In the world of writing, the path to becoming a published author is often shrouded in mystery. For many, it's a journey filled with rejection, self-doubt, and the tireless pursuit of a story. But what happens when that journey not only leads to publication, but to a place on the prestigious Sunday Times Bestseller list?This is the story of B.P. Walter, a master of psychological thrillers and horror. In a fascinating interview on The Writing Community Chat Show podcast, Walter shares his insights on crafting compelling fiction, the power of persistence, and how a surprising change of plans turned his dream into a full-time career.The Turning Point: When a Pandemic Helped Launch a Bestseller.One of the most compelling parts of the interview is the behind-the-scenes look at how Walter’s third book, The Dinner Guest, became a game-changer. Despite having two previous novels published, it was this book that captured the attention of readers and the industry.He reveals a stroke of good timing: the book was released in April 2021, just as UK retail shops were reopening after lockdown. People poured into bookshops, and The Dinner Guest was ready and waiting to be discovered. This momentum, combined with an "incredible promotion," propelled the book to number one on the Times chart, changing his life and allowing him to commit to writing full-time.Demystifying the Writing Process.For aspiring authors, B.P. Walter offers invaluable, practical advice. He candidly discusses how his writing process has evolved over 10 books. Initially, he didn't focus on word count, but a tight deadline forced him to adopt a more disciplined approach. Now, he aims for 3,000 words a day when actively drafting a manuscript.Perhaps his most surprising tip came from the Faber Academy, where he learned the power of planning. He now meticulously plans his novels chapter by chapter with a short summary for each, a method he now considers essential. Walter believes that knowing where the story is going allows for a more structured and efficient creative flow.Crafting Fear: Tips for Thriller, Horror & Gothic WritersB.P. Walter is a true genre-jumper, and he shared his best advice for writers tackling psychological thrillers, horror, and Gothic fiction.* For Horror: He suggests writers consider what genuinely scares them personally. While not every detail has to be autobiographical, drawing on personal fears can help conjure a more authentic sense of dread for the reader.* For Psychological Thrillers: Walter emphasizes the importance of rhythm. He advises writers to pay close attention to the pacing of the plot, ensuring twists and climaxes happen at the right moments to keep readers hooked.* For Gothic Fiction: He describes this genre as being all about atmosphere and feeling. He recommends that aspiring writers read extensively within the genre to understand how to create that unsettling vibe.A New Mystery on the Horizon.In the interview, Walter offers an exciting pitch for his new book, The Winter Visitor. He describes it as his "most Agatha Christie-ish book" yet—a murder mystery set in a Scottish castle during a storm. When a mysterious stranger is found dead with a Christmas ornament in his heart, everyone in the locked-down castle becomes a suspect.Connect with B.P. Walter:* Instagram: @BPWalterAuthor* Twitter: @BarnabyWalter* Buy his books: Available on Amazon, Waterstones, and Audible.This conversation with B.P. Walter is a masterclass for anyone interested in the art of writing and publishing. It’s a powerful reminder that success often comes from a combination of hard work, adaptability, and the courage to keep going.To watch the full interview and learn more from B.P. Walter, you can find the episode on our YouTube channel.Or, watch it right here: About the Show.The Writing Community Chat Show is a live streaming YouTube podcast that brings you the stories of authors, screenwriters, and more. From the best NYT best-sellers to celebrities and indie authors, this show is for the community. Recently ranked number 3 in the top 10 writing podcasts in the UK 2025.Support Our Non-Profit CIC.As many of you know, The Writing Community Chat Show is now officially a non-profit Community Interest Company (CIC). Our mission is to support authors and creatives through interviews, workshops, competitions, and community proj
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, everybody. Well done, you've made it through the week.
You are here with us on a Friday evening. If
you're watching the show live, please stick around and get
some questions in at the end. If you're listening back,
thank you very much for doing so. We hope we're
filling your podcasts with lots of writing advice and tips
and guidance, and Tonight's guest is going to be no
(00:30):
different on that front because they are an absolute mastermind
of not one, not two, but three genres, So we're
going to definitely pick their brains apart and try and
get some really good tips for you and also talk
about their writing journey and all that good stuff. So
hello to you, Anye, Hello Chris, thank you for joining us.
(00:52):
And again, like I said, Tonight's guest is fantastic, so
please stick around and ask some questions at the end.
If you've got any particular bug bear at the minute
with writing, maybe he's struggling with something, maybe ask something
along those lines. Equally, if you're a huge fan of
Tonight's guest, then obviously it's a gold mine for you
because you get to ask any questions that you want
within reason, providing no appropriate so I'm not going to
(01:16):
talk forever, Chris Agot. He's not well, so I send
my fastest recovery wishes to him. Get well soon. It's
better when you are with us, for sure, so get
well soon. But tonight's guest, as I've said, is a
psychological mastermind, so he writes psychological thrillers. He also writes horror,
(01:36):
and he dabbles in gothic fiction as well. I shouldn't
Saydavil's because that sounds the meaning, but he's a fantastic
writer and gothic fiction. I absolutely love it, So more
of that, please.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So he wrote Medlock, The tree House, The Dinner Guest,
the Garden Party. You may have heard of some of
those books because they're absolutely everywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I know.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I've seen him out about when I've been on my
shopping tours. So without further ado, I'm just going to
bring him on so we can really get into having
a good chat about all things writing. So, ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome b Pete Walter. Hello, Hello, how are you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Hello? I am very well, thank you? How are you?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I'm very good? Thank you. I love the posters that
you've got of your books in the background as well.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
They were fantastic. Yes, yeah, this is my little writing
room and I quite like to have them on the walls.
I do have others that I need to put up
in other places, but yeah, those are the two that
keep me company when writing.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Brilliant and what particular, like, why did you pick those
two books? Because obviously you've got quite a lot, but
what is it about those two?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
When I had the frames done, I think I'd only
had I think four books out at that point, so
I think they were just the four books, and so
I've got two there and then two other frames elsewhere.
But I'm going to have to get more now because
book ten comes out in in three weeks, so I
need to get more frames.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, so you're gonna have a whole library of posters
as well to go with those books. Fantastic. So one
of the things we always ask when we start the
show is where in the world are you coming from
and what is the writing scene like that.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I am coming from Chemsford in Essex, and there are
I have a number of author friends actually who live
sort of around the Essex area, but as is ever
with many jobs like ours, where we do them generally
from home. My author friends are dotted around the UK
(03:38):
all the world even so whilst it's lovely to be
able to meet up with people locally, quite often it
ends up places like Harrogut at literary festival places like
that that you end up seeing people you haven't seen
for a whole year before because you're kind of separated
by hundreds of miles. But yeah, I am very lucky though.
There are a number of really great writers here in Essex.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Brilliant. Yeah, And he says the holiday light and candle
also makes a space really cozy and perfect.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I do try, you try. Yeah. I'm a big autumn fan,
so I've got the autumn decorations and pumpkins and everything,
so it's my favorite time.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Brilliant. Yeah. I was actually born in Chelmsford in Essex,
so yeah, but I didn't live there for very long.
I moved up north into Manchester, and so whenever I
hears somebody from Chelmsford, I'm like, what was it, Like,
what's it like to live there?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
It's great? Yeah, I really like it. I'm originally from
bill Rickey, which isn't too far away, but yeah, I
really like chance. It's a nice mixture between city and
town kind of vigue.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, as you mentioned Harrogut. We spoke to quite a
few people at Harrogut Crime Rits Festival, and a lot
of them worked in the publishing industry, and some of
them worked and lived in Harrogut, and they said they
commute into London one of the benefits. So do you
find yourself going to London quite a bit or I.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Don't go that much more, even though it's only about
twenty five minutes half an hour to Liverpool Street station.
But I used to live in London, and then when
the pandemic hit, I moved back to Essex and I
ended up never going back to London. I stayed in Essex,
but I loved it when I lived there, and it
(05:26):
was a wonderful place. But it now feels strangely far away,
even though it's only about half an hour away.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Well, now we've covered where you're coming from in the world.
I'm just going to play a little short video and
that is the road to writing. So when we get
back after this video, I'm going to ask you how
writing became such a thing in your life and where
it all began. So I'll just play a quick video. So BP,
(06:03):
if you can take us back to when writing first
became a thought in your mind.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I think it was probably when I was very young,
but it wasn't this sole kind of goal or job
in my future I felt at that point. I think
I wanted, definitely wanted to be an author at some
point in my childhood, but I think I also wanted
to be like a Disney animator and a film critic
and various other jobs as well. But it was in there,
(06:31):
particularly when I started reading crime fiction, probably when was
about eleven or twelve, and I thought it would be
wonderful to write crime novels, and I did. I thought
that would be a great thing to end up doing,
but I can't say it was kind of my life's
ambition as such. And when I went to university, I
(06:54):
was very focused on potentially going to the film industry,
and I did an undergrad in film in English and
postgrad in Film and Cultural Management, which was very much
setting me off to go and potentially work in film
marketing and that kind of thing. But I just knew
I wanted to tell my own stories and instead of
(07:15):
kind of packaging other people's, which is a very creative
job in many ways, but I knew I wanted to
be kind of coming up with the stories myself, so
that's how I kind of that was the startings of
knowing this is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
How did that university experience sort of help or hinder you,
because we've had quite a few people on the show
that have been to university in a short of great space,
as you've mentioned, and some people have said it's been
brilliant and it really helped their writing, and others have
said it was the worst thing I did, complete waste
of time. I should have just got on with something
something way earlier. I absolutely loved, loved UNI.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I didn't do a degree that focused on the practical
sides of writing. It was purely theoretical based. There were
some modules within it that you could end up doing
some practical writing. I did do a little bit, but
generally speaking, it was very much the study of English
literature or the study of films rather than writing literature
(08:13):
or filmmaking. And that was completely what I wanted at
the time. I wanted to study other people's works, and
I loved studying two or three books a week and
two or three films a week, and I think it
allowed me to work out that was what I wanted
to do myself. By absorbing some of the best examples
(08:35):
of storytelling, I think I found that inspiring and encouraging
and probably daunting in a way, but I think it
led me onto seeking out the kind of the space
and time to do it myself. But it was overall
really positive experience, and yeah, I look back on those
years as probably some of my best in education. I think.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So when i'bviously you in the midst of studying and
you know, you just shown yourself about like digesting all
of the best examples of literature and film, when did
you actually start putting pens of paper for your own ideas?
And can you talk us through what that moment was like.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It was towards the end of my time at UNI.
It was towards the end of my MA and I
it was around the time when if we wanted to
end up going to work in the film industry, publishing,
or something kind of relevant to our degrees, it was
the time that we should probably start looking for jobs
in those areas. And I was kind of hesitant to start.
(09:39):
I'd done some internships in film companies and I just
wasn't sure that was really where I wanted to go.
And I suddenly had an idea for a novel, and
I knew it was something I was quite confident in pursuing,
and more or less immediately I decided that's what I
(10:00):
wanted to do. As soon as I graduated from IMA.
I wanted to devote as much time as I could
to trying to write that particular book that had just
kind of popped into my head out of thin air.
And I was very lucky when I finished and moved
back home with my parents. When I finished my degree,
they were wonderful in allowing me the space and time
(10:22):
to write. I was very lucky in that sense. I
did work part time in a bookshop whilst I was
doing that, which itself was a great education because it
allows you to see what's selling, what people are likeing,
what books customers are excited to talk about, so that
itself was really good as well. And for about a
year I just focused on writing and working in bookshops.
(10:45):
I did, in the end go on to a full
time office job and social media, but I think that
was great because it allowed me to experiment with the
writing and how I wanted the plot to go and
that sort of thing. And curiously that book wasn't the
one that got me an agent or a publisher, but
it did end up being published as my fourth novel, weirdly,
(11:07):
which was all my fifth novel, which was The Locked
at It. Do you know I actually have the books
here with me. I did quite often podcasts, and I
can see the books out of sight and out of reach,
and I've been reprepared and now I can hold it up.
So this was the book I wrote in about twenty
fourteen twenty fifteen when I finished UNI, and it was
turned down by all the agents I sent it to,
(11:29):
and it was never offered out to publishers because I
wasn't represented by agents at that point. But in the
end it did get published, which I found really excited,
even though it was kind of five books later down
the line. And I also did very much rework and
rewrite it because my writing style had changed by that point,
so it wasn't as if it was just kind of
clickprint on the very first thing. But it was nice
(11:51):
that the book actually did end up going out there
into the world.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So what was it about the idea behind the Locked
Locked attic that really got you go in in that
first initial incident to actually write a book. Because we
have a lot of people who are writers or want
to be writers, and it's quite famous that that first
book sort of syndrome. A lot of people start one,
but they never finish one. So why was that idea
(12:18):
different and how did you go about actually completing it?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I think I wasn't too This is probably not very
good commercial answer, but I wasn't that hung up on
genre when I was writing it. I didn't really think
considering I was working in a bookship at the time.
I don't think I thought too much about where it
(12:42):
fits within certain genres, and I didn't think it would
be crime when I wrote it. It was very much
I mean the readers who people who have read the
book readers may notice that it's probably my less crime
of all my novels, and it's much more about kind
of suburbia and sort of family secrets, and these are
(13:04):
themes that go through quite a few of my books,
but this one's very much more kind of concentrated on
one street in suburban Kent, and it was that kind
of neighborhood toxicity that I found really compelling, and I'd
read in other books as well, not necessarily crime novels,
but it was something that I found intriguing and kind
of enjoyed when I saw it in TV dramas. So
(13:24):
I think that was the thing that kind of spured
me on to write it. And I think not being
too kind of concerned or worried about which genre would
fit into was quite liberating at the time. It probably
explains why it wasn't the book that got me agency representation,
because it probably wasn't one thing or another, I think
(13:45):
at that point. But it was great to be able
to have it later on and go back and remaster it,
rework it, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
So again, like, obviously you've gone through the whole process
of writing a book, and then you've got through the
process of trying to get an agent with that first idea,
and you've been knocked back a couple of times. At
that point, some people would quit, They would go, do
you know what I've tried didn't work out, I didn't
get where.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I wanted to go.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I'll either just leave it in a draw and forget
about it. So what made you go? Do you know
what I enjoyed writing that first one, I'm going to
write a second one. And how did that process happen?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I think that came about from me just having a
lot of ideas.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
And I.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Think I sometimes hear other authors talk about this filmmaker
Quentin Tarantino. I think once said he would die before
he gets to make all the films in his head.
And I can understand this idea of having so many
ideas and there's just not enough time to get them
down on paper. So it didn't really phase me too much.
Of course, every rejection in this industry can be quite
(14:56):
a hard hitting thing, but it didn't once make me
I think therefore it won't happen. It just made me
not with this book, but let's try another one. So
I think I was probably quite lucky to be fairly
fairly keen just to move on to the next one
if one didn't work. And I also knew some other
(15:19):
people who had tried to end up with an agent
or get published, and knew that, and I listened to
a lot of podcasts coming similar to this one as
well about authors publication journeys, and I knew it wasn't
uncommon for it not to be the first book to
get an agent and then not to be the first
book to get publisher, And I knew this wasn't an
unusual kind of journey, So I think knowing that this
(15:41):
was fairly normal allowed me to think, well, then let's
just let's just try another one then.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And did your write and process change with book two?
In terms of you said before you didn't think about
genre the first time round. Obviously you said as well,
you tweaked it as well for when it did eventually
come out as a book. So did you sort of
change your approach to writing with the second book? And again,
what was that like?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I One of the main things I did was I
enrolled in the Favor Academy, and which, for those who
don't know, is of course run of the publisher's favor
and Favor And my teetor was the brilliant author Rowan Coleman,
and she was so encouraging and just an absolutely brilliant teeta,
(16:25):
really really encouraging and warm and welcoming for people who
were trying to trying to write or had the startings
of a novel. And I think it was probably the
third novel I was working on that I was trying
to write at that point when I thought this could
help maybe or at least teach me things about the
(16:46):
craft and the industry that would be useful, And it
did both. And I think by that point I'd already
written two whole novels and just felt I needed to
do something new, to try and see if we could
change the direction with the with the next one and
the one I worked on whilst that The Favorite Academy
was actually at my debut level that ended up getting published.
(17:07):
So I found that whole experience probably. I mean, it's
hard to say, you never know how things would turn
out if one doesn't do them, but I really think
that was the thing that helped nudge me in the
right direction when it came to getting an agent and
getting published.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And what did go into the Favorite Academy do for
your actual writing? Did it just sort of tweak what
was already there? Did it teach you something completely different
that you'd never even considered before.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think the best thing it taught me was how
to plan, and I already sort of planned in probably
a more haphazard way. And Rowan on the course was wonderful.
She wasn't prescriptive in the sense that this is how
you have to do it. She more led us explore
ways that could work for us as students on the course,
(17:58):
and I found that the way that really to me
was laying out an entire book chapter by chapter, with
a short summary for every chapter. And ever since then,
I've done that for every book since and I couldn't
really imagine writing without without doing that. And I think
the course as a whole enabled me to discover for
myself what kind of writer or what my sensibilities were
(18:21):
when it came to writing. And it turns out I'm
a very structured, very kind of plan and advanced sort
of author rather than seeing where the story goes. And
that isn't, of course, to say there's one right and
one wrong, because there are many wonderful authors, and I
have friends who just sit down at a blank page
and writers to write a book. But for me, that
course enabled me to work out which of those those
(18:43):
two things I was.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So when you first started writing that very first book,
what was your writing process like and how has it
changed now that you ten books in? And I'm going
to add to that as well in terms of what
do you wish you what do you know now that
you wish you.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Knew then, gosh so much. I think my writing process
and when I wrote the very very very first one,
I don't think I planned. I think I just went
in and wrote it. I think I probably had a
plan in my head, and which is probably what I
mean when I say I planned a certain way, but
(19:21):
I knew where it was going, just probably not every
beat getting there. But I think my process now is very,
very different. It's very ordered. It's less kind of let's
discover where things go. It's more I like to know
exactly where things, where things are going. And I don't
think I've got there when I wrote the second book
(19:43):
I ever wrote, not my second published, because I hadn't
done the Favor course by that point. But by the
time I was onto my third book, which was my
working progress while I was at the course, that was
one that helped me start to find sheune that process
a bit more, and I think I find you it
a bit more and a bit more with every book
that went since, and my writers. My writer process has
(20:05):
changed even over the past year or so, depending on
how quickly I have to write a book, whether there's
a deadline for it or not, whether it's a book
I've planned out with my publishers or whether it's one
that I have just come up with by myself. It
can very little depending on what the book is. And
I kind of see the process is something that I
(20:26):
have mostly set in stone, but the stone can change color.
I think that's how think about it. I can just
adapt it a little bit, depends on what would suit
the book at the time.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah. Again, we've got a lot of people who watched
the show that again I want to be writers or
are writers, and LUs like. One of the things we
try and get into is the sort of numbers and
try and sort of take some of the stigma away
from it. So we had like Adele Parkson, for example,
and she says she aimed for a thousand words a day. No,
in fact, she said she does a thousand.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Words a day, and that's that you've done.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
But we had Ben Aronovich on and he said two
hundred and fifty words is a good day for him,
and if he does that every day consistently without fail,
he's got a book at the end of the year.
So what are your day to day numbers? What are
you happy with on a day and how long roughly
does it take you to map out a book and
write the book.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Do you know I used to? This is one of
the ways it's changed. Actually, I used to not focus
on workout at all, and I wouldn't know at the
end of each day how much done or not. And
that was quite deliberate in this, particularly when I used
to work. When I still worked in social media coordination,
I couldn't really write much during the week. I to
(21:42):
just write at weekends, and there were some weekends I
was busy with seeing friends or family commitments, and I
knew that if I held myself to a particular workout,
I'd end up feeling bad for spending time doing the
other things. So at that point I kind of gave
myself permission not to even look. And I loved writing
so much it wasn't as if I needed to kind
(22:02):
of like push myself into doing it. And that mostly
stayed the same even when I went to write full time.
I still carried on without really noticing too much of
the workout, and I only really changed to now. I
now try and do three thousand words a day. When
I'm it's a proper full on writing day. Different if
(22:23):
I'm in the midst of structural edits or doing events,
it can change. But if I'm in the midst of
just pure writing, I try and do three thousand words
a day. And that came about last year when an
order of books publication order changed and then I had
to write a book that was originally going to be
the year after had to be brought forwards and had
to write that quite quickly, and so I deliberately came
(22:46):
up with a how many words a day kind of
plan in order just to make sure it definitely got done.
And I ended up really enjoying it and thought, why
haven't I've been doing this from the start? I it
appealed to the structured planning kind of part of my brain,
and ever since then, I've now tried to do three thousand.
It's it's a number of films. I don't feel like
(23:07):
I've really stretched myself too far, but I feel like
I've still made substantial progress in the manuscript. But I
say all this under the sort of understanding or kind
of contract with myself that it's okay to break it
if I have a busy day. We've had lots of
other adminy kind of things that comes with the books
coming out, it's fine if it doesn't if it doesn't happen,
(23:28):
So it's a relaxed aim.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I'd say, yeah, So you said, obviously you went full
time as a writer, and this is something that a
lot of people tend to struggle with in terms of
like when the time is right to go full time?
You know, you've got finances and things like that to manage.
So how did you come to that decision to go,
(23:51):
do you know what, I'm going to go full time
with this? And again, can you talk us through that process?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Sure, it was when my I'd have three books out
by that point, and I knew I was going to
give it a couple of books. I think i'd already
kind of decided that quite early on, at least a
couple of books. I should say, I was well aware
it could have taken more. But I was very lucky
(24:18):
that my third my third book just became a very
different publishing experience for me than the two books that
came before it, where it just completely changed my life.
It just sort of took off in a way that
the books my first two books hadn't, And I was
with a new publisher and or a new imprint. I
(24:39):
should say and steadily, one by one, things started to
happen that hadn't happened before. We had enormous supermarket orders,
it was chosen for an incredible promotion at Waterstones. It
just the stars just started to seem to be aligning,
and I started to think, all, this might be the
(24:59):
one that means I can write full time. And I
was very lucky that it did turn out to be.
And it was also a very good moment, I think
in terms of where the Pandemic was up to, because
it came out in twenty twenty one. It was called
The Dinner Guest, I should say, and that book, The
Dinner Guest was ready and waiting in bookshops. When everyone
(25:23):
went back to shops, I think it was about April
or late April, when Boris's kind of chart of where
we're up to in the lockdowns allow retail to reopen,
and there was a lot of worry that people will
be really hesitant to not go back, but it was
the opposite. People poured back into shops, and I think bookshops,
I think I read somewhere that footfall was similar to
(25:43):
what they'd kind of expected Christmas, and I think that
that timing was really lucky as well, because when the
shops reopened, the dinner guest was there, ready to be
discovered on the tables, and it was just kind of
gaining momentum in a way that I'd never experienced before.
And it got to number one on the Times chart,
(26:04):
and I didn't expect it to because I the day
before the chart was revealed, I said to I said
to a friend of mine, it definitely won't reach one
number one because there's this other big book out and
there's no way it's going to go past that. And
then the next day it did and I just couldn't.
I absolutely can't believe it.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
It was.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
It was amazing. And then after when I when it
hit the s Ony Times Bestseller's chart, I started to think, this,
I probably should make a decision now to kind of
commit to doing this as my full time job, and
I discussed it with my agent and I yeah, I
then made the choice to write full time, and also
(26:45):
just timing. I was so stretched between doing a full
time job and trying to write as well. And you know,
as I mentioned, there's lots of admin stuff that has
to go with being an author, so that was kind
of a real weight off my shoulders being able to
just make it my full time, full time job.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So obviously one way off because the full time job
was gone. But obviously the success of The Dinner Guest
is that an additional weight that then you're having to bear,
because obviously, if a book is hugely successful the book
after it, I can imagine that that's quite difficult to
comprehend in terms of going, oh, this was so successful,
(27:26):
is this one going to live up to the hype?
Was that something that you struggled with when you were
writing the next book after The Dinner Guest?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I don't think so, because it would have done had
the next three books not already been written. So I
knew I was writing books that would be way into
the future past that, because the three books after that
were very much kind of finished and planned out. So
(27:57):
I don't think there was a period that kind of
a left me to be daunted, which is a very
lucky position to be. I'm aware of that. Yeah, I
think they were just so kind of locked down, and
I knew kind of when they were coming out or
and even seeing the covers of probably at least one,
if not more, And so I think that kind of
(28:17):
protected me in a way of not worrying too much
about it. And I knew the book I was probably
writing at the time wouldn't be seen for two, three,
maybe more more years from that point. So yeah, I
think I was I was slightly shielded from that that
sort of things fantastic.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Like you say, pressure can work in both ways, but
you planned for success and that worked out in your favor.
In so with book ten, then obviously book one must
be really exciting, and every author or people watching the
show have aspirations of book one coming out and being
published and having that debut experience. What's it like and
(28:59):
what's the difference between having a debut and then book ten?
Does that change at all when the books come out?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
It does me both, it doesn't, it doesn't. I don't
get as nervous now when the books come out. I
now probably see it as a much more exciting, fun
thing rather than a kind of let's worry about this thing.
It's still there are, of course, still worries about it,
but I think I do appreciate approach it with more
(29:29):
of an appreciation for people reading it and people picking
up and buying it, whicheasing to download it and I'm
often so much in the world of the ones that
I'm writing and the ones that are coming up next.
I think that also helps, whereas when you're right at
the start of one's career, there's more doubts about that
and sometimes you don't even know if you've got another
(29:49):
contract or whatever. So I think I feel very much
in the midst of it all and with a lot
of other considerations. It It's almost like anxiety kind of
fills a vacuum, doesn't it if there's space for it
to go. And I think any kind of worries or
anxiety about certain book releases doesn't have too much space
(30:09):
to go because I'm still dealing with lots of other
other books and other things, and as particularly the case
that I've kind of expanded the amount of books I'm
writing and the genres I'm working in. And this year
I've had three books out, or we'll have three books
out which of July, September, and October, so the publications
(30:31):
for those feel very kind of close together, and only
one has gone and then I'm kind of preparing for
the next one. So I think that's what's changed the most.
But at the same time, it still feels the same
in the sense that you're sending out this thing that
you've worked really hard on out into the world and
you just really hope people will like it. And I
(30:52):
probably feel very similar in that way than I did
back in twenty nineteen when my first one came out.
The good thing now, though, is that I don't do
any book launches because I did one book launch and
I found it incredibly stressful and I feel like I've
done it and that's it, and now I don't do
book launches. That there was there was a pandemic in
between for the books two and three, so that gave
(31:14):
me come permission not to have to even think about
book launches. But yeah, Pandemics Society, I have carried on
the trend of not doing book launches because I find
being the center of attention at a party absolutely, so yeah,
I don't do that.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And obviously, with three books out in a year, that's
quite a lot of parties.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
To be the yeah, exactly, yeah, all I was doing,
so yeah, definitely a lot of time taken up as well,
I should imagine, because it's not just one night with
these things.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
So with that in mind, obviously you've got three books
out this year. Normally, what we do for this section
is what's the story? So what we asked the author
to do is to pick the story that they want
to promote and give us either their elevator pitch, or
you could if you've got the books hand, you can
read the back of the blurb. It's entirely up to
(32:04):
you how you do it. So I'm going to play
this little video and then when we get back, I'm
going to ask you to give us an elevator pitch.
So bp picking between three books, I suppose it's like
(32:24):
picking from your children. You never know which which one
is your favorite at any given moment. You give a
pitch please for the book of your choice.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
It's true. Well, well, the one that's I will do,
the Winter Visitor, because that comes out this month. I
should just give the only one I've got to hands
of those is The Treehouse, which came out in July,
so that's out now if people wanted to grab that now.
But the one I've got out this month is The
Winter Visitor, which is actually a Christmas crime thriller, and
(32:55):
even it comes out in September, but that's apparently when
Christmas books they come out in September October, and it's
kind of amazing. I haven't written a Christmas early before now,
but it's probably the most augur the Christish book I've written,
where there is a murder in the Scottish castle. So
the main pitch for it is there is a family,
(33:16):
the Wayman family, who are very rich, affluent family and
have a big Scottish Highlands castle, and they gathered for
Christmas and someone turns up a stranger and he says
he believes he is the son of one of the
three adult sons of the family, but he doesn't know
which one, and he's there to find out whose real
(33:38):
father is and the whole family just kind of shocked
and horrified, all the three sons of partners. They don't
understand how this could have happened. And there's a big
storm and the guy they can't throw him out. They
put him up in a guest room, planning to work
this out the next morning, which is Christmas morning. But
the next morning he is found dead in the guest
room with a Christmas ornament through his heart, and someone
(34:00):
in the castle has killed him during the night, and
someone didn't clear didn't want him to get to the
bottom of the secret of his parentage. So yeah, that's
the that's the basic kind of hook for the Winter Visitor.
And yeah, it's snowy and festive and hopefully something that
people will enjoy reading as the night start to get darker.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah. Wow, And he says this book sounds amazing after
no fantastic. So again, obviously you mentioned there about moving
around into different genres. And again we've spoke to a
lot of authors when they get pigeonholed into one sort
of genre and it's like the publisher says, no, you know,
we want you to keep going with this character or
(34:42):
of this type of fiction. So I suppose the question
is what appeals to you about moving into different genres
and how have you sort of been able to do
that when you've got a really good fund base in
various different genres.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I think it's I think it's partly because I like
to read a variety of different genres myself, and I
know many readers who don't just stick to one, So
I think probably I think readers are probably more I mean,
I certainly am more tolerant of genre shifts than sometimes
maybe the industry thinks they are. Maybe but I've always
(35:22):
liked reading thrillers that I feel do something a bit
different with the genre or push boundaries a bit, maybe
stray into other genres or a little bit more unplaceable possibly,
And I've tried to do that with my books, and
I'm always very grateful when readers contact me to say
sometimes what they like about my books is that they
(35:43):
all feel very different, and it's certainly something I try
to do. Occasionally a name change is in order because
it can be helpful just to indicate I think to
readers that this is a quite a different proposition, which
is what I did with my horror novel Scuttle last year,
(36:03):
which was published as Barnby Walter rather than BP Walter,
just to kind of suggest to readers that it's still me,
but there's something different different at work within these pages.
And in the case of that novel, it was giant
spiders that kill people. And also with my gothic thriller Medlock,
which comes out in October that's published under the name S. G. Hartnell.
(36:25):
Sometimes these things are there to make things work with
multiple publishers. Sometimes they're there to kind of give readers
a sort of a notice to say expect something a
little bit different. But overall, when it comes to writing,
I just really want to write the books that excite
me when i'm writing them, ones that make me or
how I would want to read on if I was
(36:46):
the reader rather than the writer. I think that's mostly
what I set out to do, and then I try
and find or me and my agent or editor will
try and find a way of making that work. So
it's a collaborative process. But at the end of the day,
I want to write a book that I'm happy writing,
and hopefully a book that readers are are king to read.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So with The Winter Guests, then obviously you mentioned Christie's
influence potentially in terms of, you know, trying to write
in that sort of lot I suppose it's a lot
room thriller. Again, when did the idea come and how
difficult was it to write something like that because from
(37:27):
a reader's perspective, obviously all the characters are very close together,
you get in different perspectives. You're trying to guess constantly
sort of like what the outcome is. So as an author,
that must be quite tricky to try and keep people
on their toes but also throw in a couple of
twists as well, which you're going to, you know, leave
the reader with the drawer on the floor types thing.
(37:48):
So how do you do that?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I do not know, That's the honest answer. I am
a terrible of then when it comes to working out
where ideas came from and how they end up on
the page, because and I've only come across I think
one other author who said it very very similar to
how it works for me, and that was the author
(38:12):
Amanda Prow's, and she said, it's as if she just
gets a movie downloaded into her head and it's her
job just to write out what the movie is playing.
And that is exactly how it is for me, where
a book wholesale gets kind of just arrives into my
head and I know it all from beginning to end
(38:32):
right in that moment. There's usually not too much that changes.
Sometimes things do. Some of the things have to change
in order for twist to work, or kind of the
actual structure of the story to work. But generally speaking,
the basic plot and idea just arrives kind of out
of nowhere and as if magic spells happened, and I
(38:52):
then try and plan out the novel as soon as
the idea or as close to that idea arriving as feasible,
I don't want it to go. I may end up
never using it. I may end up deciding it's not
worth carrying on with. But as long as I feel
I capture it down in a chapter plan, I feel
it's then there for me to go back to at
(39:13):
a later date if I need to, and there will
be a period of refining I think as I kind
of go through it and getting the characters and making
them feel kind of real and it's thoughtfully developed. But
in terms of where the idea comes from and how
I kind of wrestle the plot, I don't feel there
is any wrestling, because it is just it's just there. Really,
(39:35):
that's a very strange and unhelpful answer, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I suppose with that, then, if we try and give
people watching three potential tips for write in let's say
one for each genre psychological thrillers, horror, and then the gothic.
What would your one tip in each genre be for
people looking to write in those areas Horror.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I'll do horror first, because I think that might be
one that's probably the most helpful in terms of real
kind of genre signposting because it has to be something
scary within it. And I think maybe if someone was
writing a horror novel, one could consider what that writer
(40:24):
finds scary. And I'm not necessarily saying that he or
she has to put their worst fears down on paper,
but I think spotting when one's own kind of reactions
to things crops up can be a helpful sort of
almost like a map to follow, I think when thinking
particularly about how that's going to appear scary on paper.
(40:47):
And even though I wouldn't necessarily say I have a rachnophobia,
I'm not a big fan of house spiders, and we
are in house spider season at the moment in the UK,
and you know every moment, if you just move something
you're worried is gonna be something that darts out. I think,
even without thinking about it, I probably sort of drew
on that side of things. I'm not necessarily saying that
(41:09):
to write horror nov it has to be or biographical,
but I think thinking about what causes that sense of
fear it's probably helpful in terms of psychological thrillers. In
terms of one tip, I would probably say it's it's
probably for me down to a rhythm, because I think
(41:32):
if someone reads a lot of psychological thrillers or murder
mysteries or any kind of crime novel, you, I think
the brain loves repetition, and the brain quickly starts to
learn when certain things should happen within a book, And
I think particularly voracious readers get quite good at spotting
(41:53):
when it isn't working within a particular rhythm, when something
hasn't happened for a long period of time, or when
there hasn't been enough twists, or when you feel like
the payoff wasn't wasn't worth it. So I think that's
probably what I really bear in mind when I'm doing
my chapter plans. It's that sense of ridthm And it
doesn't necessarily have to stick to a really kind of
(42:16):
set structure, because I'm sure there are many kind of
set formulas that one could find, but I think just
having a sense of like when the twist should happen
at midpoint, climax, this kind of thing. I found that
hugely helpful when it comes to planning out thrillers, just
being aware of where they go. Having said that, many people,
I think, if they've read enough books and watched loads
(42:36):
of movies will probably know just by osmosis when those
things are supposed to occur. So I think there's probably
an element of distrusting oneself really with that. And lastly,
with Gothic horror, I think all Gothic thrillers. I think
that's a difficult one because I think Gothic there is
a very kind of strict historical definition of the term.
(43:00):
But I think it has also come to me more
of a sensibility and a feeling and a vibe, an
atmosphere to a book that is probably more malleable when
it comes to where a book can be set, when
a book can be set this kind of thing. My
book Medlock is a reworking of The Secret Garden where
(43:20):
the character Missus Medlock, the housekeeper, is the main character,
and for a bit it does follow the Secret Garden
quite closely, and then it does veer off in a
much darker direction. And so I think if one was
setting out to craft a Gothic novel, I think reading
other books that have that sensibility within them would give
(43:42):
a great education as to how to conjure that vibe.
I think it is really about atmosphere and feeling and
sort of dread or something unsettling and all these other
things that's different to horror as such, but they can
go together as well quite nicely.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, brilliant. It's a really good advice. Yeah, love Gus Well,
I love all these gens. So that's fantastic advice for
people watching. Speaking of people watching, if you're watching now,
we're shortly going to be moving over to the writing
community question time, So if you've got a question, feel
free to send it in and we'll ask as many
(44:17):
questions as we can get through. But first we're going
to ask some of our staple questions and we're going
to play a little video to indicate that. So Community
question time, brilliant. So lots of people in the comments. Again,
(44:46):
if you've got questions, please send them in and we'll
get through those, but we'll ask a few of our
staple questions first. So one of the first staple questions
that we have is if you could take any character
from fiction and do what you want with that character.
Which character would you choose and what would.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
You do with them? I think it would have to
be the character of Ariadney Oliver from Agatha Christie's novels.
She appears mostly in poorer novels, although she does appear
in The Pale Horse, which is a standalone and she
is widely kind of accepted as the most autobiographical of
Agatha's creations. She is a mystery writer within Agatha Christie stories,
(45:26):
and I think you can probably tell at times that
Agatha is taking out some of her frustrations that come
with being a novelist in the character of Aria Nilva.
And I would love to have her go off on
her own adventures and have a whole series of books.
So yeah, it probably would be her.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
On the topic of frustrations as a writer, do you
have any frustrations as a writer that you're willing to share?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Oh goodness. I try my best to just focus on
the wonderful things, but I I'm not perfect at that. Of course.
There are many many frustrations I think that can happen.
I think this is a job that were kind of
baked into the job. There are ups and downs and difficulties,
(46:15):
and I think getting used to the fact that so
much is out of your control as a writer can
be a difficult one and it can be hard to
sit back and watch sometimes watch things going wrong when
you can't do anything about it, or mistakes or that
kind of thing that you can't really do anything about.
And I think that that could be hard. In any profession,
(46:38):
that could be hard. And I think as a writer,
we're very As writers, we're very used to kind of
having control over our characters. But then when that book
or those characters go out into the world, we sacrifice
some of that control because then it becomes a product
that needs to be sold. And if someone doesn't like that,
(46:58):
that's perfectly fine, because one can self published, which is
a very legitimate way of telling stories, but if one
wants to be published, traditionally that is something one has
to reconcile with oneself that in the end has to
be a product. In the same way that you know,
school shoes or pencil cases or conflicts or various other
(47:19):
things are also products that have to appeal to audiences
or consumers and be bought. So with that comes many
many difficulties or frustrations, and I, if ever they crop up,
I just try to focus on the things that I
like and the things I enjoy and find exciting about
the process, because in the end, they're the most important parts.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, absolutely so. One of the other questions that we
have that's a staple question is if you could change
the end into any fiction, what would you change the
end into and why.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
This is a difficult one, and I definitely wouldn't want
to suggest I know better than the author of any
known piece of literature. But one that popped into my
head actually was the ending to The Hunger Games, the
very last of the Hunger Games trilogy before the more
recent two books came out. The original trilogy where spoiler
(48:15):
alert if someone by an amazing miracle hasn't come into
contact with the Hunger Games books or films at this point,
like maybe mute or something, because I'm about to say
that happens at the end of the last Hunger Games
book and film. But there's a bit for those who
know it. There's a bit where all the victors decide,
once they've seized control of and they've won the kind
(48:38):
of civil war essentially, the idea is floated to re
establish the Hunger Games, almost as a form of revenge
against the people that have terrorized them, and they all
agree to it, including Catnus, the main character, And there's
an important reason why she agrees to it because she's
got a plan to do something later on. But I
(48:58):
always thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if the book or
if the film just stopped there and it had it
that Catnus had been twisted so much by her experiences
that she'd become the very villain that she had seek
to sort to try and depose. And it just ended
with a really cold, horrible idea that this is just
going to continue and continue to continue. And of course
(49:18):
that isn't the ending that Ceeson Collins came up with,
and it's probably best that it wasn't, but the darker
part of my brain sometimes thinks it would be wonderful
just to cut to black at that at that point
and have that as a very chilling, miserable ending.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, I agree, I love that brilliant. So we've got
some questions coming in sort of chat again. If you
watch it now, your opportunity to send them in or
please send them in. This is a question from I
knew best and worst places for writers retreat.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
I have never done a writer's retreat. I do reading
retreats where I either take myself off somewhere to a hotel,
or I do it locally at a local leisure center.
But I've just done one this week where I go
away for a whole week and just read. I don't
generally write or do much else. I just read books
all day every day, and it's joyous and I really
(50:09):
love the immersion kind of in reading that that gives me.
But yeah, I've never done a writer's retreat, so I don't.
I don't know if I can answer in the best way,
but I imagine a lovely place would be somewhere kind
of cozy, maybe with other things like swimming pool or
nice lounge or that kind of thing where one can
(50:30):
write and then rest. That kind of thing. In terms
of the worst place, probably if one sat down in
the middle of being Q or Asada or something and
try to try to write amiss the aisles or somewhere, yeah,
somewhere very busy. I don't know if it would be
would be very conducive, but but yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I think, yeah, that sounds like so much fun. Obviously
reading retreats, Yeah, I mean, obviously lots of people say
in to be a writer, you have to be a
reader too, So yeah, I why not do that? Yeah,
there was a question off the back of that I
was going to ask, Oh, that was it, the Winter Guest.
Why did you decide to sit out in Scotland?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
I I'm not too sure. I think I wanted it
to be the Highlands of Scotland, somewhere where I one
of my closest friends used to live and I used
to go and visit her there and I loved it,
absolutly loved it there. I think it appeals to me
because I do not like sunshine. Sunny days are not
my favorite kind of days. I like dark and overcast days,
and I think the Highlands of Scotland has some of
(51:28):
the least amount sunshine in the whole of the UK.
So whenever I was there, I loved the fact it
was just constant cloud cover, and I think that appeals
to the part of me that loves the autumn and
winter vibes. So when it came to writing The Winter Visitor,
I think I knew I wanted it to be set
somewhere that would feel quite cozy and wintry and also
(51:50):
quite remote, because it's quite important to the plot that
the family are very much closed in and can't leave.
So I needed all those elements, and there was actually
a strange legal issue that actually was complicated by me
setting in Scotland, because Scotland, of course has different laws
than England on some things. And I won't say what
(52:12):
it is is a bit of a plot spoiler, but there
was a legal issue that my editor kind of flagged,
saying in Scotland that's actually illegal, whereas it wasn't isn't
in England. And I had to find a way of
working around that. So yeah, that temporarily caused a bit
of a bit of a worry, but it was fine.
We solved it. But yeah, generally speaking, I wanted it
(52:34):
for the vibes. I think, for the sort of the cozy,
wintry vibes.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
Nice, brilliant. So Chris in a question, thank you christ
for your question. Was there a particular writer or particular
book that inspired you to become a writer.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
I think I've already mentioned Agatha Christie, but I think
I have to mention her again. I think discovering Agatha
Christie aged eleven or twelve, and I think having the
job of not only discovering an author I loved the
books of but also realizing she wrote like seventy seven
of them. So I wasn't going to run out anytime soon,
and I think she helped crystallize me what I liked
(53:14):
from books and what I would hope to give readers.
I also think probably more modern day psychological thriller authors
helped me move towards this genre now. And although I've
said The Winter Visitors, my moth Aga the christie Ish
of my books, I think most of my thrillers are
(53:35):
probably more similar to the writings of say Ruth Rendell
or Minette Waters, and these were the authors I think
I discovered after Christie. And I think authors that wrote
very complex, dark, modern day or modern to when they
were writing, or at least more modern than Christie's feel
(53:56):
to us now, setting kind of contemporary, often suburban worlds
amidst people that we could kind of very easily imagine
meeting in everyday life. And I think the gritty realism
of those kind of infused with the more kind of
classic mystery appeal to me. And I think it was
pretty mixture of those two things. I think at the
(54:19):
time I didn't realize I was reading psychological thrillers. I
think the books Ruth Rendell wrote well, I can'ite often
just put into crime the same as Minute Waters, and
I think it's only more recently we've come to think
of there being more kind of pillars within genres in
a more defined sense. I think, yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
So we've got a few minutes left. If you're watching
now Live, please feel free to send him a question.
We'll try and get them in.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
We might be a quick vour around if.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
We get a few more questions. But again we have
another staple question. And obviously ten books in the Winter
Visits are out shortly as well. This is quite a
difficult one for some people. But you're on your deathbed,
you're looking by at your writing career. What would you
be happy with? What is success to you?
Speaker 2 (55:06):
I think for me it's just writing the books. I
enjoy writing. Really, it's quite it's quite, it's quite simple,
and I feel like I have done that and continue
to do that. So I'm very happy with with that.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, brilliant. And so with the Winter Visitor, then what's
your like? What can readers expect that maybe they haven't
seen in your books before.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
I think it's probably my most light of my books.
I say that cautiously, because there are murders, there are
dead bodies, there are disposing of bodies that you know.
This this isn't Gilmore Girls, but it's I think slightly
lighter in tone than some of my other books. And
there's probably more slightly humorous family dynamics that go on,
(55:55):
and there's probably a bit more time spent with that
rather than the dark and more grisly side. And I've
had some very very dark books in the past, like
my book Notes on the Murder involved a very very
disturbing island where things like murder and torture happened, and
this is definitely not that. This is much more of
the lighter side of crime, where it's kind of more
(56:16):
the mystery and the family dynamics that are at the
heart of it rather than anything too hard hitting. So
I think that's probably the most different aspect of it.
Although having said that, people who have enjoyed my darker
books will hopefully still find shades of that within this.
So fingers crossed it pleases everyone.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
That's the and on that if somebody was listening or
watching this now and they haven't read any of your books,
which of your books would you recommend they start with?
Speaker 2 (56:43):
I think I mean I've mentioned the Dinner Guess. That
was my first bestseller, and people seem to really respond
to that book, I think, and my book The Garden
Party People, which came out last year, people seem to
have responded really well to. I think it's pen slightly
whether one likes the darker side or the lighter side.
(57:04):
Probably the Dinner Guest or The Winter Visitor is a
quite good starting off points if one doesn't like things
too dark. But if darkness is your thing, I'd say
pick up my book Notes on a Murder or Hold
Your Breath, or if you like horror, go with Scuttle.
But in terms of the psych thriller's probably Notes on
a Murder is still a psychological thriller, but a very dark,
(57:25):
very dark.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
One, brilliant. And we have got a question from Alo,
so I'm just going to squeeze it in there. But
has a writing idea slash your imagination ever scared you?
Speaker 2 (57:36):
No? I don't think it has. I don't think anything
has ever scared me from my imagination. I think maybe
if I was writing. I have just finished writing another
horror book actually, and that did involve quite brutal things
in it that made me think, or is that too strong,
(57:56):
but never anything too specific or or horrendous so far.
So it may maybe one day, but yeah, nothing nothing
to be bad.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
Maybe one day, right, So before we go, what we
ask is if you could just give us all your
lovely information, So if people listening or watching back, if
they wanted to stalk you, if they were to buy
your books. Not so much stocking, but you know what
I mean in terms of just go yeah, finding you
on all the social medias and things like that. So
where where can they find you? And where can they
(58:29):
buy your books?
Speaker 2 (58:31):
The books are available to buy in bookshops and of
course online retailers like Watson's dot Com and Amazon and Audible.
I love audiobooks, so yeah, definitely definitely be able to
download on there. And you can find me on the
major social media platforms and be people to author on Instagram.
Instagram is probably my most active, but I'm also on
(58:51):
Facebook as bp Walter author and on Twitter or x
as Barny Walter, So yes, I can you find and
in contact on all of.
Speaker 1 (59:01):
Those brilliant Okay, so that's the end of the show.
Thank you very much for watching. Again, we might do
a little lifeter show after this, So if you're interested
in sticking around and having a chat about all things writing.
Obviously we move away from the sort of the guest format,
but it's more casual. So yeah, if you're into that,
(59:24):
we might go live on TikTok and things. But thank
you so much for listening. If you're right in this weekend,
please get in touch with us, just let us know
what you're doing, where you're up to, because we love
to support the authors of the show and the people
who listen to the show as well. But yeah, that's
it for me.
Speaker 3 (59:41):
Anything left from you BP.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
That is everything. Thank you so much having on the show.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
It's been great to chat brilliant So that's the final
bet of the show everyone, So thank you very much
and we look forward to seeing you same time next week.
Speaker 3 (59:54):
Thank you have a good weekend. It was back to
(01:00:33):
b
Hello, everybody. Well done, you've made it through the week.
You are here with us on a Friday evening. If
you're watching the show live, please stick around and get
some questions in at the end. If you're listening back,
thank you very much for doing so. We hope we're
filling your podcasts with lots of writing advice and tips
and guidance, and Tonight's guest is going to be no
(00:30):
different on that front because they are an absolute mastermind
of not one, not two, but three genres, So we're
going to definitely pick their brains apart and try and
get some really good tips for you and also talk
about their writing journey and all that good stuff. So
hello to you, Anye, Hello Chris, thank you for joining us.
(00:52):
And again, like I said, Tonight's guest is fantastic, so
please stick around and ask some questions at the end.
If you've got any particular bug bear at the minute
with writing, maybe he's struggling with something, maybe ask something
along those lines. Equally, if you're a huge fan of
Tonight's guest, then obviously it's a gold mine for you
because you get to ask any questions that you want
within reason, providing no appropriate so I'm not going to
(01:16):
talk forever, Chris Agot. He's not well, so I send
my fastest recovery wishes to him. Get well soon. It's
better when you are with us, for sure, so get
well soon. But tonight's guest, as I've said, is a
psychological mastermind, so he writes psychological thrillers. He also writes horror,
(01:36):
and he dabbles in gothic fiction as well. I shouldn't
Saydavil's because that sounds the meaning, but he's a fantastic
writer and gothic fiction. I absolutely love it, So more
of that, please.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
So he wrote Medlock, The tree House, The Dinner Guest,
the Garden Party. You may have heard of some of
those books because they're absolutely everywhere.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I know.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I've seen him out about when I've been on my
shopping tours. So without further ado, I'm just going to
bring him on so we can really get into having
a good chat about all things writing. So, ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome b Pete Walter. Hello, Hello, how are you?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Hello? I am very well, thank you? How are you?
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I'm very good? Thank you. I love the posters that
you've got of your books in the background as well.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
They were fantastic. Yes, yeah, this is my little writing
room and I quite like to have them on the walls.
I do have others that I need to put up
in other places, but yeah, those are the two that
keep me company when writing.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Brilliant and what particular, like, why did you pick those
two books? Because obviously you've got quite a lot, but
what is it about those two?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
When I had the frames done, I think I'd only
had I think four books out at that point, so
I think they were just the four books, and so
I've got two there and then two other frames elsewhere.
But I'm going to have to get more now because
book ten comes out in in three weeks, so I
need to get more frames.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, so you're gonna have a whole library of posters
as well to go with those books. Fantastic. So one
of the things we always ask when we start the
show is where in the world are you coming from
and what is the writing scene like that.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I am coming from Chemsford in Essex, and there are
I have a number of author friends actually who live
sort of around the Essex area, but as is ever
with many jobs like ours, where we do them generally
from home. My author friends are dotted around the UK
(03:38):
all the world even so whilst it's lovely to be
able to meet up with people locally, quite often it
ends up places like Harrogut at literary festival places like
that that you end up seeing people you haven't seen
for a whole year before because you're kind of separated
by hundreds of miles. But yeah, I am very lucky though.
There are a number of really great writers here in Essex.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Brilliant. Yeah, And he says the holiday light and candle
also makes a space really cozy and perfect.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I do try, you try. Yeah. I'm a big autumn fan,
so I've got the autumn decorations and pumpkins and everything,
so it's my favorite time.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Brilliant. Yeah. I was actually born in Chelmsford in Essex,
so yeah, but I didn't live there for very long.
I moved up north into Manchester, and so whenever I
hears somebody from Chelmsford, I'm like, what was it, Like,
what's it like to live there?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
It's great? Yeah, I really like it. I'm originally from
bill Rickey, which isn't too far away, but yeah, I
really like chance. It's a nice mixture between city and
town kind of vigue.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, as you mentioned Harrogut. We spoke to quite a
few people at Harrogut Crime Rits Festival, and a lot
of them worked in the publishing industry, and some of
them worked and lived in Harrogut, and they said they
commute into London one of the benefits. So do you
find yourself going to London quite a bit or I.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Don't go that much more, even though it's only about
twenty five minutes half an hour to Liverpool Street station.
But I used to live in London, and then when
the pandemic hit, I moved back to Essex and I
ended up never going back to London. I stayed in Essex,
but I loved it when I lived there, and it
(05:26):
was a wonderful place. But it now feels strangely far away,
even though it's only about half an hour away.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Well, now we've covered where you're coming from in the world.
I'm just going to play a little short video and
that is the road to writing. So when we get
back after this video, I'm going to ask you how
writing became such a thing in your life and where
it all began. So I'll just play a quick video. So BP,
(06:03):
if you can take us back to when writing first
became a thought in your mind.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I think it was probably when I was very young,
but it wasn't this sole kind of goal or job
in my future I felt at that point. I think
I wanted, definitely wanted to be an author at some
point in my childhood, but I think I also wanted
to be like a Disney animator and a film critic
and various other jobs as well. But it was in there,
(06:31):
particularly when I started reading crime fiction, probably when was
about eleven or twelve, and I thought it would be
wonderful to write crime novels, and I did. I thought
that would be a great thing to end up doing,
but I can't say it was kind of my life's
ambition as such. And when I went to university, I
(06:54):
was very focused on potentially going to the film industry,
and I did an undergrad in film in English and
postgrad in Film and Cultural Management, which was very much
setting me off to go and potentially work in film
marketing and that kind of thing. But I just knew
I wanted to tell my own stories and instead of
(07:15):
kind of packaging other people's, which is a very creative
job in many ways, but I knew I wanted to
be kind of coming up with the stories myself, so
that's how I kind of that was the startings of
knowing this is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
How did that university experience sort of help or hinder you,
because we've had quite a few people on the show
that have been to university in a short of great space,
as you've mentioned, and some people have said it's been
brilliant and it really helped their writing, and others have
said it was the worst thing I did, complete waste
of time. I should have just got on with something
something way earlier. I absolutely loved, loved UNI.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I didn't do a degree that focused on the practical
sides of writing. It was purely theoretical based. There were
some modules within it that you could end up doing
some practical writing. I did do a little bit, but
generally speaking, it was very much the study of English
literature or the study of films rather than writing literature
(08:13):
or filmmaking. And that was completely what I wanted at
the time. I wanted to study other people's works, and
I loved studying two or three books a week and
two or three films a week, and I think it
allowed me to work out that was what I wanted
to do myself. By absorbing some of the best examples
(08:35):
of storytelling, I think I found that inspiring and encouraging
and probably daunting in a way, but I think it
led me onto seeking out the kind of the space
and time to do it myself. But it was overall
really positive experience, and yeah, I look back on those
years as probably some of my best in education. I think.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
So when i'bviously you in the midst of studying and
you know, you just shown yourself about like digesting all
of the best examples of literature and film, when did
you actually start putting pens of paper for your own ideas?
And can you talk us through what that moment was like.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It was towards the end of my time at UNI.
It was towards the end of my MA and I
it was around the time when if we wanted to
end up going to work in the film industry, publishing,
or something kind of relevant to our degrees, it was
the time that we should probably start looking for jobs
in those areas. And I was kind of hesitant to start.
(09:39):
I'd done some internships in film companies and I just
wasn't sure that was really where I wanted to go.
And I suddenly had an idea for a novel, and
I knew it was something I was quite confident in pursuing,
and more or less immediately I decided that's what I
(10:00):
wanted to do. As soon as I graduated from IMA.
I wanted to devote as much time as I could
to trying to write that particular book that had just
kind of popped into my head out of thin air.
And I was very lucky when I finished and moved
back home with my parents. When I finished my degree,
they were wonderful in allowing me the space and time
(10:22):
to write. I was very lucky in that sense. I
did work part time in a bookshop whilst I was
doing that, which itself was a great education because it
allows you to see what's selling, what people are likeing,
what books customers are excited to talk about, so that
itself was really good as well. And for about a
year I just focused on writing and working in bookshops.
(10:45):
I did, in the end go on to a full
time office job and social media, but I think that
was great because it allowed me to experiment with the
writing and how I wanted the plot to go and
that sort of thing. And curiously that book wasn't the
one that got me an agent or a publisher, but
it did end up being published as my fourth novel, weirdly,
(11:07):
which was all my fifth novel, which was The Locked
at It. Do you know I actually have the books
here with me. I did quite often podcasts, and I
can see the books out of sight and out of reach,
and I've been reprepared and now I can hold it up.
So this was the book I wrote in about twenty
fourteen twenty fifteen when I finished UNI, and it was
turned down by all the agents I sent it to,
(11:29):
and it was never offered out to publishers because I
wasn't represented by agents at that point. But in the
end it did get published, which I found really excited,
even though it was kind of five books later down
the line. And I also did very much rework and
rewrite it because my writing style had changed by that point,
so it wasn't as if it was just kind of
clickprint on the very first thing. But it was nice
(11:51):
that the book actually did end up going out there
into the world.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
So what was it about the idea behind the Locked
Locked attic that really got you go in in that
first initial incident to actually write a book. Because we
have a lot of people who are writers or want
to be writers, and it's quite famous that that first
book sort of syndrome. A lot of people start one,
but they never finish one. So why was that idea
(12:18):
different and how did you go about actually completing it?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I think I wasn't too This is probably not very
good commercial answer, but I wasn't that hung up on
genre when I was writing it. I didn't really think
considering I was working in a bookship at the time.
I don't think I thought too much about where it
(12:42):
fits within certain genres, and I didn't think it would
be crime when I wrote it. It was very much
I mean the readers who people who have read the
book readers may notice that it's probably my less crime
of all my novels, and it's much more about kind
of suburbia and sort of family secrets, and these are
(13:04):
themes that go through quite a few of my books,
but this one's very much more kind of concentrated on
one street in suburban Kent, and it was that kind
of neighborhood toxicity that I found really compelling, and I'd
read in other books as well, not necessarily crime novels,
but it was something that I found intriguing and kind
of enjoyed when I saw it in TV dramas. So
(13:24):
I think that was the thing that kind of spured
me on to write it. And I think not being
too kind of concerned or worried about which genre would
fit into was quite liberating at the time. It probably
explains why it wasn't the book that got me agency representation,
because it probably wasn't one thing or another, I think
(13:45):
at that point. But it was great to be able
to have it later on and go back and remaster it,
rework it, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
So again, like, obviously you've gone through the whole process
of writing a book, and then you've got through the
process of trying to get an agent with that first idea,
and you've been knocked back a couple of times. At
that point, some people would quit, They would go, do
you know what I've tried didn't work out, I didn't
get where.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
I wanted to go.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I'll either just leave it in a draw and forget
about it. So what made you go? Do you know
what I enjoyed writing that first one, I'm going to
write a second one. And how did that process happen?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I think that came about from me just having a
lot of ideas.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
And I.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Think I sometimes hear other authors talk about this filmmaker
Quentin Tarantino. I think once said he would die before
he gets to make all the films in his head.
And I can understand this idea of having so many
ideas and there's just not enough time to get them
down on paper. So it didn't really phase me too much.
Of course, every rejection in this industry can be quite
(14:56):
a hard hitting thing, but it didn't once make me
I think therefore it won't happen. It just made me
not with this book, but let's try another one. So
I think I was probably quite lucky to be fairly
fairly keen just to move on to the next one
if one didn't work. And I also knew some other
(15:19):
people who had tried to end up with an agent
or get published, and knew that, and I listened to
a lot of podcasts coming similar to this one as
well about authors publication journeys, and I knew it wasn't
uncommon for it not to be the first book to
get an agent and then not to be the first
book to get publisher, And I knew this wasn't an
unusual kind of journey, So I think knowing that this
(15:41):
was fairly normal allowed me to think, well, then let's
just let's just try another one then.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And did your write and process change with book two?
In terms of you said before you didn't think about
genre the first time round. Obviously you said as well,
you tweaked it as well for when it did eventually
come out as a book. So did you sort of
change your approach to writing with the second book? And again,
what was that like?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I One of the main things I did was I
enrolled in the Favor Academy, and which, for those who
don't know, is of course run of the publisher's favor
and Favor And my teetor was the brilliant author Rowan Coleman,
and she was so encouraging and just an absolutely brilliant teeta,
(16:25):
really really encouraging and warm and welcoming for people who
were trying to trying to write or had the startings
of a novel. And I think it was probably the
third novel I was working on that I was trying
to write at that point when I thought this could
help maybe or at least teach me things about the
(16:46):
craft and the industry that would be useful, And it
did both. And I think by that point I'd already
written two whole novels and just felt I needed to
do something new, to try and see if we could
change the direction with the with the next one and
the one I worked on whilst that The Favorite Academy
was actually at my debut level that ended up getting published.
(17:07):
So I found that whole experience probably. I mean, it's
hard to say, you never know how things would turn
out if one doesn't do them, but I really think
that was the thing that helped nudge me in the
right direction when it came to getting an agent and
getting published.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And what did go into the Favorite Academy do for
your actual writing? Did it just sort of tweak what
was already there? Did it teach you something completely different
that you'd never even considered before.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think the best thing it taught me was how
to plan, and I already sort of planned in probably
a more haphazard way. And Rowan on the course was wonderful.
She wasn't prescriptive in the sense that this is how
you have to do it. She more led us explore
ways that could work for us as students on the course,
(17:58):
and I found that the way that really to me
was laying out an entire book chapter by chapter, with
a short summary for every chapter. And ever since then,
I've done that for every book since and I couldn't
really imagine writing without without doing that. And I think
the course as a whole enabled me to discover for
myself what kind of writer or what my sensibilities were
(18:21):
when it came to writing. And it turns out I'm
a very structured, very kind of plan and advanced sort
of author rather than seeing where the story goes. And
that isn't, of course, to say there's one right and
one wrong, because there are many wonderful authors, and I
have friends who just sit down at a blank page
and writers to write a book. But for me, that
course enabled me to work out which of those those
(18:43):
two things I was.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So when you first started writing that very first book,
what was your writing process like and how has it
changed now that you ten books in? And I'm going
to add to that as well in terms of what
do you wish you what do you know now that
you wish you.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Knew then, gosh so much. I think my writing process
and when I wrote the very very very first one,
I don't think I planned. I think I just went
in and wrote it. I think I probably had a
plan in my head, and which is probably what I
mean when I say I planned a certain way, but
(19:21):
I knew where it was going, just probably not every
beat getting there. But I think my process now is very,
very different. It's very ordered. It's less kind of let's
discover where things go. It's more I like to know
exactly where things, where things are going. And I don't
think I've got there when I wrote the second book
(19:43):
I ever wrote, not my second published, because I hadn't
done the Favor course by that point. But by the
time I was onto my third book, which was my
working progress while I was at the course, that was
one that helped me start to find sheune that process
a bit more, and I think I find you it
a bit more and a bit more with every book
that went since, and my writers. My writer process has
(20:05):
changed even over the past year or so, depending on
how quickly I have to write a book, whether there's
a deadline for it or not, whether it's a book
I've planned out with my publishers or whether it's one
that I have just come up with by myself. It
can very little depending on what the book is. And
I kind of see the process is something that I
(20:26):
have mostly set in stone, but the stone can change color.
I think that's how think about it. I can just
adapt it a little bit, depends on what would suit
the book at the time.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah. Again, we've got a lot of people who watched
the show that again I want to be writers or
are writers, and LUs like. One of the things we
try and get into is the sort of numbers and
try and sort of take some of the stigma away
from it. So we had like Adele Parkson, for example,
and she says she aimed for a thousand words a day. No,
in fact, she said she does a thousand.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Words a day, and that's that you've done.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
But we had Ben Aronovich on and he said two
hundred and fifty words is a good day for him,
and if he does that every day consistently without fail,
he's got a book at the end of the year.
So what are your day to day numbers? What are
you happy with on a day and how long roughly
does it take you to map out a book and
write the book.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Do you know I used to? This is one of
the ways it's changed. Actually, I used to not focus
on workout at all, and I wouldn't know at the
end of each day how much done or not. And
that was quite deliberate in this, particularly when I used
to work. When I still worked in social media coordination,
I couldn't really write much during the week. I to
(21:42):
just write at weekends, and there were some weekends I
was busy with seeing friends or family commitments, and I
knew that if I held myself to a particular workout,
I'd end up feeling bad for spending time doing the
other things. So at that point I kind of gave
myself permission not to even look. And I loved writing
so much it wasn't as if I needed to kind
(22:02):
of like push myself into doing it. And that mostly
stayed the same even when I went to write full time.
I still carried on without really noticing too much of
the workout, and I only really changed to now. I
now try and do three thousand words a day. When
I'm it's a proper full on writing day. Different if
(22:23):
I'm in the midst of structural edits or doing events,
it can change. But if I'm in the midst of
just pure writing, I try and do three thousand words
a day. And that came about last year when an
order of books publication order changed and then I had
to write a book that was originally going to be
the year after had to be brought forwards and had
to write that quite quickly, and so I deliberately came
(22:46):
up with a how many words a day kind of
plan in order just to make sure it definitely got done.
And I ended up really enjoying it and thought, why
haven't I've been doing this from the start? I it
appealed to the structured planning kind of part of my brain,
and ever since then, I've now tried to do three thousand.
It's it's a number of films. I don't feel like
(23:07):
I've really stretched myself too far, but I feel like
I've still made substantial progress in the manuscript. But I
say all this under the sort of understanding or kind
of contract with myself that it's okay to break it
if I have a busy day. We've had lots of
other adminy kind of things that comes with the books
coming out, it's fine if it doesn't if it doesn't happen,
(23:28):
So it's a relaxed aim.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I'd say, yeah, So you said, obviously you went full
time as a writer, and this is something that a
lot of people tend to struggle with in terms of
like when the time is right to go full time?
You know, you've got finances and things like that to manage.
So how did you come to that decision to go,
(23:51):
do you know what, I'm going to go full time
with this? And again, can you talk us through that process?
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Sure, it was when my I'd have three books out
by that point, and I knew I was going to
give it a couple of books. I think i'd already
kind of decided that quite early on, at least a
couple of books. I should say, I was well aware
it could have taken more. But I was very lucky
(24:18):
that my third my third book just became a very
different publishing experience for me than the two books that
came before it, where it just completely changed my life.
It just sort of took off in a way that
the books my first two books hadn't, And I was
with a new publisher and or a new imprint. I
(24:39):
should say and steadily, one by one, things started to
happen that hadn't happened before. We had enormous supermarket orders,
it was chosen for an incredible promotion at Waterstones. It
just the stars just started to seem to be aligning,
and I started to think, all, this might be the
(24:59):
one that means I can write full time. And I
was very lucky that it did turn out to be.
And it was also a very good moment, I think
in terms of where the Pandemic was up to, because
it came out in twenty twenty one. It was called
The Dinner Guest, I should say, and that book, The
Dinner Guest was ready and waiting in bookshops. When everyone
(25:23):
went back to shops, I think it was about April
or late April, when Boris's kind of chart of where
we're up to in the lockdowns allow retail to reopen,
and there was a lot of worry that people will
be really hesitant to not go back, but it was
the opposite. People poured back into shops, and I think bookshops,
I think I read somewhere that footfall was similar to
(25:43):
what they'd kind of expected Christmas, and I think that
that timing was really lucky as well, because when the
shops reopened, the dinner guest was there, ready to be
discovered on the tables, and it was just kind of
gaining momentum in a way that I'd never experienced before.
And it got to number one on the Times chart,
(26:04):
and I didn't expect it to because I the day
before the chart was revealed, I said to I said
to a friend of mine, it definitely won't reach one
number one because there's this other big book out and
there's no way it's going to go past that. And
then the next day it did and I just couldn't.
I absolutely can't believe it.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
It was.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
It was amazing. And then after when I when it
hit the s Ony Times Bestseller's chart, I started to think, this,
I probably should make a decision now to kind of
commit to doing this as my full time job, and
I discussed it with my agent and I yeah, I
then made the choice to write full time, and also
(26:45):
just timing. I was so stretched between doing a full
time job and trying to write as well. And you know,
as I mentioned, there's lots of admin stuff that has
to go with being an author, so that was kind
of a real weight off my shoulders being able to
just make it my full time, full time job.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So obviously one way off because the full time job
was gone. But obviously the success of The Dinner Guest
is that an additional weight that then you're having to bear,
because obviously, if a book is hugely successful the book
after it, I can imagine that that's quite difficult to
comprehend in terms of going, oh, this was so successful,
(27:26):
is this one going to live up to the hype?
Was that something that you struggled with when you were
writing the next book after The Dinner Guest?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
I don't think so, because it would have done had
the next three books not already been written. So I
knew I was writing books that would be way into
the future past that, because the three books after that
were very much kind of finished and planned out. So
(27:57):
I don't think there was a period that kind of
a left me to be daunted, which is a very
lucky position to be. I'm aware of that. Yeah, I
think they were just so kind of locked down, and
I knew kind of when they were coming out or
and even seeing the covers of probably at least one,
if not more, And so I think that kind of
(28:17):
protected me in a way of not worrying too much
about it. And I knew the book I was probably
writing at the time wouldn't be seen for two, three,
maybe more more years from that point. So yeah, I
think I was I was slightly shielded from that that
sort of things fantastic.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Like you say, pressure can work in both ways, but
you planned for success and that worked out in your favor.
In so with book ten, then obviously book one must
be really exciting, and every author or people watching the
show have aspirations of book one coming out and being
published and having that debut experience. What's it like and
(28:59):
what's the difference between having a debut and then book ten?
Does that change at all when the books come out?
Speaker 2 (29:05):
It does me both, it doesn't, it doesn't. I don't
get as nervous now when the books come out. I
now probably see it as a much more exciting, fun
thing rather than a kind of let's worry about this thing.
It's still there are, of course, still worries about it,
but I think I do appreciate approach it with more
(29:29):
of an appreciation for people reading it and people picking
up and buying it, whicheasing to download it and I'm
often so much in the world of the ones that
I'm writing and the ones that are coming up next.
I think that also helps, whereas when you're right at
the start of one's career, there's more doubts about that
and sometimes you don't even know if you've got another
(29:49):
contract or whatever. So I think I feel very much
in the midst of it all and with a lot
of other considerations. It It's almost like anxiety kind of
fills a vacuum, doesn't it if there's space for it
to go. And I think any kind of worries or
anxiety about certain book releases doesn't have too much space
(30:09):
to go because I'm still dealing with lots of other
other books and other things, and as particularly the case
that I've kind of expanded the amount of books I'm
writing and the genres I'm working in. And this year
I've had three books out, or we'll have three books
out which of July, September, and October, so the publications
(30:31):
for those feel very kind of close together, and only
one has gone and then I'm kind of preparing for
the next one. So I think that's what's changed the most.
But at the same time, it still feels the same
in the sense that you're sending out this thing that
you've worked really hard on out into the world and
you just really hope people will like it. And I
(30:52):
probably feel very similar in that way than I did
back in twenty nineteen when my first one came out.
The good thing now, though, is that I don't do
any book launches because I did one book launch and
I found it incredibly stressful and I feel like I've
done it and that's it, and now I don't do
book launches. That there was there was a pandemic in
between for the books two and three, so that gave
(31:14):
me come permission not to have to even think about
book launches. But yeah, Pandemics Society, I have carried on
the trend of not doing book launches because I find
being the center of attention at a party absolutely, so yeah,
I don't do that.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And obviously, with three books out in a year, that's
quite a lot of parties.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
To be the yeah, exactly, yeah, all I was doing,
so yeah, definitely a lot of time taken up as well,
I should imagine, because it's not just one night with
these things.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
So with that in mind, obviously you've got three books
out this year. Normally, what we do for this section
is what's the story? So what we asked the author
to do is to pick the story that they want
to promote and give us either their elevator pitch, or
you could if you've got the books hand, you can
read the back of the blurb. It's entirely up to
(32:04):
you how you do it. So I'm going to play
this little video and then when we get back, I'm
going to ask you to give us an elevator pitch.
So bp picking between three books, I suppose it's like
(32:24):
picking from your children. You never know which which one
is your favorite at any given moment. You give a
pitch please for the book of your choice.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
It's true. Well, well, the one that's I will do,
the Winter Visitor, because that comes out this month. I
should just give the only one I've got to hands
of those is The Treehouse, which came out in July,
so that's out now if people wanted to grab that now.
But the one I've got out this month is The
Winter Visitor, which is actually a Christmas crime thriller, and
(32:55):
even it comes out in September, but that's apparently when
Christmas books they come out in September October, and it's
kind of amazing. I haven't written a Christmas early before now,
but it's probably the most augur the Christish book I've written,
where there is a murder in the Scottish castle. So
the main pitch for it is there is a family,
(33:16):
the Wayman family, who are very rich, affluent family and
have a big Scottish Highlands castle, and they gathered for
Christmas and someone turns up a stranger and he says
he believes he is the son of one of the
three adult sons of the family, but he doesn't know
which one, and he's there to find out whose real
(33:38):
father is and the whole family just kind of shocked
and horrified, all the three sons of partners. They don't
understand how this could have happened. And there's a big
storm and the guy they can't throw him out. They
put him up in a guest room, planning to work
this out the next morning, which is Christmas morning. But
the next morning he is found dead in the guest
room with a Christmas ornament through his heart, and someone
(34:00):
in the castle has killed him during the night, and
someone didn't clear didn't want him to get to the
bottom of the secret of his parentage. So yeah, that's
the that's the basic kind of hook for the Winter Visitor.
And yeah, it's snowy and festive and hopefully something that
people will enjoy reading as the night start to get darker.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah. Wow, And he says this book sounds amazing after
no fantastic. So again, obviously you mentioned there about moving
around into different genres. And again we've spoke to a
lot of authors when they get pigeonholed into one sort
of genre and it's like the publisher says, no, you know,
we want you to keep going with this character or
(34:42):
of this type of fiction. So I suppose the question
is what appeals to you about moving into different genres
and how have you sort of been able to do
that when you've got a really good fund base in
various different genres.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
I think it's I think it's partly because I like
to read a variety of different genres myself, and I
know many readers who don't just stick to one, So
I think probably I think readers are probably more I mean,
I certainly am more tolerant of genre shifts than sometimes
maybe the industry thinks they are. Maybe but I've always
(35:22):
liked reading thrillers that I feel do something a bit
different with the genre or push boundaries a bit, maybe
stray into other genres or a little bit more unplaceable possibly,
And I've tried to do that with my books, and
I'm always very grateful when readers contact me to say
sometimes what they like about my books is that they
(35:43):
all feel very different, and it's certainly something I try
to do. Occasionally a name change is in order because
it can be helpful just to indicate I think to
readers that this is a quite a different proposition, which
is what I did with my horror novel Scuttle last year,
(36:03):
which was published as Barnby Walter rather than BP Walter,
just to kind of suggest to readers that it's still me,
but there's something different different at work within these pages.
And in the case of that novel, it was giant
spiders that kill people. And also with my gothic thriller Medlock,
which comes out in October that's published under the name S. G. Hartnell.
(36:25):
Sometimes these things are there to make things work with
multiple publishers. Sometimes they're there to kind of give readers
a sort of a notice to say expect something a
little bit different. But overall, when it comes to writing,
I just really want to write the books that excite
me when i'm writing them, ones that make me or
how I would want to read on if I was
(36:46):
the reader rather than the writer. I think that's mostly
what I set out to do, and then I try
and find or me and my agent or editor will
try and find a way of making that work. So
it's a collaborative process. But at the end of the day,
I want to write a book that I'm happy writing,
and hopefully a book that readers are are king to read.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So with The Winter Guests, then obviously you mentioned Christie's
influence potentially in terms of, you know, trying to write
in that sort of lot I suppose it's a lot
room thriller. Again, when did the idea come and how
difficult was it to write something like that because from
(37:27):
a reader's perspective, obviously all the characters are very close together,
you get in different perspectives. You're trying to guess constantly
sort of like what the outcome is. So as an author,
that must be quite tricky to try and keep people
on their toes but also throw in a couple of
twists as well, which you're going to, you know, leave
the reader with the drawer on the floor types thing.
(37:48):
So how do you do that?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
I do not know, That's the honest answer. I am
a terrible of then when it comes to working out
where ideas came from and how they end up on
the page, because and I've only come across I think
one other author who said it very very similar to
how it works for me, and that was the author
(38:12):
Amanda Prow's, and she said, it's as if she just
gets a movie downloaded into her head and it's her
job just to write out what the movie is playing.
And that is exactly how it is for me, where
a book wholesale gets kind of just arrives into my
head and I know it all from beginning to end
(38:32):
right in that moment. There's usually not too much that changes.
Sometimes things do. Some of the things have to change
in order for twist to work, or kind of the
actual structure of the story to work. But generally speaking,
the basic plot and idea just arrives kind of out
of nowhere and as if magic spells happened, and I
(38:52):
then try and plan out the novel as soon as
the idea or as close to that idea arriving as feasible,
I don't want it to go. I may end up
never using it. I may end up deciding it's not
worth carrying on with. But as long as I feel
I capture it down in a chapter plan, I feel
it's then there for me to go back to at
(39:13):
a later date if I need to, and there will
be a period of refining I think as I kind
of go through it and getting the characters and making
them feel kind of real and it's thoughtfully developed. But
in terms of where the idea comes from and how
I kind of wrestle the plot, I don't feel there
is any wrestling, because it is just it's just there. Really,
(39:35):
that's a very strange and unhelpful answer, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I suppose with that, then, if we try and give
people watching three potential tips for write in let's say
one for each genre psychological thrillers, horror, and then the gothic.
What would your one tip in each genre be for
people looking to write in those areas Horror.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I'll do horror first, because I think that might be
one that's probably the most helpful in terms of real
kind of genre signposting because it has to be something
scary within it. And I think maybe if someone was
writing a horror novel, one could consider what that writer
(40:24):
finds scary. And I'm not necessarily saying that he or
she has to put their worst fears down on paper,
but I think spotting when one's own kind of reactions
to things crops up can be a helpful sort of
almost like a map to follow, I think when thinking
particularly about how that's going to appear scary on paper.
(40:47):
And even though I wouldn't necessarily say I have a rachnophobia,
I'm not a big fan of house spiders, and we
are in house spider season at the moment in the UK,
and you know every moment, if you just move something
you're worried is gonna be something that darts out. I think,
even without thinking about it, I probably sort of drew
on that side of things. I'm not necessarily saying that
(41:09):
to write horror nov it has to be or biographical,
but I think thinking about what causes that sense of
fear it's probably helpful in terms of psychological thrillers. In
terms of one tip, I would probably say it's it's
probably for me down to a rhythm, because I think
(41:32):
if someone reads a lot of psychological thrillers or murder
mysteries or any kind of crime novel, you, I think
the brain loves repetition, and the brain quickly starts to
learn when certain things should happen within a book, And
I think particularly voracious readers get quite good at spotting
(41:53):
when it isn't working within a particular rhythm, when something
hasn't happened for a long period of time, or when
there hasn't been enough twists, or when you feel like
the payoff wasn't wasn't worth it. So I think that's
probably what I really bear in mind when I'm doing
my chapter plans. It's that sense of ridthm And it
doesn't necessarily have to stick to a really kind of
(42:16):
set structure, because I'm sure there are many kind of
set formulas that one could find, but I think just
having a sense of like when the twist should happen
at midpoint, climax, this kind of thing. I found that
hugely helpful when it comes to planning out thrillers, just
being aware of where they go. Having said that, many people,
I think, if they've read enough books and watched loads
(42:36):
of movies will probably know just by osmosis when those
things are supposed to occur. So I think there's probably
an element of distrusting oneself really with that. And lastly,
with Gothic horror, I think all Gothic thrillers. I think
that's a difficult one because I think Gothic there is
a very kind of strict historical definition of the term.
(43:00):
But I think it has also come to me more
of a sensibility and a feeling and a vibe, an
atmosphere to a book that is probably more malleable when
it comes to where a book can be set, when
a book can be set this kind of thing. My
book Medlock is a reworking of The Secret Garden where
(43:20):
the character Missus Medlock, the housekeeper, is the main character,
and for a bit it does follow the Secret Garden
quite closely, and then it does veer off in a
much darker direction. And so I think if one was
setting out to craft a Gothic novel, I think reading
other books that have that sensibility within them would give
(43:42):
a great education as to how to conjure that vibe.
I think it is really about atmosphere and feeling and
sort of dread or something unsettling and all these other
things that's different to horror as such, but they can
go together as well quite nicely.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, brilliant. It's a really good advice. Yeah, love Gus Well,
I love all these gens. So that's fantastic advice for
people watching. Speaking of people watching, if you're watching now,
we're shortly going to be moving over to the writing
community question time, So if you've got a question, feel
free to send it in and we'll ask as many
(44:17):
questions as we can get through. But first we're going
to ask some of our staple questions and we're going
to play a little video to indicate that. So Community
question time, brilliant. So lots of people in the comments. Again,
(44:46):
if you've got questions, please send them in and we'll
get through those, but we'll ask a few of our
staple questions first. So one of the first staple questions
that we have is if you could take any character
from fiction and do what you want with that character.
Which character would you choose and what would.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
You do with them? I think it would have to
be the character of Ariadney Oliver from Agatha Christie's novels.
She appears mostly in poorer novels, although she does appear
in The Pale Horse, which is a standalone and she
is widely kind of accepted as the most autobiographical of
Agatha's creations. She is a mystery writer within Agatha Christie stories,
(45:26):
and I think you can probably tell at times that
Agatha is taking out some of her frustrations that come
with being a novelist in the character of Aria Nilva.
And I would love to have her go off on
her own adventures and have a whole series of books.
So yeah, it probably would be her.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
On the topic of frustrations as a writer, do you
have any frustrations as a writer that you're willing to share?
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Oh goodness. I try my best to just focus on
the wonderful things, but I I'm not perfect at that. Of course.
There are many many frustrations I think that can happen.
I think this is a job that were kind of
baked into the job. There are ups and downs and difficulties,
(46:15):
and I think getting used to the fact that so
much is out of your control as a writer can
be a difficult one and it can be hard to
sit back and watch sometimes watch things going wrong when
you can't do anything about it, or mistakes or that
kind of thing that you can't really do anything about.
And I think that that could be hard. In any profession,
(46:38):
that could be hard. And I think as a writer,
we're very As writers, we're very used to kind of
having control over our characters. But then when that book
or those characters go out into the world, we sacrifice
some of that control because then it becomes a product
that needs to be sold. And if someone doesn't like that,
(46:58):
that's perfectly fine, because one can self published, which is
a very legitimate way of telling stories, but if one
wants to be published, traditionally that is something one has
to reconcile with oneself that in the end has to
be a product. In the same way that you know,
school shoes or pencil cases or conflicts or various other
(47:19):
things are also products that have to appeal to audiences
or consumers and be bought. So with that comes many
many difficulties or frustrations, and I, if ever they crop up,
I just try to focus on the things that I
like and the things I enjoy and find exciting about
the process, because in the end, they're the most important parts.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, absolutely so. One of the other questions that we
have that's a staple question is if you could change
the end into any fiction, what would you change the
end into and why.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
This is a difficult one, and I definitely wouldn't want
to suggest I know better than the author of any
known piece of literature. But one that popped into my
head actually was the ending to The Hunger Games, the
very last of the Hunger Games trilogy before the more
recent two books came out. The original trilogy where spoiler
(48:15):
alert if someone by an amazing miracle hasn't come into
contact with the Hunger Games books or films at this point,
like maybe mute or something, because I'm about to say
that happens at the end of the last Hunger Games
book and film. But there's a bit for those who
know it. There's a bit where all the victors decide,
once they've seized control of and they've won the kind
(48:38):
of civil war essentially, the idea is floated to re
establish the Hunger Games, almost as a form of revenge
against the people that have terrorized them, and they all
agree to it, including Catnus, the main character, And there's
an important reason why she agrees to it because she's
got a plan to do something later on. But I
(48:58):
always thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if the book or
if the film just stopped there and it had it
that Catnus had been twisted so much by her experiences
that she'd become the very villain that she had seek
to sort to try and depose. And it just ended
with a really cold, horrible idea that this is just
going to continue and continue to continue. And of course
(49:18):
that isn't the ending that Ceeson Collins came up with,
and it's probably best that it wasn't, but the darker
part of my brain sometimes thinks it would be wonderful
just to cut to black at that at that point
and have that as a very chilling, miserable ending.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, I agree, I love that brilliant. So we've got
some questions coming in sort of chat again. If you
watch it now, your opportunity to send them in or
please send them in. This is a question from I
knew best and worst places for writers retreat.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
I have never done a writer's retreat. I do reading
retreats where I either take myself off somewhere to a hotel,
or I do it locally at a local leisure center.
But I've just done one this week where I go
away for a whole week and just read. I don't
generally write or do much else. I just read books
all day every day, and it's joyous and I really
(50:09):
love the immersion kind of in reading that that gives me.
But yeah, I've never done a writer's retreat, so I don't.
I don't know if I can answer in the best way,
but I imagine a lovely place would be somewhere kind
of cozy, maybe with other things like swimming pool or
nice lounge or that kind of thing where one can
(50:30):
write and then rest. That kind of thing. In terms
of the worst place, probably if one sat down in
the middle of being Q or Asada or something and
try to try to write amiss the aisles or somewhere, yeah,
somewhere very busy. I don't know if it would be
would be very conducive, but but yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I think, yeah, that sounds like so much fun. Obviously
reading retreats, Yeah, I mean, obviously lots of people say
in to be a writer, you have to be a
reader too, So yeah, I why not do that? Yeah,
there was a question off the back of that I
was going to ask, Oh, that was it, the Winter Guest.
Why did you decide to sit out in Scotland?
Speaker 2 (51:06):
I I'm not too sure. I think I wanted it
to be the Highlands of Scotland, somewhere where I one
of my closest friends used to live and I used
to go and visit her there and I loved it,
absolutly loved it there. I think it appeals to me
because I do not like sunshine. Sunny days are not
my favorite kind of days. I like dark and overcast days,
and I think the Highlands of Scotland has some of
(51:28):
the least amount sunshine in the whole of the UK.
So whenever I was there, I loved the fact it
was just constant cloud cover, and I think that appeals
to the part of me that loves the autumn and
winter vibes. So when it came to writing The Winter Visitor,
I think I knew I wanted it to be set
somewhere that would feel quite cozy and wintry and also
(51:50):
quite remote, because it's quite important to the plot that
the family are very much closed in and can't leave.
So I needed all those elements, and there was actually
a strange legal issue that actually was complicated by me
setting in Scotland, because Scotland, of course has different laws
than England on some things. And I won't say what
(52:12):
it is is a bit of a plot spoiler, but there
was a legal issue that my editor kind of flagged,
saying in Scotland that's actually illegal, whereas it wasn't isn't
in England. And I had to find a way of
working around that. So yeah, that temporarily caused a bit
of a bit of a worry, but it was fine.
We solved it. But yeah, generally speaking, I wanted it
(52:34):
for the vibes. I think, for the sort of the cozy,
wintry vibes.
Speaker 1 (52:39):
Nice, brilliant. So Chris in a question, thank you christ
for your question. Was there a particular writer or particular
book that inspired you to become a writer.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
I think I've already mentioned Agatha Christie, but I think
I have to mention her again. I think discovering Agatha
Christie aged eleven or twelve, and I think having the
job of not only discovering an author I loved the
books of but also realizing she wrote like seventy seven
of them. So I wasn't going to run out anytime soon,
and I think she helped crystallize me what I liked
(53:14):
from books and what I would hope to give readers.
I also think probably more modern day psychological thriller authors
helped me move towards this genre now. And although I've
said The Winter Visitors, my moth Aga the christie Ish
of my books, I think most of my thrillers are
(53:35):
probably more similar to the writings of say Ruth Rendell
or Minette Waters, and these were the authors I think
I discovered after Christie. And I think authors that wrote
very complex, dark, modern day or modern to when they
were writing, or at least more modern than Christie's feel
(53:56):
to us now, setting kind of contemporary, often suburban worlds
amidst people that we could kind of very easily imagine
meeting in everyday life. And I think the gritty realism
of those kind of infused with the more kind of
classic mystery appeal to me. And I think it was
pretty mixture of those two things. I think at the
(54:19):
time I didn't realize I was reading psychological thrillers. I
think the books Ruth Rendell wrote well, I can'ite often
just put into crime the same as Minute Waters, and
I think it's only more recently we've come to think
of there being more kind of pillars within genres in
a more defined sense. I think, yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
So we've got a few minutes left. If you're watching
now Live, please feel free to send him a question.
We'll try and get them in.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
We might be a quick vour around if.
Speaker 1 (54:45):
We get a few more questions. But again we have
another staple question. And obviously ten books in the Winter
Visits are out shortly as well. This is quite a
difficult one for some people. But you're on your deathbed,
you're looking by at your writing career. What would you
be happy with? What is success to you?
Speaker 2 (55:06):
I think for me it's just writing the books. I
enjoy writing. Really, it's quite it's quite, it's quite simple,
and I feel like I have done that and continue
to do that. So I'm very happy with with that.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, brilliant. And so with the Winter Visitor, then what's
your like? What can readers expect that maybe they haven't
seen in your books before.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
I think it's probably my most light of my books.
I say that cautiously, because there are murders, there are
dead bodies, there are disposing of bodies that you know.
This this isn't Gilmore Girls, but it's I think slightly
lighter in tone than some of my other books. And
there's probably more slightly humorous family dynamics that go on,
(55:55):
and there's probably a bit more time spent with that
rather than the dark and more grisly side. And I've
had some very very dark books in the past, like
my book Notes on the Murder involved a very very
disturbing island where things like murder and torture happened, and
this is definitely not that. This is much more of
the lighter side of crime, where it's kind of more
(56:16):
the mystery and the family dynamics that are at the
heart of it rather than anything too hard hitting. So
I think that's probably the most different aspect of it.
Although having said that, people who have enjoyed my darker
books will hopefully still find shades of that within this.
So fingers crossed it pleases everyone.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
That's the and on that if somebody was listening or
watching this now and they haven't read any of your books,
which of your books would you recommend they start with?
Speaker 2 (56:43):
I think I mean I've mentioned the Dinner Guess. That
was my first bestseller, and people seem to really respond
to that book, I think, and my book The Garden
Party People, which came out last year, people seem to
have responded really well to. I think it's pen slightly
whether one likes the darker side or the lighter side.
(57:04):
Probably the Dinner Guest or The Winter Visitor is a
quite good starting off points if one doesn't like things
too dark. But if darkness is your thing, I'd say
pick up my book Notes on a Murder or Hold
Your Breath, or if you like horror, go with Scuttle.
But in terms of the psych thriller's probably Notes on
a Murder is still a psychological thriller, but a very dark,
(57:25):
very dark.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
One, brilliant. And we have got a question from Alo,
so I'm just going to squeeze it in there. But
has a writing idea slash your imagination ever scared you?
Speaker 2 (57:36):
No? I don't think it has. I don't think anything
has ever scared me from my imagination. I think maybe
if I was writing. I have just finished writing another
horror book actually, and that did involve quite brutal things
in it that made me think, or is that too strong,
(57:56):
but never anything too specific or or horrendous so far.
So it may maybe one day, but yeah, nothing nothing
to be bad.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
Maybe one day, right, So before we go, what we
ask is if you could just give us all your
lovely information, So if people listening or watching back, if
they wanted to stalk you, if they were to buy
your books. Not so much stocking, but you know what
I mean in terms of just go yeah, finding you
on all the social medias and things like that. So
where where can they find you? And where can they
(58:29):
buy your books?
Speaker 2 (58:31):
The books are available to buy in bookshops and of
course online retailers like Watson's dot Com and Amazon and Audible.
I love audiobooks, so yeah, definitely definitely be able to
download on there. And you can find me on the
major social media platforms and be people to author on Instagram.
Instagram is probably my most active, but I'm also on
(58:51):
Facebook as bp Walter author and on Twitter or x
as Barny Walter, So yes, I can you find and
in contact on all of.
Speaker 1 (59:01):
Those brilliant Okay, so that's the end of the show.
Thank you very much for watching. Again, we might do
a little lifeter show after this, So if you're interested
in sticking around and having a chat about all things writing.
Obviously we move away from the sort of the guest format,
but it's more casual. So yeah, if you're into that,
(59:24):
we might go live on TikTok and things. But thank
you so much for listening. If you're right in this weekend,
please get in touch with us, just let us know
what you're doing, where you're up to, because we love
to support the authors of the show and the people
who listen to the show as well. But yeah, that's
it for me.
Speaker 3 (59:41):
Anything left from you BP.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
That is everything. Thank you so much having on the show.
Speaker 1 (59:45):
It's been great to chat brilliant So that's the final
bet of the show everyone, So thank you very much
and we look forward to seeing you same time next week.
Speaker 3 (59:54):
Thank you have a good weekend. It was back to
(01:00:33):
b
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