March 24, 2025 • 30 mins
In this episode we chat to Stig Abell about his latest novel, The Burial Place, and talk about an inspiration for another of his books, coming soon, namely Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Murder Junction, ladies and gentlemen, and this week
we are back with an old friend of the show,
mister Stig Abel, who will be talking to us about
the various shenanigans he's been up to since last we spoke,
but also with the third book in his series. Stig
welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi guys, so pleased to be here. Thanks very much
for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Stig, you are looking very very suave and very buffs.
We should tell our listeners exactly what what Stig is wearing.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well, he's gone for the Bruce Willis die hard look,
and he hasn't got a machine gun, but he had
but he but he has got headphones on which are
equally lethal.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's a white vest, is what he's wearing. A sleeveless
white vest.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Very Bruce willis set with bigger guns.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
In my defense, when I joined this Zue meeting, it
said your host has said you've not allowed to switch
your video on. So I was thinking I could put
a jumper on, but they're not going to see me anyway,
So I'll be finding my vest quietly sitting here in
my living room. And then VAS turned on the picture
and it could be worse. I once did it. When
I was at the TLS. We had a podcast with
an American writer I probably shouldn't name, and we were
(01:13):
doing a podcast interview and he'd put on zoom and
he was naked from the waist down because he obviously
thought that on the waist, yeah, waist down, so he
was wearing like a top. But he obviously thought that
no one could see him, and the camera was really
(01:33):
at the equatorial level, so that we had this poor
producer who was just staring down the barrel of this
relatively famous American author who's old. I mean, he's an
old man as well. It would not have been a
pretty side.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Should we should tasting that?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Neither Vast nor I are wearing anything below the waste
at the moment, either are we.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Mass isn't wearing anything at all.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You're sitting there with a ball of cereal, munching away,
and in the nude, in the.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Nude, you're wearing two you're wearing two jumpers.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Vassi's jumper as well. Chapped it over to me, ladies.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
And because he's so mean that he won't turn the
heating on, his wife and kids are shivering shivering in
the back.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Say my wife's not here at the moment.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
My way.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
It was my wife's birthday that weekend, and I've sent
her off to a SPA day today and she's texted.
She's texted me to tell me to tell the kids
that she's never coming back. Spur of turn up.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
But they are cooking anything for dinner. I'll be wrong.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
If I could afford it, I'd send you away for
us spaday. See if they could do anything about your face.
I'm guessing not try. I think.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Look whatever you've got, even it's like fifty p let's
see what they can do.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
We're both very handsome men. I don't I know that
you're only joking for that reason, but.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
You're the only one in Bruce willis vest my friend.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Stick right, Well, what about the stick? How have you
been since we last spoke? What have you been up to?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So when did we last speak? Was it the first
or the second book?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
The second? It was the second book?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It was the second year? Was the last year? So
I've done so, I've written. The third one is out
the twenty seventh of March. I've actually written. And this
is going to either annoy you or you're going to
nod in an understanding fashion. I've written the fourth and
the fifth books already because I've just become totally addicted
to the process. And to me, the best bit is
(03:21):
the writing I was saying before the actual bit. When
it comes to publishing, I get really mired in sort
of self doubt and self loathing and I find it
quite difficult that bit. But the actual writing writing bit,
I've just become totally addicted to it in a slightly
weird way. And so this book's out in March. The
(03:42):
fourth one is pretty much edited, and the fifth one
I've written and my publishers basically say, don't send it
to us, stop bothering us. I'm kind of this weird ask.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Gatst that a lot as well, don't you fask? But
you basically give us two choices there.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
We can either nod and agree with you, or look
at you and think, yeah, utter bastard. How do you
think each of us reacted to that comment? Well you
can you can guess how do you think vas reacted?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I felt that neither one of you is going to
be a hugely understanding of my plight here.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I don't know that's fair.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I think I think see vass is a robot. Vas
has written is next six books.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Only that were true. However, I do commend your efficiency.
And the only problem with writing the next six books
in next six books in a particular series is if
people stop buying the books, then you might have wasted
all of that.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, that's right.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Well, I just wanted to tell you state that I
think you're a nutter bastard because I am struggling just
even finish one thing at the time.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
But there you are.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
You have the full you have the full gamut of
emotional responses that you have.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
But there's kind of an artistic point here, isn't it
that in some ways it shouldn't be so straightforward. And
I wonder whether people who struggle with it all and
battle with it all it feels more, that feels more
artistically heightened than the robotic churn monster, which I've probably become.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I mean, no, I don't think like, no, you're being
what the other kid said of Mozart, who was churning
out simple symphonies at age five, while people like Abit
had a triangle and they could barely get three notes
off of it.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I mean that is that's a fair analogy. I would
give you the analogy.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Of bowel movements.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I don't believe regular movements are seen in any way
as inferior to massive constipation. Right, So no, I think
I think you'll find you know, it seems rather uncouth
analogy in my rather high bro one really summarize the
sick point.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
We should We should ask you to actually, because if
you've introduced the book now, so we should ask you
to name the book. Give us the elevator pitch, and
then we can talk a little bit of it and
around it.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yes, it's called the Burial Place. I want to talk
to you about titles at some point in this conversation
because I have a real battle with titles at the minute.
But this is the Burial Place. It's the third in
the Jake Jackson series. So we last saw him in
Deep Winter, where he ended up solving a crime to
do with an old cold case. This is now spring,
(06:17):
going into summer, and he's got a relationship with this
girl that he met, this woman that he met called Livia.
And then nearby in the countryside, the deep dark countryside
where he lives, there is an archaeological dig on the
top of an old Iron Age fort which has then
been subsequently built on for millennia since there's lots of
(06:38):
archaeology there, and at this archaeological dig, someone is unhappy
that the archaeologists are digging up the past, and it
connects to people's views generally about how much the past
should remain in the past and how much it should
be allowed to re emerge into the present, which is
one of the things that Jake always wrangles with because
he's my detective who quit the force and wants to
get away from it all, but constantly gets draw back
(07:00):
into a world he's trying to reject. So in some
ways it's a kind of who Done It based on
a archaeological dig, So there's a bit of a nod
to murdering Mesopotamia and things like that. But as with
all of the series, I think what I'm trying to
write about constantly is the intrusion of modern life on
us all and how far you can ever get away
(07:21):
from that. So Jake tries to get away from it
in numerous different ways and gets dragged back in. So
the philosophical bit of the book is about modern life,
and the crime detection book is about murders that seem
to be happening on an archaeological dig by this figure
who calls himself Wolf noof a sort of shadowy figure
from the past who doesn't want these people disturbing the
(07:43):
history of the site.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Sounds sounds terrific. It sounds very much in the Wheelhouse
of Ellie Griffiths, very famous series with an archaeologist who
works with the police.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, and she actually read it and sent me a
nice message that she liked it. And I know loads
of people who just love Ellie Griffiths. I mean, it's
very different in the sense of how she's constructed that series,
and this is the archaeology is just a one off
scene setting for me. But it'd be wrong for me
not to note, as you say, the sterling work that
she's done.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
In the talking about people, she writes about six Sorry sorry,
I'm just going to finish the talk. You're talking about
people who are super productive. Ellie writes about six books
a year because she writes one under her own name, yeah,
previous name, where she's written sort of non crime and
she writes for a kid's crime fiction as well, So she's.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I was going to ask you archaeology, why that particular
topic is that something that you are interested in.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So when I was a kid, I used to watch
Time Team with my dad and he used to do
that thing that many dads did, particularly I think in
the eighties and nineties, when there wasn't very much else
to do. Our holidays were very much in Britain, going
to things like quoits in Cornwall. Our quoits of these
just standing stone that come from nowhere, and you walk
(09:01):
for two miles through some damp hedgerows. You stand and
look at a stone that's kind of inexplicable. Your dad
makes sort of happy sighing noises about the breadth of history,
and then you walk back to your car and that's
your holiday. I was kind of a bit chuntry about
it as a time, but I always loved history, and
I used to love watching Time Team with my dad.
(09:23):
And there's this great So I'm really interested in history,
and there's this great quote which I've used as the
epi the epigraph of the book. I love epigraphs on books,
so I always flip to them when i'm in shots.
But it's by the history, because I was reading it act.
This is kind of the spirit of this. It's by
a historian early part of the twentieth century called GM Trevellion. Anyway,
(09:45):
this is what he said, which is the kind of
inspiration for the book. In lots of ways, the poetry
of history lies in the quasi miraculous fact that once
on this earth wants on this familiar spot of ground,
walks other men and women as actual as we are today,
thinking their own thoughts, weighed by their own passions, but
now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as
(10:08):
utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts
at Cockcrow. And it's the idea of living in a
small country like ours. You're always walking on ground that
people one hundred, five hundred thousand, two thousand years ago
walked on, which I kind of find really exciting as
a thought.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
How well it is, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You think that many, many lives over the millennia that
have trodden. You know where we stand now, where we
sit now, you know, it's it is fascinating. I was gonna,
I was gonna say about Cornwall, if it makes you
feel better, we spell.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
As a kid, I.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Spent a lot of time in Cornwall because what would
happen is our parents would save up to go to
India and manage it every four years. The other three
years you'd end up in Cornwall because it was the
closest place, you know, it was the most southerly place
that they could afford. So if you went to Cornwall
in this late seventies and eighties, full of Asian kids
been really grumpy because that's where the appearance took them.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Because in lieu of India, did you end up there?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Of us?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
No, not really. Although I did go to Cornwall a
few years ago because my wife is from India and
one of the things that she wanted to do was
go and see Cornwall. I'm not sure she was as
impressed as as she thought she might.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
She might be.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
It didn't compare to the coast of the west coast
of India, I have to say, the Coromander.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
When I was a kid, it was the time of
bad weather. It was always I don't I know whether
has got has got warmer because of climate change, which
is my eighties memories of these summer holidays. There was
occasionally very hot ones, but often it was a sort
of slightly drippy, damp affair going in and then we
went to places like you know, Roman forts and English
(11:48):
heritage castles and stuff like that, so that that was
a real shaping part of my childhood that I'm obviously
just addressing in the course of this book.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I think the first time Cornwall came across my consciousness
really was when Ian both of them, did that walk
for charity from Tom and then a week later he
was he was accused of being on the puff of
took the headlines a little bit. I'm not sure if
(12:16):
he needed it to get from one.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I remember that. I actually, when I close my eyes,
I can think of him with his headband walking along
the Cornish coast, So I actually I do remember that
very clearly.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
It's a lot longer in India.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Now does adverts, doesn't He does adverts for therapeutic devices.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right, He's a lord now, he's Lord Beefy, both of them.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I think he was business endvoy to envoy to Australia
or some trade on.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Boy got he got sucked into Brexit on the side
of the Brexiteers, and then I think the Boris Johnston
government made him a business endvoy exactly in it and
ennobled them.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Oh well, well, yeah, he's still a great cricket enough
said he's still he's still the greatest cricketer that England
has ever produced him. That's fair enough.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
What's yeah, so what's next? Tell us a little bit
about the fourth book? Is it in the series or
is it something quite different?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, so I've written. I've signed a book deal for
six books totally, so vas is warning that don't write
them because they might not be published. I'm very conscious
of so I'm not going to write the seventh one
anytime soon for that reason, but I have a deal
to write six. So the fourth one continues the story
and is set very much on the river, and it's
(13:29):
a bit more serial killery. And then the fifth one,
which I've written. Have you guys read A Daughter of
Time by Josephine Tay book, classic book, classical of crime fix.
If people don't know about you should read. It's really short,
it's well worth reading. But anyway, her detective Inspector Grant
breaks his leg and solves the murder in the Tower
(13:50):
of the Two Princes by just by just reading stuff.
So it's a crime not set in the hospital bed.
It's brilliantly done. And then about thirty years after that
was written, Colin Dexter wrote a novel, a Morse novel
called The Wench Is Dead, where Morse gets an ulcer
from drinking too much and he solves a Victorian murder.
(14:11):
And so I won't spoil it. So it's a bit
far advanced. But there's a reason why Jake and Livia,
my two main characters, have a hospital visit and a
Peterville hell's not just set in hospital. And anyway, I
thought I would like to write a homage. I suppose
to that type of novel. And so someone in the
(14:31):
village Kyle and Pardner in the book has an old
family scandal where a woman dies back in eighteen fifty
five and he has to solve the ultimate cold case
from just looking at diaries and look at the landscape
and stuff like that. So the fifth book in the
series is kind of my version of The Wench's Dead
and Daughter of Time.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
That's brilliant because that's what whenever you process, then will
you write sorry first?
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Carry on a go to say, so what was the
process then?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Because you did you finish number four before starting number five?
Or where the ideas in your head called terminously?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
So I kind of I finished the way I've been
doing it is I've been finishing the So I've been
finishing a book in like April May of the year,
and then there's a lot of, as you know, faffing
around with the text of the book, which seems to
go on forever. But it comes to the end of
the beginning of the next year, and I've had quite
(15:31):
a lot of time to think about stuff, and so
by the start of the next year, I already have
in my mind the story in the broadest possible sense
of what I want to say. So I had this
idea for the fourth book of the River, and I
liked the idea of remember the Nicoler Bully case, very
sad case where a woman fell into a river and
(15:52):
there was no real there was no malfeasance. But it
made me realize that even in a country as small
as Britain, even with all the technology that we have,
people can just get lost and missing and disappear, even
when people know kind of where they were twelve hours
before they went missing. And it made me think about
(16:14):
the possibility of this river, which I've always been writing
about in I've got in my mind, is in the
landscape I thought could be a place where people were
going missing. So I had that idea for the fourth
one and was working that up and then started at
the beginning of the year and wrote it. And then
I've always wanted I think I've always loved it. Talk
about the love of history, but I've always loved that
(16:34):
Josephine table Can There's just something I thought, I wonder
if I could do a cold case set in a
different period of history. So I was very keen to
do that as well.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I'm going to ask you the same question, because you've
got three projects on or you had, You've got your
you know, your historical crime novel set in Bombie, You've
got your Q novel, and you've got this psychological crime
novel that's coming out very soon, go and sell a
How did you manage the process of having these very
desperate ideas.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
They were written at different times, So I think it's
partly it's the fact that the Q contract came along
unexpectedly and I hadn't expected to have to shoehorn that
into my writing schedule. But I think with anything, and
you've done this with your American thriller, when you have
an idea and you know it's going to be published.
(17:22):
You have to stop faffing around, aren't You've got to
get on the seat and you've got to write the
damn thing and then you can make it hopefully better.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And I think I love the most genuinely, And people
might listen to think, oh, you would say that, But
you know, I have a day job, which is this
breakfast show on Times Radio, where I get very early
and I have to do it four days a week,
so my time for writing is really restricted. It's really
from twelve o'clock till my kids come home at three o'clock.
(17:53):
But on the plus side of that is because there
is a very finite amount of time absolutely throwing myself
into it, and I've worked out that I can write
fifteen hundred words a day, seven days a week ish,
and you're kind of in the eight to ten thousand
words a week area. And a novel is eighty thousand
words or ninety thousand words or a hundred thousand words,
(18:15):
so you're it's not impossible to write. Now, whether it's
any good or not is a different question, and how
much after around after question, But you can write. You
can write a novel in three months.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, Well, you probably a lot longer than that to
do the research around it and get the ideas on
paper and the synapsis and all and all the rest
of it, and especially with the historical fiction. I'm sure
Abbe will agree, we need time to do the historical
We need time to piss around with the historical research.
I should say, whether or not it ends up in
the book is a different is a different story. But
(18:47):
I think O per finishes. I want to come back
to the burial place and talk about your struggle with tongue.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, I want just what I would say to that
point is, yeah, you very much can write, you know,
a book in three min But as Vas says, I
think you can only write it if you know the story,
if you know inside out what's going to happen, If
you sit down in front of a blank page and
just try and pants it, I think that's extremely difficult
to do. You know, even with a short story, I
(19:15):
find that if you don't know what's going to happen,
it takes three times as long to write. So I
think the entire process, the thinking, the research, the planning,
I think if you include that as part of the time,
then I think you know it would take longer than
three months.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
But you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
You can, if you know what you're writing, you can
get a first draft done in three months.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
And I wonder whether, actually what I'm saying is the
way I do this is probably I have three months
writing and then nine months of the year thinking about it. Yeah,
and so maybe three months is the wrong timeframe because
I always know, Like with the fifth one, the historical one,
You're right, I did loads of research for that, but
I've also been it's about Victorian crimes, so in some
ways I've been researching for my whole life, reading Victorian
(19:58):
stuff and to card But no, that's I think that's right.
I know some writers they really do, you know, go
for a blank. I think Lee Child does this pretty
much sits down at its computer on the September the fourth,
and it starts writing. And I think you're right. I
like to have at least where it's going. The feel
(20:19):
of the book. This season. I've worked at actually doing
these books. Actually, the season is really important to me.
These books are set in very specific seasons because the
landscape of the book. The landscape is quite important in
all of my stuff, and so a season a kind
of mood and an overarching story. We all kind of
have to be there to begin with.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I think that's actually captured in your covers quite well.
They look very seasonal. But tell us about the title.
What is it that you're you're struggling with, because this
is quite good.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think the The Burial Place is pretty good one.
But so so my first novel in the series is
called Death under a Little Sky, and I wrote that
without a deal for my own pleasure, but I just
called it little Sky. I like the idea of a
narrowing horizon, and publishers, you know, they will I agree
with them. This is not a complaint because I desperately
want people to read my books as you guys do,
(21:09):
so I never mind about commercial conversations. But they go,
we need to have death in the title. So then
we did Death under a Little Sky. So the second
book was Death in a Lonely Place, and they said
again it needs to have.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Death in the title.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And then it comes out and well, maybe having death
in the title means it's too confusing with the first one,
And so we talked about the third one, and I
had various ideas, and all of my ideas are just
found to be rubbish, and so we ended up with
the Burial Place, which I think is quite a good one.
We jumped off the death Chat the death Train because
it was seen as it was doing it too much,
(21:44):
and then we still haven't got one for the fourth one.
I tell you, I want to call the fourth one
and see if you think it's a good few things.
Is a good idea because the publishers don't. So the
book is.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Which is the guys. This is the guy in solving
the crime without leaving.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
His advice to that's the fifth one.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Last time.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, the river on the river, Yes, yes, yeah, So
I would like to call it the Sullen God, which
is it's a line from Elliott in The Dry Salvage
is about the river and it's about it calls it
the brown sullen God, intractable, and it's about how the
river is this looming, quite creepy presence, which is very
(22:24):
fitting the tone of the book. So I like the
Sullen God. And they're like, no, no, no one will,
no one will know what you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Swear that that is the problem.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You'll come up with a brilliant title and they will
say it's not commercial enough.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I'll tell you what your fifth one should be called,
given that the protagonist is going to be lounging around
solving this this this crime from the past, death in
a white vest Is you.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Make a joke about it, they would the publishing be like,
not a bad idea, that's how do you cope with that?
Are you over all your titles yours from the beginning?
Does your working title ever make it into the into
the onto the type page.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Of the book? Twelve books? Just two titles that have
been allowed to keep the one from them All about
House series, which was Death of a Lesser God and
the Q book Quantum of Menus good title Quantum of Menue,
both great titles.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Seven books well, six published and one coming out this year.
Five have been my own titles.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Really the yeah, yeah, but I mean that's not thing
that's saying they're particularly good.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
The ones that my publishers came up with was number four,
Death in the East, and the new one that's coming out,
which is a very similar title to you is it's
called The Burning Grounds, which is, you know, in Hinduism,
the burial place, right, It's the equivalent of.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Are you happy with them? Picking a title like that.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Yes, I am. You know, we came up with lists
in this instance.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
I just couldn't think of anything better, and I think
Burning Grounds works quite well.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
The problem with this book is that it's quite it's
a bit different.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
It's loosely based on the life of Merle Oberon, so
there was no real sort of fit. Very loosely based,
I should say, but you know that's there was no
title I could come up with that what didn't sound
too filmy? So all of mine had sort of silver
screen or this or that, and they said, well, as
as you mentioned, they said, well that's not crimey enough,
(24:18):
and so we've gone with the Burning Grounds because the
book opens on it.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So I think does sound very crimy. Do you think
the soull In God just doesn't sound crimey enough?
Speaker 4 (24:28):
This is the thing.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
It's a great title, right, but it's it's a clever title.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And it really depends on where they pitch you.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
I mean, if you look at my first book was
called A Rising Man, which is not a crime title, right,
So it really depends on where they're pitching you. My
titles have got more crimey as the books have got
more sort of uptake, you know, In the beginning, they
were sort of pitched at, you know, a certain level
in a historical niche, and now they're much more pitched
(24:57):
towards the crime audience.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
So yeah, I think I think you'd be lucky to
keep that title.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I think it's a great title, but I don't think
it's a mainstream title.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
And listeners can find out because when the book comes
out in the years time, it'll be called something like
dead Man in the River, or the Killer River, or
the River of Death, or the Surprise River. That won't
have river in the title, because the river is like
the main thing. People die in the river. They'll call
it dead in a River.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I think we're the best will in the I think
we're the best will in the world. Once the sales
and marketing team get a hold of it, their main
preoccupation is how do we cut through the noise, how
do we make sure that the people who read crime
fiction understand what kind of crime fiction book this is?
That the fact that it is a crime fiction novel.
So with my psychological thriller, I called it eden Falls
(25:49):
because it's said in a fictional small American town called
leaden Falls. They got a hold of that and they
savaged it.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
I love that title.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I loved it, but they said, no, nobody will understand
that Adis is a crime novel, be that it's a
psychological thriller. So they came up with the girl in
selee Ai, which is relevant to the book.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
And the thing is none of us are white.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
First I'd buy that.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I don't. Yeah, yeah, but see, none of us are
precious about this because I think it's one of these
things that when you write a book, I'm sure you
agree that all you want is for some people to
pick it up and read it. And if someone says
to you, you know, ten more people are going to
read this, or at least pick it up to look
at it. If you call it big death or something
like that, I'm fine with that. I just I just want,
(26:33):
I just want people to read the goddamn thing, a.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Big wet death.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And often these decisions are dictated by big book chains
or Amazon or the supermarkets, who like a particular kind
of cover and title because they know that's what needs
to go on the on the shelves. And as much
as I love the Sullen God, I'm not one hundred
pent sure you will get the sales and marketing team
to agree to it. I hope they do because I
(26:58):
would love to see a different kind of kind of titles. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Interesting, interesting, I'm not the burial Places are perfectly good title,
and I'm kind of gad it doesn't have dethnics. The
other thing, I read so much crime fiction, and you know,
some people start series and they get locked into them,
and you know, sometimes it works, you know, the Kinsey
mill Home alphabet one's kind of work. And I love
John D. McDonald and the American author who wrote with
(27:22):
colors in the title, But some of them, I think
Kathy Wright's having bones in all the After a while
it kind of annoys me because I just think some
poor sod has had to think of another word, you know,
the phrase with bones in the title, whatever it is,
and I think it's becomes distracting in it, So I
kind of I don't want it to have a title
with the same thing repeated.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Oh if Peter James has done all right now because
he's dead in every single one of.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
His Yeah, and maybe it works and he works because
it's brilliant, But I'm glad to not be part of
that now.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I think before we finish off. I want to make
people aware that this book is going to be out
on March to twenty seventh. That's right right, available for
pre order as we speak.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, please do I know that, But it will sound
pathetic and desperate. But yes, I'm pathetic and desperate. That's me.
I'm a pathetic and desperate man in a vest.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
And where can people meet either year staging in your
in or not in your vest? Or you're going to
any any festivals this year or are you doing any publicity?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Doing an event event in London with Anthony Horowitz which
is in April, which is worth checking out Water Center
doing that well worth a look at the Edinburgh Festival.
I think at some point at Stratford Festival I'll be
knocking around the place and I'm quite noticeable. I'm the
six foot five person wearing white vests. So if you
(28:40):
see me in the no shoes, those shoes just coming
knock me away.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
The vest and the machine guns rap to his back. Big.
It's been absolutely lovely chatting to you again, and you'll
have to come back. I'm especially interested in the Daughters
of Time knockoff. I love that book and I love you.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Can't say, I.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Mean that in a positive if ye.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I know what you and listen. I love you, guys.
I love how you write, I love how you talk.
And one of the few pleasures of actually getting that
goddamn being published is talking to folk like you. So
I'm very grateful of the judge.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
He's drunk, fast, he's obviously drunk. Do you want me
to do the outro?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Well?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Well?
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Before well, yes, I will do the out but before that,
I have a question. Fast, If if Stig is the
sullen god, what gods are we? What god would you be?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Ves?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
And what what god do you think I'd Be's.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
The god of two sweaters, by the look of today, the.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
God of warmth, Ladies and gentlemen. On that rather surreal notes,
we have been your friend's murder Junction. Apart from the
how do I say this?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Do I?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Are we still the Red Hart Chilies doing murder junction?
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Or well, ladies and gentlemen, whatever we are, we're your friends.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Please do you know?
Speaker 4 (29:52):
If you've liked the episode, please.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Do leave a review on your favorite podcast app, and
please do spread the words. As I say, we have
been your friends. The Red or Chiley Writers presenting murder
junction and we hope.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
To see you soon. Thank you so much for tuning in,
and thank you Steg
Welcome to Murder Junction, ladies and gentlemen, and this week
we are back with an old friend of the show,
mister Stig Abel, who will be talking to us about
the various shenanigans he's been up to since last we spoke,
but also with the third book in his series. Stig
welcome back.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi guys, so pleased to be here. Thanks very much
for having me.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Stig, you are looking very very suave and very buffs.
We should tell our listeners exactly what what Stig is wearing.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Well, he's gone for the Bruce Willis die hard look,
and he hasn't got a machine gun, but he had
but he but he has got headphones on which are
equally lethal.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's a white vest, is what he's wearing. A sleeveless
white vest.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Very Bruce willis set with bigger guns.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
In my defense, when I joined this Zue meeting, it
said your host has said you've not allowed to switch
your video on. So I was thinking I could put
a jumper on, but they're not going to see me anyway,
So I'll be finding my vest quietly sitting here in
my living room. And then VAS turned on the picture
and it could be worse. I once did it. When
I was at the TLS. We had a podcast with
an American writer I probably shouldn't name, and we were
(01:13):
doing a podcast interview and he'd put on zoom and
he was naked from the waist down because he obviously
thought that on the waist, yeah, waist down, so he
was wearing like a top. But he obviously thought that
no one could see him, and the camera was really
(01:33):
at the equatorial level, so that we had this poor
producer who was just staring down the barrel of this
relatively famous American author who's old. I mean, he's an
old man as well. It would not have been a
pretty side.
Speaker 4 (01:47):
Should we should tasting that?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Neither Vast nor I are wearing anything below the waste
at the moment, either are we.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Mass isn't wearing anything at all.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You're sitting there with a ball of cereal, munching away,
and in the nude, in the.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Nude, you're wearing two you're wearing two jumpers.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Vassi's jumper as well. Chapped it over to me, ladies.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
And because he's so mean that he won't turn the
heating on, his wife and kids are shivering shivering in
the back.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Say my wife's not here at the moment.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
My way.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
It was my wife's birthday that weekend, and I've sent
her off to a SPA day today and she's texted.
She's texted me to tell me to tell the kids
that she's never coming back. Spur of turn up.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
But they are cooking anything for dinner. I'll be wrong.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
If I could afford it, I'd send you away for
us spaday. See if they could do anything about your face.
I'm guessing not try. I think.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Look whatever you've got, even it's like fifty p let's
see what they can do.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
We're both very handsome men. I don't I know that
you're only joking for that reason, but.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
You're the only one in Bruce willis vest my friend.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Stick right, Well, what about the stick? How have you
been since we last spoke? What have you been up to?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So when did we last speak? Was it the first
or the second book?
Speaker 4 (02:58):
The second? It was the second book?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It was the second year? Was the last year? So
I've done so, I've written. The third one is out
the twenty seventh of March. I've actually written. And this
is going to either annoy you or you're going to
nod in an understanding fashion. I've written the fourth and
the fifth books already because I've just become totally addicted
to the process. And to me, the best bit is
(03:21):
the writing I was saying before the actual bit. When
it comes to publishing, I get really mired in sort
of self doubt and self loathing and I find it
quite difficult that bit. But the actual writing writing bit,
I've just become totally addicted to it in a slightly
weird way. And so this book's out in March. The
(03:42):
fourth one is pretty much edited, and the fifth one
I've written and my publishers basically say, don't send it
to us, stop bothering us. I'm kind of this weird ask.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Gatst that a lot as well, don't you fask? But
you basically give us two choices there.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
We can either nod and agree with you, or look
at you and think, yeah, utter bastard. How do you
think each of us reacted to that comment? Well you
can you can guess how do you think vas reacted?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I felt that neither one of you is going to
be a hugely understanding of my plight here.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I don't know that's fair.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I think I think see vass is a robot. Vas
has written is next six books.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Only that were true. However, I do commend your efficiency.
And the only problem with writing the next six books
in next six books in a particular series is if
people stop buying the books, then you might have wasted
all of that.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, that's right.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Well, I just wanted to tell you state that I
think you're a nutter bastard because I am struggling just
even finish one thing at the time.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
But there you are.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
You have the full you have the full gamut of
emotional responses that you have.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
But there's kind of an artistic point here, isn't it
that in some ways it shouldn't be so straightforward. And
I wonder whether people who struggle with it all and
battle with it all it feels more, that feels more
artistically heightened than the robotic churn monster, which I've probably become.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
I mean, no, I don't think like, no, you're being
what the other kid said of Mozart, who was churning
out simple symphonies at age five, while people like Abit
had a triangle and they could barely get three notes
off of it.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I mean that is that's a fair analogy. I would
give you the analogy.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Of bowel movements.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I don't believe regular movements are seen in any way
as inferior to massive constipation. Right, So no, I think
I think you'll find you know, it seems rather uncouth
analogy in my rather high bro one really summarize the
sick point.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
We should We should ask you to actually, because if
you've introduced the book now, so we should ask you
to name the book. Give us the elevator pitch, and
then we can talk a little bit of it and
around it.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yes, it's called the Burial Place. I want to talk
to you about titles at some point in this conversation
because I have a real battle with titles at the minute.
But this is the Burial Place. It's the third in
the Jake Jackson series. So we last saw him in
Deep Winter, where he ended up solving a crime to
do with an old cold case. This is now spring,
(06:17):
going into summer, and he's got a relationship with this
girl that he met, this woman that he met called Livia.
And then nearby in the countryside, the deep dark countryside
where he lives, there is an archaeological dig on the
top of an old Iron Age fort which has then
been subsequently built on for millennia since there's lots of
(06:38):
archaeology there, and at this archaeological dig, someone is unhappy
that the archaeologists are digging up the past, and it
connects to people's views generally about how much the past
should remain in the past and how much it should
be allowed to re emerge into the present, which is
one of the things that Jake always wrangles with because
he's my detective who quit the force and wants to
get away from it all, but constantly gets draw back
(07:00):
into a world he's trying to reject. So in some
ways it's a kind of who Done It based on
a archaeological dig, So there's a bit of a nod
to murdering Mesopotamia and things like that. But as with
all of the series, I think what I'm trying to
write about constantly is the intrusion of modern life on
us all and how far you can ever get away
(07:21):
from that. So Jake tries to get away from it
in numerous different ways and gets dragged back in. So
the philosophical bit of the book is about modern life,
and the crime detection book is about murders that seem
to be happening on an archaeological dig by this figure
who calls himself Wolf noof a sort of shadowy figure
from the past who doesn't want these people disturbing the
(07:43):
history of the site.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Sounds sounds terrific. It sounds very much in the Wheelhouse
of Ellie Griffiths, very famous series with an archaeologist who
works with the police.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, and she actually read it and sent me a
nice message that she liked it. And I know loads
of people who just love Ellie Griffiths. I mean, it's
very different in the sense of how she's constructed that series,
and this is the archaeology is just a one off
scene setting for me. But it'd be wrong for me
not to note, as you say, the sterling work that
she's done.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
In the talking about people, she writes about six Sorry sorry,
I'm just going to finish the talk. You're talking about
people who are super productive. Ellie writes about six books
a year because she writes one under her own name, yeah,
previous name, where she's written sort of non crime and
she writes for a kid's crime fiction as well, So she's.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I was going to ask you archaeology, why that particular
topic is that something that you are interested in.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So when I was a kid, I used to watch
Time Team with my dad and he used to do
that thing that many dads did, particularly I think in
the eighties and nineties, when there wasn't very much else
to do. Our holidays were very much in Britain, going
to things like quoits in Cornwall. Our quoits of these
just standing stone that come from nowhere, and you walk
(09:01):
for two miles through some damp hedgerows. You stand and
look at a stone that's kind of inexplicable. Your dad
makes sort of happy sighing noises about the breadth of history,
and then you walk back to your car and that's
your holiday. I was kind of a bit chuntry about
it as a time, but I always loved history, and
I used to love watching Time Team with my dad.
(09:23):
And there's this great So I'm really interested in history,
and there's this great quote which I've used as the
epi the epigraph of the book. I love epigraphs on books,
so I always flip to them when i'm in shots.
But it's by the history, because I was reading it act.
This is kind of the spirit of this. It's by
a historian early part of the twentieth century called GM Trevellion. Anyway,
(09:45):
this is what he said, which is the kind of
inspiration for the book. In lots of ways, the poetry
of history lies in the quasi miraculous fact that once
on this earth wants on this familiar spot of ground,
walks other men and women as actual as we are today,
thinking their own thoughts, weighed by their own passions, but
now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as
(10:08):
utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts
at Cockcrow. And it's the idea of living in a
small country like ours. You're always walking on ground that
people one hundred, five hundred thousand, two thousand years ago
walked on, which I kind of find really exciting as
a thought.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
How well it is, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You think that many, many lives over the millennia that
have trodden. You know where we stand now, where we
sit now, you know, it's it is fascinating. I was gonna,
I was gonna say about Cornwall, if it makes you
feel better, we spell.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
As a kid, I.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Spent a lot of time in Cornwall because what would
happen is our parents would save up to go to
India and manage it every four years. The other three
years you'd end up in Cornwall because it was the
closest place, you know, it was the most southerly place
that they could afford. So if you went to Cornwall
in this late seventies and eighties, full of Asian kids
been really grumpy because that's where the appearance took them.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Because in lieu of India, did you end up there?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Of us?
Speaker 1 (11:07):
No, not really. Although I did go to Cornwall a
few years ago because my wife is from India and
one of the things that she wanted to do was
go and see Cornwall. I'm not sure she was as
impressed as as she thought she might.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
She might be.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
It didn't compare to the coast of the west coast
of India, I have to say, the Coromander.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
When I was a kid, it was the time of
bad weather. It was always I don't I know whether
has got has got warmer because of climate change, which
is my eighties memories of these summer holidays. There was
occasionally very hot ones, but often it was a sort
of slightly drippy, damp affair going in and then we
went to places like you know, Roman forts and English
(11:48):
heritage castles and stuff like that, so that that was
a real shaping part of my childhood that I'm obviously
just addressing in the course of this book.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I think the first time Cornwall came across my consciousness
really was when Ian both of them, did that walk
for charity from Tom and then a week later he
was he was accused of being on the puff of
took the headlines a little bit. I'm not sure if
(12:16):
he needed it to get from one.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I remember that. I actually, when I close my eyes,
I can think of him with his headband walking along
the Cornish coast, So I actually I do remember that
very clearly.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
It's a lot longer in India.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Now does adverts, doesn't He does adverts for therapeutic devices.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right, He's a lord now, he's Lord Beefy, both of them.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
I think he was business endvoy to envoy to Australia
or some trade on.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Boy got he got sucked into Brexit on the side
of the Brexiteers, and then I think the Boris Johnston
government made him a business endvoy exactly in it and
ennobled them.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Oh well, well, yeah, he's still a great cricket enough
said he's still he's still the greatest cricketer that England
has ever produced him. That's fair enough.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
What's yeah, so what's next? Tell us a little bit
about the fourth book? Is it in the series or
is it something quite different?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
No, so I've written. I've signed a book deal for
six books totally, so vas is warning that don't write
them because they might not be published. I'm very conscious
of so I'm not going to write the seventh one
anytime soon for that reason, but I have a deal
to write six. So the fourth one continues the story
and is set very much on the river, and it's
(13:29):
a bit more serial killery. And then the fifth one,
which I've written. Have you guys read A Daughter of
Time by Josephine Tay book, classic book, classical of crime fix.
If people don't know about you should read. It's really short,
it's well worth reading. But anyway, her detective Inspector Grant
breaks his leg and solves the murder in the Tower
(13:50):
of the Two Princes by just by just reading stuff.
So it's a crime not set in the hospital bed.
It's brilliantly done. And then about thirty years after that
was written, Colin Dexter wrote a novel, a Morse novel
called The Wench Is Dead, where Morse gets an ulcer
from drinking too much and he solves a Victorian murder.
(14:11):
And so I won't spoil it. So it's a bit
far advanced. But there's a reason why Jake and Livia,
my two main characters, have a hospital visit and a
Peterville hell's not just set in hospital. And anyway, I
thought I would like to write a homage. I suppose
to that type of novel. And so someone in the
(14:31):
village Kyle and Pardner in the book has an old
family scandal where a woman dies back in eighteen fifty
five and he has to solve the ultimate cold case
from just looking at diaries and look at the landscape
and stuff like that. So the fifth book in the
series is kind of my version of The Wench's Dead
and Daughter of Time.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
That's brilliant because that's what whenever you process, then will
you write sorry first?
Speaker 4 (14:57):
Carry on a go to say, so what was the
process then?
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Because you did you finish number four before starting number five?
Or where the ideas in your head called terminously?
Speaker 2 (15:10):
So I kind of I finished the way I've been
doing it is I've been finishing the So I've been
finishing a book in like April May of the year,
and then there's a lot of, as you know, faffing
around with the text of the book, which seems to
go on forever. But it comes to the end of
the beginning of the next year, and I've had quite
(15:31):
a lot of time to think about stuff, and so
by the start of the next year, I already have
in my mind the story in the broadest possible sense
of what I want to say. So I had this
idea for the fourth book of the River, and I
liked the idea of remember the Nicoler Bully case, very
sad case where a woman fell into a river and
(15:52):
there was no real there was no malfeasance. But it
made me realize that even in a country as small
as Britain, even with all the technology that we have,
people can just get lost and missing and disappear, even
when people know kind of where they were twelve hours
before they went missing. And it made me think about
(16:14):
the possibility of this river, which I've always been writing
about in I've got in my mind, is in the
landscape I thought could be a place where people were
going missing. So I had that idea for the fourth
one and was working that up and then started at
the beginning of the year and wrote it. And then
I've always wanted I think I've always loved it. Talk
about the love of history, but I've always loved that
(16:34):
Josephine table Can There's just something I thought, I wonder
if I could do a cold case set in a
different period of history. So I was very keen to
do that as well.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I'm going to ask you the same question, because you've
got three projects on or you had, You've got your
you know, your historical crime novel set in Bombie, You've
got your Q novel, and you've got this psychological crime
novel that's coming out very soon, go and sell a
How did you manage the process of having these very
desperate ideas.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
They were written at different times, So I think it's
partly it's the fact that the Q contract came along
unexpectedly and I hadn't expected to have to shoehorn that
into my writing schedule. But I think with anything, and
you've done this with your American thriller, when you have
an idea and you know it's going to be published.
(17:22):
You have to stop faffing around, aren't You've got to
get on the seat and you've got to write the
damn thing and then you can make it hopefully better.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And I think I love the most genuinely, And people
might listen to think, oh, you would say that, But
you know, I have a day job, which is this
breakfast show on Times Radio, where I get very early
and I have to do it four days a week,
so my time for writing is really restricted. It's really
from twelve o'clock till my kids come home at three o'clock.
(17:53):
But on the plus side of that is because there
is a very finite amount of time absolutely throwing myself
into it, and I've worked out that I can write
fifteen hundred words a day, seven days a week ish,
and you're kind of in the eight to ten thousand
words a week area. And a novel is eighty thousand
words or ninety thousand words or a hundred thousand words,
(18:15):
so you're it's not impossible to write. Now, whether it's
any good or not is a different question, and how
much after around after question, But you can write. You
can write a novel in three months.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, Well, you probably a lot longer than that to
do the research around it and get the ideas on
paper and the synapsis and all and all the rest
of it, and especially with the historical fiction. I'm sure
Abbe will agree, we need time to do the historical
We need time to piss around with the historical research.
I should say, whether or not it ends up in
the book is a different is a different story. But
(18:47):
I think O per finishes. I want to come back
to the burial place and talk about your struggle with tongue.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, I want just what I would say to that
point is, yeah, you very much can write, you know,
a book in three min But as Vas says, I
think you can only write it if you know the story,
if you know inside out what's going to happen, If
you sit down in front of a blank page and
just try and pants it, I think that's extremely difficult
to do. You know, even with a short story, I
(19:15):
find that if you don't know what's going to happen,
it takes three times as long to write. So I
think the entire process, the thinking, the research, the planning,
I think if you include that as part of the time,
then I think you know it would take longer than
three months.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
But you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
You can, if you know what you're writing, you can
get a first draft done in three months.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
And I wonder whether, actually what I'm saying is the
way I do this is probably I have three months
writing and then nine months of the year thinking about it. Yeah,
and so maybe three months is the wrong timeframe because
I always know, Like with the fifth one, the historical one,
You're right, I did loads of research for that, but
I've also been it's about Victorian crimes, so in some
ways I've been researching for my whole life, reading Victorian
(19:58):
stuff and to card But no, that's I think that's right.
I know some writers they really do, you know, go
for a blank. I think Lee Child does this pretty
much sits down at its computer on the September the fourth,
and it starts writing. And I think you're right. I
like to have at least where it's going. The feel
(20:19):
of the book. This season. I've worked at actually doing
these books. Actually, the season is really important to me.
These books are set in very specific seasons because the
landscape of the book. The landscape is quite important in
all of my stuff, and so a season a kind
of mood and an overarching story. We all kind of
have to be there to begin with.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
I think that's actually captured in your covers quite well.
They look very seasonal. But tell us about the title.
What is it that you're you're struggling with, because this
is quite good.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think the The Burial Place is pretty good one.
But so so my first novel in the series is
called Death under a Little Sky, and I wrote that
without a deal for my own pleasure, but I just
called it little Sky. I like the idea of a
narrowing horizon, and publishers, you know, they will I agree
with them. This is not a complaint because I desperately
want people to read my books as you guys do,
(21:09):
so I never mind about commercial conversations. But they go,
we need to have death in the title. So then
we did Death under a Little Sky. So the second
book was Death in a Lonely Place, and they said
again it needs to have.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Death in the title.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And then it comes out and well, maybe having death
in the title means it's too confusing with the first one,
And so we talked about the third one, and I
had various ideas, and all of my ideas are just
found to be rubbish, and so we ended up with
the Burial Place, which I think is quite a good one.
We jumped off the death Chat the death Train because
it was seen as it was doing it too much,
(21:44):
and then we still haven't got one for the fourth one.
I tell you, I want to call the fourth one
and see if you think it's a good few things.
Is a good idea because the publishers don't. So the
book is.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Which is the guys. This is the guy in solving
the crime without leaving.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
His advice to that's the fifth one.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Last time.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, the river on the river, Yes, yes, yeah, So
I would like to call it the Sullen God, which
is it's a line from Elliott in The Dry Salvage
is about the river and it's about it calls it
the brown sullen God, intractable, and it's about how the
river is this looming, quite creepy presence, which is very
(22:24):
fitting the tone of the book. So I like the
Sullen God. And they're like, no, no, no one will,
no one will know what you're talking about.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
Swear that that is the problem.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You'll come up with a brilliant title and they will
say it's not commercial enough.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
I'll tell you what your fifth one should be called,
given that the protagonist is going to be lounging around
solving this this this crime from the past, death in
a white vest Is you.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Make a joke about it, they would the publishing be like,
not a bad idea, that's how do you cope with that?
Are you over all your titles yours from the beginning?
Does your working title ever make it into the into
the onto the type page.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Of the book? Twelve books? Just two titles that have
been allowed to keep the one from them All about
House series, which was Death of a Lesser God and
the Q book Quantum of Menus good title Quantum of Menue,
both great titles.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Seven books well, six published and one coming out this year.
Five have been my own titles.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Really the yeah, yeah, but I mean that's not thing
that's saying they're particularly good.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
The ones that my publishers came up with was number four,
Death in the East, and the new one that's coming out,
which is a very similar title to you is it's
called The Burning Grounds, which is, you know, in Hinduism,
the burial place, right, It's the equivalent of.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Are you happy with them? Picking a title like that.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Yes, I am. You know, we came up with lists
in this instance.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
I just couldn't think of anything better, and I think
Burning Grounds works quite well.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
The problem with this book is that it's quite it's
a bit different.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
It's loosely based on the life of Merle Oberon, so
there was no real sort of fit. Very loosely based,
I should say, but you know that's there was no
title I could come up with that what didn't sound
too filmy? So all of mine had sort of silver
screen or this or that, and they said, well, as
as you mentioned, they said, well that's not crimey enough,
(24:18):
and so we've gone with the Burning Grounds because the
book opens on it.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So I think does sound very crimy. Do you think
the soull In God just doesn't sound crimey enough?
Speaker 4 (24:28):
This is the thing.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
It's a great title, right, but it's it's a clever title.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
And it really depends on where they pitch you.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
I mean, if you look at my first book was
called A Rising Man, which is not a crime title, right,
So it really depends on where they're pitching you. My
titles have got more crimey as the books have got
more sort of uptake, you know, In the beginning, they
were sort of pitched at, you know, a certain level
in a historical niche, and now they're much more pitched
(24:57):
towards the crime audience.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
So yeah, I think I think you'd be lucky to
keep that title.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I think it's a great title, but I don't think
it's a mainstream title.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
And listeners can find out because when the book comes
out in the years time, it'll be called something like
dead Man in the River, or the Killer River, or
the River of Death, or the Surprise River. That won't
have river in the title, because the river is like
the main thing. People die in the river. They'll call
it dead in a River.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
I think we're the best will in the I think
we're the best will in the world. Once the sales
and marketing team get a hold of it, their main
preoccupation is how do we cut through the noise, how
do we make sure that the people who read crime
fiction understand what kind of crime fiction book this is?
That the fact that it is a crime fiction novel.
So with my psychological thriller, I called it eden Falls
(25:49):
because it's said in a fictional small American town called
leaden Falls. They got a hold of that and they
savaged it.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
I love that title.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
I loved it, but they said, no, nobody will understand
that Adis is a crime novel, be that it's a
psychological thriller. So they came up with the girl in
selee Ai, which is relevant to the book.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
And the thing is none of us are white.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
First I'd buy that.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I don't. Yeah, yeah, but see, none of us are
precious about this because I think it's one of these
things that when you write a book, I'm sure you
agree that all you want is for some people to
pick it up and read it. And if someone says
to you, you know, ten more people are going to
read this, or at least pick it up to look
at it. If you call it big death or something
like that, I'm fine with that. I just I just want,
(26:33):
I just want people to read the goddamn thing, a.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
Big wet death.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
And often these decisions are dictated by big book chains
or Amazon or the supermarkets, who like a particular kind
of cover and title because they know that's what needs
to go on the on the shelves. And as much
as I love the Sullen God, I'm not one hundred
pent sure you will get the sales and marketing team
to agree to it. I hope they do because I
(26:58):
would love to see a different kind of kind of titles. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Interesting, interesting, I'm not the burial Places are perfectly good title,
and I'm kind of gad it doesn't have dethnics. The
other thing, I read so much crime fiction, and you know,
some people start series and they get locked into them,
and you know, sometimes it works, you know, the Kinsey
mill Home alphabet one's kind of work. And I love
John D. McDonald and the American author who wrote with
(27:22):
colors in the title, But some of them, I think
Kathy Wright's having bones in all the After a while
it kind of annoys me because I just think some
poor sod has had to think of another word, you know,
the phrase with bones in the title, whatever it is,
and I think it's becomes distracting in it, So I
kind of I don't want it to have a title
with the same thing repeated.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Oh if Peter James has done all right now because
he's dead in every single one of.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
His Yeah, and maybe it works and he works because
it's brilliant, But I'm glad to not be part of
that now.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
I think before we finish off. I want to make
people aware that this book is going to be out
on March to twenty seventh. That's right right, available for
pre order as we speak.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, please do I know that, But it will sound
pathetic and desperate. But yes, I'm pathetic and desperate. That's me.
I'm a pathetic and desperate man in a vest.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
And where can people meet either year staging in your
in or not in your vest? Or you're going to
any any festivals this year or are you doing any publicity?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Doing an event event in London with Anthony Horowitz which
is in April, which is worth checking out Water Center
doing that well worth a look at the Edinburgh Festival.
I think at some point at Stratford Festival I'll be
knocking around the place and I'm quite noticeable. I'm the
six foot five person wearing white vests. So if you
(28:40):
see me in the no shoes, those shoes just coming
knock me away.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
The vest and the machine guns rap to his back. Big.
It's been absolutely lovely chatting to you again, and you'll
have to come back. I'm especially interested in the Daughters
of Time knockoff. I love that book and I love you.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Can't say, I.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Mean that in a positive if ye.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
I know what you and listen. I love you, guys.
I love how you write, I love how you talk.
And one of the few pleasures of actually getting that
goddamn being published is talking to folk like you. So
I'm very grateful of the judge.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
He's drunk, fast, he's obviously drunk. Do you want me
to do the outro?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Well?
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Well?
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Before well, yes, I will do the out but before that,
I have a question. Fast, If if Stig is the
sullen god, what gods are we? What god would you be?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Ves?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
And what what god do you think I'd Be's.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
The god of two sweaters, by the look of today, the.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
God of warmth, Ladies and gentlemen. On that rather surreal notes,
we have been your friend's murder Junction. Apart from the
how do I say this?
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Do I?
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Are we still the Red Hart Chilies doing murder junction?
Speaker 3 (29:46):
Or well, ladies and gentlemen, whatever we are, we're your friends.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Please do you know?
Speaker 4 (29:52):
If you've liked the episode, please.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Do leave a review on your favorite podcast app, and
please do spread the words. As I say, we have
been your friends. The Red or Chiley Writers presenting murder
junction and we hope.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
To see you soon. Thank you so much for tuning in,
and thank you Steg
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