Today I'd like to welcome novelist Rachel Amphlett to my blog. Originally from the UK, then based in Australia and now back on our shores, Rachel’s novels appeal to a worldwide audience, and have been compared to Robert Ludlum, Lee Child and Michael Crichton. Wow! Let's get going with the interview…

Thanks for having me on your blog, Maggie. 'Will to Live' is the second in the series, and sees Kay Hunter pitted against a serial killer who’s been using a stretch of the local railway known as “Suicide Mile” to dispose of his victims – until a witness stumbles across one of his victims before the train strikes. Kay and her team then have to revisit a number of cold cases to try to establish a pattern, while the killer is still at large. On top of that, Kay’s investigation into who tried to destroy her career intensifies, with catastrophic consequences.

I enjoy writing the spy fiction, but crime thrillers are where my heart is at. It simply took a few books under my belt before I felt I had the confidence to give them a go. The response to one of my standalones, 'Look Closer', is what gave me the nudge I needed – that’s the closest I’d written to the crime fiction genre at that time, and it’s proven to be a great success. By the time I got to the beginning of 2016, I had the inkling of a new series featuring a female detective, and that’s how the Kay Hunter series evolved.  

I definitely want to write a historical/ crime fiction book – I’ve been researching in between writing the Kay Hunter series and have jotted down a few scenes and a rough outline. I’m hoping to spend some time on that later this year.  

It’s what I’ve been reading since I was a kid – I love mysteries, so like a lot of authors I started off reading Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five and went from there. I can’t recall a time I wasn’t reading crime fiction in some form!  

I usually have the opening scene in my head and the “lift” points sorted out, and then I’ll take those and develop a rough outline using a five act structure. Once I have that, I get stuck into the writing. I do like to leave a bit of wiggle room for characters to develop, because that makes it interesting for me as a writer – a character could say something that takes me down a different path to the ending I have in mind that’s a better way than I originally thought, so it’s important to allow that to happen. 

The first draft usually takes me no longer than 12 weeks – and it’s a hot mess, I can tell you! However, it’s important to me to get it written down as fast as possible because it reflects the pace of the story. The fastest I’ve ever written a first draft is 9 weeks.

CJ Sansom’s 'Lamentation' – I’ve loved his whole Shardlake series of books, and I’ve finally found a bit of spare time to savour this one!     

Like to know more about Rachel and her books? See below:​
Website:  www.rachelamphlett.com
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/rachelamphlett.author/
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/rachelamphlett

Something I remember after I finished the first draft of my fifth novel, 'After She's Gone' - how, along the way, something odd occurred. Many, if not all, other fiction writers report it's happened to them too; it's a concept that sounds a little off the wall, a bit wacky, at first. Readers who are not also writers tell me it's hard to understand, and I can see why. I'm talking about the tendency of fictional characters to resist doing what the author wants. Instead, just like real people, they often refuse to do what they're told, developing minds of their own and behaving in very contrary ways! Fiction writers will know what I mean. For others, though, this is a weird notion. 'But you're the author!' they say. 'Aren't you in control? Why not just make the characters do what you'd planned for them?' The answer is, I can't, not always. Let me explain.

As a novelist, I’m an outliner, plotting my books in a fair amount of detail before I write them. As part of my planning, I prepare notes about each character - their motivations, their hopes, their issues, along with a physical description and a precis of their role in the plot. After I've done that, I tell myself I know them quite well, but the truth is, I don't. It's not until I start writing that they take on lives and minds of their own, and sometimes those minds decide to follow a different route through the novel. If this all sounds a bit woo-woo, it is and yet it isn't. In one way, there's nothing mystical about what I'm describing. However carefully an author plots in advance, it's impossible to foresee every eventuality, and it's not until the writing begins that a novelist finds out whether his/her story works. What may appear feasible at the planning stage can unravel once written; inconsistencies and contradictions appear or the plot simply doesn't feel right. The same happens with characters. I'll explain by using Jake Hamilton, a minor player in 'After She's Gone'.

When I plotted the novel, Jake was a poor father, a lousy partner and an all-round deadbeat. As I wrote one particular scene, however, something didn't sit well with me. The storyline would work better, I decided, if I portrayed Jake as flawed in many ways, yet ultimately a man trying to do his best. Someone who regretted his past mistakes. So that's what I did. Nothing woo-woo about that, simply an author recognising that a different approach would suit the novel better. On the other hand, though,  Jake asserting his true character provided a magical moment. It was as if he was shouting at me, trying to get my attention, yelling, 'Hey! You behind the keyboard! You've got me all wrong - I'm more of a nice guy than you give me credit for!'

I hear you, Jake! And once I did, I changed my story accordingly. Characters don’t exist independently from an author's fiction, of course, however real they may become to a writer. The chances are, though, that if a character is pressing to go in a particular direction, then that's the best course for him/her to take. Here's novelist Dianne Doubtfire on the subject: 'Sometimes a character becomes so real that he refuses to do what you have planned for him. When this happens, don't coerce him; it means you have created a real person with a will of his own and this is a marvellous moment in any novelist's life. Hold him on a light rein, as it were, giving him his head to a certain degree but ensuring that he does not stampede you out of your story.' (Dianne Doubtfire, The Craft of Novel-Writing, published by Allison and Busby, 1978). Wise advice, Dianne - thank you! Oh, and a big thank you also to Jake Hamilton - I'm glad I listened to you!

Are you a fellow novelist who's had characters run out of control and do their own thing? Or are you a reader, someone who doesn't understand why authors can't exercise complete authority? Are there fictional characters who you think would have been more convincing if they'd been portrayed differently? Leave me a comment and let me know!  
 
'After She's Gone' is available from Amazon in ebook, paperback and audio formats via this link: After She's Gone.

As readers of my blog will have gathered, I'm an avid Stephen King fan; I'm working my way through all his supernatural thrillers. Apart from 'Nightmares and Dreamscapes' and the rather flat 'From a Buick 8', I've not yet read anything from King I haven't liked. So when I spotted the hardcover copy of 'End of Watch' in the supermarket, I bought it straight away. The novel is the final book in the Bill Hodges trilogy, the other two being 'Mr Mercedes' and 'Finders Keepers'. Here's my review of 'Mr Mercedes';  I didn't post a review for 'Finders Keepers', but I loved that one as well.

The title, one that fits the story perfectly, comes from an American expression for police officers at the end of their working life. Those who retire permanently, or die. Which one will Bill Hodges do? He's certainly an engaging sleuth, although a somewhat stereotypical one: retired police officer, divorced, battling health problems and with a past drinking problem. He's teamed with Holly Gibney, a woman with multiple issues of her own, along with Jerome Robinson, a student and former lawn boy for Bill. Books one and three of the trilogy concentrate heavily on the evil Brady Hartsfield, a mass murderer who's also obsessed with suicide. The middle novel, 'Finders Keepers', diverts to explore one of King's favourite topics, the writing life, although it involves the Brady Hartsfield character as well. Here's the sales blurb for 'End of Watch': ​
 
'Retired Detective Bill Hodges now runs a two-person firm called Finders Keepers with his partner Holly Gibney. They met in the wake of the 'Mercedes Massacre' when a queue of people was run down by the diabolical killer Brady Hartsfield. Brady is now confined to Room 217 of the Lakes Region Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic, in an unresponsive state. But all is not what it seems: the evidence suggests that Brady is somehow awake, and in possession of deadly new powers that allow him to wreak unimaginable havoc without ever leaving his hospital room. When Bill and Holly are called to a suicide scene with ties to the Mercedes Massacre, they find themselves pulled into their most dangerous case yet, one that will put their lives at risk, as well as those of Bill's heroic young friend Jerome Robinson and his teenage sister, Barbara. Brady Hartsfield is back, and planning revenge not just on Hodges and his friends, but on an entire city. The clock is ticking in unexpected ways... Both a stand-alone novel of heart-pounding suspense and a sublimely terrifying final episode in the Hodges trilogy, 'End of Watch' takes the series into a powerful new dimension.' 

Sounds great, doesn't it? And 'End of Watch' delivers the goods. Brady Hartsfield is a wonderfully warped villain, aided by his sidekicks Felix Babineau and Library Al, both of whom end up zombie-fied after Brady invades their minds. Intent on revenge on Bill Hodges, Brady will stop at nothing to achieve his goal, as well as drive thousands of young people to kill themselves.
 
Although his brain was seriously damaged by Holly Gibney, Brady avails himself of new powers, possibly resulting from Felix Babineau using him in unauthorised drug trials. King also hints that the savage head blow dealt by Holly may also have contributed, allowing Brady to access the 90% of his brain that lies dormant in all of us. As his extraordinary powers grow, the deaths begin…
 
Stephen King is a master at creating memorable characters (think Jack Torrance, Annie Wilkes, Jake Epping). 'End of Watch' also has an interesting cast list, one that develops both Bill Hodges and Holly Gibney, more so the latter. Whilst it's not specifically mentioned, Holly is either autistic or has Asperger's syndrome, and the book shows her shedding her coping mechanisms  as the story progresses. It's Brady Hartsfield, though, who receives the full Stephen King treatment, morphing from a catatonic invalid to a mind in motion, capable of transferring into other bodies at will. His evil mission poses a huge problem for Bill and Holly in their race to stop him. They can hardly tell the police what they suspect Brady is up to, after all!
 
I found some aspects of the plot a little far-fetched - the use of obsolete games consoles to facilitate mind control, for example, and the numerical pink fish. Perhaps that's a little unfair, as Brady's opportunities for evil are limited initially, and the use of technology, albeit outdated, fits what we already know of him as a computer expert. Besides, this is Stephen King, creator of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, supernatural cars and telekinetic teenagers. Beside them, digital pink fish seem small fry!
 
King can be verbose at times, but his mastery of words transcends what might grate if coming from a lesser writer. 'End of Watch' rollicks along at a fast pace towards the satisfying, if sad, conclusion. It can be read either as the third book in the 'Mr Mercedes' trilogy, or would work equally well as a standalone novel. If you're a fan of his novels, I suspect you'll love this book.

Have you read 'End of Watch', or any of the other books in the trilogy? What did you think? Leave a comment and let me know!       

This week I'm delighted to welcome crime novelist Andrew Barrett to my blog. Andrew has been writing best-selling thrillers since the mid-1990s, all set in northern England. He’s also written several short stories, and co-written a number of television scripts. His stories focus on the world of crime scene investigators, using his own expertise as a senior CSI to develop his fiction. I recently read the fourth book in his Eddie Collins series, 'Ledston Luck'. OK, let's get going with the questions!

Most writers tend to get going with their stories by asking the 'What If' question. I do too, but with most of my stories, and especially with 'Ledston Luck', first came a couple of scenes.

One scene I latched onto as I drove over a canal bridge, was the sight of a woman’s face just beneath the water’s surface. Of course there was no woman there, I’d imagined it, but it looked very real for a moment, and that stuck with me. I wrote a scene around Eddie pulling her from the water.

The next scene grew in my mind from a small kernel: I saw a naked woman sitting in a stout wooden chair in a dark farmhouse kitchen. The door opened and in stepped two burglars. The naked woman didn’t scream or run away, she reached for the shotgun next to her. Both of these scenes excited me enough to then ask the 'What If' question, and I slowly constructed a story around them.

Eddie Collins is seen by many as angry most or all of the time. But he’s not. He’s just as angry at the man standing next to you in the bus queue noisily chewing on a toffee. What makes Eddie different is that he’s not good at controlling his anger. He’d most likely step away from the toffee-chewer because, if he didn’t, he’d say something that everyone else in the queue would be thinking – and it probably wouldn’t be pleasant. Eddie is not only poor at controlling his feelings, he’s not exactly tactful. He’s an honest, down-to-earth man who really does speak as he sees, and it doesn’t matter if that guy at the bus queue is a street-sweeper, a copper, or Prince Philip, no one is exempt from a Collins tongue-lashing. Eddie is a cuddly bunny if he’s on your side. And all you need in order for him to be on your side is to experience injustice. He hates injustice, whether it’s a victim of murder or someone scratching your car for no good reason. These extremes, and all the other things in between infuriate him; that’s the root of his anger.  

Next for Eddie is a novella called 'The Note'. As with all Eddie’s short stories, I write them in first person because I adore the immediacy of it, the relentless onslaught of thought and action. I don’t think I could sustain that through a full novel, but in short story form, it’s so exhilarating. I adore writing Eddie. And I think that’s because I can relate to him so much; he can say the things I feel and get away with them (I can’t, I’ve tried!), and that alone is a wonderfully refreshing experience, so I’ll definitely write more Eddie books. 

I have tried to work to an outline. And failed miserably. I find the story tends to grow from an initial scene or two. Having said that, I can recollect two books that benefitted from a bit of planning. 'Stealing Elgar' and 'Ledston Luck' both stalled at around the 100k words and 50k words mark respectively. I could see where I wanted to be at the end, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there. So I made myself stop staring at the cursor, and took out a sheet of paper and a pencil. I managed to draw up a list of scenes that could take me there, and plotted from each scene a consequence, incorporating that consequence into the following scenes until I reached my goal. I finished those books remarkably quickly once I knew exactly what came next.

Of course you (I mean me) can’t plan for the unexpected happening while writing a scene, so it’s always good to have written the list in pencil! I wish I could plot a book from page one to page 400 but I can’t. I’ve tried.

It changes depending on my circumstances. I began 'The Third Rule' in 2004 and finished it in 2012. That was because I took a seven year break from it while I chased a dream of writing for television. I wrote and published 'Black by Rose' inside six months. I’m pretty sure I could never do that again though; it damned near killed me! I should say I can easily write a book and a short in a year, but I don’t think I’d want to do more than that because I’m working full-time (about 60 hours a week), and I’m trying to become more normal. By that I mean that I’m trying to be a good dad, and I’m trying to sample life outside in the real world. I quite like some of it, though if truth be told, I feel more at home inside my head where my characters and my story live. 

Great question. I put a lot of thought into names for central characters, but I usually end up just choosing something that sounds right for that person. I began the first crime book with a central character called Jonathan Benedict. I have no idea where that name came from. But after the first book I disliked it; it felt too wimpish, so I changed it to Roger Conniston, and that gave him (in my eyes) a far more purposeful stance; he had more verve. I got ‘Roger’ from Mr Taylor of Queen (I love Queen), and Conniston from the Lake District (with an extra ‘n’). I took ‘Collins’ from the dictionary at my side because it was nice and easy to say and rolled from the tongue pleasantly when combined with ‘Eddie’ – also chosen because it was short, and I think, because it’s a trustworthy name. In Black by Rose, the bad man was called Slade Crosby. I got ‘Slade’ from HMP Slade. Remember Porridge with Ronnie Barker? Yes, that’s where my Slade came from. And I took ‘Crosby’ from Bing; it’s also a friendly-sounding name that I used for a most evil man because ‘friendly’ and ‘evil’ co-habit often. Most of the other names I choose are simply because they sound right rather than coming from a specially selected source; they fir the character’s time-frame and their social standing. ‘Divine Wright’ from Ledston Luck has a certain religious connotation, and how could a woman who was called Divine turn out to be so evil? Her mother, Lisbeth, was a religious woman, and I figured her own parents would have been too, and whether it’s correct or not, I thought ‘Lisbeth’ sounded religious, and it also sounded Edwardian, which is the time frame they would have grown up in. 

Absolutely none. Well, no that’s not entirely true. I do research weapons; I had to for 'Stealing Elgar' and 'The Third Rule', and I did a little more in 'Ledston Luck' because I wanted to get a specific shotgun cartridge manufacturer and the details of their cartridge correct.

If you don’t enjoy it, stop. If you do enjoy it, push everything else aside and do it until your eyes, fingers, and heart bleed. Then do it some more. 

Website: http://andrewbarrett.co.uk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrewBarrettUK
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I have been passionate about foreign travel for as long as I can remember. During my twenties  I did various solo trips within Europe, but yearned for more. My first big travel adventure started in 1989, when I embarked on a nine-month journey to Asia, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. Things were rough at first - nothing could have prepared me for India, my first stop. The noise, dirt, hustle and bustle almost proved overwhelming, especially when I was struck down by dysentery, a horror I hope never to experience again! Throughout the nine months, I grew more travel-hardy and overall had a fantastic trip. Over the ensuing decades I have carried on travelling, having written 'His Kidnapper's Shoes' on a year-long visit to Asia and South America. Since my return I have become a full-time novelist, and in the future I'd like to combine the two great passions of my life by becoming a nomadic novelist. After all, I can write my books anywhere in the world via my laptop. I'm currently planning my next adventure! As part of my 'Five' series, I though it would be fun to examine five other novelists who have been keen travellers, or whose trips have influenced their work. So, without further ado, let's pack our bags and journey to some amazing locations!