Last week, I was delighted to be interviewed by historical crime writer, Caron Allan about my writing. Caron published the interview on her blog on the day of the launch of Peril in Persia, 31st of January.
It seemed a good idea to include a copy of the interview on my own blog this month.
Caron: Many of your books are set on a holiday tour, are they all based on trips you’ve made personally?
Judith: All my travel mysteries are based on holidays I’ve taken. That is always my starting point. The trip comes first. The itinerary in the book is the same one I followed. Many of the things that happen on our journey end up in the novel. For example, I slipped down the last couple of stairs and twisted my ankle on the way to the Rhine Valley. I was able to use that idea in Blood in the Wine to further the plot. Similarly, when we were in the Galapagos, we saw a sea lion with a tuna fish in its jaws batting it from side to side. I remember thinking, ‘What if that were a human arm?’ It was one of the things that inspired A Death too Far. Places can also give rise to ideas. The Hilton Hotel in Berlin has an impressive atrium which inspired the idea of hoisting someone over the balcony from the third floor in Blood Hits the Wall.
Caron: Have you ever had any odd encounters on your tours that you’ve thought would be perfect for a book, or perhaps even too unbelievable even for a novel?
Judith: After our tiger watching holiday in India, I came back with a complete plot. Our party included a successful Australian businesswoman who was partially deaf. She had paid for her young assistant to come with her. They were both drinking gin at breakfast which didn’t go down too well with everyone else. To make matters worse, the two fell out bigtime, so much so that one night the assistant went out of the compound where we were staying in the middle of the tiger reserve. A tiger had killed a man from one of the villages in the reserve only the week before and the guards were prohibited from going out once the gates were shut. In the end, one of the passengers went out on foot to bring her back. Our guide then had no choice but to go after him in a jeep to help find her. All three managed to get back safely, but the friction that followed would have made an excellent plot. Bar an actual murder, I had all the material – characters, subplots and fantastic wildlife and scenery – for Tiger, Tiger another psychological suspense. Sadly, I’ve never had time to write it.
Caron: When is your next Fiona Mason book coming out? Any hints as to location?
Judith: The next Fiona Mason Mystery will be set in Paris. I’d like to think that it will be ready by the end of the year, but I have a lecture cruise coming up at the end of March so I shall be busy putting together my presentations for the Canary Islands until after Easter. We also have a holiday planned for October when we’ll be doing a Nile Cruise. I’m hoping that trip will give me enough ideas for the next Aunt Jessica and Harry Mystery.
Caron: Are your characters based on people you meet on your travels? What about your sleuths? Are you the real Aunt Jessica or Fiona Mason?
Judith: My characters are always my own creations. Like many writers, I find they take on a life of their own even doing things that surprise me. I’ve had a couple who point blank refuse to be the murder and Peter Montgomery-Jones, who I only ever intended to be a minor character in the first Fiona novel Blood on the Bulb Fields, insisted not only on a bigger role but on coming back in all the later books in the series. It makes the novels considerably harder to plot. Not only do I have to find an additional terrorist/political mission for him to be involved in, but also tie it together with Fiona’s investigation at the end of the novel.
Although the idea of Aunt Jessica came from the Islamic specialist who came with us on our trips to Morocco and Persia, Jessica is nothing like Diana though they both work in the British Museum.
My characters may be totally from my imagination, but my locations are not. I need to picture them exactly. Hotels, flats or kitchens might not be in the places I say they are, but they are real. I had to make a special trip into Swindon to find a café in the right part of town, even sit in the same seat at a table in the window as my protagonist, before I could write the scene.
Caron’s latest book is The Spy Within. It’s the 6th in her Dottie Manderson Mystery series.
Caron lives in Derbyshire, England, where Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy came from. She hasn’t met him yet, but nevertheless clings to the dream. She writes mysteries and crime but sometimes dabble in other genres, such as romance or paranormal fantasy.
Like many writers, Caron always wanted to write stories. She can remember announcing this to her mother when she was eight years old. Caron says, ‘I seem to remember she wasn’t overly impressed.’
Caron started reading adventure stories and mysteries for children when she was around 7 or 8 and graduated to Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth (her faves) when around 9 or 10. She has never looked back.
Caron has tried writing literary fiction – and says she was terrible at it. She has tried writing romance but got bored and killed everyone off. So now she sticks to what she loves – murder mysteries. The Dottie Manderson mysteries are set in the 1930s and feature a terminally-nosy well-to-do young woman, whereas the Friendship Can Be Murder series are set ‘now’ and written as diary entries by a posh woman, Cressida Barker-Powell, who has a low tolerance for bad people, and plans to begin with her mother-in-law.
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Thank you so much for the mention, Judith!
My pleasure. I’m grateful for the interview.