The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
Welcome to The Conversation with Nadine Matheson, where best-selling author of the 'Detective Inspector Anjelica Henley' series Nadine Matheson sits down with fellow authors for insightful, honest, and entertaining conversations. Each episode dives deep into the world of writing, from the publishing journey to overcoming challenges, the experiences that shape their work, and anything else that comes up when great minds come together. Whether you're a fan of gripping stories or curious about the life behind the books, 'The Conversation' promises thought-provoking chats and moments of inspiration.
If you'd like to be a guest or have a message or question, reach out to us at theconversation@nadinematheson.com.
Finalist -Independent Podcast Awards 2024
*music: the coffee jam ©stereo_jam
The Conversation with Nadine Matheson
M.W. Craven: Luck, Crime Writing and Life Lessons
Celebrating a remarkable milestone, we bring you the 100th episode of "The Conversation with Nadine Matheson," featuring the award winning and bestselling author M.W. Craven. We talk about the serendipitous events that shaped Craven’s career, from a fateful book signing encounter that set the course for his success, to the powerful role of networking within the crime writing community. Craven's journey is filled with tales of unexpected luck, chance meetings, the importance of being in the right place at the right time ,the challenges of fighting a bear (That last part will make sense) and his latest book in the Washington Poe series, The Final Vow.
The Final Vow
The Mercy Chair
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin . . .
Washington Poe has a story to tell.
And he needs you to listen.
You'll hear how it started with the robber birds. Crows. Dozens of them. Enough for a murder . . .
He'll tell you about a man who was tied to a tree and stoned to death, a man who had tattooed himself with a code so obscure, even the gifted analyst Tilly Bradshaw struggled to break it. He'll tell you how the man's murder was connected to a tragedy that happened fifteen years earlier when a young girl massacred her entire family.
And finally, he'll tell you about the mercy chair. And why people would rather kill themselves than talk about it . . .
Poe hopes you've been paying attention. Because in this story, nothing is as it seems . . .
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When I'm writing the Koenig book, I want to get back to Poe, and when I'm writing Poe, I think actually I wouldn't mind writing Ben Koenig fighting a bear, which is what I'm writing now. He's actually fighting a bear.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Conversation with Nadine Matheson. And not only is it a warm hello, it is a happy new year because this is the first episode of 2025. And, most importantly, this is the 100th episode of the Conversation with Nadine Matheson, and I can't believe that we're here. I can't believe that this episode featuring my guest, mw Craven, is my 100th conversation. This podcast will have been going for two years. In a couple of weeks, it will be our two-year anniversary. So it just leaves me to say thank you so much. Thank you to everyone who's listened, thank you to everyone who shared and followed and left a comment. I'm really grateful and I'm just really pleased that you keep coming back for more. So continue doing what you're doing, continue listening and continue sharing. And, before I forget, because I always forget, there are other ways in which you can continue to support the conversation with Nadine Matheson podcast. One of the easiest ways is simply to buy me a cup of coffee, and you can do that by going to the link in the show notes, which will take you to my Ko-fi page, and what that will do will allow you to support the podcast and help me keep this podcast going. So I'm going to say thank you in advance. Now let's get on with the show.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned earlier, I'm in conversation with the award-winning and best-selling author of the Washington Post series and the Ben Koenig series, mw Craven, and in our conversation we talk about being at the right place at the right time, how his previous job in probation influenced his storytelling and what it means to be responsible as an author, and we also have some tips for the debut authors out there. Now, as always, sit back or go for a walk and enjoy the conversation, mw Craven. Welcome to the Conversation. Happy to be here, nadine. Glad to have you Right. My first question for you is because when I was reading your very, very, very, very extensive bio, my question was how would you describe your writing journey so far and your publishing journey?
Speaker 1:I mean I think Mick Herron said this quite recently that not a lot of people talk about how important luck is in in publishing and I feel as though I've kind of started off with with my dog, which is a weird place to start my my dog. I'll explain this better than just say it's my. I'm an author because of my dog, but it's kind of true, it's a first time.
Speaker 1:I was due to go and see um, an author called matt hilton in waterstones in carlisle. But it all meant an early start because we were going somewhere that day and we kind of given up on the idea. My dog for some reason started barking like a idiot about three in the morning, a non-existent burglar or a ghost or something. So I ended up getting up a lot earlier than I ordinarily would have. So I actually made this book signing. At this book signing I met this bloke called Graham Smith who runs a crime writing course in Gretna. I'd never met Graham before. I talked to him and it happened to start the next weekend and he said come along. So I did.
Speaker 1:I met my first publisher there and I enjoyed it. I went to the next one. I met my agent there. So it's all. I mean, you kind of make your own luck, I suppose. But that's the journey I had. So I don't have a whole stack of rejection letters or anything like that. I've only had David actually has my agent. He had a stack of rejection letters when he was submitting the puppet show. But from my point of view I've kind of sailed through the whole process, which is weird. It makes me a bit of an outlier it does.
Speaker 2:But, um, and everyone's journey is so different because even when people ask about my journey, it's, I say it was. I say it's long, in a sense that I've always been writing on and off, but in terms of submitting the manuscript and getting signed and getting a publishing deal, that is very, very it's so, it's so short. It's literally from December 2019 and then signing with an agent in January 2019 and getting the deal in March. Yeah, so it's very quick, but then it's again, it's that right place, right time sort of thing, because I was doing a course and then meeting agents as well and then my tutor introduced me to you know, gave me his agents details. So there's a lot of things I was able to maybe to avoid, as opposed to all those other obstacles everyone's journey is different.
Speaker 1:It is, but when I'm asked to give advice to people, which I frequently do, and if I want to just go above, above the right, right, right and read Stephen King's on writing kind of thing, I do say get out to the festivals and meet as many people as you can and just engage, because it's quite a collegiate community. Crime writing, uh, the crime community, yeah, and that's because we, um, people who read crime, read more than one crime book a year, so we're not in competition with each other. If you, if you're the poetry business, then by all means you do need to stab each other in the back, because there's only about six poetry books sold a year, so it's yeah, you know, there's a movie there.
Speaker 2:right, there's a film there. There's a book in there, poetry.
Speaker 1:The poetry book murders. You can have that if you want.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you so much. I wasn't thinking about cozy crime or literally, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you can make it as dark as you wanted. Um, it's um, but it's. It's kind of true. I I've met, uh, pretty much every crime writer I have wanted to meet and everyone has been absolutely lovely and they've all been happy to stop and chat. And this was before I was a crime writer. I remember door-stopping Michael Rebotham at one of the first Harrogates I went to. He didn't know me from Adam, I didn't have a publishing deal or anything. I stopped him Me and my wife did and we were both readers of him. Well, we're still readers of Michael Bolton, who isn't, I suppose and it was lovely and he stayed for about 45 minutes just chatting to us. I mean, where else would you get that? It's a lovely community to be part of and if you do want to be a crime writer then you need to join that community, otherwise you're going to be loving stuffing from the outside and you don't have all those advantages of making the connections that we've just been talking about.
Speaker 2:I remember the first crime festival I ever went to was Crime Fest and it was 2018. And the only reason why I went? Because I was doing the creative writing masters and you could specialise in either literary like that was my.
Speaker 1:That was my first time. Was it really well?
Speaker 2:I spent the night I can't remember what night, it was the Friday night or the Sunday or the Saturday night, like one o'clock in the morning, chatting and jinking with Martina Cole that's a very good example, actually, because Martina Cole is a giant of the genre Seven-figure advances routinely.
Speaker 1:I mean, she's just a phenomenon and she's absolutely the most approachable person and she's dead funny and she's dead down to earth. But yeah, 2018, I didn't and I wasn't even going to go. My publisher wanted me because the puppet show was out that year.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And we went. It was a month before publication but they managed to get some early copies, so it was the first time I'd actually seen my book, a hardback book kind of thing. And I did a panel with Ellie Griffiths and I've kept in touch with Ellie ever since. We were kind of pals and it was just a lovely experience. And I didn't know anyone. I mean, we just wouldn't know anyone. But yeah, I didn't know anyone I'm still friends with now.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's just that kind of kind of thing. Harrigate was the first crime festival I went to and when I tell people harrigate, I would say you have a different Harrogate every single time you go. It's not the same festival because it's. You know more people Every time you go. You know people that you met for the first time the previous year, kind of thing. So it grows and grows and grows. Sometimes you can't spend as much time with people that you used to spend when I was going back in, like 2013, 2014, you could end up like spending six or seven hours with the same person because you only knew like five or six people.
Speaker 2:Now you know about 300 people. I remember my first harrigan. I went in and I'd gone with. Who did I go with? I think I went with my friend patricia, who's also an author. So it was me and her kind of stuck together. And then we found like we formed like another little crew of people who was their first time as well, and, as you said, it was just us, like our tight little crew, for those two, three days. And then I think the last time I went to Harrogate, it took me and I'm not even lying, took me an hour to get out of the tent. I said I was leaving at whatever time it was, and it took me an hour just to even just get to the tent door. Because you're just stopping and talking to people, yeah. So it changes each time.
Speaker 1:It absolutely does. I did a panel for the first time this year actually. In fact, we're on the same panel, obviously, weren't we? Yeah, was that the first time? Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's just the way it happens. I mean, chris Whittaker hadn't done a panel until that year anyway, and he'd won it a couple of years before. So the first time I was actually on the stage was when I actually won the award in 23.
Speaker 1:But I had a hell of a time getting out of the signing tent. It was only me there at the end and that was the Merge and Harrogate book. People took this book which they'd been buying, the Merge and Harrogate anthology, which I was getting no money for whatsoever, been buying, the Merge in Harrogate Anthology, which I was getting no money for whatsoever. So it was kind of annoying as well, because it wasn't my royalties, it was Sam Eads' royalties that she was getting. But yeah, it's just lovely. I love Harrogate, I love all the festivals. Actually, there's no festivals that I don't enjoy, but some I look forward to more than others, depending on what kind of mood I'm in at the time. Um, I mean, I'm going to newcastle this afternoon, um, and I happen to be in newcastle at the same time as newcastle.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not actually going to newcastle yeah no, although I'll probably stick my head in um tomorrow at some point because I'm going to see a band. But I'll no doubt meet up with a load of writers in the city because I know. I know that they're there and they know I'm coming as well, because not everyone's so nosy aren't?
Speaker 2:they. Our lives are online. When did you know? This is what you wanted, though to be not just a writer, but to be a crime writer, because I think I can think about. I knew I wanted to write, but, and I was interested in crime, but I can't think of when I decided no, this is really, really what I want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an interesting question. Have you always written crime? Is that the only thing you've written?
Speaker 2:No, god, no, I've written like speculative fiction. I've done, if you want to call them, rom-coms and like family dramas. I've done all sorts of like've got. You know, I don't think I'm the first and last person's gonna have like a really poor film script that they wrote in uni because they watch Pulp Fiction, but yeah, but the crime stuff, I think I always knew. I think I always knew I was going to, but I just probably didn't have the confidence to.
Speaker 1:It just felt like a challenge yeah, I mean I kind of started down the fantasy path. I was reading because I still am in Lord of the Rings and that kind of thing, so I'm one of the actually I'm not one of the few people, but when Game of Thrones was on TV, I knew that Ned Stark was going to get his head chopped off because I'd read the books like years before. Not to pry, it's not a spoiler to say this, the books have been around for 20 years. But so I started off writing fantasy and but I was also reading crime.
Speaker 2:I was a big, big still.
Speaker 1:I'm a big Edmund Bain fan and I collect first edition Edmund Bains and kind of thing and then so I was writing on and off ever since I can remember to be honest, um, but when it came to doing it properly, I thought I'm a probation officer. That kind of gives me a little hook, some of your uh, barrister or solicitor barrister solicitor advocate right, okay that's a kind of hybrid, that's's a hybrid thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the hybrid, yeah.
Speaker 1:For my days. You can argue in Crown Court.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can do it, I'm dredging my memory, here I do the Crown Court appearances. I've got my wig and gown.
Speaker 1:I saw it. Yeah, I saw it at Capital Pride last year. You did, or this year sorry, yeah, was it you cross-examined me, or was it Helen? I can't remember. I can't anyway.
Speaker 2:No, I think I did.
Speaker 1:I think yeah, oh god, you're nice yeah so I thought I'll, I'll give crime writing a go. And also, I had read about the debut, the CWA's debut dagger competition, and I thought, well, that seems dead easy 3,000 words Because I was used to writing three-sentence reports which were around about that long anyway. Usually I could do them in about two hours, which is why most of my offenders went to prison. Most of my offenders went to prison. The obviously 3,000 words and the 1,000 word synopsis is not easy at all. But I took a couple of weeks off work and I did it. Then I got shortlisted and it was kind of at that point I thought, well, actually this was a huge surprise to get shortlisted.
Speaker 1:We went down to London and we met Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth and, um, there was probably all sorts of people who I know very well now were there at the dinner. I know David Hedley was at that dinner. Obviously I didn't know him then because it was way before I'd met him. Um, and I at that point I thought I'm gonna focus on crime writing, I'm just gonna give this a go because I enjoy writing it anyway. Um, an agent had asked to see the completed manuscript. So I said, and I'd only written 3,000 words, but I told a I say a white lie. My wife says it was just a complete lie. There was no white lie about it.
Speaker 2:You had written 3,000 words, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I said it's not quite finished and she said how long are you going? You're gonna need I said six months and I wrote it and it was absolutely dreadful and it was 150 000 words long. It kind of morphed into a um conspiracy. It started out was a bog standard crime book in cumbria, ended up in a war crime thing in afghanistan. It was absolutely awful.
Speaker 1:Um, but this agent uh, read it and she gave me some incredibly useful feedback. Um, she said, well, I can't take you on, so that actually. So I do have a rejection letter actually. Yeah, my wife said why don't you get back and tell her to piss off? And I said no, this is really good feedback is, I'll take it on. I completely rewrote it. At that point I met Graham Smith and I met a guy called Darren Laws who was the chief exec or the owner of Caffe Night Publishing and I give him this book with the CWA shortlisted little sticker on it that you get, and he bought it. So that's kind of how I started down the crime writing journey. But I could have just as easily been a fantasy writer, and fantasy doesn't have as many obstacles. You've got the world-building element, obviously, but if you're writing police procedurals set in the UK, you need to know a little bit about how that world operates. You just can't because UK crime readers are so knowledgeable.
Speaker 2:They'll spot a fraud immediately. That's the thing and I think and I don't know if it's unique, probably not unique to the UK probably same applies maybe in, I suppose, maybe in the States, but I just think in the UK growing up you're constant, like you're just constantly inundated with like crime in all sorts of settings, whether it was like watching I'm saying crown court, because that's what I do remember watching crown court. When I was little it was on during the day, so probably when you're sick from school and crown court. So so you're watching crown court and inspector morse is on. Then the bills on what else? Yeah, cavern, accused cities, and it's, it's just, it's just continuous, and so yeah oh god, oh my god.
Speaker 2:Yeah, juliet, bravo to sweeney. Like so you feel like you know, like you have this inside information. I think you're right people can detect a fraud, which I think this is why I avoided writing legal thrillers, because I just thought it's going to be expect and it sounds really strange to say, because that's my world, but I thought I don't. I'm not thinking about the reader, I'm thinking about people.
Speaker 1:I know, because I know that I have to.
Speaker 2:I have to bend things a little bit. I have to bend the rules a little bit to make it fit with the story and I thought I'm not ready to have people I know calling me a gay Nadine. You know this is not right. I I'll do police procedures.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of lucky because my books are set in Cumbria and it's a very small police force covering a huge area. So there's a lot of multitasking going on with certain roles. So I can kind of get away with the same person doing roles which would all be distinct jobs in the Met, for example. So the case manager and the exhibits officer and things which are all unique roles, and distinct roles in bigger forces are quite often the same person. In a small force, I mean, if there's a murder in Cumbria and it's unsolved for any length of time, you can have half the force working on it, because it's quite a small force there's only about 1,000 in total and that probably includes the civilian stuff, whereas in the Met, where you've got 10,000, and that's just the warranted officers.
Speaker 2:I think that's why I wrote I created like my fictional unit, because I mean I've got my little fictional unit which has got, I think, six people in it Six or seven I think it's got in it and they're pursuing like serial crime cases which should take a whole massive force, but it's six of them. But I think if I create this little fictional unit I can have them. You know, they literally are doing the multitasking and I couldn't.
Speaker 1:I kind of stumbled across this um weird little unit in the national crime agency called the serious crime analysis section and I adopted it as my own and the actual unit themselves. It's all academics and they um look at data and um the the remit is to identify emerging serial killers and serial rapists, but they're all civilians and it's about half a dozen of them and I sort of pinched that and I put Poe in that and I give it a little bit of a structure. I give it an investigative role A lot for that reason. So my first series was very much a police procedural. It was a DI in the kind of government of a major case team.
Speaker 1:This one is very much just Poe and Tilly just arsing about, basically, but they're not part of the official investigation, so they can go and do what they want. They've always got to report to someone and sometimes it works because you can have a clash and that works. Obviously no conflict works very well and sometimes they'll. They'll get on with who they're working. It depends how you particularly want to play that scene or a chapter or the entire book. So I've kind of done the same thing as you, albeit my unit is a real unit. I've got no idea what they think of the way I portray them. I think I'm quite a slap in the face.
Speaker 1:They've had some huge wins, but they come across as quite buffoonish sometimes I just thought one of them was getting out of breath, going to the fridge because they're proper nerds.
Speaker 2:Well, I have people asking me if the units were at real my serial crimes unit and I'm like no, as far as I know it is not real at all. But you know, like, if I go back to your probation days, because when you're talking about your psr reports, it's only been like not even 3 000 words. And I used to remember thinking when I was writing briefs for council, I remember doing the briefs and you know preparing my clients' instructions, doing their proofs. I remember going thinking this is just a story, like the whole thing, preparing the brief from beginning, middle to end. Yeah, it's all story, it's all storytelling. Do you think you was aware of that in a funny way when doing your reports?
Speaker 1:Kind of that in a funny way when doing your reports. Um, kind of, I suppose, because we obviously in those days it doesn't happen now because it's it's. It's a kind of um, they've trimmed it down now so it's a much more watered down version of pre-sentence reports. But in when I was a probation officer you had to meet with the, with the offender. Sometimes you had to meet with them twice. So there's a lot of prison visits and things if they were remanded. And then after those interviews and after some quite difficult interviews and some quite challenging questions, you would form a view of what you wanted to happen to this guy, because your recommendation was invariably followed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Particularly on the borderline cases where there could be custody, might not be custody. Obviously, if someone has just been caught abusing a child, then they're going away for that how long? And then you just need to inform the judge about how his risk can be managed, what programmes he needs to do in prison, that kind of thing. But you kind of form the view and depend on what view you wanted to take. You would slant your report as in this guy needs to go to prison, without overtly saying it, because you still had to give all options. If the judge because you get instructions from the, the court, saying all options are open, or they might say we're thinking of custody, kind of thing, we think the custody and then you think actually this can be managed in the community, then you do have to tell the story about why they can pull back and vice versa. If they're thinking of community sentence, you think actually this fucking idiot needs to go to prison, then that's a different story. Um, so yeah, you do, and then you kind of get after the first. Um, so yeah, you do, and then you kind of get after the first, I don't know 30 of them. You kind of get your head around what works and what works for you, what, what's, what kind of thing and how. You want to present an argument, exactly the same as you do I.
Speaker 1:I, I imagine, um, and most times my recommendation was followed. I can't actually remember any times, any occasion, that it wasn't, but then again, I wasn't going for weird and wacky solutions. I wasn't saying that a child murderer could be managed with 100 hours of community service. I was. It was an important job and I've been in court where defense solicitors had met their client for the first time that day and they in mitigation. Just read out the pre-sentence report. You've earned your three thousand pounds, mate no, but.
Speaker 2:But I mean, it happened to me more than once. It's like so and so can't do it. I need you to go and cover a sentence. You're like it's annoying because it's not your case, so you haven't sat down with a client. For god, no, no, sometimes these cases not, they're going on for like six months plus. So you haven't sat down with your client. I don't think about.
Speaker 2:And you're meeting for literally for the first time outside the court and you have to do so much work in a short space of time. You're like um, get acquainted with the file, trying to keep your client on your side, because they're like I don't know you. And then you've got to read this psr and you're like, oh crap, they're saying you're getting to prison. And the worst thing, what it's annoying me, it's when you know you spend time with your client and you I. I would advise them now how best to approach their appointment with probation. You know, take responsibility, take responsibility, be remorseful, and you see the report. They've done the complete opposite. Like you twat, you twat. Now I have to go and try and mitigate this somehow in court.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I remember because we used to get pre-sentence reports, I think that the magistrates, particularly the mainly magistrate thing, they used to use it assentence reports. I think that the uh magistrates, particularly the mainly magistrate thing, they used to use it as a way to adjourn. We'll adjourn for a pre-sentence report. I remember interviewing a farmer who had set fire to some tires. I mean that was his crime. I don't know. Even I can't remember what the crime was, some sort of?
Speaker 1:illegal setting fire to tires crime mean it was pretty niche and he turned up in his blue overalls, covered in mud wellies, saying do I need my solicitor here? I said you've been convicted, mate. I mean this is your chance to tell me why your fine should be 20 quid, not 30 quid. It was that kind of thing. I mean that thing. I mean when I say my reports on average are about 3,000 words, that one was about 200 words. It was like don't waste my time, please, magistrates. You can do some things you can do on your own.
Speaker 1:I know I did a report on a child being caught in Cumbria. It was a Manchester resident child. He'd been caught in Cumbria. He was a Manchester resident but he'd been caught luring children into his tent in Cumbria, which got local police involved. They arrested him and he was charged. They went back to his house with the help of Manchester police and discovered this whole trove of horrific stuff and he ended up getting charged with about 15. He'd been videoing himself. He'd been like um, a um, like a handyman for a housing association, so he had access to houses and he was. It was. I'm not even gonna say what it was, because it was so horrific.
Speaker 1:I got the report and I took a probation like a training kind of thing. I thought this would be a good experience and also means I don't have to actually write it. I'll just like, I'll just read it and then offer some suggestions. And that was an all day interview. So we did like two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon in Durham and at the end I thought this guy can't ever get out of prison. He's just too dangerous. He just doesn't see what he's done wrong.
Speaker 1:For a start, I think he had a mild learning disability. He is actively looking for ways to offend. So he's a predatory paedophile and his victims were aged from from like 15 down to two months, that kind of. So he wasn't you couldn't put in a management. Planning for him would have just been no impossible. So we I I thought I need this guy to get a life sentence because it some one of his offenses was enough to attract a life sentence. Um, and I can't remember which one it was, it wasn't a man, it wasn't a mandatory life sentence, it wasn't attempted murder or murder or something like that yeah um, and so I had to tell a real story.
Speaker 1:Then I explained to the judge, um, and we got thanked in court actually for such an in-depth report, um, and he got a life sentence with a tariff of about 11 years or something like that, and he was old enough that I knew by the when, when, because all the stuff that came out that we weren't privy to after sentence about some of the things that they've been videoing themselves doing, that wasn't a legal behavior, but it was very worrying. Yeah, um, the parole boards and everyone involved in the proposal would have had access to that. They'll have access to all the police steps, all my presence report. That guy would never have been deemed safe to be managing the community, so he died in prison. He would be dead by now because he was. He was getting on a bit back in those days, um, so that's one extreme um, and the entire guy is probably the extreme little farmer worrying that he's gonna incriminate himself but that's how it was though, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's like you'd have. It goes from both ends of the spectrum, where you know I was, you know I'm in the magistrate's court because my client's been arrested for stealing literally a bag of potatoes and a bottle of whiskey from saintsbury's it's like it was so farcical. And another guy who just got completely drunk on new year's eve and went into saintsbury's and stole lots of champagne he has no memory of it, and they caught him in the next one. They caught him in gapwick airport trying to get to amsterdam. It was just so farcical. So it'll go from that. It'll go from that end to, as you said, the worst, the worst kind of sexual offenses and the murders.
Speaker 2:But I'm I was sitting there, you know, while you're talking and I'm listening and I'm thinking other people who have no experience of this world. They probably think how can you do this day in, day out, and you it doesn't. You know, we can just talk about it the way we talk about it, and I always say I think you just you either learn very quickly to compartmentalize or you're just able to do that. That's just naturally how you are. You've been asked with you.
Speaker 1:I I absolutely think that I also think having a dark sense of humor helps enormously. And also there is the lighter side of this. I mean I mean it's not all darkness and things. There are some funny it's. I mean, attending magistrate court. Court is actually quite amusing sometimes, particularly in Cumbria where they're all like look, I remember sitting in court where someone wasn't paying his fines and he'd been lifted by the police, drunk, sat in a puddle, and the magistrate said if you can afford to get blathered, you can afford to pay your fine. And just wouldn't, let us find. I remember a defence solicitor dropping his papers, bent down to pick it up, farted, dead loud, but well, obviously by accident, got up and said sorry, mum, just things like that which kind of become legendary. Um, but then you've got the dark side.
Speaker 1:Everyone finds the coping mechanism and we're kind of on the periphery of it, aren't we? We hear about it and we read about it. We don't actually see it. So I mean, the police officers that we talk about are actually living it firsthand. So I mean they burn out, but because they don't have any good days, I mean that's the. The thing that they tell you is there's no good days in the police. You, you're seeing people at their worst, yeah, or on their worst, sometimes at their worst, and sometimes on their worst days, when you've got to go and tell them someone's died or something like that, or there's been a car crash, or they've been burgled, or you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:So I mean, it's not surprising that police officers, all with with almost out of exception, can't wait to retire. There's very few of them, I think, and I'd love to be swimming in the mud until I'm 70, you don't? You don't find that?
Speaker 2:no, you don't. You definitely don't find that. I was just remembering when, um being at South Western Magistrates Court, you said you have those those funny moments for me, and in South Western Magistrates Court the chairs it was an old fashioned court, so you had the seat would flip up or flip down one or two, and I thought the seat was already down. So I think I was standing up doing my submission. I thought the seat was already down. I went to sit down. I just landed straight on the floor and the judges were like it's Madison, are you OK? I'm lifting my hands up. Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine, let's just go on. Let's just go on with it.
Speaker 1:I was in Crown Court once doing a verbal report for a judge on a drug treatment testing order. So this is when they were just in. So you had to go every month and basically say how this guy was doing and I've turned my. I've turned my mobile off. It was one of those old brick nokia ones, you know the indestructible ones that were. The battery lasted for six years and so I turned it off like a good little probation officer. Um, I'd forgotten I'd set an alarm for something. I think it was probably a recurring alarm and I didn't know this either. Nokia's turn themselves on if there's an alarm. So suddenly I'm doing that. My, my mobile just started bleeding away, like because the nokia was really loud, it was like a fire alarm and I didn't know. I was looking around trying to blame someone and everyone's looking at me. Well, it's not me, my phone's off and they's off and the judge was getting really angry. So just things like that, I mean.
Speaker 1:But everyone's got stories like that. Yeah, everyone's got. Whatever part of it, you work, everyone has stories like that and that's kind of the gold that we can pick out of the river of mud that we've been talking about, these little things that humanize it in the books and make it real, so that other people, so your colleagues, when they're reading it, can say, ah yes, I remember that happened to. Someone fell over in court and all these things. So I put in things that I know have happened. I've changed the name sometimes. Sometimes I leave it in the actual name. So, yeah, that's kind of kind of go back to the question, whatever it was, which I think was why you're writing crime.
Speaker 2:That's why, yeah, basically, that's why I've had my. I'm still always amused when I get an old and literally an old client's found me normally on LinkedIn, on Facebook, and they've asked I found your book, am I in your book? No, you're not in my book. No, we're not. I'm not accepting your friend request.
Speaker 2:That is not happening for coffee no, no, no, no, not at all. Listeners, it's time for a very short break. If you're enjoying this conversation with Nadine Matheson and want to help keep the podcast going, why not buy me a cup of coffee? Your support goes such a long way in keeping these conversations flowing. Just check out the link in the show notes. You know you've had like the two different experiences of like being with an independent publisher and being with I say like big five. What did being with the independent publisher like? What did that teach you? Also, what did it prepare you for for when the awards came and the success came and the bestseller status came?
Speaker 1:it's the. The big thing I took out of it, I think, was that you've got to be responsible. You can't just when you sign with one of the big five, that's, you're still responsible, particularly for the local publicity um which we kind of got good at, as as with a very small publisher um and can't be nice, I mean, there weren't, there weren't a minnow, I mean they were publishing like sean hudson, the, the um horror writer, and um a few other quite well-known rc bridgestock were with them um, but you are responsible because their budget is is tiny when it comes to the um, the bigger, bigger publishers, and you do you get used to just taking a bit of responsibility um for yourself. So beth and I, my publicist, uh, with little brown, when we have the publicity meeting, we we'll split up some tasks. So I will do all the local stuff, I will contact local journalists, oh will you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I know them. I have personal relationships with them so I can bob them. My wife is going out on the piss all day on Saturday with a BBC journalist who I knew from one of the glossy magazines. She's now working with the BBC, so we kind of know them. And Cumbria's so small. You do have these personal relationships. So I know half a dozen that I can just call, I can text and say, look, I've got this coming out, I've got some news next week. If you want to use it, I can give you a quote kind of thing. So I will do all that local stuff. I'll tend to arrange all the local shops as well, signings at local stops. So I mean what we, how we work. Publication week is my week. I say because I can do three of them. I mean the last, my launch for the mercy chair. It was june this year and it was a 250 seat venue and it sold out in 36 hours. So I don't need Beth involved for that.
Speaker 1:It kind of does itself. So I say publication week is my week, beth, we'll do, and we're actually going to run three big events this week in different parts of the county. The week after is your week, so you can send me wherever you want to sort of do whichever strategy you you want. So we kind of do work for that and I think a lot of that came from working with an independent start, when you've got to take responsibility um for it, and I've never, I've never lost that. We still do um our own advertising. So I've got, we do um.
Speaker 1:I've scribbled all over this but we have beer mats um which we get into local pubs, and they've got like the book cover on the front and then like a QR code on the back, which just things like that which we pay for. We have bookmark packs and things. So we still spend a little bit of money on things that my publisher just wouldn't, they wouldn't see immediately connect the value. So I mean the Mercycedes chairs out in paperback tomorrow, actually um thursday, and they've got ads running in railway stations doing this weird thing where if you walk past this electronic ad with your phone open, it'll capture your data. Then it'll start bombarding you with ads.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, it's very sinister, but yeah I don't know how I feel about that one. I'm like, yeah, look, it sounds it. You're like, oh yeah, electronic billboard, cool. You're like, yeah, capture your data. I'm like, eh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm exactly the same. It sounds a bit Minority Report, doesn't it? So that kind of thing I wouldn't know how to do. And this year, for a bit of fun, there's a big, massive billboard that we drive past, a big electronic thing in Carlisle, and we thought it would be excellent just to have a Merseyshire one for that. Now, little Brown won't pay for that because they won't advertise in Cumbria because there's no need because I'm everywhere in Cumbria. Yeah, you're there, I'm like a fungal rash, but I thought that would be fun.
Speaker 1:So we actually paid for an ad on this big billboard, which That'd be fun. So we actually paid for an ad on this big billboard which we could drive past every day and run competitions, take your photograph with this under the billboard and win a bookmark pack and that kind of thing. So we still do that. And I know a lot of authors kind of equivalent to where I am at now and a bit below, a bit above maybe, don't do that. They kind of leave it all to their publicists and get angry that they don't have the reach and they don't have all this and that, and they see some of these things and they wonder why perhaps they're not getting the exposure that they feel. I think doing a lot for yourself. There's still a lot to be said for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to ask you you do you think it's important for not I'd say, not just us, or actually it's important for, like I say, mid-list, um people have got three or four books out, but you think it's more important for new writers, who are just the debuts, to understand that, because you'll hear so many stories, even when I've, you know, been doing this podcast and I always say the moments that don't make it, that aren't published, when we carry on talking afterwards, and there's always a story of disappointment because they didn't get what they thought they was going to get, whether it's in mainly in terms of advertising and being promoted, being promoted and seeing the billboards. So, if you feel like they need to be aware that you, you should not be afraid to take on things for yourself and just, I think, is that especially your local area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely I. I also think public publishers have a responsibility to do a bit of expectation management. Yeah, because when you are a aspiring author and you see other authors with um billboards on the tube and all these big fancy ads, you can can think that well, I'll have that as well, that everyone gets that level of service. And of course we both know that you don't. And I'm thinking specifically of that. Of course you're at Harrogate this year. Yeah, the airport departure lounge that Richard Osman had in one of the rooms.
Speaker 2:I'm only laughing. He was supposed to stroke his ego, really wasn't he?
Speaker 1:Because he doesn't need the exposure. Hardly anyone is going to get something like that. You're just not Doing the local stuff, because if you can get a local base of readers, then those readers will just spread out and spread out, and spread out. So when it came to my first contract with Little Brown I've had like half a dozen contracts now, or five or something. I already had a base of local readers through my first series with Kathy Knight because I'd put in those like hard yards and I'd made little connections. I've been to bookshops and and things. When it came to um, a press release, I was able to share the press release with the contacts I'd made. So oh look, we've got something a bit a bit different coming, albeit it's exactly the same. The story of the puppet show was actually going to be the third story in the fluke series, but we don't really was it really?
Speaker 1:um, when david said I need you to write me a new series because the first one hasn't sold every well, very well at all. For you with an independent publisher, and all publishers I will be submitting to will have access to that data, so they won't want to continue with that series I need you to write a new series, but set it in cumbria and kind of keep it the same. So I thought I might as well just use the same story. But, um, I had, I built up those contacts and I, so I I wasn't stuck, I wasn't starting from from nothing.
Speaker 1:And that's the biggest bit of advice I will give new authors is yeah do, do the work, do the things that your publicist won't be able to do, which is to get in at the, at the um. Let them do the macro, you do the micro, and I can't imagine not doing that, to be honest.
Speaker 2:No, I say the same thing to when I was doing mentoring and even if you know debuts like they, get in touch with me and I'll say don't be afraid to just go out there on your own, because it's unavoidable. You're always going to be looking at what's going on around you and what debut x had in comparison to what you, what you've had and, I think, my day, my expect, I had expectations, but they got this. I didn't even just get muted, I just got demolished because I went, my book came out in lockdown, so it's like I didn't have all the expectations, yes, all the expectations I had.
Speaker 2:I'm like it's not going to happen. So I kind of didn't have. Why didn't I have x, y and z? Because no one had any of those things. But I always say to the like just new authors, like, remember, it's a business. I don't mean to burst your bubble because we all, you know, we care about our craft and our art and stuff, but it is a business and anything you can do for yourself, do it for yourself.
Speaker 1:I've started recommending that authors who are just about to come out, or just out but haven't made any kind of impact yet, they go to their local Waterstones, their local independent, and they say I'm happy to interview authors for you at no charge. And because publishers are always looking to save a book, and because I mean I've just been asked to go and do Rob Parker's debut in Manchester next year, which I would have done for free because he's a mate, but Bloomsbury are paying 150 quid. At Bloomsbury you can save 150 quid and travel and travel for me is not cheap because I'm in Cumbria and I only travel by helicopter.
Speaker 1:But if you've got your own water zone, because a lot of the water zone staff don't have the time or actually some of them don't like doing it If they have an author to call on who can do a semi-decent job of interviewing someone like Peter James or someone like that. Because Peter James calls local independent bookshops and things. Hey, you're meeting peter james, you're making connections with his publicist and peter james himself. You're making connections with the bookshop you're, you're kind of um in their good books, the more likely to do you a favor when, when you come around, um, do you mind if I have my lunch in in waterstones, that kind of.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things you can do that are proactive, that don't cost you anything. But on the flip side of that, a lot of authors are very shy and it's quite difficult to approach someone To be a successful author. Unless you're just going to be Mick Herron, who is quite a shy guy, although he's very funny on stage, then you're going to have to get over that somehow and either just be the best author there's ever been so that your words do speak for themselves, which, quite frankly, that voice comes around once in a generation. You have to get out and let people know that you exist, that you're there.
Speaker 2:Because times have changed. Now, yeah, I say times have changed. I yeah, and I'm just saying times have changed. I mean, if, the exception of mick heron and a few others, you can't really be, uh, an author just sitting in your room, like you know. You need that so that social media is there and people have certain expectations. So I always say to you don't need to be everywhere, you don't need to be on every single platform, but I think you should pick one that kind of resonates with your personality yeah, absolutely, and I, like a lot of people, have moved across the blue sky and I'm thinking of deleting twitter completely, which will be a shame.
Speaker 1:I've got like 22 000, yeah, followers, but there's, I mean, but I thought, well, I can't make that decision. You know, actually now I've got to check with little brown and with my publisher in the US as well, flatiron in the US, because this potentially could affect them as well if I've got one less platform. If they see us. I mean, they're both happy for me to come off, mainly because of the engagement has just dropped down to virtually zero on Twitter has just dropped down to virtually zero on on twitter. Um, as a um, I had just given over, I'm not giving. I had allowed little brown access to my facebook page. They um wanted access to do run analytics and things, because they're gonna they are gonna put money into my facebook page and build up that kind of thing which, oh, that gets a lot of engagement on there.
Speaker 1:I think instagram is fun. Instagram works. Blue sky, I think, is a lot of fun at the minute. I think that'll probably grow and I'd like to be there when it, when it does. And facebook the facebook account is is good for a lot of the local stuff as well. But you're absolutely right. You can't just assume that you're, that you're gonna, and be the one who doesn't go on social media.
Speaker 1:There's only one person who's allowed any one time, that's mick erin.
Speaker 2:At the minute he's not allowed I actually he doesn't even have a tv, though no, he told me about his phone. I was like is that? It, is that what you're using? He's lovely. Now I deactivated my twitter. It would be nearly a month. It'd be. I'm sure it's coming up to a month now, but again, I mean, I think I had like five, six thousand followers, something like that, but it was. It was the engagement and I thought, if the engagement's not there, I'm not, I can't be waiting. All the other stuff, I can't be wasting my time. Not like blue sky, I post my pictures on insta and then just see how it goes before I go on to like your new, your US series. Did the surprise of no, did the surprise? Did the success of the puppet show? Did that surprise you?
Speaker 1:Well, commercially it wasn't a massive success. I mean it did all right. David made it the book of the month, so it sold 1,000 copies straight away. Snap of the finger. Yeah, I mean it's quite handy having David as the agent, to be fair Actually, sorry, it was 750 copies then that's what's a book of the month?
Speaker 1:I think it's 1,500 now, if you book of the month, yeah, If you sell another 100 on top of that, you've got a very good chance of making it Sunday times. It was so commercially it did all right. It did all right in the supermarkets. The paperback Black Summer did better, and then the creator did. Every book is sold more than the previous book.
Speaker 1:The award came as a massive shock. I really wasn't expecting to win the gold dagger for the puppet show when I got longlisted. That was blimey. I had to fill up my seat, not literally. You know, when someone gives you bad news and say are you sitting down? How many people are standing up and they fall on the floor? There's not many, few people, like usually. They're falling over because, like someone's pranged the car or something like that, um I, uh.
Speaker 1:So when I went to the awards, when it got got shortlisted which was a big shock I wasn't actually going to go to the awards. But then we decided we'll just do and David said have you written your speech? And I said no, I don't think I'm going to win. And he said I do. I think Black Summer is a brilliant book. And I said Black Summer is not up for it, it's the puppet show. And he went, went, oh, shite, um.
Speaker 1:So I thought, well, you've got the confidence, you've got a lot of confidence in this as well, so I didn't bother your own agent. And when I got called out, I had absolutely nothing prepared at all. I mean, it was it's on, it's on youtube. Ali kareem filmed it. Bastard um. It's an absolute car crash of a of a speech, in fact, when I um because I won the steel dagger for Dead Ground three years after and my wife had put a speech in my pocket just in case, because I was up against Sean Cosby and I thought, well, he's going to win, so I don't need to prepare anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah you don't need to do anything.
Speaker 1:Exactly. So when I got called up, I thought shite, so I walked up. I thought shite, so I walked up and I think right, my wife's speech is in my pocket and it was apologise for last year's speech and get off the stage as quickly as possible. So I actually read it out and I said that's good advice. Thank you agent. Thank you editor. I'm away, off you go. But then I kind of wised up. So when the botanist was short shortlisted for the um steel dagger the year after and I thought, well, actually I think this might win this. So I had, I. I had thought about a speech really you had about do you thought I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did. I was, I was confident because the botanist at that point, I think, was probably the most accessible book, it was fun, it kind of everything kind of worked and, um, they didn't win, to the point I was so surprised I actually almost stood up.
Speaker 2:We're going to accept someone else's award you're like the oscar, you know when they have you see everyone else. Yeah, yeah, you've got to do the face. I think samuel jackson was it pulp fiction? He got nominated. Then I think, oh my god, I know my head, do one, but it's gone out of my head. But um, and they went to his face and he just went shit because he didn't win his Best Supporting Actor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean, a couple of months later I was at Harrogate for the Thixons Award and David didn't even bother coming. He said, oh, it's Ellie Griffiths going to win it this year. Yeah, and everyone thought Ellie Griffiths was going to win because she'd been shortlisted like five times and hadn't won it. And in the tent everyone was quite chilled about it, apart from I won't say who, apart from one author who, well, I won't even say. We'll say it after. Yeah, I will, and you know who I'm talking about anyway. So we were all having a laugh and we were quite. It was because I knew most of the people that were in the shortlist. It was like Fiona Cummins and Doug Johnson.
Speaker 1:So we were having a bit of a laugh. And then then they did. You know, everyone gets on stage and does the speech, thing kind of thing. And so this is the shortlisted book, this is the next shortlisted book, and then this is the winner. But before we're going to do the winner, we've got a special, highly commended award this year and it goes to Ellie Griffiths, and I thought, oh shite.
Speaker 1:The five people who were expectingie to win all stiffened up. Yeah, it could be me game on now, and but it's such a short thing, I thought I need to think of something to say. I've got like a minute just in case it is me like so, and I kind of got away with it because I just saw that, well, I just, I just, I just did, but that was so. I have never expected to win an award. I've won and I've always expected to win the awards that I didn't. So I'm just going to go through life assuming that the worst is going to happen and then just hope the best you know it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not a bad way to roll through life, though well, it's about managing your expectations as well, isn't it?
Speaker 1:I mean, I uh, I've been lucky, very lucky, I think, to win three of the major awards. Um, extremely, but it's, I certainly don't take it for granted, and if I don't win an award again ever, then that would be absolutely fine, because there are some incredible writers out there who are writing books far better than mine. I mean, it's just, you've just got to.
Speaker 2:I was going to say do you think, like the crime writers, crime fiction, do you see it changing with crime writers who are coming in now? Yeah, is it good to see.
Speaker 1:I'm enjoying some of the newer voices coming in. I'm enjoying some of the ways they are approaching. So, like Joe Callaghan's book I thought was a good approach to getting AI into crime in a positive way. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out way. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out. I'm a bit wary about ai as a way of writing crime books because I I think that was in the bookseller week last week or the week before about a company that's going to yeah then one.
Speaker 1:So we're going to publish 8 000 books a year and they're saying they're going to just do the editing via ai. But really eventually they will be writing ai books and they'll just be putting it out thousands of book a year and each one just might make a thousand, might sell a thousand copies. But if you're putting out enough books a thousand times a ten, like ten, a hundred thousand or something, it's a lot of money there's money to be made.
Speaker 1:I am, I think, the crime as association, adding two new daggers for next year. I thought that was an interesting move um the psychological thriller and I can't. Was it a cozy one?
Speaker 2:I can't remember yeah, it's a cozy one the tune of daggers.
Speaker 1:I thought that was interesting because I think cozy crime has traditionally had a bit of a um, I've only seen as kind of inferior, but it's been. It hasn't been taken as seriously. A bit like comedy films aren't taken as seriously at the oscars and um, that, that kind of thing and the psychological thing. I think that was an interesting one actually because you could argue that that doesn't need its own dagger. If it's a good psychological book it should be able to stand on its own. It's not as distinct as the historical dagger, for example, which is very clearly it's got, the parameters are very clearly defined. But I think broadening the appeal, broadening the daggers, is a very positive thing. I think Vasim has been a breath of fresh air to his sort of stewardship of the Crime Arts Association.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I've got a lot of time for Vasim anyway. He's great. I mean, actually he he is. When I first signed with little brown, david headley did um and he does it every now and then crime in the court, which is like a group of crime writers just go and listen to david do a speech. They drink some of his warm wine and they chatatted which of it in on Cecil Court and he said look, christina, your editor's coming to this.
Speaker 1:And I hadn't actually met Christina at this point other than when when I went down to London to discuss whether she would buy the publisher, yeah, and she said I think you should come. So we trooped down and we didn't know anyone and Vasim saw me and my wife just standing on our own um and he came and spent like an hour with us. He's just one of the nicest men. He is um you can never meet and he's so helpful and he's so thoughtful as well and he and he's an incredibly intelligent man. He just comes across in the way he talks far better than the drivel I do when I'm talking in public.
Speaker 2:I'm going to see him later. I'm going to tell him. I'll pass on all these compliments to him.
Speaker 1:I'll say Mike, you're singing your praises. Yeah, I'll just say I was drunk.
Speaker 2:I'll say you were very drunk on my podcast Right before I go on to like your book that's coming up. And the last set of questions why did you do the switch to your US Marshall series? Was it something you wanted to do or you just thought, no, I just need a change.
Speaker 1:No, I mean this is such a weird thing because it kind of takes everyone by shock my Ben Koenig series the first one predates the Poe series. It actually predates the second Fluke book. It was actually the second thing I wrote. Oh, does it really? Yeah, I finished it while I was still in probation. I was writing it at lunchtimes and I left probation in 2015, and it was definitely finished by then. When I went down to the Daggers in 2013 for the debut dagger I met, I was on the same table as lee child's publicists and I. They said you want to meet lee child? And I was like blimey, do you think, do you?
Speaker 2:think you'll talk to me.
Speaker 1:He said, yeah, he's a lovely man so at the end of dinner they came and dragged him over and he spent half an hour with me, lovely man, very intelligent, very eloquent, and he said he just said where are you at in your journey? I said, well, I was up for the debut. It didn't win, but unpublished, unagent. I didn't have an agent. What advice have you got? And he said what do you write? And I said police procedure set in Cumbria. He said, well, do you like that and you like that? And I said yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1:We said my advice is to try something different. Discover and try a different style of writing. Maybe set it somewhere you haven't been to just have a play about and then settle on something you enjoy writing, because when you enjoy what you're writing, it will shine through. So I thought, well, I'll just put Leigh Charlton. I'm going to write a Jack Reachery kind book set in the US and I'm going to do it in the first person rather than the third person. And I did that and I found it quite difficult, particularly the first person thing. I kept on slipping tenses. So when I was reading it back the first time, a lot of it was like present tense. It was weird.
Speaker 2:I find it very hard in the first person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't actually like it. I prefer it. No, a lot of books are written in the first person. You don't even notice, and that's the sign of an excellent book. So I'm a Robert Crace is probably my favorite crime writer. All his books are in the first person and I barely notice because it's done so well. When it's done badly, it's. I did this, I did that, so I finished it and I kind of did nothing with it. Um 2018, when christina had bought the public show, she was checking um what else I'd written and she realized she was gonna have to buy my first series off my off of caffeine nights, which she, which she did. So she bought um born in the borough of Gowan, body Breaker. So she's basically just doing some.
Speaker 1:Admin Said have you written anything else that is later going to come back and bite me? And I said well, I've written this stupid thriller. David hasn't read it. I knew David hadn't read it because of some of the comments. He said that you could change it to a UK set thriller. I said you haven't read it then because it physically couldn't happen to a UK set thriller. I said you haven't read it then because it physically couldn't happen.
Speaker 1:So she read it and tagged it on the end of whichever contract it was the bottomless contract, I think and the plan was to put it out under a different name in like a dreary paperback only release, just to get it out. She didn't pay a lot of money, didn't pay a lot of money, didn't pay a lot of money for it, but so. So that was maybe an eight year gap seven or eight year gap between writing it and actually getting a deal that I didn't particularly want or had sought in the first place. And then a us publisher, an editor, who was a big fan of the post series and they've been trying to find a way to get me on her list but couldn't make it work with the post series because they've had problems with publishing the series way behind another country because all the press and the blogs have been done and things like that. So they can't. They can't do that debut impact kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So she grabbed hold of this. It needs a lot of work. I would want it as the first in a series rather than just the standalone mess that it is. It needs a lot of work because you clearly don't understand America and I didn't, because I hadn't done any research at all, because it was never meant to be published, so I just guessed at things. So I had Ben Koenig driving across Texas in 90 minutes. It's the size of Germany.
Speaker 2:Even I know.
Speaker 1:It takes about 15 hours. I'm like a Mike Mike. I also thought Washington DC was the capital of Washington State you know, I'm shaking my head at you.
Speaker 1:I can see. So it needed a lot of work and which I was happy to do, obviously, and I rewrote large parts of it. It took about six months actually longer to actually edit Koenig for the American market than it does to actually write a poem book from scratch. And then there was a big Hollywood bidding thing went on. There was like 35 studios scrambling for it and there was a whole thing we had bidding thing went on. There was like 35 studios like scrambling for it and there was a whole thing we had to do zoom meetings with, with la, and we had um, a bidding war went on and we um, which got really weird. So the whole profile of the thing um got ramped up for the uk market as well, because they weren't going to bother.
Speaker 1:So suddenly, right, we're going to put the Mercy Chair back a year, we're going to have the Ben Koenig's the 23 release and it became a whole thing and it was a Sunday Times bestseller, which nobody was. So now I've kind of got two series that people are enjoying. The Venn diagram of readers is the circles are quite wide apart. The intersection isn't that big. I mean, it's found its own unique readership. Not many people read both series because they're very different. Yeah, so that's why I wrote it. It wasn't. I thought I want to do something different, because I would be happy just to keep on writing the post series. But now I know you're going to get onto this, but what I'm writing now is the third ben konig book, so we'll be announcing the new contract next year. I signed it last month, but we'll be announcing it next year, so it doesn't get swallowed up by christmas news, and one of them was for the new ben konig book.
Speaker 1:So I'm now kind of in a genre that I don't actually read anymore. I don't really read action thrillers anymore.
Speaker 2:It's just crazy. To me that would be more surprising than a success of Poe, because it's something you wrote so long ago and you had to completely. You know you couldn't get across Texas in half an hour. You had so much work.
Speaker 1:You have to do with it and then Conan ordering black pudding for breakfast and things like my head is going what the hell is black pudding? Things like that it's, um, it is, it's, it was, it was a strange, it was a strange, it's a strange thing. And I don't know if I'm still happy about it yet, because I do like the poe series. I love the poe series, I love the way that's going and I've got kind of a whole like 15 book arc kind of sorted out yeah in my head.
Speaker 1:Um, and the the Koenig series kind of is kind of getting in the way of that in my own head. It's got a massive readership as well and I need to service that readership. I can't just ignore that and I can't just say well, the Koenig's like the lesser cousin, it's like the stepchild it's not.
Speaker 1:It's like an annoying little brother yeah, it needs to be taken just as seriously. So when I'm writing a Koenig book, I've got to treat it just as I would a Poe book and do it properly and do my and I need to do my research now. Um, so I'll just come back from New York actually to do a bit of research for, for, for, um, yeah, koenig book and also a standalone which I wrote when nobody asked for. I've got a standalone coming out at some point which and everyone was going what the hell are you doing? You've written another book. Nobody has asked for this book. We're gonna have to buy it now because otherwise someone else will. It's kind of uh, weird and although now I've got my head around it's when I'm writing the koenig book I want to get back to poe, and when I'm writing poe I'm thinking actually I wouldn't mind writing um ben koenig fighting the bear, which is what's just, which is what I'm writing now he's actually fighting a bear. What it is is it can just go absolutely nuts with the koenig series.
Speaker 2:In the post series you're back down to reality to a certain degree, I think, but the other tops you're sort of bounded by laws in the uk yeah, I think that's the thing about when you, if you do, set stuff in the states, it's so vast, you know, and every I would say every state I think people need to understand it's like its own little country, so you can get away with so much more, I think, than you can with a purely uk same.
Speaker 1:Obviously it depends yeah, and lee child said once that, um, he doesn't feel as though he's going over the top because, whatever he thinks of in the, in the us someone's done something worse yeah, I'm sure someone's.
Speaker 2:I'm sure someone's wrestled with a bear.
Speaker 1:Chuck Norris. I mean, I told someone I'm doing a little bit of work with and he sent me a video of Chuck Norris fighting the bear. So that was.
Speaker 2:And I'm going off topic. There's a film called Crawl and it's one of these terrible oh God action. It's a storm, youl, and it's so. It's one of these terrible oh god action. Um, it's a storm, you know. It's a storm in Florida. There's flood, there's flooding and crocodiles are alligators. They go into the house and the people are trapped in the house and they're, you know, they're trying to get, they've got. I know. I watched it in duress and I was like I'm not what. And I watched it. I was like for god's sake. And then, when I had the last little hurricane in florida, was there not a guy with his video? It was crocodile, you know. The mic the night, the next book out, if I got it right. So it's final vow, which is a final vow.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yeah yeah do you want to tellilly 7. It was originally called the Third Light, which was about a sniper, so it was kind of based on the third light on the match rule.
Speaker 1:That's well superstition, that you don't take the third light off a match because it's bad luck, which goes all the way back to the Boer War, I think. And the first time telescopic sights were used on the battlefield and snipers would see a light, they would oh there's a light, and by the time the third person was taken a light, they'd actually aiming and firing. Um, so that's kind of something in the army. So in the army, when I was in the army for 12 years, you wouldn't you wouldn't take a third light of a match. It was just a weird thing.
Speaker 1:Um, but because there's a kind of different theme going on, there's a strong theme of weddings going through the book. They had a very strong cover in mind and the cover didn't fit the title, so they changed it to the Final Vow, which confused a lot of people. But hopefully it's all sorted now, because it was on different formats. It was still the Third Light and then it was the Final Vow, depending on whether you bought the e-book or the hardback. It's all sorted now. Yeah, the final vow, it's out in august.
Speaker 2:I know, are you excited about it. He's booked seven. Yeah, I mean I.
Speaker 1:I kind of always get excited about the post series and nervous I'm just. I just get nervous about the Koenig series because I'm writing something that I don't actually read myself. Yeah, it's very different. I know it's also set in a country I don't know a great deal about, as we've already established, but it's the Poe series.
Speaker 1:I'm kind of the authority on the Poe series, which is why I don't mind talking about it and doing all these big events in front of loads of people, because I can't be challenged. It's not like when I used to do these because I was an assistant chief probation officer in probation, so I was like managing cumbria and part of lancashire and I would go up and do conferences and things and I'd be bluffing it. I'd do bullshit because I hadn't bothered reading the material because by then I wanted to be a writer anyway. So I was basically all my spare time was spent reading books or writing, rather than You're just getting through the day. Yeah, but I am the authority on Poe and Tilly. What I say is it's law. It's the law basically. So I'm excited for it. Yeah, and the next one after that's already written as well. So I've written book eight, which I don't know when that'll be out. Actually it needs a little bit of work, but it's written, it's submitted and I've written a standalone as well. So that's written.
Speaker 2:How many are you writing in a year?
Speaker 1:I try just to write the one properly, because you're writing one. But because Fearless was a pre-written book, I kind of gained a year because I didn't have to write a book that year.
Speaker 1:It took a lot of time to edit but it still gave me like six months of doing nothing. So I wrote that standalone and I caught up on Poe. The last Poe book took me 36 days to get a first draft down. So I'm writing them very quickly. Yeah, I'm writing them very quickly now. Then I mean then I edit them a few times and then I'll read through and things. You've got the bones of it down. Yeah, from start to finish. I can do it in six months comfortably. And that that includes like time off to do other stuff. I mean the commitments outside of um writing the book are getting bigger and bigger as you go on. So the the demands. We're publishing 30 languages now. So I mean that's. There's a lot of demands from foreign publishers and I was out in the us yesterday for nobody's hero that was their publication day. So I've been doing a lot of um zoom interviews at night for their magazines and press and and and things.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of activities have to go on outside of just physically sitting down to learn to balance it as you know, you do and um and you kind of block off bits of bits of time to um right and so, like the start of next year, I'm going to be um writing solidly from january to april okay, that's what kind of blocked off to finish Konig 3, because I'll finish Konig 3 by probably end of Jan yeah, I think the first year I started when I was published and well, the first year does it count?
Speaker 2:half of it doesn't count because we were still in Covid. But I think the second year was my first like challenging year of writing, editing and doing events and getting the balance right. I was so exhausted at the end of that year and in the following year I was like I know I need to change things with book three because it's too, it's too much, it's a lot yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:I think it's important that you get your books, you get your books written. I think to do that you've got to manage your time outside the book, so we don't do all the festivals now so we miss. I'm not doing Capital Crime next year and I'm not doing Bloody Scotland, and the year after I'll do Capital Crime I'll do Bloody Scotland.
Speaker 1:I'll do Halligall every year, just because it's a lot of fun. I'm doing Stockport in February. I might not do it the following February, that kind of thing. You just have to manage your time and see your time as a commodity, and you've only got so much, because you can't just write for 10 hours a day, because your last three hours, four hours, they'll be absolute gobbledygook which you have to rewrite anyway. So you might as well stop. I don't know, I don't know what you're like, but I kind of know when I've had enough for the day, oh, I, I do, I, I. I lose the ability to spell um, and I'm just like a monkey trying to do shakespeare.
Speaker 2:I always say words don't look like words to a certain point, and when I'm at that point, I'm like I'm done. And also I know, I know how my brain works, I know how I work and I'm never, I've never, I'm never gonna be, because I've never have been one of these writers or students who'll be working till two, three, four in the morning, like it, that, that doesn't. That doesn't work for me. So you learn.
Speaker 1:I don't work early in the morning either. I've got a kind of sweet spot between like half nine till about half five. Yeah, that's perfect. I can be quite productive in that in that time, and so I'll do emails and add many things. First thing. Um, when I can be bothered and I'll do I'll just tap away at my phone at night when I've got a bit of downtime.
Speaker 2:That's me. That is literally my process. I mean, there's been occasions I think once I had to be at my because I wasn't even in the country I was in Morocco and I had to be on my laptop at 6 o'clock because I had to get my edits out. But that is not something that I would do regularly, not at all. All right, mike, your last set of questions. Are you an introvert or extrovert, or hybrid of the two?
Speaker 1:I I think I'm a hybrid. I come across as an extrovert, but I can be quite shy on occasions as well, particularly when I'm in a group and I don't know anyone. I I find I find talking to someone I don't know very awkward.
Speaker 2:How did you manage at work? Because you never went on probation. If you're like me, I don't want to talk to you, but you're constantly meeting new people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the thing is, I mean I was very, very shy, like painfully shy, until I was very ill in 2003 and I was told I was going to die. In fact, I was moved to palliative care. I mean it was that kind of deal. Oh wow. So I was like six months in hospital and at that point I made a decision. It was such a weird thing. I thought, if I actually do survive, I'm not going to be shy anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I actually made a decision not to be shy. It was such a weird thing and the first thing is not to care what people think too much and it was so liberating and so I'm much better at it. I mean, public speaking was just a nightmare for me. It really was. I absolutely hated it to the point I didn't apply for certain jobs that I wanted because I knew it would be more be managing meetings and things like that. Um, I was terrified of it. When I came out hospital, I was able to manage meetings with the chief constable in attendance and and things like that. So I actually made a decision a conscious decision does that answer the next question then.
Speaker 2:So what challenge or experience shaped in life shaped you the most?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, yeah, most definitely. I mean it wasn't so much that I came out because I had like six months of chemotherapy and I had a Zimmer frame. I had like special things on my legs because I couldn't move my ankles. It was a state, so I've been quite physically active before then. Ankles it was as a state, so I've been quite physically active before then.
Speaker 1:And so I actually started to write and I was going to do an autobiography of what it's like to be in a cancer ward, as to see people just like you see every day. Then suddenly they're dead and just all this horrific, but again, with the black humor, some dead, funny things happened Dead literally. And when I was writing it down I thought this is a load of rubbish. Who's going to want to read this? Well, I'll tell you what because I'm thinking of writing crime, I'm going to give my protagonist the same illness I had, yeah, and I'm going to have him, having lied, to get back to work. He's hiding all his symptoms, his side effects, and that's the book that got shortlisted for the debut Dagger. So it did.
Speaker 1:It changed me massively, I mean it did and also indirectly led to me the dog and a tumour the size of a rugby ball, the two things that led me to being a crime writer.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. So if you could go back to when you were 25 years old and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 1:Probably don't do a bodyguarding course as you do, at least course with the army because that was like the biggest waste of time. It was something I thought it was like that of beekeeping. Quite frankly, when I left the army you did a computer programme to see what job you'd be suited for. It took about two hours of answering questions like what would you rather do, and when I pressed the results it said soldier, and I thought, well, that was a big fat waste of time. So I never did that with beekeeping and bodyguarding. And now I wish I'd done beekeeping. You've done beekeeping and bodyguard and now I wish I'd done beekeeping.
Speaker 1:But on a more serious note, I I think I kind of wasted that opportunity because I could have done A-levels, um yeah, as part of my pre-release course, whereas I didn't know that because I wanted to do a degree when I got out and universities wouldn't take me because I didn't have any evidence of recent study at a higher level. So I had to go to college and do A levels just to get onto a, onto my social work course. So I could have could have actually saved a year, but it's kind of a sliding doors thing, isn't it? I mean, you don't know what that that might have changed my the entire path of my life. So I mean but yeah, it would have been to do my A levelslevels a year earlier than I did. Nothing massive. It's all about those sliding door moments. Don't ignore the lump in your side. That would have been another big one. Don't just think it's just a Scotch. I've stuck somewhere.
Speaker 2:Pay attention, pay attention to your body and what's going on. So, finally, nw Craven where can listeners of the podcast find you online, you've kind of said, though, but you can tell them again yeah, um, I'm, I've got a facebook page.
Speaker 1:Facebook um twitter for now, blue sky um instagram what? Are you everywhere, all them yeah, honestly, I'm like a fungal rash. I'm everywhere. You'll be muting me before long.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say you're a great rash, but I don't know how that even comes across. Yeah, honestly, I'm like a fungal rash. I'm everywhere. You'll be muting me before long.
Speaker 1:I was going to say you're a great rash, but I don't know how that even comes across. It just sounds wrong. I've got a website. I mean the website is because my wife does it. It's up to date and written sensibly rather than just a picture of me holding a pint of beer. So my website always has up to date stuffdate um stuff and there's a newsletter that my publisher does for me. She can sign up to that via my newsletter, by my website.
Speaker 2:So just the usual thing nothing extraordinary nothing extraordinary. Well, mw Craven, that just leaves me to say thank you so much, and it's been an absolute joy. Thank you so much for being on the conversation, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being on the conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Nadina. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to today's conversation with Nadine Matheson. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Be sure to tune in every Tuesday for a brand new episode featuring more amazing guests. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps the podcast grow and if you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a cup of coffee or sign up on Patreon. The links are in the show notes and if you'd love to join the conversation as a guest, feel free to send an email to theconversation at nadinemaffersoncom. Thanks again for your support and I'll catch you next time.
