From Elephants to Espionage: Vaseem Khan on Q, Rejections, and Finding the Joy in Writing.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hello everybody, and welcome to the Writing Community Chat show.
It's great to be here as always, and it's great
to make it a Friday. But also we're now in December. Chris,
I feel like this week, this month, and this year
is absolutely flown by. How are you doing and have
you felt the same way?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, I mean definitely. Obviously the calendars have started for
a lot of people. The help on the shelf that's
become a thing, so probably a few parents staring the
house out with the elves knocking about. But yeah, it's
been a very quick year when you stop and think
about it, Like I can still remember some of the

(00:59):
very early interviews we had at the start of this year,
and yeah, they've flown back and Harrogate was almost what
five months ago now?

Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's bonkers, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
I know you've read a lot this year, so and
it's quite early to ask this, but have you got
a book that really stands out for you this year yet?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah? I've spoken about it a few times and it's
that crooked little vein book that I read.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
It was just it's.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Unlike anything I've ever read before, and it just blew
my mind just how ballsy.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
It was a brilliant like when the story just hits
you and I thought, how much is he actually getting
away with here? And he just kept going and going
and it got It was like a like a dark
exploration of America and the underbelly of America. So I
really enjoyed that. I loved them. Obviously we had American

(01:57):
rapture on the show that.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
C J.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
Lead.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Oh no, we've messed that up, mate. I think maybe
it was Lead. I think we confused. It was okay
and yeah, yeah, but that crooked little vein for me.
If you, if you like your writing a little bit.

Speaker 5 (02:20):
Darker, I would definitely recommend that as.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
My I've got to be selective of who I recommend
that to. I recommended it to one person that I
know in work, and other than that, I would not
mention it. And I've just mentioned it on the internet.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Now, Yeah, do you say that because it is so
kind of like dark and sort of gritty that you
need to be the right kind of reader to enjoy
it the way you did? I don't.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
I don't necessarily, Yeah, you do, you do, because it
was it was a dark rereed. It opened my eyes,
But that way. But I like the bravery of the author.
I like a book when I'm even one at the minute.
By Oh what's his name, Nick? He's a famous musician,

(03:07):
Nick Cope. I think his name is Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
But his book is brilliant.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
It's the Death of Bunny Monroe and it's a TV
series with Matt Smith, and I love Matt Smith as
the doctor. He was brilliant and my messy names with it.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
No, yeah, he was.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
He was my favorite doctor simply because I watched it
with my kids and he was the only one that
they would watch. As soon as the doctors got older,
they started to be like, no, I'm.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Not watching this. I think they started older and got younger,
didn't they.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, they got a little bit younger, but they won't
entertain any of the new series. We tried to watch
the first one with that little tea type of character
and freaked me out. So Nick, But hello to Chris
and people in chat. Obviously we've got a great guest today.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Rob Parker is someone that we obviously speak to you
quite a lot, and he's a huge Bond fan. So
getting into today's show is going to be brilliant.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah, I imagine Rob harro Get has had a chat
with our guest about that once or twice, perhaps because
he's always there having a good chat to people and
we've got a few of his videos to prove that.
But yes, hello to you all in chat. Like Chris said,
it's great to see you there. I hope you've had
a good week. And you know, if you've read a
book this year that stood out, like Chris mentioned, let
us know what that was for you, and also, how

(04:31):
has your writing week been? Unluckily and luckily and motivatingly
for me, I'm trying to find words to make this
make sense. Last week I was productive this week not
so much. What about you, Chris? Are you writing this week?
How's it been?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, I've not been writing. I've been reading, just sort of.
I've read a quote it said, if you're not writing,
you should be reading. If you're not reading, just watch something.
Just keep those stories sort of flowing in your mind
and at some point you'll get back to it.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
And yeah, that's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Absolutely. Yeah, So let us know in the chat how
is what book stands out for you this year? And
how is your writing being this week? So while you're
doing that, and writing away in there and say hello
to each other as well. Please do that. I'm going
to introduce tonight's guests. I'm going to get them on
for a great chat and I'm sure you're going to
enjoy this, so please hang around, put your questions in
there and remember at the end we have a section

(05:24):
four questions as well, but if you like throwing them
in the middle, do that as well. So tonight we
welcome an absolute powerhouse of the crime fiction world. He
is a Sunday Times best selling author and multi award winner,
including the prestigious CWA Historical Dagger, and he currently serves
as a chair of the UK Crime Writers Association. But
perhaps the most exciting part, he has personally been commissioned

(05:47):
by the Ian Flaming Estate to continue the legacy of
James Bond's very own gadget Master Q in the new
Q mystery series. That is a career arc we are
absolutely going to talk about tonight. Here is the author
of the Blooded Baby Ganash Detective Agency series featuring Inspected
Chopper and his elephant Gha I hope it's spelled pronounced

(06:09):
that right, and that particularly acclaimed Marlborough House series which
just just released its final book, The Edge of Darkness,
starring India's first female detective, So please join me and
giving a massive warm welcome to tonight's spectacular guest for
sim Cahn, Hello, Seem.

Speaker 4 (06:28):
Hello Jensen, Hello everybody else. I'll tell you what I
love that. I love that pre amble chat about that
Dr Who's with Tom Bakers as Dr Who And and
you're right. Yeah, they started off ancient with John Perkwey,
and then they got younger and younger, and now they're
and now they're going in the other direction again and
Chris doesn't like it. I do have to say that

(06:48):
we had to decide because I got completely confused with
the two Christis and we had to I had to
decide what to call you guys, and we decided on
Chris good Cop and Chris Badcock and Chris who bad
because he he turned up late to the pre chat
as if he just didn't give it. And then he's
got that, says hard Man. Hard Man look to him,

(07:08):
So yeah, he's going to be Chris Badcop and you're
going to be Chris good Cock.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
I love it, And uh yeah, I'm sure I'll chat
the way that the conversations have been in the past.
Good Cop, Bad Cop is another addition to our Chris
versus Chris sort of saga. Yes, but seem thank you
so much for joining us. It's it's a real pleasure.
As I mentioned before the show, we've spotted you around
Harrogate a few times but never really had that great
chat and tonight is our opportunity to do that. So

(07:33):
thank you and we hope you do well. How's your
week been.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yeah, it's been a it's been a good week. Yeah.
I've got to say I've been up at four am
watching watching England play in the Ashes because I'm a
huge cricket nut and that what that means is that
my wife's not awake, so I've got I've got the
house to myself. It's very quiet and I can actually
do some writing. Of course, every few minutes I shall
have to shout at the screen because England have done
something stupid again. And yeah, being a massive England fan,

(08:00):
it does drive me by me when they don't when
they don't play proper.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
I was going to say, you worked in India for
a long long time and then you know you're supporting
England cricket. Is that is that.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
Well, obviously I was born in London, grew up here
and I and I grew up watching cricket in an
era where there were no other There were like three
TV channels, right, yeah, so you couldn't watch any other
team except England. And I fell in love with with
the English team which had David Gower and Ian Botham.
So those were my heroes. And so when I went
to work in India in my twenties, and it was

(08:30):
satch Intendal and everybody was mad mental for cricket. And
then when India would play England, I was the lone
person in the entire because the entire office would stop
work just so they could watch cricket. And I was
the lone person in the in the in the office
cheering for them for England.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Amazing. That's so such an interesting thing, isn't it. Cricket
in between It's not something I've followed, but I know
the passion for it and within cricket it is enormous.
And India is absolutely obsessed with cricket, as is the
in the community of cricket. So and from what I understand,
I should love it because from what I understand is
when people go to cricket. They just tend to celebrate

(09:08):
the entire time they're there.

Speaker 4 (09:11):
You're talking about the Barmai Army, the notorious England. Well,
I think that's the difference betweenuse I love football as well, right,
I mean I grew I grew up, I was born
just what a few hundred yards away from West Ham's
old ground, so I grew up as a Hammers supporter
and I play five a side still. So. But the
difference between the fans is, you know, it's chalk and cheese.

(09:33):
Because cricket fans they will go to a cricket match,
they will drink beer all day long, shout themselves horse
and then if their team loses, then moan for about
five minutes, and then they'll go and have a drink
with the opposition. Whereas football fans, same thing happens, and
then they get out the nunchuckers and have a good
old brawling.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Well, Hama said, what is cricket? Well, imagine two people
stood opposite each other with bats and some really hard
at that person, and they have to hit ball and
run between the two people. Not like baseball. It's very different,
but kind of the same concept list both.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
It's exactly like baseball. If baseball lasted five days, still
wasn't a result.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
Well, interestingly you said you play five a side and
now Chris definitely does that. Bad Cop does that as well.
So is there scope here? I'm sure like people like
Rob Parker for Harrogate? Is there scope there? We get
a little five aside going at some point during Harrogut.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
Well, there was another festival. There is another festival called
Bloody Scotland. Up until maybe a year or so ago,
they used to have a five a side game during
the festival. I used to play in that while Mark
Billingham used to be there, so I played for the England.
It was England versus Scotland. Writers wow, Mark Billingham was
the captain of the England team and Craig is it

(10:49):
Craig Robertson. Craig Robertson, I think was enough the Scottish team.
So I played that three years in a row and
then they decided that everybody was getting too old and knackered,
the risk of injury was. They started to take it
a bit too seriously. So you mu supposed to slide
tackle in five side?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Come on, No, definitely not. But I can imagine that
being fun, brilliant. So it's great, as I said, to
have you on and we're going to play a very
quick quick video and then we're going to talk about
your rot to writing. So obviously you've won multiple awards.
You're now the chair of the Crime Writers Association, which
is amazing.

Speaker 4 (11:27):
I wasn't sorry, I should correct you. I wasn' until
a couple of months ago because it's a two year
gig and I and I'm you know, I passed on
the chalish, the poison chalice.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Okay, my apology is there, but yes, we will still
discuss that amazing journey and the rotor writing, which is
coming right up. So for scene, do you remember the

(11:59):
first spark in your mind and the first light in
the fire that was like, writing is something I have
to do with in my life.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
Yeah, I guess I do. Because I was in school
and there was a particular English teacher and we know
that bad cop is a bad copy, just so was
my sister, and he was very very encouraging, and he
used to set us these assignments to write these stories, right,
and he'd say, you know, write like a hundred words
and then I'd submit like six thousand pages, but he

(12:30):
never he never said what's wrong with you? So so
that was that was That was the earliest time I
started getting into writing. I did hear recently that you
may have I think his life ended tragically. I think, yeah,
so it didn't end well, I'm sure it wasn't because
of me, but for other reasons.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
And then read the pages.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
And then because because I'm really having to read all
those damn short stories that finally got to him. And
then in my teens, I came across Terry Pratchett's amazing
Discworld series and I decided I was going to write
my first novel because I thought, A, this looked really easy,
and so you know, I wrote a comic fantasy I'll

(13:16):
a Pratchett. I finished it when I was seventeen, and
I sent it off to some agents, and then I
went to my parents and I said, I'm not going
to university because I'm going to be a rich and
famous writer, which is probably not the kind of thing
you should say to immigrant Asian parents, who are, you know,
working hard to make sure you get educated and you know,
and do better than they did. Anyway, there was no

(13:39):
real problem because the book was shit. And it was
duly rejected, and I had to go to university, became
a management consultant that took me around the world ten
years in India, sometime in China, Middle East, et cetera,
and everywhere everywhere I was working. I would keep writing,
and I wrote another seven novels across various genres. I

(13:59):
tried write literary fiction, historical thrillers, I try to write.
I even try to write a sort of an erotic thriller.
And you know, my missus keep saying, you clearly didn't
know what you were doing, because none of this looks
remotely true to life. So I wrote all of those books,
and every time I would finish one, I would send

(14:21):
it to about twenty five or thirty agents in the UK.
And back then you couldn't email, so I had to
literally print these things out so and everything and mail
them from India and then hope for the best. And
I tell you what, when you collect all that number
of rejections over that many years, I've probably got over
one hundred rejection letters. I mean, it's like being kicked

(14:43):
in the bollocks repeatedly every few years. And I know
there will be people on this podcast who will appreciate
and understand that experience. And it is really tough when
you've spent three years writing something that you really believe
in and you think this is the one that's going
to crack it for me, and then it gets roundly
rejected and dust yourself up, pick yourself off off the floor.

(15:06):
But that's the beauty of this industry, right, because one
idea dies, and then you know, if you love books
and you love the idea of being a writer, sooner
or later another idea will come come along to you.
I think Terry Pratchett, who I've already mentioned and a
great hero of mine, he captured it best. He wrote
somewhere that there are ideas constantly moving through the cosmos,

(15:30):
waiting for the right head to fall in, and that
fall into and I think I love that image that
there are sort of ideas and you know, there might
be one that bounces into my head and that's the
right one.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
That's nice. I'm reading Stephen King's on writing manoir at
the moment, yeah, and he mentioned how similar story like
he had to send them manuscripts away all the time
and got all these rejections and he actually had a
nail in the wall where he put these hundreds of
rejections up there, and he had to change the nail
to something bigger because that's how many kept getting and

(15:59):
we know how his career worked out, you know. So
it was it's those people out there that get one
or two rejections and then think this is not for me.
They gave up that dream. It wasn't the rejection that
did it. It was that commitment to you know, almost
like the arrogance to keep going because you believe that's
going to happen.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Absolutely well, Stephen King's clearly got a more understanding wife
than I have, because if I started punching holes in
the wall every time I got a rejection, it wouldn't
go down well with me. Yeah, I think persistence is
a key, but also I think it's you know, why
did you start writing in the first place, And if
it's because you love books, but you also you have

(16:40):
to be in love with the idea of being a writer,
being an author and a novelist. And if you're not
in love with that idea and it's just a passing fancy,
then yes, you will give up after the first round
of rejections. But I think most people who last the
course and get published eventually, it's because they've never given
up on that dream, no matter what other My dream
was not to be a management consultant. It was always

(17:01):
to be a writer. And yes it took me until
the age of forty to get published, but now what
is it twelve years later and twelve books later. So
you know, you can never say you've fulfilled every single
ambition or dream because there's always something new to write
and something new to achieve. But it is it's a
nice place to be after that long being ridiculed.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Interestingly about sorry Chris, about your You mentioned the different
genres that you wrote in, including the Eurotic sort of novel.
Do you think that was to do with kind of
your experience as a writer and growing or perhaps timing
because for example, at the moment, erotic stories are kind
of be the big trend. So do you think that

(17:42):
was a case of just you were waiting for the
right tough thing to hit to kind of think that's
where you want to go with it? Or was crime
writer a crime writing always your destiny if that made sense?

Speaker 4 (17:53):
No, no, not by any means. Like I said, I
started off loving sci fi. I wrote sci fi short
stories in long hand, and then I wrote that comic fantasy.
I think largely it was because of a complete lack
of knowledge, which is why podcasts like this are amazing. Now.
You know when I when I was growing up, there
was no Internet, There was no there was no way

(18:13):
you could go online to see you know, aerodyite, good
Good Cop Chris and Bad Cop Chris and all this
kind of stuff and listen to writers. You couldn't even
go and see any write because they hardly did any touring.
And I come from an Asian community where you know,
almost no one read fiction. There six hundred people went
to my sister's wedding. They had bloody bagpipers there, but

(18:35):
I could count on one hand a number of people
who read fiction. So there was no one for me
to talk to. And there was no courses for me
to attend, no festivals to go to. So for that,
for that, for the entire period of twenty odd years
and seven rejected novels, I literally showed nothing. I didn't
show a single thing, single piece of writing to anyone

(18:57):
anyone else. And I think now when I look at that,
and I think I could have shortcut a shortcut of
that process. If I'd had the advice and the guidance,
and instead of willing nearly trying to write any old
thing that I thought might sell in the market or
just came into my head, I would have been a
lot more focused about it. Yeah, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
The question then, is how did you sort of harnessed
your craft and sort of find your voice that event
eventually broke through to you becoming published. And what do
you think the difference was between the novels you were
writing before that and the one that actually launched your career.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
Oh that's that's relatively easy to answer, actually, because I
a my earlier novels were shit. I mean, and genuinely speaking,
I can go back and look at them and I cringe.
You know, a seventeen year old cannot really write a
grown up, proper novel. It's just not they think they can, right,
And unless they're that one in a million genius, then

(19:56):
they're completely completely deluded. And I was completely deluded, and
I think it wasn't until my I think, I think,
and this is quite odd because most agents are not
this are not just that shite bags. But I got
one person replying to me on that on that submission
when I was seventeen, to say, we don't think you

(20:16):
should ever write another word again, which is quite a
cruel thing to say to a seventeen years old. It
wasn't until my fourth book that I started to get
positive feedback that you know, we can't, we don't want
this book, but we like you're writing. The next thing
you write, do send it to us. And I think
that was just those little tiny glimmers of encouragement were

(20:37):
enough to keep me, to keep me going. Sorry, what
was the question I've forgotten?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Just like how did you find your voice that sort
of then launched your career?

Speaker 4 (20:48):
That was that it comes back to write what you know.
I've written a lot of books where the protagonist was
nothing like me or doesn't didn't lean into my background
or experience. I was just trying to write what I
thought the market wanted. I wrote one thriller and this
will make you laugh now, but at the time it
made perfect sense to me. It was set in the

(21:09):
American White House where the president is kidnapped by aliens
and when he returns, he acts in a really bonker's way,
and well, you can't make it up now, Yeah, yeah,
So It was the ten years that I lived in
India in my twenties, and I saw this amazing country
change from the pre industrial society to the near global

(21:31):
superpower that we think of India as today. So globalization, westernization,
all of that comes into the country. You've got skyscape,
scrapers and all the rest of it, and then you've
got these crazy things like you know, first when I
landed and I walked out of the airport and we
were in a taxi going to the hotel, who stopped
at this set of traffic lights with this chaos in
the road, and then this massive elephant with a man

(21:54):
on his back comes walking through the traffic and you know,
you can't see anything like that unless you've had a
few too many of Friday Friday night in England. And
so that stayed with me, and I think that experience
went into that first book that was published, which is
called The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra. It's a mystery,

(22:14):
it said in modern Mumbai in India used to be Bombay.
The policeman, in his mid forties, forced into early retirement.
One last mission, one last job, trying to solve a
murder but he also inherits on his last day in office,
a baby elephant. And I never expected this book to
be published. I mean, who puts an elephant into a

(22:36):
bloody crime novel? But I just wanted to put in
all of the amazing things I'd seen out there. And
it turns out that that's what did it, because the book, well,
I got an agent off the back of that book,
and then the agent sold the first four books in
that series to a Big five publisher. And I asked
him afterwards, I said, why did you why did you

(22:58):
buy this book? Editor said, it's because it was so
completely different to anything we'd seen in the crime fiction market. Firstly,
it was out in India, and there hadn't been many
crime novels set in India. And then you had this policeman,
this very serious man who takes justice very seriously in
this turbulent modern India with sort of you know, poverty

(23:20):
and slums and all the rest of it. But you've
also got this globalization and westernization. And then you've given
him this baby elephant that he has to look after
and he lives on the thirteenth floor of a tower block.
I mean, and they just said it was. They just
fell in love with that idea and they put me
on BBC Breakfast to talk about it, which gave it
a great start, translated into seventeen languages, and effectively, that

(23:44):
book it's changed my life. It gave me a career
as a writer. I wrote five books in that series
and they continue. I haven't written a book in that
series for about six years because I wanted to do
something different, But they continue to sell and people continue
to write to me, and there's usually two questions. One
is when are you going to do another one? And
the second question is more of a threat, make sure

(24:04):
nothing happens to that damned elephant.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
It's incredible to think about. And there's a lot of
people out there might feel they need to stick to
what's already there to kind of fit in and to
get a chance of being published, for example, And there's
people out there that want to go wide with their stories,
like kind of even further than what you've done. Is
there a line they should go down? Do you feel?

(24:29):
Or is it you just write what you feel like
you should write and that's true to your heart and
that's the way it should be.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
Well, yeah, I mean, one thing I've I've become over
the last twelve years is a student of the industry,
of the publishing industry, And because I talked to people
around the industry, or you know, I run a crime
fiction podcast where I talk to people famous writers and
editors and the like, And what you quickly come to
realize is that very few people know what the bloody

(24:57):
hill they're doing. And a large part of what happened
is luck for good fortune or people taking a punt
on something and not really knowing. I mean, Harry Potter
was rejected by what twenty eight agents. Can you imagine
being an agent who's rejected a multi billion dollar franchise?
You'd be bloody suicidal, wouldn't you? And so I mean,

(25:18):
as far as I'm sorry, I forgot the question again?

Speaker 1 (25:21):
What was it just about writing? Do you think the
people out there that think they need to write directly
to sort of what the industry looks like or like
yourself with the elephant going slightly sideways, do you think
there's a right way to approach that.

Speaker 4 (25:34):
I think the industry. I think the best way to
encapsulate it is do something completely different but the same.
And that sounds nonsensical, But what It really means is
that when you have something like crime fiction, which has
a template and certain beats that readers are expecting, then

(25:54):
it's good to try and stick to that template and
those beats. But what editors really are looking for is
somebody who takes that formula and then just tweaks it
enough so that they can go to the market and say, hey,
if you loved Ian Rankin's Rebus series, here's another brilliant

(26:14):
Scottish police procedural, but it does something slightly different, so
that gets them that market of readers who already love Rebus,
but hopefully it brings something new so that everyone doesn't
roll their eyes and just say, oh, well, it's just
a complete ripoff of Reabs. So I'm not going to
claim to be completely unique. I mean, I know, yes,
nobody else has put an elephant into a crime novel

(26:36):
as a sidekick, but those books do lean into the
kind of market that Alexander McCall smith's Number One Ladies
Detective Agents, although they're a bit darker and Chopper is
a more serious, a more serious man. Do either of
you read Ben Oranovich's Rivers of London. Yes, there's a

(26:56):
perfect example of somebody who took a known formula and
it did something completely off the wall with it and
it's paid off.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
We had a great chat with Ben on the show.
He was fantastic. While you're talking about uniqueness and the
way you were discussing it just then, what I want
to talk about is you're now taking on the Q
series or a new series of Q through the Ian
Fleming Fleming Estates. So when there's already sort of a

(27:26):
history of that character, how do you approach about taking
that in a similar way like your own direction, without
changing too much, but whilst also making it unique.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
Yeah, so that so that project came about because they'd
been reading some of my Malabar House novels, which is
my nineteen fifties India set historical series, and you know,
they were looking for something with a similarly dry, dry tone,
and Q is a very dry character, you know, dryly humorous.
And what they didn't want was another spy novel because

(27:59):
they've got people who write straight continuation novels of James Bond, right.
What they wanted was to lean into this. So here's
their pitch that we want something halfway between Mick Hero
and Slow Horses. And Richard Osman's a murder club. Yes,
and we want Q to be the central protagonist, but
we don't know what the story could be, so why

(28:20):
don't you give us some ideas? And the idea that
I gave them and they went with was Quantum of Menace,
where Q is booted out of six and as you said,
he's the gadget master, or you know, he thinks of
himself as a as a real scientist. He's been there
for a few decades and he's and he basically produces
weapons and field kit for James Bond and the other
double agents. Now he's booted out, he doesn't know what

(28:43):
to do with himself. He's got no friends, got no family.
He's age fifty, so he's neither Desmond Llewell, and neither
is he Ben Wishaw. We sort of partly answers your
question because I did not want to create use either
of those, because people are so wedded to them that
if I made a mess of it, you know, I'd
have lead regions of Bond fans part ouside my house
lobbing bricks through my window. Didn't want that. And then

(29:07):
he's he's he's at sea, and then he receives a
cryptic letter from his childhood friend Peter Napier, who's a
quantum computer scientist, hence the title Quantum of Menace, and
Peter's recently died under mysterious circumstances, and that letter pulls
Q back to his small hometown to reinvestigate Peter's death.

(29:27):
And he's not been back home for a nearly three
decades because he's left a very messy, messy pass behind.
So the book is it's a small town murder mystery,
but it's also an it's an exploration of how Q
reacts now that he's lost his job at MI I
six and what is he going to do next with
his life? And the hope, of course, is that he
becomes a kind of an amateur detective in this small town,

(29:51):
solving various murders as we move along the series.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
It's a great kind of addition to have the fact
his background can assist him in that modern sort of journey.
Did you lean on sort of what was already there
a lot or did you kind of think I'm going
to reinvent this completely in my sort of image.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, Well, the great thing about Q is that he
doesn't appear in the books very much at all. You know,
he starts live as a major Boothroyd as an armorer
in the sixth book, I think, or fifth doctor No.
And he's the one who gives Bond his wald for
ppk W and Bond was previously using a peretta. And
then he t vanishes and then we get to see
him on film and he becomes Q and so the
two become joined together, and you know, it becomes a

(30:34):
que that we know. But even in the films, you know,
it's usually just a few minutes of things exploding in
the lab. And then he gives Bond something and put
and gives him a dry put down, pay attention Bond
or whatever. Yeah, and so I had plenty to work with.
I've given him a whole I made him into a
proper character, a man who, as I said, takes his
work very seriously because he believes in a vision. And

(30:58):
he and James Bond believe in a vision of democracy
and a way of life that we all hopefully sign
up to in Western countries. And he's helped to try
and protect that way of life, as has James Bond,
and we sometimes lose that in the films because they're
sort of action movies, and I've tried to bring that
sense back into the book. So he leans into that
part of his past, and we get lots of Easter

(31:20):
eggs for Bond fans and lots of and James Bond commanded.
James Bond does make a meaningful appearance in the second
half of the book. So yeah, it's a balancing act.
You know, how much of the old queue to include
and how much do we want the new que who
is actually out there solving this mystery. I've had an
enormous amount of fun with it, and people seem to

(31:42):
be enjoying it once you've read it.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
The one question that it didn't fit in with what
I was planning to ask, and I wanted to ask it,
which is, if it has the potential as it stands,
you know, just the fact of what it is to
have a series or potentially a movie made of it.
If that was the case, would you have any idea
who you would love to have as the classic James

(32:08):
Bond stroke Q theme song to perform the theme song?

Speaker 4 (32:12):
Theme song haven't just been signed up to do. I'm
sure I heard it on the news yesterday. Oasis have
just been signed up to do the theme song for
the new or have been requested to do the theme
song for the new Bond des that. To be honest,
you're an Ois fan.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
I'm not.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
No, what about you.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
I think you strike me as someone who would like that.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oh thanks, stereotyping much.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
From Manchester.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
It depends what they do with it, to be honest,
it's been a couple of really good I mean, I
didn't think Adele would do a great the Bond song,
but I think, you know.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Skyfall was a really good one.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
So I just I think it just depends on the
mood of the film and if they can sort of
get that right.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Yeah. I don't know who Britney spears. Yeah, that's it.
It's got to be right Britney.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
We've had recently, we've had Sam Smith, We've had Billie Eilish,
We've had who you just mentioned. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (33:11):
Oasis should be a fellow, a fellow thriller writer.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, Mike Willingham's band.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
No, No fifty cent Curtis Jackson. Oh yeah, did you
know that he writes thrillers? Yeah? I only discovered this
the other day.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
His hands and everything at the minute he makes doctor
writes crime novels.

Speaker 4 (33:34):
I'm not I'm not sure that he actually wrote a
single word of those, because the actual writer's name is
on there as well, in very very tiny microscopic font.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
He may be like said the idea to the writer.
Maybe maybe we don't know, We don't know. You might
have dreamed it once. Yeah, I see.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Obviously, with your books being produced in seventeen different countries
and the success that you've had obviously with your roles
as well, that you've had over the time, does that
add any additional pressure to you when you sit down
and write, Because obviously you said you wrote, you know,
seven books before you got published. It should imagine that
was you just driving yourself forward. But then when you've

(34:17):
got an army of people waiting for things to happen,
waiting for the next story, the next idea, does that
add additional pressure to you? And how do you cope
with that and sort of manage the writing?

Speaker 4 (34:29):
Hmm? Well, I mean, look, when you're under a publishing
contract or two of them, as I am at the moment,
there is that deadline pressure. There is that knowledge that
once you submit something, you're going to get an editor
of more than one editor tearing things apart and help
and helping you. I mean, that's a tearing thing to
part is the wrong the wrong way. They're there to

(34:49):
help you make a better, better book, and that pressure
is not there when when you're when you're not published.
But in terms of actually sitting down and enjoying the
process of writing, you know, there's nothing better except maybe
making a fifteen playing cricket when I'm playing cricket. But
and this is something I know that everybody who's listening

(35:11):
today will will recognize that when you're when you've got
an idea that really excites you, and you've got characters
that you've invented and you love their company, and you're
sitting down and you're flying you know, the plots, the
plot's making sense, everything's working. It's just it's just a wonderful,
amazing feeling. And whenever things go wrong, you know, I

(35:32):
always try and go back to that and say, look,
you didn't start off this whole thing when you were
a teenager trying to be a writer because you thought
you were going to be famous and rich and all
the rest of it. You did it because of how
much joy and pleasure it gave you to sit down
and write. And I think whenever I do workshops or whatever,
that's the first thing I say to people. I say,

(35:52):
if you're not feeling that joy, that means that either
you're not writing the right book or you're just not
This is not for you. Writing is not for you.
You've got to feel that joy to do it, and
that doesn't go away no matter how many publishing deals
you have or whatever.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
And if we try and break down the stigma a
little bit, because we have a lot of people who
watch the show that are aspiring writers, and I think
it's really helpful to go into what the actual day
to day looks like and what success is on a
daily basis for different people. So could you sort of
like take us through a typical day in your life
in terms of like what you're aiming to achieve that

(36:31):
day and things like that.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Sure, but I will say this for people who are
aspiring writers. So one of my favorite writers is a
chap called John Irving, who writes the big, meaty literary
books like The Cider House Rules and you know those
kind of books. And I read something when I was
still struggling to try and get published. I read something
by him, which I found really inspirational because because he'd

(36:56):
written that when he was still struggling to get published.
He went to a talk by one of his favorite
writers and he spoke to this guy afterwards, and he
was in awe of him, and he said to him, look,
you know, I'm trying to be a writer, and you know,
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And the guy
pulled him up and he said to him, look, first
things first is each day you've got to stop saying

(37:16):
that you're trying to be a writer. If you're writing
in any form, it means you are a writer. And
it doesn't matter if you haven't yet got a publishing
deal or whatever. You are a writer because you've taken
the effort to make that first step in the journey,
and you've taken the effort to keep going. So so
never believe that you're not a writer just because you

(37:36):
haven't got that publishing deal yet. To my process is
that I plan a lot. I'm not a panther. I'm
a dedicated plotter. I spend two or three months creating
a plot. I was a management consultant, so I use spreadsheets.
You know, I'll have one row for each of the
scenes in the book. I'll do the research and i'll
hone it, hone it, and then I'll have this great

(37:57):
big spreadsheet that has every scene, little basic plot for
every scene. Then I start writing. I'll get up very
early in the morning, six seven. I'll write thousand words,
fifteen hundred words, and then I'll stop, and then I'll
reread them, and then i'll try and edit. And I
like to edit as I go because I absolutely hate

(38:17):
getting edits from my editor afterwards. So I try and
make it. I try, and and I hate doing the
whole just dump a first draft and then go back,
because I find that that's for me. It doesn't work
because it means I have to go and change so much.
I'd much rather go change as I go. And also
as I change as I go, it means that new

(38:39):
ideas will occur to me because I'm going slightly slower
than if I just tried to dump an entire one
hundred thousand words in two months. And then once I'm done,
I leave it for a few weeks and then I
come back to it, reread, edit, reread, do that two
or three times, and then I'll send it in nice.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
I noticed that reference there, Chris.

Speaker 4 (39:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
I mean there's a lot of my students that if
somebody says, then you didn't do that, then.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
My daughter will laugh at that. I will show this and.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
At getting up early in the morning.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
No, Chris, is this crazy weird trend that makes no sense.
It's called six seven and Chris, it's a weird symbol
that the kids like to do.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
Yeah, yeah, well I know where I would listening to
it on the radio. The comes from an American basketball player,
who oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just gone bonkers, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
It really has. So I want to talk about just
because this is kind of jumbled up in the way
we've talked about things in a great way. The Edge
of Darkness being the sixth and final book in the
Malabar House series.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
Well, it's news to me that it's the final book.
Halfway through the seventh one.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
My information is absolutely horrendous.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
Right now, My editor is something else, don't.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
It is now finished? There is no seventh that is like, no,
of course, not so ignore that. How many books do
have planned in the series. That'll be a bad question
for you, mean to ask.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
So that series does really well. So it's entirely up
to the publisher. They keep renewing it and I love
writing them, so I should probably give some background. So
after I did five books in that first series with
The Policeman and the Baby Elephant, the Baby Ganess series,
I wanted to do something where I looked at where
this modern India came from. It's my heritage, but I

(40:28):
didn't know anything about it until I went their age
twenty three. All I'd ever known about it before was
what I'd seen in Bollywood films. And if you've ever
seen one of these things, you know that they bear
no relationship to reality whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
They are fantastic.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
So I learned about the history of India and I thought,
you know what, I want to write about this. But
I want to write about that time just after India
became independent, because Britain had been there for about three
hundred years and they completely changed the trajectory of the country.
But we don't really understand it that well because we
don't teach it in history here. History and English one

(41:01):
of my favorite subjects at school, but we learn I
love learning about Tudor England, and I love learning about
the World Wars, but it would have been nice to
learn a little bit about Britain's time in India. So
I picked nineteen fifty, just after India becomes independent. I
introduced India's first female police detective. She's working with an
English forensic scientist who's out there trying to help the
Bombay force set up its own forensic science lab. And

(41:23):
then the first book, it's called Midnight at Malabar House,
an English diplomat is murdered in Bombay as Mumbai was
then known, and the case falls into their lab. Because
she's the only woman on the police force in India,
they don't know what to do with her, so they
shove her into Bombay's smallest police station with all the
rejects and misfits, and so she's trying to prove herself

(41:44):
while she's trying to solve this murder. And I didn't
know if the book would be successful, but you know,
it really took off, and we're up to six in
the series. Now the Edge of Darkness, which you reference,
which comes out in January, and this time she's been
banished to the eastern northeastern jungles of India where she's

(42:05):
working in this small police station in a place called
the Naga Hills, which is now Nagarland, and that area
is famous because the local tribes there up until the
nineteen sixties were still chopping off each other's heads. Wow,
She's staying in a colonial hotel and she's called up
to the room of the state governor and it's locked,

(42:27):
and they break in and they discover his body and
it's the head is missing, and so we have a
locker room mystery. We have a missing head, and there's
an insurgency going on. So it's all of that lovely
politics and history or mixed up with a proper locked
rum mystery. So lots of fun for me to write.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah. Were there any inspirational characters to sort of motivate
you to write parises? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (42:50):
I mean there was so when you look at the
history of that period, sort of women didn't really have
much of a voice. It's a very patriarchal society, a
lot of misogyny in the police force. But there were
some some women when I did the research, that were
really sort of going a grit against the against the trend.
And there was one really amazing woman. She she married
into a family of pilots and then her father in

(43:14):
law saw that she liked She liked this, and so
he trained it and then he took her to an
airfield in Bombay and he said, if you can, so
the story goes. Don't know if he actually said it,
but but the story goes. He said, if you could
take this plane up, it was a little gypsy moth.
If you can take this plane up and bring it
down without crashing, I'll give you a pilot's license. Apparently

(43:34):
she did. And there's this amazing picture if you google
her name, Sariha Takral, of this woman in a sari,
an Indian sari with a big old style aviator cap
on her head standing next to this gypsy moth. So
she's one of India's first female pilots. So she's kind
of an inspiration. Loved that.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
So with the lot room thriller, then, like we've had
a lot of guests come on the show and talk
about sort of how they construct locker room thriller. But
what advice would you give to somebody if they were
attempting it for the first time, because it can be
quite truck.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
Yeah, it is tricky and the first thing to do is,
of course to read, do a bit of googling find
the books that have really done this. Well, probably not
the ones that are really old from the Golden Age
era because they use certain tricks that today readers would
just roll their eyes at. But even in the last
decade or so, Mike Craven, who you've probably had on
or you know, you know, he's done one, and there's

(44:28):
a few other people. And that's one thing. And the
second thing is, of course, that don't be afraid to
take a little bit of liberty because a locker room mystery,
no matter how you do it. I mean, if I
don't know if you guys are fans of Death in Paradise,
but I think Death in Paradise did an entire season
of locked room mysteries, and some of them you get
to the end and you'd want to smash a TV

(44:50):
because you think this is nonsense, but you love the
show so you keep watching, so you can take a
bit of liberty with those.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Helo has put a comment in saying it is that
where the Naga myth comes from, reverencing slightly earlier.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
I'm not sure what Halo means by the Naga myth.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, let us know, Halo, if you can just to
jump in there. I've found that picture so unlucky. If
you're on the podcast listening, sorry you can't see this,
but is that the image you're talking about?

Speaker 2 (45:20):
One?

Speaker 4 (45:21):
Yeah, she goes, Yeah, it a go you.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Know, it's just a plain I'm sure loads of help
and safety violations, but yeah, I guess back then it
was all about dreams and well done. If that was
a real story is amazing. Yeah. So we are flying
through this and the realms have kind of jumbled up,
so we're kind of been the time where you guys
can ask questions. So if you do have questions, please

(45:46):
send them in and we will ask them around our
staple questions. So, Chris, do you want to start us
off with those?

Speaker 4 (45:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
So the first staple question that we have is if
you could take any character from fiction and make that
character your own, which character to choose them?

Speaker 4 (46:00):
What would you do with that? Right? Okay? So I
thought about this, and I always thought because I love
fantasy and sci fi, as I've told you, and I
loved Lord of the Rings and I read it earlier,
and I always thought, poor old Saron got a bad deal.
You know, he's always painted as this villain. And yes,
he's a bit villain nurse and he kills load of
loads of people. But you know, he's backed into a corner.

(46:21):
He's got no he's got no option but to take
over Middle Earth because I just won't let him do
what he wants to do. So I'd love to get
Souron out of Middle Earth, put him into a crime novel,
you know, put him into a crime novel as a sidekick.
And I think he'd be a really good sidekick. You know,
you can imagine a show like Home Style Detective saying
was elementary my dear Saron, and Saron would be quite

(46:45):
an intimidating kick, right, You wouldn't want to mess with
want to mess with Saron? Get yourself laser eyed to
death something. I'd love to do. Something sympathetic.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Well, there could be a really interesting backstory as how
he is where he is.

Speaker 4 (47:03):
I think was it Amazon? Possibly? Who Who've on Netflix?
And there is a series which looks at Aaron's background
and leads us through how he started off nice and
then became a bit nasty. But I watched it and
I thought to myself, Yeah, this isn't fair. You know,
they're just painting as a bad guy yes, so what
if he kills a few hobbits.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
Here and the.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
Bloody hobbits Anyway.

Speaker 5 (47:27):
A brilliant video of somebody yesterday who has recreated their
own Souron and they've done it entirely out of metal
and made the whole suit of arm and everything.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
And the guy actually has a heart attack and nearly
died because the head was on strings and one of
the strings snaps and Saron's head moves.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
Oh no, but when he was working.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
On the arm, the head just moved and it looked
really menacing, and obviously he wasn't expecting it to move,
so it's.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
Even just like a sort of collapse.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
This reminds me of an event I did years ago
when a person came in with their teenage daughter and
she'd made this paper mache elephant because she'd been reading
my first series, and you know, I thought, oh, this
is amazing, thank you so much, and then she said, no,
you can't have it. I just thought you to sign,

(48:25):
so can you sign it? And I'm taking it back?
Was it one of your students, Chris? It's bad Chris's students,
wasn't it?

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Quite possibly. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
I love how the people are bringing, you know, made
work for you to sign and everything that would be
in somebody's room. It's a little treasured piece.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
But yeah, it's brilliant or an eb and they get
how they are motivated, Halo said, referencing the question earlier. Sorry,
the half human half cobra myth Oh.

Speaker 4 (48:55):
No, no, that's slightly, that's something different. So the Nagas
are just they're they're try Bibles in that particular area.
What you're talking about is a from Hindu mythology. A.
The Nagas are largely Christian because the Brits and the
Americans converted them the Christianity.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
As that happened often. So that's uh, We'll carry on
with the stable questions. So, if you could take any
character from the word of fiction, this being a TV show,
a movie, or a novel or a series, and put
that character into maybe a book of your own, or
even if you can't think of that, taking them out
for the day, what character from the word of fiction

(49:34):
would you do that with? Oh?

Speaker 4 (49:36):
I thought we just did that. We star run, didn't
we Apologies?

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Okay, if you could take the ending of anything again
to those same sort of categories and change the ending.
What ending would you change? And why?

Speaker 4 (49:47):
I'll tell you what the movie seven, right, Brad Pitt,
And because the studio bosses for sech some of those
who don't know. Seven is a serial killer movie with
Kevin Spacey's a serial killer and it's got this hideous
ending where, yeah, right, I don't want to spoil it
completely for people, I might have to actually, because yeah,

(50:09):
so long is that brad Pitt's wife, the serial killer
cuts off her head, sticks it in a box, calls
bad brad Pitt to this location and he says, here's
the box, and d know what's in the box until
he opens it, and then of course he kills the
serial killer, which is what the serial killer wants. And
I always thought the studio bosses didn't like that ending
to begin with, and I always think to myself, what

(50:31):
the hell did they want? Then? So if in the
box instead of the head, there's a cake or a
small lovely pet dog for Brad Pitt and simpletely changes
what we think of Kevin Spacey. Oh yes, he murdered
a few other people, but he gave Brad Pitt the
lovely pet dog.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
But it's what completed the whole seventh Sin saga.

Speaker 4 (50:55):
I know, I know, I know, I know, if but
that's the ending that always stays with me as just
an amazing, brilliant ending. So if you want to mess
with someone's ending, there's an ending to mess with, just.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
The way he tends and says, oh he didn't know.
It's like, ah, yeah, it's one of my favorite films
and I don't think it's ever been replicated to that
sort of level of awesomeness since. And that's some of those.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
Yeah, maybe it's a bigger box and somebody leaps out,
Tony Blair leaps.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
Out, what's the punk show back in the day punked?

Speaker 4 (51:31):
Oh, I don't remember watching it like a big rank.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Show when they jump out with the cameras. That would
have been quite funny.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
I seem I was just going to sidetrack a little
bit there in terms of endings then, Like, obviously you've
talked about being such a detailed planner, but how do
you know when you've got a really good ending?

Speaker 4 (51:48):
Well, I mean, if so. With crime fiction, you usually
want to set out three or four different suspects, right,
unless it's a thriller, which operates in a slightly different
way written one of those as well, So it's different.
But you want to be able to lead the right
the reader down a garden path in three or four
different directions, but any of them, you know, makes sense

(52:09):
with the eventual ending. So if you get to the
ending and the killer is revealed, and then the reader
goes back and says, but wait a minute, the groundwork
wasn't late for this person to be the killer, this
is just bonkers, then I think readers will be disappointed.
So if you've done your job properly, any of three
or four, maybe five people could be the killer, but
hopefully it will be someone who is very surprising. But

(52:31):
when the reader goes back and say, oh, wait a minute,
that person did make a tiny appearance over here early
in the book, and then we didn't really see them again,
And yes, I can understand the logic now as to
why they were the killer. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
And one of our sort of staple questions is again
a little bit morbid. But you're on your deathbed, you're
looking back at your writing career. What would you be
happy with? What is success to you?

Speaker 4 (52:56):
Jesus Christ, He's ended one of my series and you've
put me on my deathbed. Given that I've just had
my blood test done, I'm not sure if how far
away from the truth this is. I've got high cholesterol now,
so basically my wife has banned me for anything that
tass remotely good. Anyway, what does success look like? Success
looks like George Clooney, doesn't it. I mean, smoke bastard.

(53:20):
He's not only easy a top movie actor, and not
only has he got his where's my Bloody Coffee adverts,
but he's also made a billion dollars out of his
whiskey firm or whatever it is wrong or whatever. Okay,
I mean I said this a little bit earlier, didn't I.
No matter how many books you sell or you know,
how established you become, ultimately, for me, success is always

(53:44):
going to be being able to come up with a
great idea for a book, and then to have an
enormous amount of fun writing that book, regardless of whether
or not it's going to be published. And even now,
because I write read so widely across so many genres,
and even now I have I occasionally will sit down

(54:05):
and I will start writing something different, not under a
publishing contract. I wrote like ten thousand words of a
fantasy when I in between contracted books this year, just
because I wanted to write something different. Yeah, it probably
take me ten years to finish the damn thing because
I have to wait for gaps in my writing schedule.
But I do five or six short stories every year

(54:27):
in different genres because just for the just for the
pleasure of writing something that's different. So for me, I
think success really is a that and B the whole
community of friends that I've made now, including you two,
because I never expected to make those friends at this age.
You know, I got to forty, I'd never been published,

(54:49):
didn't think after one hundred odd rejections, that I would
ever get published. Once I was published, did not understand,
did not know what kind of reception might await me,
await me in the industry, because you know, if I'm
being completely honest, twelve years ago, there were almost no
writers of my heritage in crime fiction. And everywhere I went,
and everyone I saw and talked to was, you know,

(55:11):
was a white person. And I didn't know what they
would make of someone like me coming in and writing
crime novels. Said in India, but people have been so
wonderful and so lovely. It's just been an amazing experience.
And I know it's not everyone's experience, but I did
spend twenty years in the trenches. So now I feel
that a large part of the joy I get out

(55:33):
of this industry is things like this, you know, making friends,
meeting people, talking to readers and other aspiring aspiring writers.
That's that success.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, I love That's one of the best answers we've had.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
I think to that question, I.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Was about to say exactly the same thing. That's genuine
and humble and amazing. So yeah, thank you for that answer.
We do have a couple of questions in there, let
me find them. And it says ideal place and life
last ideal place. Maybe that's the least ideal. I'm not
entirely sure. For a writing.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
Retreat, well, well, I tend to get out very quickly
playing cricket, and then I've got the whole rest of
the day to sit on the sideline. So I tend
to take my laptop and I tend to get a
bit of writing done on a cricket pitch. But look,
I ideally, for me, it's a very quiet space. I
don't understand writers. Maybe you're you're one of one of
these people who you know, put on rock and roll

(56:25):
music when they're and I have friends who do this.
I just can't understand how that how that dynamic works.
So least ideal is a noisy, crowded cafe. I find
that very difficult to write in those places.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Yeah, I think music wise, it affects my emotions too much.
I'm not sure how many other people are like this.
It has to be very calm and almost non noticeable
for it to work well. Chris says, what would who
would you have playing as your cue character in a
film or TV adaptation?

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Oh, it's got to be Tom Cruise, right, I mean
if he can play Jack Reachers, who's like six foot
taller than him, Wow, we need can definitely play I mean,
I love Tom Cruise, let's you know. I think he's
an amazing actor, great range, and it was brilliant and
collateral where he dyed his hair gray. So maybe we
could have that Tom Cruise playing cute.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yeah. I agree, that was great. Yes, we might have
time for one or two more things, but the same
before we do wrap this up, because our time is
now coming to an end. Where can people find you
on social Media's where can they buy your books, and
and can you point them towards all the things you'd
like them to look at.

Speaker 4 (57:30):
Well, if you just google my name, you'll see my
website and all my books are up there. My social
I'm I'm on most of social media Instagram and Twitter
or excell whatever the hell they call it these days,
and Facebook. So I'm fairly easy to fairly easy to find.
And you know, anyone who likes who wants to read
one of my books, I'll be very grateful. The Quantum

(57:52):
of Menace does look very christmasly, I have to say,
gave it the Christmas colors.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
Yeah, I do love the the cover for your sixth book,
not the final book in the series. Yeah, it seems
very different to the others. Did you have much input
on that one?

Speaker 4 (58:10):
I did? I did. They asked me, and for that one,
I said, Look, the Nagas are known for head hunting,
so maybe a skull great, And then there's a picture
of an actual Naga hut, so they have a very
distinctive hut. So yeah, it's a great it's a great cover.
You know, I didn't do it myself. That they have
an designer at Hodder who does that it's done an
amazing job with all the series.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
So just before we go, then, can can you shed
the spotlight on a writer that you think maybe hasn't
had enough credit for the stuff they've been doing and
who would they be and what should we check out
from them?

Speaker 4 (58:45):
When you mentioned a friend of yours earlier, didn't you
Rob Parker and his latest series with the with the
sas equivalent of a diver. I've forgotten the exact terminology
they use for it. I thought that was brilliant, The
Trouble Deep I think it was called. Was it the
first in that series? And I know he is busy
beavering away on a second one in that series, so

(59:07):
you know, it's a real change for Rob. And I
think he's just in a rif. I love that book,
so I think he's I think, why not give a
friend a pat on the back there for that?

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Absolutely, And I'm going to push one more in there,
just to keep you a bit longer. For everyone that
may be watching that or listening as aspiring writers, what
is the single most important piece of writing advice you
can give them today?

Speaker 4 (59:29):
Well, that's an easy one because I say this in
my workshops and it's a very It's a very concrete
piece of advice. The number one reason that books are
rejected by agents is because the quality of the book
does not meet their minimum standard for them to be
able to have confidence sending it out to a publisher.
And what I mean by that is that people probably
haven't spent enough time learning the craft of the type

(59:52):
of prose, plotting and characterization needed for the genre of
book they're trying to to write. And it differs you're
trying to write a literary novel that the pro standard
is required is slightly higher. When you're trying to write
crime fiction. It's more about the pros isn't necessarily so important,
as we know from books like The Da Vinci Code,
which I absolutely love, but nobody's going to call it

(01:00:13):
a literary masterpiece. It's more about are you getting the
beats right? Is the hook amazing? Are the characters going
to stand up? If it's a character driven crime novel
or if it's a plot driven one, does the plot
stand up? So you've got to get feedback. You've got
to and you know, often I will say to people
that if you have good friends who are willing to

(01:00:35):
read and who are knowledgeable about this, use them, but
better to get an editor who is experienced and pay them,
because they've got some of these helpful agencies out there now. Now,
just be careful to pick one where you've read the
biography of the editor and they really have had experience
in the industry and can be trusted. And it's not
one of these fly by night merchants. But you normally

(01:00:56):
get one good chance with a good idea. What you
don't want is to send it to twenty agents, a
brilliant hook that's been badly executed, and then you ruin
your chance with that particular book, and then you you
know you have to go and write something else, make
the best fist of it before you submit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Amazing. Yep, that is absolutely fantastic advice. And thank you
so much the same. You have been amazing to chat to.
As I said, it was a shame that the amount
of times we've been to Harrogate we haven't quite had
that conversation, but now we've had that, so it's amazing
to do that. And thank you so much. And Chris,
have you got any questions bad cop before we wrap

(01:01:34):
this up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Oh, I'm just going to say a good look following
England for however many games they've got left.

Speaker 4 (01:01:41):
And yeah, I'll be up at five am again tonight.
Better day than yesterday. But guys, it's been absolutely wonderful
chatting to you, and thank you so much for all
of the support you give to writers with your with
your podcast. And if you're at Harrogate this year, I
will see you there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Yeah, thank you so much, everybody. Thank you for tuning in.
If you're watching it back or listening, thank you for
doing that as well. Please do leave some comments and
follow Vissem on his socials and of course by his
latest books and you can find them on his website
and on Amazon and your local bookstore I'm assuming as well.

Speaker 4 (01:02:14):
Yeah it's an all that book stolls.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
Yeah, excellent, So they go go and pick those books
up this weekend because it's raining in the UK, so
you may as well read a book. But from us,
it's goodbye, have a great weekend, and thank you very
much for watching. Bye everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
Thank you guys, thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):
Thank you so much for joining us for another powerful
conversation here on the Writing Community chat show Before you Go.
If this episode sparked an idea, gave you a new tool,
or just made you feel a little less alone in
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(01:02:53):
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