Why weddings can be murder for Val McDermid [INTERVIEW]
Val McDermid and Danuta Kean are currently appearing at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate (19-22 July 2012).
Where does Wire in the Blood creator Val McDermid get her ideas? Danuta Kean investigates.
Weddings can be murder for Val McDermid. As can radio shows, conversations, walks on beaches and even book reviews. For these are among the unlikely inspirations for the crime writer’s 25 bestsellers, including recent UK number one The Retribution (Sphere, 2012).
‘When I started off I thought I had maybe three or four novels in me,’ she explains over a cup of tea on the lawn of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, her old college and where she is hosting a crime writing conference ‘The concept that I would still be full of ideas after 25 books seems bizarre, but there has never been a point in the last 25 years when I have thought, “What am I going to write?”’
For those of us who struggle to realize one idea McDermid’s admission that she ‘always has at least three ideas at an advanced stage’ in her imagination will be a source of wonder as well as envy. ‘Things come from small beginnings,’ she explains. ‘It can be a throwaway line on the radio or a little anecdote someone shares over dinner.’
Unlike other writers the Queen of British Noir does not scribble these crumbs of inspiration into a notebook. ‘I work on the principle that if it’s not interesting enough to remember, it’s not interesting enough for a reader to want to read about it.’ Her voice retains the tough, no nonsense tones of her working class roots in Fife, Scotland. It is one of those accents that can make a whisper sound sinister and clashes with our surroundings – a rose garden in an elite English university.
It was from here that she spied the inspiration for Trick of The Dark (Sphere), her 2010 standalone thriller. ‘I was sitting on the lawn just by the river, over there,’ she points towards the banks of the Cherwell, where a girl in a punt trails her hand in the water, while her male companion lazily pushes it along.
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Read the full article and Val McDermid’s writing tips in Publishing Talk Magazine issue #01.
[Image © Alan Peebles]
