Proximity Blog Tour: Author Interview with debut author Jem Tugwell

Available here

DI Clive Lussac has forgotten how to do his job. Ten years of embedded technology – ‘iMe’ – has led to complete control and the eradication of crime. Then the impossible happens. A body is found, and the killer is untraceable. With new partner Zoe Jordan, Clive must re-sharpen his detective skills and find the killer without technology, before time runs out for the next victim…

If this blurb doesn't draw you in then I don't know what will. The Crime warp is delighted to feature a Q&A with Proximity author Jem Tugwell ... and he can certainly come again because he brought .... BISCUITS!

Where did the inspiration for Proximity come from?

From my dread that the world of Proximity is really close to happening.

We already have companies in Sweden and the USA whose employees have embedded RFID chips, ‘smart’ motorways causing congestion, and every bit of weather being given a name. We have an overbearing nanny state looking to change behaviour by rules and not education. The litigation culture is growing and we are heading towards constant surveillance.

With our technology, we rush for the new versions and buy the promise of convenience and ease, but we don’t bother to read the Terms and Conditions. We seem happy to sign up to a technology enabled prison that makes our lives simple and connected.

All of this feeds the world of Proximity and the fast-paced crime thriller it contains.

 Are any of your characters based on real life people?

Jem Tugwell

Not directly. However, when I am thinking about characters, their personality and traits, I do like to find a photo of someone who can act as a visual shortcut. The photo can  also really help in defining the character, and act as a reminder of the character when you need to get their thoughts or actions right in a particular scene.

I might start with a specific person in mind, which makes it easy to search for images on the web. If I don’t know exactly who, then I will start with a broad search and take a single defining adjective, say ‘insincere’, and search for ‘insincere people’ or ‘insincere politician’. That will give a lot of photos, but something or someone will catch my eye, and then I will drill down on them. I use Scrivener and create a page for each character, and import one or two photos that really catch the essence of the character.

Is there a subsidiary character you have created and are particularly fond of and why?

I really like Doris Barclay and she was fun to write. She looks like a typical little old lady, but has a foul mouth and is extremely violent. I got the idea for her when I was on the tube. Two little old ladies were sitting together and chatting, but they both had a lot of huge skull rings on their fingers.

The rings were so incongruous with the little old lady stereotype, that it started me thinking about how a violent and abusive person might look innocent when they were older, but still have a violent and abusive core.

Where is your favourite place to write and why?

We have an apartment in Andalucía, Spain. It has a large terrace and overlooks the sea. I love to write there as I am usually very productive. It’s away from the distractions and pressures of home, and because everything happens so much later in the day in Spain, I can write for several hours in the morning and still have plenty of sunshine hours left. If I’m stuck, I can look at the view and pretend to be thinking.

 Do you ever suffer from writer’s block and if so how do you overcome it?

I do suffer from writer’s block. Some days I might be writing for hours and only have a couple of hundred words to show for it. I have a couple of things I try and do to minimise blocks. The first is to plot, and plot, and plot before I write. That way I’ll end up with one or two sentences on each chapter that describes what happens in that chapter, where to foreshadow, etc. It really helps to have this clear vision for the chapter when I sit down to write it. The second tip is that I try to just write and don’t read what I’ve written. I can always fix it in the editing phase, and rereading simply breaks my flow.

If I’m really stuck I will go and do something manual that requires no real brain power - like cutting the grass. It allows time and space for ideas to circulate and form for the next day.

If you weren’t a writer what would you like to do?

I would love to spend my time tinkering and rebuilding old cars and bikes. I would snowboard in the winter and go to Spain in the summer. The only problem would be that all of these things wouldn’t keep my mind occupied enough.

Who are your writing heroes and why?

In general, it’s any author who has written and finished a book. It’s not easy, takes a lot of dedication, and then you lay yourself open to everyone having an opinion on how it could have been better. We must be mad.

I really like face-paced thrillers, sci-fi and crime stories. As a child it was anything from Dorothy L Sayers, to Frederick Forsyth, Wilbur Smith, etc. I really admire Dick Francis. He always got such great pace into his stories, and managed to portray huge threat of violence without describing it in detail. I love Lee Child’s Reacher series for the clarity of the stories, and the way the action scenes are written. I also loved The Passage by Justin Cronin for the scale of the author’s imagination.

Who or what inspires you to keep writing?

I guess that I do. It feels more like a need than inspiration. My mind always seems to be switched on and generating ideas. I need an outlet for my imagination, and writing gives me that. I also enjoy the challenge of the puzzle - the designing of a cohesive story that holds together over a whole book.

Have you ever thought of setting a book somewhere exotic so you could visit that place or perhaps live there for a while? Where would/ will that be?

I keep thinking about setting a book in the Alps. It would be set in the winter and involve snowboarders. I really like the Avoriaz/Morzine area so I could set it there. It would give me the perfect excuse to spend a season in the mountains and snowboard every day. I’d probably end up doing no writing at all.

Do you have competing ideas for future projects and have you ever worked on more than one at the same time?

Yes, at the moment I have three books on the go. My real WIP is the sequel to Proximity, but I have a standalone novel that I have plotted out as well. It took a lot of back and forth to decide which one to write first. I will probably finish the first draft of the sequel and then put it to one side for several weeks before editing it. I’ll try and start the standalone book during this time.

I have another book in my head but it needs a lot of research to get the world building right, so I am doing that as a background task. It will be book four so there’s no rush.