Author interview - Cath Staincliffe

R: The Crime Warp’s latest interview is with Cath Staincliffe, writer of crime novels, TV scripts and even radio plays.  Hi Cath, welcome to the Crime Warp.  You’ll be glad to know I’ve not included any of the most commonly asked interview questions that you’ve already answered in your entry on the Murder Squad website!

CS: Hello – and thanks for that!

R: You were always strongly inclined towards arts and entertainment, especially with your work in Drama and as a community artist in Manchester.  What part did writing play in your professional life and did you always believe you would be a professional writer?

CS: No, I never imagined I would be – though it was a dream of mine.  In my community arts work I did quite a bit of scriptwriting for community theatre pieces or I’d write linking material for cabarets or youth club shows and so on.  I’d always been drawn to writing – one of the options I took at university where I studied Drama was playwriting with David Edgar but I’d no idea how to ‘become’ a writer. 

R: You started writing science fiction and were told that it was more crime than science fiction.  Was Looking for Trouble your first crime novel and did the previous practice help to make it so successful?

CS: I must admit to an earlier crime novel (the one in the drawer) which also featured Sal Kilkenny but wasn’t quite strong enough to make the grade.  It was called Murder at the Community Centre.  Hah!  Previous practice certainly contributes to the quality of work and no writing is ever wasted for that reason but I was taken aback at the level of success Looking For Trouble achieved.

R: Looking for Trouble is set in Manchester with Sal as a single parent, trying to balance family and work.  What did you draw on as inspiration for Sal and was it linked to your own life at the time?

CS: Very much so!  I was juggling with that balance for the first time and when I decided to write a contemporary private eye series I decided that being a parent would be a defining characteristic for my protagonist.

R: The novel was short listed for the CWA best first novel and then serialised for radio.  What was your reaction to this success?

CS: Unfettered joy and amazement.

R: Fantastic.  After that you wrote another five Sal Kilkenny books but were also scriptwriter for Blue Murder, which began in 2003.  How did you move from novelist to scriptwriter?

CS: I wrote another seven by the end (if it is the end). Blue Murder grew out of my attempts to interest Granada TV first in the Sal books then in an unpublished novel I’d written about a woman DCI solving murders in Manchester.  I never thought I would end up writing the scripts.

R: How different is it writing a novel and writing for the screen? Do you watch your work on the screen and is it what you expect?

CS: Very different.  Screen writing is much much more collaborative, lots of people have input at every stage of the process.  A whole outline has to be agreed in detail before a word of dialogue is put on the page.  My books are much more organic.  Also of course scripts are very visual, there are no inner monologues, no description.  Thankfully I’ve been very pleased with the results.  Once a director is on board my role is over and it is up to them and the actors to work their magic.  I do watch with one eye closed because I have this terrible fear that I’ve made a mistake and I’ll suddenly spot it!

R: Do you find that you only work in one particular medium at a time or are you working up new book ideas whilst you are writing screen work too?

CS: With novels I can only work on one at a time but I can switch between novel writing and radio or TV scripts fairly comfortably.

R: What prompted you to change direction from 2009 to a series of four novels that focus on a range of deeply personal and emotional themes?

CS: The desire for a challenge, to stretch myself as a writer and do something a bit different.  It was scary at first but I’m really glad I took the plunge and found a publisher to support me in that.

R: The Kindest Thing is about a wife who helps her husband end his life.  Tell us more about this book and how you came to write it

CS: Chatting to my then agent (the late Kate Jones) about what I might write next, we discussed stories with ethical dilemmas at their heart.  That’s what led me to this one.  The prospect of being asked to help someone die terrified me and I wondered what on earth it would be like.  That was the seed for the novel.

R: Witness is about ordinary people faced with huge decisions – the idea is that this could be you tomorrow.  Is this why you chose these particular characters and the theme?

CS: Yes.  I’d had a very minor brush with potentially being a witness when I reported someone for dangerous driving and was asked if I’d appear in court if required.  Although I said yes, I became very nervous just thinking about it.  The police contacted me later to say they wouldn’t pursue it as the individual in question was under investigation for more serious offences.  That coupled with an awareness of the problems for witnesses in Manchester in gang related crimes was a starting point.  The characters were chosen as a totally disparate group of ordinary people who were unlucky enough to witness a murder. 

R: You’ve also written a couple of short story ebooks.  Was this to dip your toe in the ebook market or do you think there’s a niche in ebooks that supports a particular style of writing? 

CS: That wasn’t the primary reason.  I have been publishing novels in ebook form for a while.  The short story ebooks were suggested by my publisher as a way to create a quick fictional response to hot topics.  I do like short stories though I don’t write very many.  They are an opportunity to do something new, to experiment and they only take a few days to write.  The ebook market is expanding all the time and seems to include all styles.

R: Mrs Romancrimeblogger encouraged me to watch Scott and Bailey and I was hooked after just one episode!  I’ve reviewed both books on the Crime Warp and really enjoy the way that the characters, particularly Rachel Bailey come alive.  Do you think that some of this is because of a positive experience with the TV series?

CS: Definitely.  I saw the series as a fan and loved it.  So being asked to write the books was an honour.  But it was made much easier because the characters were so well written and well performed for TV – I could see them very clearly, knew how they would react in certain situations.

R: Is it true that the characters names come from Scotland Yard and The Old Bailey?

CS: I’ve no idea – I’d not heard that but it sounds good.

R: Was it a conscious decision to centre the books and series around three strong women as the central characters?

CS: Sally Wainwright and Diane Taylor created the series based on an idea by Suranne Jones and Sally Lindsay – they wanted two strong women at the centre and they made the boss Gill Murray a woman too – she quickly became equally interesting.  So when I wrote the first book I suggested having three points of view in that, to include Gill alongside Rachel and Janet.

R: Would we have seen the Scott and Bailey books without the TV series?

CS: No.

R: Now, I must ask about the setting of Scott and Bailey, as an Oldham expat living “down south” – why did you choose Oldham for Scott & Bailey and the Manchester locality for a number of your other books? 

CS: Sally and Diane chose Oldham for the TV and so I kept to that when I wrote the books.  All my own novels are set in Manchester because it’s where I live, it cuts down on the research I have to do: the way people talk and the atmosphere and different neighbourhoods are familiar to me, and it’s a city with so many facets and an endless supply of potential stories.

R: I’m genuinely pleased that you chose these locations, because aspiring writers always seem to be told by agents that places like Oldham are not good settings for books!

CS: Hopefully that has changed – a vividly depicted location, wherever it is, is I think is a really important element in a good story.  As a reader I enjoy exploring new places in fiction and I’m sure other book lovers do too.  Even our northern mean streets.

R: I want to talk about your work on radio.  I loved Stone when I heard it on Radio 4 and I spotted that you wrote a couple of episodes.  How does that work creatively, when you’ve already got a cast of developed characters who behave in a particular way?  Do you find that restrictive?

CS: No – though it probably helps to like or ‘get’ the characters which I did with Stone.  Danny Brocklehurst (the series creator) can give feedback during the scripting process if he feels anyone is going astray with how the character would behave but I don’t know that it’s ever come to that.

R: How different is the writing approach for radio, presumably very different from screen and novels?  How easy or hard did you find it to adapt to this way of writing?

CS: It’s much more focused on dialogue than with novels.  It is important to read it aloud (though I do that with all my work when I have the time).  It came fairly easily to me but I did have the help and support of the producer in working through several drafts to get a decent play at the end.  One restriction with radio is we can only budget for a limited number of characters so in terms of story that affects how it is told.  

R: Finally, I have to ask about the Murder Squad.  How did this start and how did you get involved?

CS: I had met a number of writers through the Crime Writers Association Northern Chapter and several of us were disillusioned with the lack of promotion we were getting even though our books were well received and attracted very good reviews.  Margaret Murphy, one of our number, took the initiative and suggested we band together to promote ourselves – rather than just moaning about it.  We set up a website, produced a brochure, began to do events and published our first anthology.  We haven’t looked back since!

R: Cath, thank you for making the time for this interview, which was much longer than I expected it to be.  I look forward to seeing the next project, whichever medium it’s in! 

CS: Thank you too!  Please check my website for any news about that …

Romancrimeblogger

Cath Staincliffe photograph © Paul Herrmann