Author Q&A: Featuring Theakston's Crime New Blood author Fiona Cummins being grilled on The Crime Warp

Debut author, Fiona Cummins is the first of Val McDermid's 2017 New Blood panel from Theakston's crime festival to be interviewed on The Crime Warp.  I make no bones about saying that every year the New Blood panel is one of the ones I look forward to the most.  I find it entertaining, encouraging and welcome the chance to share this interview with The Crime Warp readers.



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

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Fiona: RATTLE is my début novel, and it's a crime thriller about a serial-killing collector who covets human specimens for his family's macabre museum of medical oddities. When he sets his sights on a six-year-old suffering from bone disorder Stone Man Syndrome, it triggers a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse between a killer, the boy's deadbeat father, and a troubled detective investigating a spate of abductions. It explores that seam of darkness that runs through us all, that struggle between light and shadow, redemption and revenge.

Liz: How long did Rattle take to write?

Fiona: It took me a year to write it, and, once I had a literary agent, a year to rewrite!

Liz:  That's par for the course.  Could you describe how the germ of an idea develops into a full-blown novel?

Fiona: It's difficult to explain, but I see it as an organic process. I'm not much of a planner. I prefer to write my way into a book.  I start with the seed of a story, then I sow it, water it, tend the earth, turning it over and over, and wait for the shoots to emerge. I hate editing, so I take my time with the writing of it, but I often have an idea of how a piece of fiction will end, and sometimes write the last line first.

Liz: Loving the gardening analogies, Fiona.  Where is your favourite place to write and why?

Fiona: I write everywhere - in the car, on the train, at the cinema, in the garden, once I even finished a chapter during a child's birthday party – but my absolutely favourite place to write is in bed. Even better if there's fresh linen, the sound of heavy rain and a freshly brewed mug of Earl Grey tea.

Liz:  Wish I could do that, but it takes me so long to get my stuff together that by the time I'm ready the moment's gone.   Do you ever suffer from writer’s block and if so how do you overcome it?

Fiona: I suppose it depends on one's definition of writer's block. There have been times in my life when it's been more difficult to write. Grief, fear, loss or any kind of emotional upheaval can be a barrier to writing, but those extremes of feeling can also be diverted onto the page. I tend to think of writer's block not as an inability to write, but as a lack of ideas.

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

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Fiona: I was once placed under surveillance and surrounded by police at a petrol station because they thought I was carrying a gun in the boot of my car.  I wasn't. It was a case of mistaken identity.

Liz: Oh my goodness.  That must have been scary... but great experience for a crime writer. Moving swiftly on, which author are you cosying up with tonight?

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Available on Amazon
click here

Fiona: I've got three excellent books on the go at the moment: Wrong Place by Michelle Davies featuring the engaging Family Liaison Officer DC Maggie Neville; Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney, a brilliant début psychological thriller and a proof of Colette McBeth's latest novel An Act of Silence, which I've only just started but have heard is brilliant.

   Liz:  Let's move from the bedroom to the dining room, shall

we?   If you were to host a “Come Dine With Me” party, who would you invite from the Crime Fiction fraternity and why?

Fiona: I'd invite Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Bateman because they fascinate me, but I'd like to have Jack Reacher and bounty hunter Lori Anderson as protection in case they try to kill me. Oh, and I'd invite Agatha Christie, too. I'd love to find out the reason she went missing for eleven days in 1926. On second thoughts, I don't think it would be wise to let Hannibal prepare a meal.

Liz: I'm with you on the Hannibal thing.  Maybe you'd have to insist on vegetarian.  Could you describe the book you are working on at the moment using only 5 words?

Fiona: Creepy crime with a twist.

Liz: Ooooh, delicious! 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 that be?

Fiona: I have always been intrigued by Svalbard, a lonely archipelago between Norway and the North Pole. This arctic wilderness, a stark and desolate terrain, is home to a few thousand polar bears and other wildlife. What an eerie and atmospheric location for a crime novel, although I think I'm a bit late to the Scandi noir trend.

Liz:  It's been an absolute pleasure to host you here on the Crime warp, Fiona.  looking forward to your panel at Harrogate