[Music] Hello I’m Marcus Railton and this is the Scotscare podcast. Scotscare is the only charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged Scots in London through a range of support including mental health therapy, financial grants, advocacy, sheltered housing for older Scots, job coaching, social events, befriending and support for Children and Families. The Charity’s been running for 400 years to help break the cycle of poverty experienced by some Scots.
In this series of the scotscare podcast I’ll be chatting to celebrities and supporters of the charity that have also forged a life in the capital away from home and about the ups and downs that can bring.
Scotscare: supporting Scots away from home in London.
On the podcast today is best-selling crime writer Christopher brookmire Chris created the Jack Parlabane character who features in many of
his novels he also writes under the pseudonym Ambrose Parry alongside his wife Dr Marissa heitzman add to this a
handful of sci-fi novels TV and video game credits and it’s no surprise that
Christopher brookmeyer has sold over 2 million books it’s an absolute pleasure to have him on the Scots care podcast
today Scott’s care helping to break the cycle of
deprivation for Scots in London hi Chris hi hi
have you been writing today no I haven’t um because Marissa and I just finished
the new Ambrose party the first draft last week and we sent that in Friday so
um no it’s one of the first one of the first times and I don’t know how many wins when I can actually say I haven’t
been reading when you’re not in at the point where you’re finishing the first draft do you write every single day no
matter how you feel I probably do uh no every day you know in terms of every day
of the week but most of the working week I’ll go walking
and that’s kind of how I write that I’ll think of ideas or I’ll dictate to myself
and then when I get back to the house and I try and scream that um and if it’s if it’s going if there’s
ideas are flowing it I’ll keep acting whatever day of the week it is but I do find that it goes beyond about
sometimes about seven days eight days and you’re having a break it starts to grind every bit you know and you take a
wee break it it all starts to flow a bit better so I don’t think um it’s rewarding to try and read
absolutely every day yeah it’s interesting you said um if it’s flowing you keep going and it
made me think I took the kids to Roald Dahl’s house recently it’s it’s not that far from where I where I live and he
there’s this great video of him talking about how he writes and he he was saying that if he’s in a really good bit he’ll
actually stop because the next day it’s far easier it was far easier for him to
get started again at that point yeah I can I can see the point that I have to pick it up uh it probably makes you feel
good if you can kind of pick up the piece again um but I think our party’s always
thinking well if this is going well I want to nail it yeah I mean sometimes if
I’ve been out a long walk and I’ve got a whole load of material um I’ll feel very happy if I know that
that’s what I’ll work on the next day and sometimes if I’ve developed it part
of the the way along the process uh it’s helpful to not try and
write that evening and sometimes the the ideas will be more developed if you wait yeah I totally get what you mean by that
almost kind of sleep on them and they’re kind of ruminating your head a bit don’t they yeah yeah do you have a particular setup because when when we went to see
Roald Dahl’s house the kids couldn’t believe that he could have worked in this this awful shed with this ratty armchair
and he had this board Chris that he could have jammed across the the arms of the armchair and he obviously he wrote
long hands and that’s that’s what what for him but you can you write anywhere or do you have to have a have it set up
just so I kind of in I was going to say recent memory but
going back quite so many many years of a good stage where I can kind of write
anywhere in as much as I’m often what I have to be able to do is walk so it doesn’t matter where I’m
walking I can read and if I’m if I’m working on stuff that I’ve already mapped out then it doesn’t matter if
we’re on with my laptop I mean without years ago when my son was young uh I remember writing in soft play areas you
know with like yeah opening noise I mean I would sometimes wear noise canceling
headphones but there’s only so much they can do when you know those like 200 kids scream at each other but if the idea is
focused in my head I can I can write but obviously I prefer
um my own space and also I prefer about my own computer monitor to the laptop
for some reason I like I’m having more of a real estate on the on the screen
yeah that’s that’s just ideal I mean if I’m what if I’m on the road um promoting or something I can work
away quite happily in a hotel room right as long as I can go for a walk
that’s that’s always the the absolute deal breaker for me so when you sit down
at the at the beginning of a story do you know how it’s going to end do you plot everything out
it was hard to see what the beginning constitutes you know um I mean if you’re
talking about when I’m writing page one uh I usually know how roughly how it’s
going to end or what is going to be revealed but sometimes they if you say the beginning of a story sometimes at
the beginning of a story is a far more nebulous concept you know you might have an idea of a character or a scenario and
at that point I wouldn’t know how it would work out but I wouldn’t start writing the book until I know roughly
what’s going to be revealed at the end um and weirdly uh frequently the last
thing I write is the first thing you’re going to read because once I’ve been all the way through and I know the story I
know the characters I I’ll often write a a prog or a first chapter that
um I couldn’t have written if I didn’t already know how everything else played out yeah that makes sense
but like I remember seeing that and when it software when they made doom and
Quake in these games the the last level that we’d make would be the first level you encountered and it was all often one
of the best design level because they’d learn so much yes all of course about that and also is the first thing that
you’re going to encounter so I had such a uh it was such a good experience and I
think that’s it’s the same with a novel last week um the last thing I wrote in the new Amber Rose party was a a prologue which
Marissa and I had talked about for a long time but I kept saying I’ll write this last you know when going back right
to the the beginning of books like quite ugly one morning I I read that 20 years
ago Chris and it hit me like a steam train I kind of thought here’s a guy writing crime fiction at least with
sarcasm mixed with comedy and I I loved it I still to this day it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and I’ve never
read any didn’t like it and I wondered when you left journalism or when you were saying you know what I’m going to
be a writer full-time did you have to pull back a bit because your your style is full on when you were
trying to pitch to Publishers where they’re saying oh we like it but can you pull it back or where are the accepting of this this great new thing it was kind
of the opposite of what you may assume in the incredible morning was actually my fourth attempt at a novel and and the
the three previous ones didn’t get anywhere with Publishers because I was
writing what I thought Publishers would want it was actually raining in my
Natural Instincts then and then I decided you know I’m gonna rate someone that’s just for my own Amusement so it
was tapping into my sense of humor in my um my sensibilities really and at that
point that’s when I got an agent and that’s when there was interesting Publishers and they didn’t really ask me
to tone down much at all they were hugely excited by I think the fact that this was a very different type of cream
rating do you think publishing was more more open 20 years ago all I seem to see is celebrity biographies and cookbooks
these days no I mean it’s easy to get that impression because I think the way in which we encounter groups and whether
it’s it’s online a lot of the time you know if you’re looking on the front page of Amazon or on a Kindle or something that
gets far more limited and sort of curated by algorithms and I think if you
actually wander around any good Bookshop and we’ll show there is a as much of a
diversity as it always was but what has changed is I think the marketing of the books and the publishing process has
become more micromanaged than it was um I think that the Publishers are
always just it’s not so much the the wary of a mistake I think it’s like they
they feel the responsibility to how they can get your book out to the most readers or who and how they can make
sure it ends up in front of people who respond to it so I don’t think it’s true
that they they take less risks or that they’re they’re they’re very homogeneous
in what they’re publishing there’s a certain homogeneity creeps into things like cover design if something has
become very successful but I think that’s partly driving a game by things like the Kindle because in the past you
could have and I cover that uh an elaborate title like some of mine and a
more um elliptical image but now if that novel
cover has to appear as a thumbnail on a device then that tiny thumbnail has to convey
an awful lot at a glance so we always have to have the title which you’re not going to be allowed to call your book
150 in the middle of the night or all following games until somebody loses an eye you can only get away with that
these days but also has to convey the genre or something of the tone so I I see why
um they end up doing things like it’s content in yoga for years it was so many
crane roles on top including mahim would have a a woman in a red car or whatever back to the camera
um it became like in a visual shorthand I suppose
Scott’s care helping to break the cycle of deprivation for Scots in London
can I just talk about the number of books you’ve sold you’ve sold over 2 million books and I think my only
question is can you even imagine that how do you get your head around that number um it doesn’t sound quite as impressive
when you divide by the number of Novel stuff problems so it’s easy to get my head during that number and with that in
mind I mean it’s the thing that I feel more um rather than the number of books sold is
is just essentially a number of books written that are and still being in print so still being able to do this
quarter of a century after the first novel and in fact um the very fact of quite ugly one
morning still being in print is a matter of great pride and some surprise to me because it felt very much of its time
when I wrote out it was very geared towards the the politics of the time so
there must have been something else in there that was a bit more Universal if it’s still in print
um 26 years later it’s interesting you say that because I think it does still stand up and another book I’ve just
started reading again was espadr Street by Ian Banks and in fact this you know
there’s no mention of mobile phones in it but I think you know and it kind of reminds me of your books as well because the Scottish and they’re real and
they’re cheeky I couldn’t work out when I was lying in bed the other night reading Espada Street why it stands up
so well because it does seem quite timeless it doesn’t seem debted or edged at all do you think there’s a secret
formula to that I think it’s that um human psychology and emotions don’t
change much so if you get that right um your the book is still going to
resonate with people and in the case of expedition
you’re maybe more um Hostage to seeming dated if you’re writing about a field of the Arts or
technology or something that has changed greatly but I think um the music business has changed a lot
but still people can relate to the the Journey of of people in a band together the dynamic of that and the awkwardness
of of David we are you know Danny um that people can relate to you know I
I always thought phone number a character who was as funny as it was kind of heartbreaking because you just
felt for them all the time yeah I think that that sympathy that you can generate for a character that stays with people
when um other elements May otherwise seem dated so I think it’s it’s the ability
to get the reader to connect with the character emotionally is the thing that keeps abroad relevant is that is that a
good piece of advice for people who want to write a book is it about the humanity and the empathy I mean you must have of
people saying what is it I need to succeed in writing a novel yeah I think that as I mean people are always often
looking for what is the a great hook um and obviously that that will sell a
book but actually reading the book you you realize very quickly that it’s not
about the hook the hook may help sell it and Market it but the rating of the story The telling the story is all about
how do you make the reader feel for the characters even if they’re the the less
sympathetic characters on the circles do you ever wanted your ideas or stop I mean you talk about obviously getting
out and getting away from the computer and walking and driving but do you ever have moments of insecurity where you
think what if there’s not another plot here I don’t I mean there’s always this sort of insecurity of thinking well the
next book be engaging bills it’s an I I’ve learned to be patient you know
there might not be a plot idea immediately um but often that’s because I’ve not
given myself enough time to start you know um it’s not maybe it’s not been long enough since I finished the last book
but there’s usually some idea coming along or often you get blindsided by an
idea I was I was trying to develop um an idea recently and I saw something
just something I hated to say offhand and it just could have came at me sideways and all
of a sudden the wheels were tunneling you know so um it’s about the cliche that you you kind
of don’t go looking for it it comes and finds you but it does an element of that being true you know that you shouldn’t
be focusing on it too directly you you think about other things I I don’t even
fascinating I mean years ago as part of the end of the film festival with
um there was a filmmaker out there was myself and there was a neuroscientist
and he was talking about the how we we were wrong to imagine that there is a
sort of single spark of an idea that actually what happens is we’re having ideas and making connections all the
time but once we’ve kind of Hit Upon something that we’re going to build we
will continue to filter and hold on to the ideas that suit that and there’s a
kind of accretion process and that builds and builds so it’s actually it’s quite hard to remember the point where
you had a spark that like all that because really it wasn’t one idea you get so
many ideas it’s just that you decided to which of those ideas were going to be useful to you so it’s kind of I think
the thinking about as an accretion process is quite helpful so you don’t think
that you don’t get worried that there isn’t some ball of lightning going to come along and ignite your next story
it’s like you just wait and see what it starts to build the creative process which is massively important to you is
also important to be able to step away from it completely and have a complete break I read something that you were
talking about football being therapeutic struck a nerve with me because I don’t know if you’ve read in the book there’s
a book called status anxiety by Alan the bottom and you know I’ve read some other Island about some work with no other one
he writes about that he writes about the power of anonymity within football crowds and where you can just go and and
not worry about you know the gas bill or the kids or the job or how the book is going to finish
you can just be there yeah I think I think that’s the the level of Engagement you have
everything is focused on what’s happening in the patch and you I mean I sometimes the extent to which I can
become emotionally invested in football but the plus side is that from that period of time you’re not thinking about
your day job I’d say that that’s I’ve learned that um I took up guitar a few
years ago is a an um involved went with a front loving crane writers and that’s another area
where I’m able to completely detach from writing because it does obviously
there’s a kind of technical element to it and it’s physical but it’s also it takes my my head somewhere completely
different that’s the land that’s the band you play with other crime writers isn’t it yes yes fun loving trainees
there’s six of us but playing the guitar whether it’s practicing for the band or even just learning to play a song or
singing a song um I can’t think about plot and character so it’s really therapeutic in
that respect and it is valuable to disengage from it because Mark Bellingham who is also in the front
loving Creamery to us he once said that when you’re writing a book you’re never
not writing it yeah there’s once you’ve commenced it it’s true keeps up on you
all the time it’s popping in your head in the shower you know it’s popping in your head when you’re doing other things
uh and so there has to be times during the day where you can do something that
prevents you thinking about it I mean I like Mark billingham’s books too and I think they’re there’s a real darkness to
some of his writing as well so I I think even from you know I know he hasn’t committed these crimes he’s not
investigating these crimes but there must be an importance to be able to to take that stuff out of your head it
would be fascinating to look at what the process is how we as writers isolate some of the really dark things
and extract something from them without almost like without getting too exposed you know it’s like and Perfection some
kind of radioactive isotope which you know we we derive some kind of power from it without getting radiation
sickness because Mark talks about um the green green quote about there’s a
a shadow device at the heart of every writer that lets you focus in on
something Dreadful you know it’s a year of something Dreadful happening and the party is a little yeah but that would
make a great story you know and maybe it’s a part that is able to
um just detach yourself enough from the horrible house exploring that horror or
that that Darkness as it would affect your characters yeah well it’s always funny because
um I mean I’ve known Mark for over 20 years and and my association with my or
who I associate with my is always just laughed up you know he’s he’s a stand-up comic he’s a very really light-hearted
individual you know but that that goes for I think most crime writers are they
don’t tend to be uh the women individuals when you um come up against them in real life so but the band we’re
all much more much less in that respect when the band are together or some of them talking about dark Deeds
you know just making each other laugh so much of your writing is set in Scotland and I presume that helps you keep
connected you know deeply connected to the authenticity of the plot but you also sell very well in America and I
just wonder how how Americans react to that kind of writing have you met many of your readers over there not a huge amount
I’ll get uh the occasional email one obviously reviews and actually uh books
haven’t sown brilliantly in America and I think partly that was that American Publishers didn’t quite know what to
make of me I think I was first published shortly after train sporting and so they maybe thought this is sort of Scottish
vernacular fiction without realizing that what I was doing was was really ostensibly far more mainstream and
Commercial I’ll show you whether it’s crime fiction um so I I I think it’s significant that
the the book of mine has done the best in America was Black Widow yeah because it was about things that were pretty
Universal it’s about you know money in the East and whether you actually can trust a person if
you’ve kind of you wanted to believe too much that they will read for you you
know when you said Mr warning scenes so I think um when you had that’s a universality
you’ll find readership anywhere um but actually America’s a very insular
market in terms of its crane fiction there’s not that many non-american writers who do particularly
well over there I think they like to read about themselves you know far more than nothing we we often part of the
escapism of crime fiction is we want to read about somewhere slightly exotic to
us so obviously the American confliction fits the bill but also sort of scandin
Noir or um whatever else that might come along yeah it’s interesting to say scandi what
no Ark is what sometimes frustrates me about our country Chris being Scotland is that we suffer a bit we can’t
separate yourself on this shortbread tin image of our country and then the people
journalists were talking about Chris brookmire Tartan War yeah and I couldn’t decide what I thought of I thought oh
you know is it is it taught in Noir or would you is it just Noir Noir you know well in my case it’s not even Noir
I think I get quite as a handy label so I mean such a ass off placement of
different Scottish rating um under that that one umbrella but um in my case always resisted into our
part of it because I think our very ultimately optimistic kind of books you
know they’re frequently escapists but even if they’re not escapists they’re pretty Redemptive you know I don’t write
horrible existential week Noir novels but just to come back to the the the
sort of shortbread tin thing I think that’s it can be and disappointing you see that
vision of Scotland because for instance crane friction is one of the places where you see the sort of bountiest
variety and then multi-layeredness of of Scottish society and Scottish culture
Scott’s care for Scots in London in need of support Financial practical or
emotional help can I just ask you something there’s something that just popped into my head
does Jack Parliament does he age in your novels yeah yeah um I was when I brought them back after
a bit to some extent and make them more
realistic but I was very fortunate I went back and checked and I had never said what age he was and so I was able
to kind of work out roughly what the there’s an opera and lore age ranges might be
um given the time that had passed and yeah what I’ve been writing about um when I first wrote about it I imagine
someone who was older than me um but who’s probably closer to my age when I was writing about him later on uh
certainly the the the three books that I published most recently were definitely more about someone who was hitting
middle age and all the this other existential crisis that go along with it yeah so in some ways when I read um Ian
Rankin I kind of felt towards the end he had almost painted himself in a corner with with Rebus because I could have
felt as if I I could keep on reading the rebuses but it got too old and he had to retire and then it became a problem yeah
I think Ian was always um very conscientious in terms of mapping Rebus to the real world but also
that includes things like how long our policeman’s allowed to work yeah that’s a shame he didn’t just bucket you know
that whatever I like doing well if you stay the same age
when it came to the screen a few years back it was James Nesbitt who played Jack palaban were you happy with that
yeah I mean there was a bit six or seven years in development and not getting
anywhere and it was only really when he could he committed to it that suddenly broadcasters were opening their wallets
and at the time he was the probably the biggest actor in British television so
um you know you can’t really see better than that I mean obviously there’s a lot of people who can upset on my behalf on
the grounds that it was a not a Scottish actor playing the part but I think um
you just have to be pragmatic when it comes to these things Whatever Gets something made when I go back I kind of
see him now in the books and which I think is a good thing and because he’s an edgy guy and I think they played the
part well when it’s it’s going back to Rebus actually it’s when I like I think John Hannah’s a superb actor but I
didn’t think he fitted his Rebus because when I read the books now I obviously can stop being rubbished I think we’re
with them crowds on my morning the tone was right yeah James but played the part with the
right tone um I always felt like John Hannah would have been perfect for Rebus about 10
years later you know I think so he was I think he was slightly Too Young at the time for
how people perceived Rebus even then yeah um so I I don’t think it was that he was he
was wrong for the parks I think you know John brings a certain
a character in every I just think it was at that time uh there was just he looked
every bit or maybe you still associated with younger Parts more than he would be now you also written sci-fi was that a
was that a tough gear change no it really wasn’t I mean I I think
there’s another area where I took a degree of inspiration for me in Banks because Ian haven’t done both for so
long and made that I wasn’t thinking this was going to be a a huge issue with
my Publishers because it was the same publisher as Ian and E M Banks and I’ve
always been a fan of of Science Fiction so I felt quite comfortable in the genre I kind of stumbled into it and as much
as when I came up with the idea for pandemonium yeah and realized this is going to be this technically this is a
science fiction story but it mostly takes place in a very recognizable very
modern um sort of Scottish environment with very down-to-earth characters but then
something like Bedlam that gets far more kind of proper sci-fi and then places in the darkness it’s a space station but it
was it didn’t feel like much of a jump because places in the darkness is essentially conceived as a crime story
you know it was the idea was said could you write a crime story set
in space you know if that was the starting point Bedlam I mean Bedlam got chained got turned into an actual game
did that come as a surprise to you was that out the blue or was that always in development when you it actually started
um as the the game developers came to me first coincidentally because they’d read
a few more books and most recently they drained pandemonium and they picked up on all the gaming references in
pandemonium and they said would I be interested working with them to develop a first person shooter and so we had a
lot of chat we were meeting up the mines because we’d all grown up with with video games and and we’d watched how the
games had evolved so I had this idea could have come up with a concept that allowed us to show how games had evolved
and how our relationships were games had evolved rather than just come up with our generic sci-fi shooter and I came up
with this idea and I realized actually the best way to develop this is to go write it as a novel first so I did that
while they were trying to get the project off the ground but um the book came out and suddenly it was
a lot easier for them to get funding for the game because there was a book you know it could have added to legitimacy
so the the two things were always developed in tandem and I wrote all of
the uh the dialogue in the game and I wrote a lot of the the sort of outline
stuff once we decided what parts of the book we could realistically make into a game for that budget uh I came up with
some of the concepts for how certain goals would be uh mapped out so that it
all fit in with the story and um in fact I’m I’m voicing some of the characters
in the game as well and uh although they put all sorts of weird effects on so you’d never know it was me and my son
did all of the other section in the game where you encountered all these obnoxious American teenage Gamers and he
came up with all the voices for that because normally really can he do uh
that wasn’t just one accent he would do all these like Southern Accents or West Coast accents or the East Coast accents
I’d love to do that to Chris that’d be great yeah I would do that for nothing just to be in a video game I think that sounds an awful lot of fun it was
because then also we had um uh Robert Florence and Kirsty strain uh doing the
principal parts and also doing a lot of small parts because they’ve got such
um versatile voice talents you know that they’re best known for on listing
um so although Robert Florence has been involved in kind of games journalism for a long long time so they were like just
perfect for the rules now you’ve achieved so much over the last you know 25 years do you have any particular
Ambitions left I mean you’re still a relatively young man uh yes are we both yeah I’m always kind of keen to take off
what I haven’t done so far and I’d like to see um something of my my work on the big
screen there’s a pandemonium movie has been in development for a while and it’s getting his aging closer to happening uh
and and black will do similarly’s been developed and Marissa and I have been we’ve been telling her hand to
screenwriting to adapt the cut in in conjunction with that and a production
company in Glasgow so yeah I’d like to see more of my stuff um up here on big and small screen that’s my next area of
ambition Chris thank you very much for joining us today on the scotscare podcast it’s it’s been a delight to speak to you oh it’s been a pleasure
