Torquil MacLeod's Meet Me in Malmo was featured on the blog yesterday. To date he has written 4 books in his Malmo series featuring Anita Sundstrom.
Torquil was the latest author kind enough to tolerate a few questions from me.......
Q. Is the writing a full-time
occupation? What is or was the day job?
Writing
has become a full-time occupation in the last year as it gradually replaced the
advertising copy-writing I had done for the previous 36 years in agencies in
Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle – and then latterly as a freelance.
Q. Did you suffer many rejections
on the way to becoming published?
My first
book – Meet me in Malmö – was
rejected by every agent I sent it to.
One of the few who bothered to offer a comment was a London agent who
said how well I wrote about Malmö but had obviously never been to Newcastle
(which is described in the book). I was
rather taken aback as I’d lived and worked in Newcastle for 30 years. Eventually, it was taken on by a hardback
publisher – that was through direct contact.
It took about two years to get that far.
After the short run of the hardback sold out, the publisher declined to
reprint it, so eventually I got my rights back and decided to self publish it
as an e-book. I've done the same with the
follow-ups.
Q. Any un-published gems in the
bottom of your desk drawer?
A novel I
wrote about a copywriter who gets into all sorts of appalling scrapes, most of
which are not of his own making. I
thought it was brilliantly funny and sent it off to get professional
advice. When it came back, the report
concluded it wasn't remotely amusing! It
went straight back into the bottom drawer.
I have a few film scripts that could be converted into novels – that’s how
Meet me in Malmö started.
Q. What’s been the highlight of
your writing career so far?
When the
e-book of Meet me in Malmö got into
Amazon UK’s top 50 – for a day!
Q. What’s a typical writing day
consist of?
I’m not
very disciplined. I’m easily distracted
so I tend to work in bursts. When I was
freelancing, it was a matter of fitting in the odd hour or half hour of novel
writing around my work. Now my most
productive writing is done later in the day because I've usually spent the
morning faffing around.
Q. Do you have a target word
count for each day or do you write for a set number of hours, or do you have a
specific point in the story you want to get to?
I want to
write at least a thousand words a day.
On a good day, it’s a lot more; on a distracted day, less.
Q. Are you a plotter? Do you have
a beginning, middle and end all mapped out before you start, or does the story
unfold of its own accord as you write it?
Definitely
not a plotter. I sometimes have the
beginning or the end, and then work from there.
I’ll have a vague idea of the story-lines as I like to work two into each
book (except for Meet me in Malmö, which
has one main plot). I go in with the
attitude that if I have no idea what’s coming next, hopefully the reader won’t
either. It also makes the story more
flexible, so it can go off in directions I wasn't expecting.
Q. Do you have to do much
research for your books? How does a Scotsman living in the North of England end up
writing Scandi-crime?
I like to
visit the locations I use. And as my
elder son has lived in Malmö for over a decade, that has made life easy. And through him and his family, we have a lot
of Swedish friends in southern Sweden – one of whom is a blonde, female
detective. That’s also useful! Some readers like to look up the locations I
use on Google Earth, so I have to make them accurate.
I first
visited Sweden in 2000 and thought it would be a great place to set a
film. I was working with a producer on
various projects at the time. Back then,
Henning Mankell and the Scandi crime invasion hadn't yet reached the UK. When the films came to nothing (as they tend
to do), I decided to turn one of two Swedish ideas I had into a book.
Q. Any plans in the future for
some non-Sundstrom books?
Last year
I brought out an historical crime book called Sweet Smell of Murder. It’s
the story of a feckless actor who finds himself in deep trouble in the
Newcastle of the 1750s. It’s more of a
Georgian romp with murders and spies thrown in.
The manuscript had gathered dust in that bottom desk drawer for 20
years, so I decided to give it an airing.
At the time I had ideas for another twelve. I would certainly like to write another one
or two. I’m too old now to complete them
all.
Q. In Meet Me in Malmo and I might
be barking up the wrong tree totally, our retired Inspector Gazzard – it wouldn't be a hat-tip to a certain famous North East footballer with a similar moniker? I've never heard of it before.
No. Inspector Gazzard was named after one of my
oldest school friends. But I like the
idea of Inspector Gazza. Maybe Inspector
Gazza could investigate all the things that have gone wrong at St James’ Park
in recent times.
Q. Who are you reading and
enjoying?
I love
history and I try to introduce snippets that people might not be aware of into
the Anita Sundström stories. As part of the
research for the latest book, Midnight in
Malmö, we went to Berlin. As a
result I've just read Antony Beevor’s Berlin:
The Downfall 1945. “Enjoying” is
probably the wrong word as it’s a brutal read.
Though it’s the wrong way round, I want to move onto his Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege.
Q. Last 5 books you've read?
Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Antony Beevor
The Highland Lass by Janet MacLeod Trotter (she’s
my sister and a prolific novelist)
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré
The Pale Battalions by Robert Goddard
Q. Is there one all-time
favourite book you wished you had written?
I always
loved George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman
books. Not only are they funny and
stuffed with wonderful history, but also I just love the cheek of pinching
someone else’s famous literary character and running away with it.
Q. Favourite activity when not
writing?
Nowadays
it’s spending precious time with my grandchildren who, unfortunately, live
nowhere near us. And I've spent a
lifetime supporting sporting lost causes – Scotland rugby and football,
Newcastle United, and the England cricket team.
Q. What’s the current project in
progress? How’s it going?
I've started on an Anita Sundström short story set around a typical Swedish
Christmas. Too early to judge whether
it’s going to work. Then, later this
year, I’ll begin the fifth Malmö Mystery.
In between, I might return to my feckless 18th-century actor.
Q. What’s the best thing about
being published?
It’ll be nice
to have a physical paperback in my hand with a cover I like (the hardback one didn't do the book any favours). I think
I’ll feel a real sense of achievement.
Put it this way, if my old English teacher were still alive, he wouldn't believe it.
Q. What’s the worst?
I’ll let
you know after the paperbacks come out.
Q. If I pop back in a couple of
years’ time – where do you hope to book with the writing career?
I hope to
have produced another couple of books by then.
At least it’ll keep me from getting under my wife’s feet.
-----------------------------
Many thanks to Torquil for his time.
You can find out a bit more about him over here on his website.
His Malmo series of books were originally self-published, but are being re-released in paperback by McNidder & Grace, starting with the first today.
The following three will appear in print later this year I believe.
 |
| Paperback available in June |
 |
| Paperback available in August |
 |
| Print version - TBA |
Like Jon Jackson
last week Robert Littell is an
author who I have more books by than fingers, despite managing to have never
read him. Most if not all are in the
espionage genre.
An Israeli government minister is assassinated in the home
of his mistress. Leading the Palestinian assassination team is Dr. Ishmael
al-Shaath, a half-blind Palestinian doctor imprisoned by the Israelis for years
for crimes he did not commit. Days later, Elihu, an aging and decorated Mossad
officer, leads his final raid, killing a Hamas leader in his bed--and barely
escaping with his life. 
