The Edinburgh Dead

interview

Have you always known that you wanted to be a writer?

From a very young age, writing fiction felt like a reasonable and natural thing to be doing. Crucially, nobody ever disabused me of that notion, so although I had plenty of other interests that I was quite happy to pursue professionally, writing was always there, in my head, as an option.

Did the idea for The Edinburgh Dead come to you fully realised or did you have one particular starting point from which it grew?

I had one very specific, pretty simple starting point. I was thinking about Burke and Hare, two of Edinburgh’s most famous historical inhabitants, naughty chaps who murdered lots of innocents in order to supply the city’s anatomy schools with corpses. A straightforward question occurred to me: what if the teachers of anatomy weren’t the only people who wanted to get their hands on some corpses back then? The whole book flowed from that one thought.

What is it about Edinburgh that made you want to set your book there?

Two things: familiarity—since I was born and brought up here, and know the place and its history far better than anywhere else in the world—and the richness and strangeness of that history. For a relatively brief period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Edinburgh was at the very forefront of global scientific and philosophical thought, and at the same time there were some seriously dark and dodgy things going on here. It’s just a very tempting mixture to go and play around with.

Did you have to carry out extensive historical research before you began writing?

I already had some idea about Edinburgh’s history, but did a lot of reading to fill in the details, on things like the police force and the medical establishment. That was the most fun bit of writing the book, to be honest: any excuse to spend hours digging into the contents of a good library. Much more enjoyable than actually trying to turn words into sentences and paragraphs.

Do you have any particular favourite authors who have influenced your work?

It can be difficult to trace specific influences, but my sense of what speculative fiction is and can be has certainly been shaped by any number of writers I admire (or should that be envy?) greatly. People like Guy Gavriel Kay, Dan Simmons, George R. R. Martin.

What advantages and disadvantages do you see in using fantasy as the vehicle for your stories?

That’s a big question. One advantage is that it comes naturally to me: I’m a long-time reader of fantastic fiction, and the alternative—of writing mainstream, “realistic” stories—just doesn’t feel as instinctive. And, of course, fantasy allows the author to play around with themes and subjects in a vivid, exciting context that plugs right into the reader’s imagination. Disadvantages… well, it deters some readers, but then it potentially attracts rather a large number, too.

Do you have a set writing routine and, if so, what is it?

In a lot of ways I wish I had more of a routine than I do, really. In general terms, I actually write best (and fastest) in evenings and at night, but sadly the demands of real life don’t conform to my selfish preferences, so I end up doing most of my writing in the morning.

Some authors talk of their characters “surprising” them by their actions; is this something that has happened to you?

Not much. I like to think I’m the boss, on the whole. What does sometimes happen, though, is that I will change my ideas about what a character should do, or what fate should befall them, as I write a book. It’s not so much a case of me being surprised, as that I just have second thoughts about some particular plan. Once or twice, I’ve liked characters more than I expected to, and ended up saving them from nasty fates I originally had in mind for them, because I thought they deserved a rather happier outcome. Does that make me soft?

Do you chat about your books with other authors as you’re writing them, or do you prefer to keep them in your own head until the first draft is complete?

I talk to almost no one—author or otherwise—about what I’m writing until it’s basically complete, at least in draft form. Any conversations about the story are only in the vaguest and briefest of outline form until I’ve got enough text to be reasonably sure there’s something worth talking about there. Even then, I’m absolutely lousy at talking about my own work. Can hardly ever think of anything much to say.

If you have to live for one month as a character in a novel, which novel and which character would you choose?

Too many possible answers to this, so I’ll just pick one of the dozens that leap to mind: Dr. Watson, in pretty much any of the Sherlock Holmes stories, just to explore that world, and get to watch Holmes doing his thing. (And no, I wouldn’t really want to be Holmes himself—too manic depressive for my taste.)

If The Edinburgh Dead was ever filmed, who would you like to see directing and starring in the movie?

Directing would probably be Christopher Nolan, since I can’t remember any film he’s touched being less than interesting and distinctive. Starring… that’s harder. How about Daniel Craig? He’d be a pretty good fit for my lead character, Adam Quire, I think.

What would you do if you weren’t a writer?

I would no doubt be doing what I was before the writing thing took off: working in the environmental or nature conservation field, probably in the charity sector. I enjoyed that work and, much as I like writing, I miss my day-to-day involvement in it, so it’d be no hardship to be living that life again.