Author Interview: Stuart MacBride

 Liz Mistry Interviews Stuart MacBride
                AKA The Bearded Write-ist

 I am a huge fan of Tartan Noir and have admired Stuart MacBride's books for ages and was lucky enough to attend a creative writing course he did with Allan Guthrie at Harrogate Crime Writer's Festival. 

Apart from being really hilarious, it was enormously useful and so I signed up again for 2012.  This time the course was facilitated by Stuart and was all about forensic science, which if you've read Stuart's novels, you'll know he is extremely well versed in. In fact if you want to see a Dundee's Mortuary named after Stuart go to his website and vote for him.  

His eighth Logan McCrae book CLOSE TO THE BONE is released today.  Look to the next article for my review of this brilliant read.            

                                    

I am really chuffed that Stuart agreed to be my first victim for the blog and I am extremely appreciative.

THANKS STUART!!

Liz: First things first Stuart, whilst writing which do you prefer to dunk in your tea, a wee Abernethy or a shortbread finger? 

Stuart: Shortbread for me, thanks.

Liz: There ye go noo, just you help yourself.  I’ve another packet in ma handbag.  Now that we're all settled and comfy let's get on with it.

Close to the Bone is on sale today and I’m sure it will do well.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I felt that after the desperate ending in Shatter the Bones  there is more hope in this novel.  Do you feel that?

Stuart:  Well, that was part of the reason I went off to write BIRTHDAYS FOR THE DEAD last year, in order to give Logan some time off to get his head together. After I’d tortured him for seven books he really did need a holiday. And he’s come back from that with a tan, a wee raffia-work donkey, a flamenco dancer toilet-roll cover, and a slightly sunnier outlook.

 Liz:  I'd never have had Logan Macrae, down as a loo- roll cover sort of man, but, well there you go.
McCrae’s conversations with Samantha had me, at times in stitches and at other times, like in the cat scene near the end of the book, in tears. 

So, what I want to know firstly is why you couldn’t have chosen sensible cat names like Winky (sticky eye as kitten) or Scumpy (as in Haggis) after my fat felines?

Seriously though, where did you get the name Cthulhu  and how is it pronounced?

Stuart: Samantha’s always been one for the horror stories, which is why her caravan is full of Stephen King and Dean Koontz books. And the granddaddy of them all is H.P. Lovecraft, who’s feverish imaginings came up with the elder gods. Elder gods like Cthulhu, who has tentacles for a face and sleeps in the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh, waiting to wake again and consume all our souls… Basically the kind of elder god you wouldn’t want to invite round for a bottle of Irn-Bru and a game of Twister. And that’s who Logan and Samantha’s wee cat’s named after.  

Nothing like a wee cat if you ask me

                 

            It’s pronounced, Ca-thool-hoo, or kəˈθuːluː if you want to be all precise about it.

Liz: Aw cute- well maybe not so cute. Yet again, you’ve created a wonderful character in the form of Dr Graham and another one in the form of Nurse Claire. How do your characters come about?

Stuart: Well, believe it or not, Dr April Graham’s actually a real person (though Graham is her maiden name – her married name is Logan, so obviously I had to change that). I’ve been auctioning off characters for various charities for years now, and April won the dubious honour of being immortalised in a book by me. So we met up in Glasgow, and had a chat, and she answered a lot of impertinent questions from me, and then I went back home and invented a fictionalised version of her. PC Emma Sim’s real too, and so is Ian Falconer. It’s a nice way to raise cash for good causes. Nurse Claire, on the other hand, is completely made up.

Liz: I loved Birthday’s For the Dead, but there is no doubting it is visited some very dark places. How much did that influence your mood when you were writing it?

Will there be a sequel to Birthday’s For the Dead? - Please say yes!!!

Stuart: Well, I’m happy to tell you that I’ve just started writing a follow-up to BIRTHDAYS. I hadn’t intended to – Ash and all his cohorts were meant to be a one-off, so everyone was disposable and I wouldn’t have to worry about how badly I messed with them – but almost as soon as the book came out, people were demanding to know what happened next. And after a while, I started wondering the same thing. So, here I am.

            The thing that strikes me about BIRTHDAYS is that it didn’t seem that bad when I was writing it. I spent a huge amount of time trying to make it oppressive and dark and harrowing, but it wasn’t until recently, when I read the opening to try and pick Ash Henderson’s voice up again, that I realised how full-on dark it is. Dear Lord, that’s a bleak book! Which is rather cool.

            I’d really wanted to write something different, and ended up with a Shakespearian Tragedy. There’s no way that I can make the new book that bleak though. People will be slitting their wrists.

Stuart MacBride

Liz:  Well, I can't wait to read it.  Now, remember when John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged that 'Love In' for world peace?  Well, if you had to choose one of your characters to share a bed with, in public, in a perfectly platonic manner, which one would you choose?

Stuart: Ooh, you spoiled it there with the word ‘platonic’. It certainly wouldn’t be DI Steel – she’d hog all the blankets, smoke in bed, and get biscuit crumbs everywhere. Plus she’d probably insist on warming her cold feet on me. Ash would be a bad idea, and so would Insch. Rennie would get irritating after about fifteen minutes… So I’d have to say it’d probably be Dr Alice McDonald, the psychologist from BIRTHDAYS. She’d be fun to wind up too.

Liz: On the subject of beds, and at the risk of sounding slightly pervy, I’d be fascinated to know what the following characters wear in bed

DI Steel?

Stuart: Yeah, that is a bit pervy… Anyway, DI Steel sleeps in burgundy silk pyjamas, with pink fluffy-bunny slippers. ..

...

Unless she’s getting amorous, in which case it’s scudsville all the way!

Liz: That Figures!

          

  Reuben?

Stuart: Reuben’s a T-shirt kind of guy, but probably not one that’s long enough to cover his willy, should he have to leap out of bed to deal with an intruder.

Liz:  Not sure how I feel about that.

            Biohazzard Bob?

Stuart: Biohazard Bob sleeps in the nip. That way the dangerous build-up of noxious gases can seep out under the duvet to be shared by his lucky wife.

Liz: Lovely!- Well, there's one of your characters I wouldn't share a bed with.  I have a bit of a soft spot for poor old Reuben.  Which of your villains are you most fond of and why?

Stuart: I’m actually fond of all of my villains. I like to think that they’re all people in their own right, and they’re not evil people, they just have reasons for doing evil things. A lot of the time I find myself tapping away at my keyboard thinking, ‘Oh, you poor sod…’ even though I know they’re about to go off and do something horrific to someone.

            I wouldn’t invite any of them round for that game of Twister I was talking about though…

Liz:  No I'd say twister with Reuben is a definite no, no.  I’ve heard authors talking about their characters leading them down a different path from the intended one.  Have any of your characters ever surprised you? and if so which and why or when?

First Logan McCrae

Stuart: They do sometimes, but that’s not because I think they’re real people and there’s some sort of arty-farty-spiritual-channelling-nonsense going on, it’s just my subconscious poking the rest of my brain because it’s spotted something shiny in the undergrowth it wants to go investigate. Take Desperate Doug McDuff from COLD GRANITE. He was meant to be nothing more than a bit of set dressing: a wee auld mannie sitting in the bookies with his ancient Alsatian at his feet. And he turned into one of the key characters of the book. It’s great when that happens.

Liz: Do you feel that as a published author there is always pressure on you to get started on the next book and if so do you ever worry that the next idea might not come?

Stuart: Well, if I didn’t there are always about a dozen people emailing me every day telling me to get my finger out and write faster. The worst ones are those that say, ‘I read your book in one night! When’s the next one coming out? Write faster! LOL!!!’

Second Logan McCrae



Third Logan McCrae



Fourth Logan McCrae

Fifth Logan McCrae

One night? That sodding book took me 12 months of swearing and banging my head off the keyboard to write. SLOW DOWN AND SAVOUR THE BLOODY THING!

But, of course, it’s tremendously flattering that they got so caught up in the story that they couldn’t put it down till they finished it. Means I’ve maybe done a decent job…



Sixth Logan McCrae





Seventh Logan McCrae



Currently there are more ideas, scribbled down on Post-It notes around my whiteboard, than I’m ever going to have time to write. And there are new ones joining it every day. I’ve got my fingers crossed the well’s not going to run dry till I’m cold in the ground (hopefully a long, long time from now).

  

Liz: And last but not least, in an interview for The Crimewarp in October 2012 Graham Smith proclaimed Roberta Steel as ‘a monstrously funny and unique character’ and suggested Kathy Burke as a possibility to play her when the series gets televised.   Jackie my co- blogger suggested Myra McFadyen but I have to disagree with both of them because I suggest me!!  I have been practicing the whole crotch groping, bra fiddling thing.  I’ve been barred from many a public place for my lewd propositions and every one of the Christmas presents I bought was inappropriately sexual in nature -  So,  please, please, please can I be her? Can I be Roberta Steel? Please, please please !!!

... But if not me who do you think would make a good DI Steel?

Stuart: I think you’d make an excellent DI Steel, but you may have to join the queue… Personally I don’t have anyone specific in mind (the author is usually the last person to get a say in these things anyway), but the best suggestion I ever had for Steel was Helen Mirren. I love the though of her going from playing the Queen, to DI Steel. Obviously it’d be a big career step up for her. *cough* It’d be a great part to play though, you’d get all the best lines, and permission to steal every single scene you were in. What could be better than that?

Helen Mirren for Roberta Steel?

Liz: She's far too sophisticated and good looking don't you think?- Or maybe I'm just jealous!  Anyway, what are you working on at the minute Stuart?

Stuart: Right now I’m writing another Ash Henderson book, and hoping to hell that it’s going to work. It’s very much early days yet, so it’s a case of flinging stuff onto the page and seeing what sticks. Fingers crossed…

Liz: Thanks very much for your time Stuart, It’s been very entertaining and I’ve enjoyed chatting with you. Oh Hells bells you ate all the Shortbread fingers!!!

Stuart: Ah… I thought they were for everyone. And you weren’t eating them.

Liz: Trust a bloody crime writer to swipe my biccies! 

 

Apart from the his eight Logan McCrae novels Stuart is also author of Halfhead a futuristic crime novel and Sawbones a quick read for the National Literacy Society and Twelve Days Of Winter (a book of short stories)





To look Forward to :

An illustrated kiddies book -

THE COMPLETELY WHOLESOME ADVENTURES OF SKELETON BOB

in February 2013

And of course the new Ash Henderson Book