Author Q&A with Amanda Fleet one of the Bloody Scotland Spotlighters 2016

On this lovely Spring morning we welcome debut author Amanda Fleet to The Crime Warp.  Her novel The Wrong Kind of Clouds is a thriller that reaches from Edinburgh to Malawi.  It's great to have you here Amanda...

Liz: Tell us a bit about your current book release.

Amanda: The Wrong Kind of Clouds starts with Patrick

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Forrester being attacked. During the attack, he manages to call his ex-girlfriend, Summer Morris, and begs her to help him. Summer hasn’t seen Patrick for months – with good reason. However, he begged her to help, so she tries to find out what has happened to him. In trying to find him before he gets killed, she unearths a raft of secrets – there are a lot of people who want Patrick dead.

Liz: How long did The Wrong Kind Of Clouds take to write?

Amanda: I started writing The Wrong Kind of Clouds in 

2012 and it took me about nine months to finish the first draft. After that, I let it sit for a while before editing it, sending it off to beta-readers, doing another round of editing, sending it off to a professional editor... All in all, I suppose I was working

on it (on and off) for three years, but I wrote several other books over that time too.

Liz: Are any of your characters based on real life people?

Amanda: Moyenda Mkumba – the project manager of the 

Malawian charity in the book – is loosely based on the project

manager (Mac Nkhutabasa) of a real charity I helped to set up in Malawi. The charity in the book is also loosely based on the real charity, in as much as they are both involved with helping street-children to remain in education or return to education if they’ve dropped out.

Liz: Where is your favourite place to write and why?

Amanda: Dull but true – my desk. It’s quite large and lives in the corner of our living room so it’s warm! It looks out over the garden so has a great view, it’s at the back of the house so it’s quiet and it’s where I’m used to writing. I would struggle to write anywhere else.

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

Amanda: I have in the past, but at the moment I have the

opposite problem – too many projects on the go and not enough time! I learned from a bad bout of writer’s block I had about 18 months ago that it was a reflection of my general mental and physical health. I was tired, stressed, suffering from a heart condition (which is now fixed) and reaching burn-out. My brain was too busy working out how to get me

through the day and there just wasn’t space for it to be creative as well. Once I started making sure that my health was protected, it all became a lot easier, but it took a while to recognise that and the stress of having no ideas was only adding to the problem.

Liz: Can you tell us two things about yourself that your readership may be unaware of?

Amanda: I used to be a lecturer in physiology at a medical

school and I once gave a lecture dressed as Mel Gibson from ‘Braveheart’ – complete with kilt, plastic sword and blue face-paint. It was for charity and raised over £100. The kilt was my husband’s. The plastic sword was all mine! I should perhaps point out that I’m English and was lecturing in a Scottish university.

I know a smattering of Chichewa (Malawian) and that the Chichewa for marijuana is very close to the Chichewa for a type of fish. I once accidentally ordered dope instead of fish in a posh restaurant in Malawi! The waiters tried very hard not to laugh, and failed. 

Liz: I'll bet they did!  Who or what inspires you to keep writing?

Amanda: I’m not sure that I have any external inspiration. I 

keep writing because there are characters in my head who keep nagging at me and the only way to shut the beggars up is to write about them. I suppose also, I realised when I had the serious heart condition that life is finite and I should get on and do the things I want to do. Time doesn’t wait for you. It just keeps on marching.

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

Amanda: Oh goodness, yes! Right now, I have a choice 

of about four different things I could be working on next and I’ve almost always worked on more than one project at the same time. I’ll work on a single project for a block of time and complete a stage of the writing process (e.g. writing the first draft; editing) but then work on something else completely different once that block of work is done. I never go from initial ideas to publishable version in one seamless run. As a consequence, I’ve now got quite a few things that need finalising – at the moment I could choose from a follow-on from The Wrong Kind of Clouds, another thriller, an urban fantasy trilogy, or a women’s literature novel as the next project to finish. All of them are at first draft stage (or beyond) apart from one. Plus, I’m trying to get another book (called Poisonous Minds) published at the moment.

Liz: Do you linger in your research period or do you rush your research to get stuck into the writing?

Amanda: I do quite a lot of research in the early stages and 

then a lot of plotting – getting the initial outline down if not all the detail. Once I start writing, I do more research as and when I need to, but I do the majority before I start writing the first draft. All research that’s needed is done before I reach the end of the first draft though – I don’t sketch in something then have to check it and potentially change it later.

Liz: Thank you so much, Amanda and good luck with your very many projects.