When did you first start writing?
I've always enjoyed writing. English was my favourite subject at school. But I only really tried (and failed) to write seriously in my twenties. I got into my stride when I hit thirty and finally got published six years' later.
Most writers have to serve a long apprenticeship. Yes, it's hard, with plenty of tears along the way. But if you have the 'write stuff', you'll stick it out. What else are you going to do? I knew I wanted to be a writer and i was prepared to do whatever was necessary to accomplish that ambition.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up on several south London (UK) council estates. Not the greatest start for a would-be writer! You don't see too many haling from such locations. But did I let that deter me? Did I, heck. I regarded it as a challenge. Just as well I like a challenge because all during my dilettante twenties I just played around with writing, never finishing anything. It seemed I wasn't UP to the challenge...
Then I hit the age of thirty. There's nothing like another year creeping by to gain your attention and push your determination into overdrive. I wrote and completed a book a year for each of six years after that. All romances. All rejected by Mills & Boon, the publisher I was aiming at, though the last of the six did get published, but not by Harlequin/Mills & Boon. Anyway, after my next book in the romance genre received the thumbs-down, I got good and mad. I felt like murdering someone. So I did. No, this is not a real-life confession. I don't fancy doing jail-time. Besides, murdering people in fiction is much more satisfying; you can kill off all those people who rejected you but without the unpleasantness of having the police break down your door. And you get paid. What's not to like?
My council estate upbringing has been a major influence, not only on my (eventual) choice of genre, but also on my style. Although most crime novels seem to be written by the educated middle-classes and they set their novels in that milieu, I knew it wouldn't suit my natural style. I enjoy throwing some humour into my novels and, in my DI, Joseph Aloysius Rafferty, I think I hit on the perfect pairing for me. We have a lot in common. Both lapsed Catholics from large London-Irish families with a council estate upbringing.
I gave Rafferty a family who felt— if he must be a copper— he might at least have the decency to be a bent one. No reflection on my own family who are snow-white law-abiders to a man and woman. But that premise for the series has given me some fun sub-plots that have poor Rafferty getting into more trouble than a Victoria lady of the night sans the morning-after pill.
To add to his troubles, I've given him DS Dafyd Llewellyn for a partner. More moral than the Pope, Rafferty's educated, intellectual Welsh sergeant can be relied upon to look down his nose whenever he gets a whiff of the Rafferty family's erring. To Llewellyn, even the 'bargain'-hunting mothers of detective inspectors aren't immune from prosecution by the law.
Read more of this interview.