Q&A with James Oswald!
James Oswald is one of the kings of Tartan Noir, well in fact of the UK crime fiction scene and I was so pleased when he agreed to do this! I love his books, have them on pre-order and next month I get to meet the man himself. My dad is super jealous about this!
James first book ‘Natural Causes’ was self published but he was then signed up by Penguin and his Inspector Maclean series is now at book ten. He has recently started a series based around Constance Fairchild with the characters overlapping mainly due to the involvement of Madame Rose (who I love!). James also writes a fantasy series based around Sir Benfro which now numbers at five books!
His latest book ‘Bury Them Deep’ will be released on the 20th February 2020. I have had the pleasure of reading this courtesy of Netgalley and it definitely will not disappoint his fans. I will be doing a review of it on publication day! Here is a brief synopsis;
When a member of the Police Scotland team fails to clock-in for work, concern for her whereabouts is immediate… and the discovery of her burnt-out car in remote woodland to the south of Edinburgh sets off a desperate search for the missing woman.
Meanwhile, DCI Tony McLean and the team are preparing for a major anti-corruption operation – one which may raise the ire of more than a few powerful people in the city. Is Anya Renfrew’s disappearance a co-incidence or related to the case?
McLean’s investigations suggest that perhaps that Anya isn’t the first woman to have mysteriously vanished in these ancient hills. Once again, McLean can’t shake the feeling that there is a far greater evil at work here…
It really is a good book with some surprising parts to it!
Pro tip here - if you follow James on Twitter (@SirBenfro) you will get to see daily pictures of his cows!
But anyway on to the main event! I was so surprised when James agreed to this and I hope you have as much enjoyment reading his answers as I did. Thank you so much James.
So lets dive in.
1) We all have to admit that people who write crime fiction come up with some gruesome aspects in their work. Where do you get your inspiration from?
Inspiration is everywhere, you just need to know how to see it! The central idea for Bury Them Deep came about when two Twitter conversations collided. My friend and fellow author Anna Mazzola tweeted about the legend of Sawney Bean – something I knew about, but hadn’t thought of for a while. At the same time someone else was commenting about the rather unsavoury pastime of dogging. The two ideas merged in my head, and that sparked off the first of a series of questions that went on to become the novel.
2) What was your day job before your writing took off and how do you think it has affected the books you create?
I was a livestock farmer before my writing took off, and I’m still a livestock farmer today (although on a slightly smaller scale). I don’t think it has affected the nature of the books, although I did have Tony McLean chased off a hillside by some Highland cows in one of the books. What it gives me is time and space to think about my stories while doing something entirely different.
Before coming home to take on the family farm, I worked in an endless series of jobs alongside a diverse collection of people. To a certain extent, everyone I’ve ever interacted with has affected my books. I don’t base my characters on any one person as such, but characteristics I have observed in people find their way into every person I write.
3) Who is your favourite author at present?
This is a tricky one. There used to be a few authors whose books I would snap up the moment they were published, but sadly most of them are no longer with us. Terry Pratchett and Iain (M) Banks would have joint first place, I think.
4) Who is your favourite of all time?
Author or book? Author would have to be Terry Pratchett. Book would probably be Guards! Guards!
5) Is there a genre of books you just can’t stand?
I’m not a great fan of the whole concept of genre in the first place. There are good books and bad books (and that categorisation is different for each individual reader). There are genres I wouldn’t necessarily seek out – Romance and Horror spring to mind – but if someone thrust a Romance or Horror novel into my hands and insisted I should read it, I’d probably give it a go. There are way too many books, and not enough time though.
6) If you were only allowed to read one book for the rest of your life what would it be?
This would be the most exquisite torture. I am not a re-reader at all, so the prospect of having only the one story, however brilliant it might be, fills me with such shuddering dread I cannot answer.
7) How does the ‘location’ i.e geographical area play its part when you are writing a book?
Setting is very important indeed to any story, both on the micro and macro scale. I use Edinburgh as a backdrop to my Inspector McLean stories because it is an old city with a well known history of spookiness and dark deeds. That suits the kind of stories I like to write, and is also somewhere I’ve lived and can describe without having to constantly go there. Having said which, I get things wrong sometimes and it usually doesn’t matter too much. In my first book, Natural Causes, I described Trinity, a posh area in the north east of the city, as being full of drug addicts and prostitutes. I wrote that book while living in Wales, and used a couple of Ordnance Survey Landranger maps for reference (this was pre-Google Maps). There have probably been half a million copies of that book sold or given away – it was the book I self-published on the Kindle and which kick-started my writing career before Penguin took me on. Out of all of those readers, only one has emailed to complain.
8) Describe your day when you are writing?
I am a very chaotic writer, and indeed a very chaotic person. I don’t have a set routine as such. Farming comes first – livestock has to be checked, fed, or whatever else the season dictates. If I’m writing a first draft, I like to try and get a few hundred words written in the morning so that I can let them fester in my brain for the rest of the day while I do the farm work. Most of my writing is done in the evening, from about 8 until midnight (or earlier if I’ve got a decent amount done).
I used to set myself rigid daily word counts, but that’s a recipe for burnout and depression. Now I try to think more in weekly achievements, and also not to beat myself up too much when I miss them.
9) Can you give us any clues about the book you are working on?!
I’m almost finished with the first draft of what I believe they call a standalone novel. It’s not crime, not fantasy, indeed I’m not entirely sure what it is. I don’t even have a publisher for it at the moment, so I won’t say more about it than that it’s a story I abandoned writing when my parents died almost twelve years ago, and have only just found time to pick up again.
Once the first draft is done, I will be getting to work on Inspector McLean book eleven, which should be published in early 2021. No title yet, but I think this one’s going to have witches in it.
10) How important do you think the blogging community and social media in the book industry?
This is a tricky one to answer without inadvertently causing offence! I think as a community, book blogging and social media is enormously helpful and beneficial. I love interacting with readers who have enjoyed my books (and sometimes with those who haven’t, as long as they’re polite about it!), and I’ve found writers and readers to be generally very supportive of each other. Writing and reading tend to be solitary pursuits, so it’s great to be able to find a crowd of people who share our passion and enthusiasm. I am in awe of the people who read and review and blog with such energy.
I am less convinced by the commercialisation of it, although I’m in the fortunate (unfortunate?) position of not really needing to go out and look for new things to read. Book blogging certainly has an influence – I think it wouldn’t have grown so much and so fast if it didn’t fill a need. It would concern me if I began to feel that the influence was less genuine enthusiasm by bloggers and more directed marketing from the big publishers.
And finally a bonus question!
Okay what would you rather have as a method to kill off a character - a hundred penguins descending on a person or one solitary shaving nick which led to an infection and death? Why did you choose what you did?
I think the shaving nick. I like the randomness of the penguins, but I think far more could be done with a slow, drawn-out death, the search for the cause of which unearths all manner of best kept hidden secrets, destroying lives and relationships along the way, only to be revealed in the end to have been a completely innocent accident. Or something.
