Writer Jan Edwards launches Winter Downs, the first book in the Bunch Courtney Investigates series. I tracked down Jan in her writing cave in the wilds of the West Midlands and persuaded her to answer some really, really important questions:
Where would you hide the bodies?
Under someone
else’s patio? In a volcano? Dissolve it in acid? This is a tricky question!
I guess the best way would be to destroy it as
comprehensively as possible and dispose of the rest as far away as possible
from the murder site – preferably in a different country.
To be more serious, modern forensics make things
pretty tough if the body is found. The tiniest spot of bodily fluid or matter
is potentially identifiable and CCTV and tracking on smartphones makes it hard
to go anywhere unnoticed.
Winter
Downs does not have those problems to the same extent.
Reliable scientific/lab work in the 1940s, beyond fingerprinting and detection
of poisons etc, was basic. In a time when few people had telephones, let alone
tablets and smartphones, the emphasis was always weighted toward eye witnesses.
Crime: Poirot or Girl on a Train?
There
are only so many new stories and you can argue that every story has been done
before. And yes, I do see that attraction of Girl on a Train. It’s a good read, but for me there were so many
tropes shared with Rear Window, and
or course Agatha Christie’s 4.40 From
Paddington, that it didn’t feel it was fresh enough to become a firm
favourite with me. So it’s Poirot every time. The classic whodunnit is always
tough to beat.
Do you have music playing when you write and if so
what are your tracks of choice?
Not
always but yes, I do often have something in the background. Usually something
instrumental, or instrument heavy, otherwise I get caught up in the lyrics and
lose track of what I am writing. Driving rock for the action pieces or
psychedelia or folky based music for the more cerebral or quieter parts. I did
get some 1940s CDs for Winter Downs to
immerse myself in the period
I have a fairly eclectic taste in music generally,
so choosing a few tracks would always be hard. But if I am following on from Q2
then I have a selection of albums – yes, I am that old fashioned – that I play
when writing because they are often instrumental or are so familiar that I
don’t need to listen to the lyrics. Muse (good driving rock for writing
action); Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the
Centre of the Earth – for the same reasons as Muse; Liquid Sound Company -
psychedelic rock that allows me to drift
Garden; Tea Party; Kirsty McColl, Steeleye Span; Fairport Convention;
Jethro Tull; Robert Plant; Shooglenifty... there are many more. I don’t much like crooners or the pseudo soul
that passes for R&B these days which means pretty much anything that might
win X Factor is out for me :-) That and boy bands!
Romance: Pride and Prejudice or Fifty Shades?
Pride and
Prejudice on every level that counts. I need say no more.
What one genre/plot cliché would you get rid of?
Genre:
Zombies, if they can be seen as a genre? Because a/ real zombies are not
re-animated corpses and b/ zombies that eat brains are rather limited in scope.
Cliche: ‘damaged’ cops (especially on TV). It’s
come to a point where every cop is not just a maverick but a borderline basket
case. They’d be on permanent sick leave in the real world!
Is there one subject you would never write about as
an author?
Porn?
Sports? Hunting Aardvarks in Antarctica?
I don’t think I could do Mills & Boon style romances any justice
purely because that style of novel just isn’t my thing. I can see how it is a
very hard thing to do well; i.e. without coming over as really cheesy. The same
would apply to my writing a Western or a shoes’n’shopping novel. All genres
have their invisible cloaks of verisimilitude and any readers of those books
will always spot a faker.
But genres are not the same as subjects; of which
few are totally off limits. Taboos can be dealt with if you approach them in
the right way and do enough research so that what you saying is both correct
and credible. There are a few subjects I would probably shy away from purely on
the grounds that I don’t feel qualified to write about them with any authority
What was the first (*genre ) story you read and
what kind of impact did it make on you?
That is
almost impossible to answer. Taken at face value Noddy, whose best friend is a gnome would count as fantasy...
Looking at more adult fiction? Back in the late 60s
fiction tended to leap from children’s to adult with little YA or Teen fiction
in between so I read a lot of the westerns bought by my (elder) brothers, discovering
Michael Moorcock’s Count Brass and Corum books, which sent me down the
fantasy route. They were so very different from anything else I had ever read.
The specific genre they came under at the time was Science Fantasy, which is
not a term you hear any more.
Other books that made an impact at the time were
Tolkien’s LOTR and Carrol’s Alice, which are both technically
fantasy, though Alice would probably
be called Urban Fantasy had it been written now as the contemporary fiction it
was in 1865. These books were all
required reading for the budding hippy circa 1968!
That said I also read huge amounts of classic crime
and devoured all the usual suspects; Poirot, Wimsey, Marple and the rest of the
band. But I have also read a lot of 19thc and early 20thC fiction. Austen’s Pride and Prejudice being a firm
favourite, as is Du Maurier’s Rebecca,
all of which has put me in good stead for writing Winter Downs, set in 1940!
****
Thanks, Jan! So what's Winter Downs all about, then?
In January of 1940 a small rural community on the Sussex Downs, already preparing for invasion from across the Channel, finds itself deep in the grip of a snowy landscape, with an ice-cold killer on the loose.
Bunch Courtney stumbles upon the body of Jonathan Frampton in a woodland clearing. Is this a case of suicide, or is it murder? Bunch is determined to discover the truth but can she persuade the dour Chief Inspector Wright to take her seriously?
Winter Downs is published on 3rd June 2017, by Penkhull Press in paperback and ebook format.
ISBN 978-0-9930008-6-7
For further information please contact Penkhull Press
