was a crime novel (because that’s what I’m supposed to write) but the chemistry between John and Helen turned it into a romance, too. The romance aspect was left unresolved and I knew I wanted to spend more time with those two characters. There was also the pleasure of stepping back once again into 19^th century Aberdeen and its ways.

I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to get into the sequel. I knew I wanted it to feature a theatre company performing melodramas and that it would see Helen becoming involved in her father’s business. I also knew there’d have to be a crime (see above brackets) but, since John and Helen had ended the previous book with what I described as ‘a lover’s kiss’, I had to work out what they’d been doing in the year that had passed since then. This, remember, was early Victorian Scotland so their options were limited.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?
The bulk of my output has been contemporary crime, which is a very crowded field. It comes under the police procedural tag and I started writing it because a publisher liked a stand-alone thriller I’d written but would have preferred a police procedural, so I wrote one. There are now five in the series, all featuring DCI Jack Carston who’s happily married and doesn’t have any particular hang-ups. drink problems or other character-defining flaws, so I suppose that’s one difference. More than that, though, he believes in justice rather than the law and is aware of the gaps between them. His (and my) interest is in people and their motives rather than the deeds they perpetrate so, while the books are whodunits, they’re also whydunnits.

I try to get as much humour as possible into the stories but that’s not unusual. But there’s one thing which I think is: I have a tendency to add a coda to each book which suggests that, although the crime has been solved and the loose ends have been tied up, there’s still something going on which shows that evil persists. I like to leave the reader with the satisfaction of a good story where justice has been done but a little niggle to undermine their idea that ‘all’s right with the world’.

Finally, very few of the deaths are caused by murderers.

Why do I write what I do?
Crime offers a ready-made structure. To tell any story about crime you need characters, motives, notions of good and evil and by seeing how different characters respond to temptations, frustrations, provocations and the rest, we come to understand better our own attitudes. In the end, I write because I enjoy it so much.

How does my writing process work?
If you’ve read my answer to the first question, you’ll probably be thinking ‘well, it obviously doesn’t’, but I’m always writing something. Ideas come from everywhere – newspaper items, scenes you see in the street, some dialogue you overhear, a photograph, anything and everything – and they’re either compelling in themselves or two or more of them fuse to set up something which needs to be resolved. Then, once I’ve let the implications stew for a bit, I start writing about them, characters appear and, basically, take over. Thereafter, I sit and watch and listen to them and write it all down. When I’m really into a novel, I want to be writing it all the time and I sometimes lose track of time entirely. Writing is almost always a pleasure.

Crime and the paranormal - an interview with Sara Bain, part one.

by Bill Kirton

I seem to be spending a lot of time interviewing other authors nowadays. Following on from last month’s chat with Dorothy Johnston, here’s another with a Scottish writer-friend, Sara Bain. Sara’s a journalist and late last year, she published her first novel. I read a beta version of it and wasn’t surprised to find myself drawn into a powerfully conceived, beautifully written story which ticked all the crime boxes I expected to find but also threw a disturbing paranormal element into the mix. Also, The Sleeping Warrior will be the first publication from a new publisher, Ivy Moon Press. And guess what, it’s Sara herself who’s set it up.

I found her answers so interesting that, rather than edit the conversation down, I decided to split it between two postings. Here’s the first chunk.

First, let’s talk about The Sleeping Warrior. Have you written anything like it before? If so, tell us about it and if not, tell us what sort of writing you have done.

I prefer to read and write within the confines of the ‘fantasy’ genre and all its associated subgenres. Epic fantasy, in particular, is a personal favourite and one that I’ve been reading since I was a little child and writing since I was a bigger child. That said, when I started submitting my work to traditional publishing houses, I was often told that my fantasy was not ‘epic’ enough, in that there was not enough magic in the primary plot and not enough magical creatures running around my world.

My problem is that I like real people and put them in real situations, albeit with a long stretch of the imagination. I can’t write about something I don’t believe in. Orcs and dwarves don’t work for me, although the supernatural and a belief system in heaven and hell does.

I wrote The Sleeping Warrior as a challenge to traditional publishers’ fixation for genre classification.  I decided to write a contemporary novel which crossed as many fictional genres as I could cope with; which was populated by as many cliché antiheroes from fashionable fiction that I could stuff into the story without losing the plot, so to speak; and which had an element of fantasy woven into the narrative.

For some reason, it worked for me.

Hmmm, ‘challenging traditional publishers’ fixations’. You obviously know what they, as well as agents and readers for that matter, feel about genres and how they like their authors to fit neatly into them, so isn’t your challenge rather a bold move?
Maybe, but I’ve noticed that, where a couple of years ago publishers would instantly reject novels that failed to fit neatly into the limited library classifications of fiction, they’ve now opened the submission sluice gates to the more speculative or slipstream genres: something that was anathema to them only a little while ago. I believe that, with the coming of the mighty Amazon, publishers are no longer in control of what people read and are genuinely surprised that readers are choosing for themselves. 

So what are you offering readers to counteract any possible resistance to genres being mixed?
I believe that a strong plot and strong characterisation are the true benchmarks of a good story, regardless of setting.

Well, there’s no doubt that the crime aspects of the book in particular are very real, pacey, gripping. Did you have to change gear or somehow change the way you thought as you shifted between that and paranormal/fantasy mode?

Not at all. Gabriel is the fantasy element in the book: the stranger who turns up one day and turns people’s lives into hell before making them better people for having met him. He could happen to anyone.

He’s certainly a striking character (and phenomenon). Do you see the supernatural as being an extension of ordinary reality, some feature of the subconscious perhaps, or is it purely fantastical, an escape?
I believe the supernatural is anything and everything that can’t be explained by science or logical reason, so, syllogistically, it must exist. Just because something can’t be explained or proven doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

When I was a journalist for a local newspaper a few years ago, I ran a regular feature on hauntings in my region. This not only involved interviewing the owners of the allegedly haunted buildings, but also the physical investigation of the sites. I must admit, most of the time, I was absolutely terrified but, mercifully, I saw and experienced nothing other-wordly so I wasn’t haunted by the experience.

I like to think that, if I witness something personally, then I’ll believe it. I do, however, keep an open mind just in case someone or something does come back from the dead and tries to convince me otherwise.

Tell us about your characters. Were some easier to create than others? Are there any with whom you did or didn’t like spending time?
There are a lot of characters to juggle in The Sleeping Warrior but their characteristics are so different from one another that it was quite easy to keep up with them. Carl, Libby’s boss, is the one character I particularly dislike. He has so few redemptive personal qualities that it was difficult for even Gabriel to save him. I did think of killing him off quite early in the plot, but he worked too well.

And how about the difference between males and females? Did you find them equally easy to inhabit?
I don’t think I’m one of those writers who possesses the minds of characters and manipulates them from the inside. I tend to let them get on with life while I take a back seat – a bit like God. All my books involve a vast array of characters – both good and bad, male and female, young and old, poor and rich – they tend to interact better when I’m not trying to control them and the story progresses organically.

It sounds as if you maybe don’t do much plotting beforehand. Is that true? Or do you need to have a fairly rigid idea of where you’re heading?
I start with a character and then a few more come along. I don’t plot and I don’t draw mind maps or make lists. I may have a general inkling as to where I want them to go and what I want them to do once they’ve got there, but sometimes that doesn’t work. I tend to go where my characters lead me and trust that they will get there in the end. Often the end is a surprise, even to me.

OK, time for the intermission. Next time we’ll say a wee bit more about the book, then turn to the new publishing venture and more general thoughts on Sara’s approach to writing.

Jack Carston and Me

My last contribution featured a spoof interview in which a good friend, the highly talented and incisive journalist Sara Bain, asked questions of my detective, Jack Carston. It started me thinking about my own relationship with him. I’ve known him for about 20 years now and I think he’s getting ready to retire. He first came into my head in the early 90s and now, 5 books later, the compromises he’s had to make are beginning to get to him.

He started because the UK publisher, Piatkus, liked a stand alone thriller my agent had sent them but wanted a police procedural instead, so I set about writing Material Evidence. The ending/solution was based on an actual case I read about in a book on forensic medicine, but the interest came from Carston and the team I found around him. I say ‘I found’ and that seems to be how it was. They all emerged, with their tics, foibles, ways of speaking and relationships ready formed.

Carston himself is curious about things, a creative thinker; he’s interested in people but routines bore and frustrate him. His opinion of some of his superiors is relatively low but his wife, Kath, makes sure that his self-esteem doesn’t get so high as to make him obnoxious. In fact, the love and humour in their marriage is one of the strongest themes running through the books.

Why did he choose to join the police? Well, he’s always wondering what makes people (including himself) tick and likes solving puzzles. At first he joined because he was idealistic and wanted to be on the side of the good guys – but the job has made him more aware that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are relative terms, especially when it comes to people’s motives for what they do. His high success rate derives from the fact that he’s not only fascinated by people, he cares about them, too. He’s not obviously ‘flawed’, has no particular rituals, doesn’t drive a flash car, and his only addiction is his wife. He has a temper, is sometimes childish, doesn’t tolerate fools, despises people who don’t respect the rights of others and is driven mainly by compassion.

I’ve followed him through five books so far and, without any conscious plan on my part, he’s definitely evolved – and in a specific direction. The job has taken him more deeply into the psyches of other people (and his own) and, if he had any moral certainties to start with, he certainly doesn’t now. When I first wrote about him, he solved the case by using the testimony of the various suspects to get into the mind of the victim. The picture he saw there was pretty bleak. But the way he did it – using the physical evidence, but building a picture of who the dead woman was – told me I was dealing with someone who trusted his insights into behaviours. In the next book, things were clearer because there was a definite ‘baddie’. Even then, though, the murders and the motives were surprising and not at all clear cut.

It was The Darkness that signalled the real change. He found himself sympathising with someone who was living a normal life helping others but who was also guilty of very serious crimes. It had quite an impact on him and when, in book four, Shadow Selves, his investigations brought him in contact with highly intelligent people in a university and hospital, the pettiness, self-importance and corrupt nature of some of the people there put another dent in his certainties.

And in the latest book, Unsafe Acts, at the same time as he’s trying to solve two murders and unravel a plot to sabotage an offshore platform, a vindictive superior officer decides he’s had enough of Carston’s unconventional approaches and he faces a charge of indiscipline. It makes him wonder whether he should actually leave the force.

I’m not yet sure of the answer to that, but I will be when I start book six, which might well be the last in the series.

Oh, and seeing that it’s Christmas Eve, compliments of the season from Scotland.

An interview with Jack Carston

A while back, there was a passing fad for writers to ‘interview’ their own characters – presumably to increase the feeling of authenticity about them. On my own blog, I said that I thought my policeman, Jack Carston, would be unwilling to waste time being interviewed by me since he’s not convinced I always understand him or represent his actions and motives properly in the books. Then the journalist/writer/publisher Sara Bain suggested he might respond more positively to her. It was an interesting idea, and this was the result.

SB:       Good morning, Jack. Can I start by asking about why you became a policeman? Were there any events in your youth which might have influenced your decision to join the force?

JC:       Well, first, it wasn’t any sort of vocation. Just one of several options. I come from a family of trawlermen so I was ready to try just about anything to avoid doing that. But blaming things that happen to you as a kid – I don’t think that’s the way things work. Back then, for me cops were people you were afraid of. Yeah, maybe that’s it. Maybe I wanted people to be afraid of me. I don’t think so, though.

SB:       What kind of policeman are you, then?

JC:       Not very good if you ask my boss, Ridley. I can see why he thinks that way, though. I don’t think writing stuff on bits of paper with boxes to tick gets things done. Yeah, you have to have it, but we should be more hands on, leave all that to the clerks and backroom people. OK, I stick to procedures – if I didn’t, it could mess up a whole investigation, defence lawyers would jump all over me – but when you’re dealing with people and their reasons for doing things, it’s not easy to make it all neat. I think I’m mostly honest. Try to be anyway. And, despite what Ridley thinks, I do take the job seriously. It upsets me when low-lifes get away with things. But worse than that is when nice, ordinary, harmless people have to be punished for doing something bad, when it’s not really their fault, or when you can see exactly why they did it. That hurts.

SB:       So what do you think about the idea of justice then? Do you still believe in it?

JC:       Big, big question. If you mean what lawyers and judges do – no, not really. It’s the ultimate way of putting people into boxes. The question they ask is just ‘Did he do so-and-so?’ If the answer’s ‘yes’, he’s guilty. Nobody bothers much about why he did it or what the other guy did first. Look at all the rape cases, or domestic abuse, they don’t often give the benefit of the doubt to victims who’ve retaliated. It’s a nasty part of the job.

SB:       So are you saying that the British criminal law system doesn’t really deliver justice?

JC:       No, I think it tries. The lawyers and the rest are all doing their jobs. Some of them are bent but that’s just a small minority. But they’re all such clever buggers. They’ll use the law to shine the light on some things but keep other stuff in the dark. In the end, like everything else, it comes down to the fact that, if you can afford the best, you’re more likely to be not guilty.

SB:       I can see how that might be galling for a detective. How important is it for you to ‘get your man’?

JC:       Hmmm. My first reaction is that it’s everything. No point doing the job otherwise. But then, I think back over some of my recent cases and … well, I wish I hadn’t. Found out who did it, I mean. Trouble is, I like the challenges of untangling the mystery but I don’t always like what I find.

SB:       Well, my next question was going to be about plea bargaining, but I’m guessing it’s not something you favour.

JC:       You’re right, but it depends. For example, nobody ever gives perps the chance to bargain for a lesser sentence just because the person they topped deserved it.

SB:       Have you ever broken the law yourself?

JC:       Of course. I bet you have, too. Be honest, there might be a couple of nuns somewhere who are still stainless but everybody’s done something. Last thing I can remember was shoplifting a biro. I picked it up, forgot I had it, and left without paying for it. Didn’t go back and tell them.

SB:       OK, breaking the law’s quite a wide expression. So let me ask what you think the worst crimes are.

JC:       Well, there are the obvious ones – kids, babies even – the things people can do to them … you wouldn’t believe it. Half the injuries don’t get reported. They’re that extreme. But I feel sick as well whenever it’s a case of somebody much stronger beating up on someone who’s basically defenceless. Domestics. Huge guys slapping around stick thin partners. But you know, there’s a different sort of sickness I feel, too – the sort when the people involved are in such hopeless, desperate situations and circumstances that you just feel helpless. There’s just nothing you can do. It’s not how bad the crime is, it’s the emptiness of their lives, the absence of any chances to make things better. I hate the job then.

SB:       Does that mean you’re still haunted by some of the horrific things you must have seen?

(At this point, Carston was silent for a while, his face betraying the fact that he was perhaps revisiting past experiences.)

JC:       In the end, each one just reminds you of how much evil there is – or, rather, how much potential there is for it. I push the individual ones down, way down. I can’t forget them, but they’re submerged. The only person who knows they’re there is Kath, my wife. She doesn’t say anything about them, but she knows when one of them is trying to resurface. I never get used to it.

SB:       All of which suggests it must be hard for you to stay objective. Is it easy to keep personal prejudice out of your working life?

JC:       If I could be objective about the sort of things I’m talking about, I’d be a bigger monster than any of the ones I’ve come across.