Interview with Graham Smith - Reader, Reviewer & Writer
I met Graham Smith a couple of months ago at "Bloody Scotland" and recognised him as one of the guys from Harrogate who gets to wear a press badge! We got talking over coffee and I was delighted when he agreed to be one of my first victims at The Crime Warp!
So here it is - a question and answer session with Graham Smith:-
Jackie - Graham, I understand that like me, you’ve been a crime fiction fan since you were old enough to read Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five”, what path did your subsequent progression to adult crime take?
Graham - I took a traditional kind of clichéd route. After I’d exhausted the Famous Five and Secret Seven I moved onto The Three Detectives by Robert Arthur, Jr, then The Hardy Boys followed via Willard Price’s Adventure Series . After that I moved towards more adult thrillers like Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels and then one glorious day I discovered Alistair MacLean. After that I was hooked on crime action thrillers and I moved from there naturally into thrilling crime fiction.
Jackie - Have your reading habits altered since you started reviewing and writing? If so, in what way?
Graham - That’s a tough one. As a reader no I don’t feel that I read any differently. What I do is read better. I take in more. Absorb details better. By taking in more I get more from the books. As a writer I appreciate clever plotlines and can dismantle what I am reading better than I used to. That way I can see behind the curtain so to speak. I am constantly inspired by the books I read and I have a line in one of my Harry Charters stories which was directly inspired by a line Tom MacDonald wrote in his book The Charlestown Connection. He described a drinkers bar as “…the kind of place you can hear a pin drop but never a dime…” in Detecting Malicious Murder I described a similar bar with the line “…you could hear your hair grow but you’d never hear a conversation.” The hardest thing as a writer is not to let other people’s words and ideas drown out your own, even if they are better. You have to keep your own voice and cultivate it to its finest point.
Jackie - At Harrogate, several authors have said that they really hate the device of “looking in a mirror and describing what is seen” to convey a physical description of a character. Mine is when the serial killer targets the cop or his/her family. What is your biggest bugbear in crime fiction?
Graham - My biggest bugbear is bad endings. After having invested time reading a novel I get very annoyed when I see a bad ending. Some examples of this group of pet hates are, the killer having one appearance in the novel before being unmasked. Whether it is on page two or the second last page it really grates me and smacks of an author who hasn’t plotted properly and have lazily stuck another character in to solve the problem. The hero dying in almost every book by the same author. While it may be accurate to the story in each case I cannot read this author’s books any more as I don’t want to grow to like another character who I expect to die. Once or twice is fine. Nine times out of ten is not. I also want some sense of justice, the killer / terrorist / bad guy should be punished in some form. A few loose ends are okay as is unfinished business between series characters, but I cannot abide the major plot not being finalised
Jackie - Tell us how you got into book reviewing.
Graham - I got into book reviewing via a semi drunken conversation. I was at the Harrogate Crime Festival and I got talking to one of the Crimesquad.com gang. When I found out what he did I quickly slurred, “Wow. Any jobs going.” He introduced me to the editor, who showed me the site on his laptop and told me to write a review of a book I had recently finished. In between panels I wrote a review of Pig Island by Mo Hayder and sweet-talked the receptionist into typing it up for me as my handwriting is terrible. The editor is a firm believer in “sink or swim” as within a month of being accepted I had to read and review Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid followed by The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown what was the follow up to the then best selling book ever.
Jackie - Is there a specific process that you go through when reviewing a book?
Graham - I tend to read the book through while making mental notes about key points I want to make. Then I let my thoughts mingle with my subconscious for a day or so. Then I grab the laptop and write the review. I used to revise them an awful lot when I first started but now I have my system in place I rarely change anything now.
Jackie - If you really hated a book would you review it honestly, diplomatically or not at all? Would it make a difference if the author was successful and well established or relatively new on the scene?
Graham - If I hated a book I would not get past page 100. That is my cut off point and the editor insists that if we have nothing nice to say then we should say nothing. This is a policy I heartily agree with. I will make negative comments on aspects of a book in a review but in a way that I feel is constructive. I love books and reading. Why would I want to hurt them? Also as an author myself I know of the work which has gone into writing a novel. I class myself as an enthusiast not a bully.
Jackie - Following the infamous Amazon review scandal, you said “Reviews are now tainted in the eyes of the public.” Do you have any ideas on how Amazon could remedy the current flaws in their review system?
Graham - Would you like me to sort World Peace while I’m at it? I have a somewhat simplistic view of things as I do not know what happens in the Amazon office. What I would do if Amazon was my company, is hire a top notch hacker and get him to write an algorithm which identified the computers used to upload any review or product. If the IP addresses matched or were in the same building then the review would never be unpublished and the product would be removed from sale for one month. A big disclaimer on the upload page would warn all would be sock puppeteers of the consequences. This would make it much harder for people to leave fake reviews without having to travel to different locations. The benefits would hardly be outweighed by the inconvenience.
Graham has published several books including "Eleven - The Hardest Way", "The Harry Charters Chronicles" and "Gunshots - Ten Blows to the Abdomen". I have read the first two and thoroughly enjoyed the punchy delivery and deliciously dark twists to Graham's tales of the unexpected.
Jackie - Your own writing style is quite distinctive. I particularly noted your use of non-clichéd and deliciously original phraseology, which for me evoked a strong and vivid sense of situation. Which writer has most influenced your own writing and why?
Graham - I cannot credit / blame any one writer for influencing me. I feel that I have been influenced and taught by every writer I have ever read. Some have shown me good things to do and others have shown me bad things not to do. All I’ve done is used what I’ve thought is good and not used what I’ve thought is bad. Although I will say that I try to use dialogue tags very sparingly while injecting pace, twists and mystery into my stories.
Jackie - Do you think that reviewing books helps your own writing process?
Graham - Reviewing has definitely been a help to me as a writer. Firstly being a reviewer has taught me an awful lot about the craft behind the storytelling. Writers tools like foreshadowing, back-story, romantic interests and general plotting are all much easier to write when you have understood and written about them. If asked for tips on writing I would also tell the person asking to go away and read a book and then write a critical review of all the elements in the book, namely pace, plot, prose, characterisation, how the book made them feel and so on. Being a reviewer for Crimesquad.com has also opened a hell of a lot of doors for me in the writing world. I have been to publishers parties, interviewed some massive names in the crime fiction world like David Baldacci, Lee Child, Dennis Lehane and many others. I have also made a lot of good friends in the writing community.
Jackie - You also run a busy hotel in Gretna Green which I imagine will involve lots of weddings, how do organise your writing day around that?
Graham - I tend to write when I get home at night or on my days off. I do not write every night as I have a wife and son to spend time with as well. Sometimes I can go for a month without writing anything and then I can put down nearly 20K in a week.
Jackie - The "Harry Charters Chronicles" is set in America which I think is quite an ambitious thing to do. Is that something you were conscious of at any stage?
Graham - The first two stories I wrote for Harry Charters are very short and when I wrote them I gave no thought to his setting other than the fact that it is in America. A fifties private eye would not have worked in Gretna Green or indeed in many UK locations. When I came to add to his stories to create his chronicles I knew I’d have to give him a defining location. To do that I went onto Google Maps and searched for places in the southern area of mainland America. Then I amalgamated some to create the mythical town of Mariscoper. As the stories took shape Mariscoper grew a college, a river and docks. Being brutally honest I chose to make somewhere up rather than spend the time doing research on a real place and what it was like in the fifties. My rationale being that if I make it up then I can’t get it wrong by not doing my research properly. Although I did take Harry on a couple of trips away from Mariscoper just to shake things up a bit. With A Head Made of Stone I wanted to write a “Reacher” like story where he turns up in a town, sorts the bad guys out and romances the girl. I also used this story to show a lot of his back story by taking him back to his own hometown of Kirkstone.
Jackie - I will add that I think you do the American scene-setting brilliantly and if I hadn’t known it was written by a Brit, I’d be none the wiser. Did you undertake any specific research on that?
Graham - I did next to no research whatsoever for the Harry Charters Chronicles. What I did do was look up a few things like beer brands with my research assistant Mr Google. The rest is all made up from memories of books read and the odd film I’ve seen. When I write Harry Charters I have Humphrey Bogart doing a voiceover in my head.
Jackie - What’s in the pipeline?
Graham - I’m busy re-writing my novel after an agent took a look at it and gave me some pointers. Plus the reviewing and the odd short story. Once the novel is re-written I will be doing more short stories and then I plan to start a new novel.
Graham - Being a hotel manager as well as a budding author with a great list of contacts and friends in the industry, I decided to give a little something back to the industry which has entertained me for so many years. What I came up with is a low cost, high interest weekend of crime writing master-classes which will give the participants an opportunity to pitch their novel directly to an agent. More details can be found at www.crimeandpublishment.co.uk
Jackie - If, for one day, you could be any character from any book you’ve read, who would it be and why?
Graham - The easy answer would be someone like Bond or Reacher, i.e. a hard-man who always gets the girl, kills the bad guys and saves the world / town / damsel. However I’m not going be so predictable. I would like to be Logan MacRae for a day just so I could finally meet the irrepressible Detective Inspector Roberta Steel. Stuart MacBride has created a monstrously funny and unique character in her and I’d love to see her in the flesh.
Jackie - I also love DI Roberta Steele. In fact, I think she is one of the most wonderful characters ever invented in crime fiction. Recently, I had a conversation with friends about who we thought could play her if the series got televised. There is one Scottish actress whom I can totally envisage in the part – Myra McFadyen. She is absolutely brilliant at playing gobby characters. By pure chance, I was in standing at a pedestrian crossing in Sauchiehall Street last week when I noticed that the person standing next to me was none other than Myra McFadyen and she is absolutely teensy! It was all I could do to restrain myself from telling her that I thought she would be perfect as DI Steele! Is there an actress you can imagine being up to the challenge of what would surely be the part of a lifetime?
Graham - I tend to only watch football, Top Gear and The Thick Of It so I’m a bit sketchy on actresses. The only one I can think of who fits the character’s appearance and is blessed with sufficient talent to play Roberta Steele is Kathy Burke.
Here we have suggestions of two actresses who might fit our ideal of the wonderfully delightful DI Roberta Steele. On the left is the wonderful Scottish character actress Myra McFadyen and on the right, the massively talented woman of many parts Kathy Burke.
What do you think? Are these good suggestions or is there another actress out there who could live up to the part of the bra-strap fiddling, crotch scratching, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed opportunist we know and love so well?
Afterwards, I considered the folly of this. Here was me, a total greenhorn, taking on a pro for my first foray into interviewing! Graham is not only a regular reviewer for Crimesquad, but he is also a veteran interviewer of crime authors, with names like David Baldacci, Jeffrey Deaver, Dennis Lehane, Lee Child, Matt Hilton, current CWA Chair Peter James and Mark Billingham notched on his interview's belt!
I needn't have worried. Graham was absolutely charming and put me at my ease with some gentle words of encouragement. Many thanks!So here it is - a question and answer session with Graham Smith:-
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| Graham Smith - Reader, Reviewer & Writer |
On reading
Jackie - Graham, I understand that like me, you’ve been a crime fiction fan since you were old enough to read Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five”, what path did your subsequent progression to adult crime take?
Graham - I took a traditional kind of clichéd route. After I’d exhausted the Famous Five and Secret Seven I moved onto The Three Detectives by Robert Arthur, Jr, then The Hardy Boys followed via Willard Price’s Adventure Series . After that I moved towards more adult thrillers like Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels and then one glorious day I discovered Alistair MacLean. After that I was hooked on crime action thrillers and I moved from there naturally into thrilling crime fiction.
Jackie - Have your reading habits altered since you started reviewing and writing? If so, in what way?
Graham - That’s a tough one. As a reader no I don’t feel that I read any differently. What I do is read better. I take in more. Absorb details better. By taking in more I get more from the books. As a writer I appreciate clever plotlines and can dismantle what I am reading better than I used to. That way I can see behind the curtain so to speak. I am constantly inspired by the books I read and I have a line in one of my Harry Charters stories which was directly inspired by a line Tom MacDonald wrote in his book The Charlestown Connection. He described a drinkers bar as “…the kind of place you can hear a pin drop but never a dime…” in Detecting Malicious Murder I described a similar bar with the line “…you could hear your hair grow but you’d never hear a conversation.” The hardest thing as a writer is not to let other people’s words and ideas drown out your own, even if they are better. You have to keep your own voice and cultivate it to its finest point.
Jackie - At Harrogate, several authors have said that they really hate the device of “looking in a mirror and describing what is seen” to convey a physical description of a character. Mine is when the serial killer targets the cop or his/her family. What is your biggest bugbear in crime fiction?
Graham - My biggest bugbear is bad endings. After having invested time reading a novel I get very annoyed when I see a bad ending. Some examples of this group of pet hates are, the killer having one appearance in the novel before being unmasked. Whether it is on page two or the second last page it really grates me and smacks of an author who hasn’t plotted properly and have lazily stuck another character in to solve the problem. The hero dying in almost every book by the same author. While it may be accurate to the story in each case I cannot read this author’s books any more as I don’t want to grow to like another character who I expect to die. Once or twice is fine. Nine times out of ten is not. I also want some sense of justice, the killer / terrorist / bad guy should be punished in some form. A few loose ends are okay as is unfinished business between series characters, but I cannot abide the major plot not being finalised
On reviewing and interviewing
Jackie - Tell us how you got into book reviewing.
Graham - I got into book reviewing via a semi drunken conversation. I was at the Harrogate Crime Festival and I got talking to one of the Crimesquad.com gang. When I found out what he did I quickly slurred, “Wow. Any jobs going.” He introduced me to the editor, who showed me the site on his laptop and told me to write a review of a book I had recently finished. In between panels I wrote a review of Pig Island by Mo Hayder and sweet-talked the receptionist into typing it up for me as my handwriting is terrible. The editor is a firm believer in “sink or swim” as within a month of being accepted I had to read and review Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid followed by The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown what was the follow up to the then best selling book ever.
Jackie - Is there a specific process that you go through when reviewing a book?
Graham - I tend to read the book through while making mental notes about key points I want to make. Then I let my thoughts mingle with my subconscious for a day or so. Then I grab the laptop and write the review. I used to revise them an awful lot when I first started but now I have my system in place I rarely change anything now.
Jackie - If you really hated a book would you review it honestly, diplomatically or not at all? Would it make a difference if the author was successful and well established or relatively new on the scene?
Graham - If I hated a book I would not get past page 100. That is my cut off point and the editor insists that if we have nothing nice to say then we should say nothing. This is a policy I heartily agree with. I will make negative comments on aspects of a book in a review but in a way that I feel is constructive. I love books and reading. Why would I want to hurt them? Also as an author myself I know of the work which has gone into writing a novel. I class myself as an enthusiast not a bully.
Jackie - Following the infamous Amazon review scandal, you said “Reviews are now tainted in the eyes of the public.” Do you have any ideas on how Amazon could remedy the current flaws in their review system?
Graham - Would you like me to sort World Peace while I’m at it? I have a somewhat simplistic view of things as I do not know what happens in the Amazon office. What I would do if Amazon was my company, is hire a top notch hacker and get him to write an algorithm which identified the computers used to upload any review or product. If the IP addresses matched or were in the same building then the review would never be unpublished and the product would be removed from sale for one month. A big disclaimer on the upload page would warn all would be sock puppeteers of the consequences. This would make it much harder for people to leave fake reviews without having to travel to different locations. The benefits would hardly be outweighed by the inconvenience.
On Writing
Graham has published several books including "Eleven - The Hardest Way", "The Harry Charters Chronicles" and "Gunshots - Ten Blows to the Abdomen". I have read the first two and thoroughly enjoyed the punchy delivery and deliciously dark twists to Graham's tales of the unexpected.
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Graham - I cannot credit / blame any one writer for influencing me. I feel that I have been influenced and taught by every writer I have ever read. Some have shown me good things to do and others have shown me bad things not to do. All I’ve done is used what I’ve thought is good and not used what I’ve thought is bad. Although I will say that I try to use dialogue tags very sparingly while injecting pace, twists and mystery into my stories.
Jackie - Do you think that reviewing books helps your own writing process?
Graham - Reviewing has definitely been a help to me as a writer. Firstly being a reviewer has taught me an awful lot about the craft behind the storytelling. Writers tools like foreshadowing, back-story, romantic interests and general plotting are all much easier to write when you have understood and written about them. If asked for tips on writing I would also tell the person asking to go away and read a book and then write a critical review of all the elements in the book, namely pace, plot, prose, characterisation, how the book made them feel and so on. Being a reviewer for Crimesquad.com has also opened a hell of a lot of doors for me in the writing world. I have been to publishers parties, interviewed some massive names in the crime fiction world like David Baldacci, Lee Child, Dennis Lehane and many others. I have also made a lot of good friends in the writing community.
Jackie - You also run a busy hotel in Gretna Green which I imagine will involve lots of weddings, how do organise your writing day around that?
Graham - I tend to write when I get home at night or on my days off. I do not write every night as I have a wife and son to spend time with as well. Sometimes I can go for a month without writing anything and then I can put down nearly 20K in a week.
Jackie - The "Harry Charters Chronicles" is set in America which I think is quite an ambitious thing to do. Is that something you were conscious of at any stage?
Graham - The first two stories I wrote for Harry Charters are very short and when I wrote them I gave no thought to his setting other than the fact that it is in America. A fifties private eye would not have worked in Gretna Green or indeed in many UK locations. When I came to add to his stories to create his chronicles I knew I’d have to give him a defining location. To do that I went onto Google Maps and searched for places in the southern area of mainland America. Then I amalgamated some to create the mythical town of Mariscoper. As the stories took shape Mariscoper grew a college, a river and docks. Being brutally honest I chose to make somewhere up rather than spend the time doing research on a real place and what it was like in the fifties. My rationale being that if I make it up then I can’t get it wrong by not doing my research properly. Although I did take Harry on a couple of trips away from Mariscoper just to shake things up a bit. With A Head Made of Stone I wanted to write a “Reacher” like story where he turns up in a town, sorts the bad guys out and romances the girl. I also used this story to show a lot of his back story by taking him back to his own hometown of Kirkstone.
Jackie - I will add that I think you do the American scene-setting brilliantly and if I hadn’t known it was written by a Brit, I’d be none the wiser. Did you undertake any specific research on that?
Graham - I did next to no research whatsoever for the Harry Charters Chronicles. What I did do was look up a few things like beer brands with my research assistant Mr Google. The rest is all made up from memories of books read and the odd film I’ve seen. When I write Harry Charters I have Humphrey Bogart doing a voiceover in my head.
Jackie - What’s in the pipeline?
Graham - I’m busy re-writing my novel after an agent took a look at it and gave me some pointers. Plus the reviewing and the odd short story. Once the novel is re-written I will be doing more short stories and then I plan to start a new novel.
On inspiring other writers - Crime and Publishment!
Jackie - Graham, tell us about your three day creative writing event which is coming up in March 2012.Graham - Being a hotel manager as well as a budding author with a great list of contacts and friends in the industry, I decided to give a little something back to the industry which has entertained me for so many years. What I came up with is a low cost, high interest weekend of crime writing master-classes which will give the participants an opportunity to pitch their novel directly to an agent. More details can be found at www.crimeandpublishment.co.uk
Just for Fun
Jackie - If, for one day, you could be any character from any book you’ve read, who would it be and why?
Graham - The easy answer would be someone like Bond or Reacher, i.e. a hard-man who always gets the girl, kills the bad guys and saves the world / town / damsel. However I’m not going be so predictable. I would like to be Logan MacRae for a day just so I could finally meet the irrepressible Detective Inspector Roberta Steel. Stuart MacBride has created a monstrously funny and unique character in her and I’d love to see her in the flesh.
Jackie - I also love DI Roberta Steele. In fact, I think she is one of the most wonderful characters ever invented in crime fiction. Recently, I had a conversation with friends about who we thought could play her if the series got televised. There is one Scottish actress whom I can totally envisage in the part – Myra McFadyen. She is absolutely brilliant at playing gobby characters. By pure chance, I was in standing at a pedestrian crossing in Sauchiehall Street last week when I noticed that the person standing next to me was none other than Myra McFadyen and she is absolutely teensy! It was all I could do to restrain myself from telling her that I thought she would be perfect as DI Steele! Is there an actress you can imagine being up to the challenge of what would surely be the part of a lifetime?
Graham - I tend to only watch football, Top Gear and The Thick Of It so I’m a bit sketchy on actresses. The only one I can think of who fits the character’s appearance and is blessed with sufficient talent to play Roberta Steele is Kathy Burke.
Any more Contenders?
Here we have suggestions of two actresses who might fit our ideal of the wonderfully delightful DI Roberta Steele. On the left is the wonderful Scottish character actress Myra McFadyen and on the right, the massively talented woman of many parts Kathy Burke.
What do you think? Are these good suggestions or is there another actress out there who could live up to the part of the bra-strap fiddling, crotch scratching, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed opportunist we know and love so well?
hey I've got to play the bra/crotch fiddling Roberta Steel in Macbrides Logan Macrae series
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