Latest / Rich Fulcher's TalkBox / Victoria Dowd: Meddlesome Marple, Barrister Days, Lakes are Creepy, Who’s Aunt Charlotte? I Ep. 26

Transcript

Victoria Dowd: Meddlesome Marple, Barrister Days, Lakes are Creepy, Who’s Aunt Charlotte? I Ep. 26 · Rich Fulcher's TalkBox

• 0:00
  Have a little spot here. Oh, hi, Rich Vulture here with
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  Rich Vulture's talk box. Have you been watching?
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  This is the 26th episode. Oh my, that's over 1/4 of 100.
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  And guess what, we've got merch. Finally, here's our mug.
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  You're going to love it. And there's other stuff too on
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  the site. Just look at the description.
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  There'll be links anyway. Tonight's guest, or today's
• 1:08
  guest, I don't care, is Victoria Dowd.
• 1:12
  She is a mystery writer. Yes.
• 1:15
  She's not a comic. She writes mysteries.
• 1:18
  This is really good, guys. You're going to love it.
• 1:22
  So sit back, have a talk box mug, drink a little cookie juice
• 1:30
  and watch Victoria Dowd. Deluded.
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  Oh, hi, Victoria. What are you doing?
• 2:08
  Good to see you. Have a seat.
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  Oh, it's nice to see your mug, yes.
• 2:13
  I'm doing a little bit of merge and this is the mug so I hope
• 2:18
  you like it. I like it a lot now.
• 2:20
  You now let me be honest, our audience usually I have as
• 2:26
  guests comics. Yeah, I know.
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  But I have had a magician before.
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  But most of our readers don't read brilliant, and by that I
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  mean they don't know how to read.
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  OK, good. That's what do you.
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  No, no, I'm sure a lot of people will love you and may even know
• 2:45
  about you because you write mysteries, right?
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  I do. Now, Were you always interested
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  in mysteries? Always completely.
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  I love the It's a foetus and it is what got me reading, you
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  know, when I was really young. Totally.
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  What do you read as a mystery when you're Nancy Drew?
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  Agatha Christie oh, Agatha Christie OK, with Agatha
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  Christie, you're probably not supposed to be really murder at
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  the age of 8, but you know, I loved it.
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  I just absolutely loved it and it.
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  Wasn't that pretty complicated? No, it's, it's really
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  accessible, you know, 'cause most crime books like that.
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  Read Agatha. Agatha Christie I started with
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  Murder on the Orient Express and it, you know.
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  What a what a thing to read. It's amazing.
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  Well, yeah, yeah. But it's so glamorous and, you
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  know, it's it's wonderful. And it starts off where they're
• 3:39
  on this amazing. I didn't know you had trains
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  where people could sleep on. Them I didn't know either, you
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  know? In rainy Sheffield it's, you
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  know, there was nothing to do and there it was.
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  And it went to all these countries.
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  As a Princess on. Exotic.
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  Yeah, it's just amazing. So that guy you hooked?
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  Totally. And then I went to the library
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  and asked has she, has she written anything else?
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  And they're like, Oh yeah. So did you have a relationship
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  with your librarian? Oh yeah, not like.
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  No, not like that. Yeah, they brought me.
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  They brought me a step because there was little.
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  But they liked you. Yeah, I think so.
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  Maybe they thought I was a precocious, annoying child.
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  And this was in Yorkshire. Yeah, Sheffield.
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  Sheffield, yeah, that's where. Didn't Jarvis Cocker come?
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  From there he did. Yeah, he did Pulp.
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  And Michael Palin. Yeah, we've got all the big
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  ones. Wow.
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  Who else came from Sheffield? Who else came from Sheffield?
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  You've named the big ones like, well, Arctic Monkeys.
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  Oh, I love Arctic Monkeys. Sheffield Boy.
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  Did they like mysteries? They don't know.
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  Yeah, yeah. Maybe do you think?
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  So you, but you as a career, as you were growing up, you read
• 5:00
  mysteries, read mysteries, read mystery?
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  Yeah. Did you watch stuff on TV?
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  Oh, totally. You know, they had the whole
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  Joan Hickson things, and I loved all the films with people like
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  Peter Ustinov, who isn't very much like Poirot at all.
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  But you know, they're, they're just brilliant.
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  They for transporting you, which is better?
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  Which is better? He was in Death on the Nile.
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  Yeah. Well, his Poirot was a better.
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  Yeah, he's nothing like the books, but I didn't like Albert
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  Finney as Poirot. Actually, I thought he was quite
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  Yeah, like this. And he was really shouting.
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  He got really angry and aggressive with yeah.
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  I thought back off. Poirot was in the room.
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  But I loved all the the setting and the, you know, the beautiful
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  costume and all that. Did you want any non Agatha
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  Christie stuff like sometimes? What about Colombo?
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  I loved Colombo. I liked Colombo a little.
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  Bit one more question, just one more.
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  Thing I used to like, what was I really like, Sapphire and steel
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  I used to love. OK, that was bizarre.
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  That was Joanna Lumley. So that's going back quite a
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  lot. Oh no, that's cool.
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  Yeah, that was quite good. What are the?
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  I did watch other things, I'm sure, but you know, it was the
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  70's. The telly went off for a long
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  time. What about the you know, the one
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  in Oxford? Morse Yeah.
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  Oh yeah, I love Morse and I like all the spin offs as well, you
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  know, all his, you know I love all those.
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  I like the ones, though. The thing I like about Colombo
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  is everybody thinks he's dumb and they dismiss him.
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  That's great. I love that with Yeah.
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  And it's the same with Miss Marple.
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  Everybody thinks little old lady.
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  She's a little old lady. Yeah, knock her off the street.
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  Wait till she gets the dams and gin.
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  Out. But she's annoying though,
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  right? Yeah, yeah, she won't stop.
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  I like her. She's nosy.
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  Yeah, right. And you see that in villages,
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  you know, they're a little bit of curtain twitching.
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  Was going on how you grew up? Did you know everything going
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  on? You knew everybody's business
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  then, didn't I? Really, it's a bit more behind
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  closed doors and how the murders aren't.
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  They But you became a barrister, and were you a defender or were
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  you a prosecutor? I did both.
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  I started off as a defender and for a little bit of time I went
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  over to the side of the Angels. Now, which side?
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  Which side do you think gives you better experience to write
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  mysteries? Oh, good question.
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  That's one of the best questions.
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  I would say probably prosecuting because you have to build the
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  case. You have to solve the mystery.
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  And you have to the defence, but what you're doing is present,
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  whether you're solving it or not, you're presenting it to the
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  jury as this is what happened. This is the most likely thing,
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  isn't it? Now look at this evidence that
• 7:52
  all backs it up. Clues, basically.
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  Has there ever been like it's TV all the time but an aha moment
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  where the crime got solved and it wasn't your client?
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  No. OK damn.
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  Damn it. No, but isn't that the ideal?
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  Yeah, I mean, they got off a lot of the time, right?
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  But whether or not they'd done it, they'd often done something
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  naughty. But whether they'd been charged
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  with the correct crime? But do you ever give, like,
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  evidence that it's somebody? It could easily be this person.
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  Yeah, yeah. I mean, often the I had a
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  defendant who, well, you, you often get defendants who come
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  back regular clients. Oh yeah, yeah, regular chose.
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  And I had one particular chap who he would.
• 8:43
  Wore chaps. Yeah, yeah.
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  No, he would always run the same defence ID every single, every
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  single time. You know, he was identified and
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  it was just, you know, are we running this again?
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  Are we running this again? And basically it was.
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  The problem was he looked very similar to a comedian called
• 9:08
  Richard Pryor. Like, really similar to him.
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  Everyone knows Richard Pryor. Yeah.
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  And. So lots of, and witnesses would
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  say and this guy looked like Richard Pryor and the jury would
• 9:19
  just look at her and go, Yep, that's him.
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  And every time this guy ran ID every single time.
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  And you know, every time. And then at the end, that's what
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  the defendant. The end It was really Richard
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  Pryor who did. It that's what the defendant
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  said, I said, can we really running ID again and they're
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  saying you look like Richard, you went well, could it not be
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  this guy called Richard Pryor? You got to think outside the
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  box, right? We didn't run with that, so how
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  many? Years.
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  Did you practise law? Because I went to law school,
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  Did you know that? Did you?
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  Yeah. Whereabouts.
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  Well, I didn't practise because I thought if I get sucked into
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  it, yeah, I might get on this track.
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  And so I thought I wanted to try this comedy thing.
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  I didn't know much about it and so I thought I'll give it a
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  shot. I can always go back to the law.
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  Yeah, it's always waiting. People are still committing
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  crimes. I know, but I just didn't like
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  it when I started law school. No, it's tough.
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  I didn't like it that much. It was, you know, I did it for
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  oh God. Well, probably over 10 years and
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  really, yeah. And it was.
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  I'm still on my one year sabbatical.
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  Oh, I see you took a sabbatical now was it?
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  And. And yeah, that was about, I'd
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  say, about over 20 years ago. What was the jumping point?
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  What was the jumping point from This is Me jumping from law to
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  writing? Well, I wanted to do that in the
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  1st place. OK, but you could really.
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  Yeah, you could. This.
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  Is what happened. I started studying entertainment
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  law because I go, I'll kind of want to do entertainment.
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  Yeah, this will be the bridge. But yeah, yeah.
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  So basically I, I thought, well, I needed to earn money, you
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  know, and I couldn't go into the careers person in a
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  comprehensive in Sheffield in the 80s and say what do you want
• 11:14
  to do? I want to be a crime writer.
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  'Cause you laughed at the room period of starvation.
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  Yeah, yeah. Nobody knows who you are.
• 11:23
  Yeah, that's a long period. So, but you wanted to make the
• 11:27
  bridge so that you started writing right off the bat?
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  I did. And selling stuff.
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  I, yeah. So I started, I was barrister
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  for a long time and I was still writing, but not very much
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  because, you know, it's quite a yeah.
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  It's a full on profession. It's 24/7.
• 11:42
  Basically. You know you when you finished
• 11:44
  one trial, you come out of the court and they give you the next
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  one. And you have to wear the wig
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  too, yes. You do.
• 11:51
  Yeah. Do you still have the wig?
• 11:53
  I do still have the wig. Yeah, it's a filthy, smelly
• 11:56
  thing as well. I.
• 11:57
  Read somewhere they're thinking of changing the style of the wig
• 12:01
  now my. Goodness.
• 12:03
  Oh, well, when I went, I had to have a small man this week.
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  Really. Yeah.
• 12:10
  Oh my God. We were, I was in the first year
• 12:12
  where women were allowed to wear trousers at the bar, had to wear
• 12:16
  skirts. But, and that's not good when
• 12:18
  you go in in the cells and you know you want to be ready
• 12:22
  basically. Ready to run?
• 12:24
  Yeah. Ready to run.
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  That was my defendant. I had people run on me.
• 12:30
  How often would you get really scared of your client?
• 12:34
  Never, Really Never. Never.
• 12:36
  They're innocent. Yeah, yeah, of course, all of
• 12:38
  them. So what was your first
• 12:40
  transition to writing from? Like you're on your sabbatical
• 12:44
  and you go, OK, did you know what you were going to write?
• 12:48
  It was short stories I was writing and to get something
• 12:51
  published was amazing. The first time I saw my stuff in
• 12:55
  an anthology, that was it. I just thought I can do this.
• 12:59
  You know, there is a chance I can do this.
• 13:00
  Because you had always been a good writer in school and.
• 13:04
  Yeah, I loved it, you know, and that's what I wanted to do.
• 13:08
  Guys out there always be writing.
• 13:10
  Yeah, always, always. It costs nothing.
• 13:13
  Yeah, something to do. No.
• 13:15
  But this is what happens is some people think that they're
• 13:17
  writers and they go, I'm a writer, I'm a writer.
• 13:20
  Do you write? No.
• 13:21
  But when I write, when I'm going to be a writer, I'll write.
• 13:24
  Yeah. People are really in love with
• 13:26
  the idea of being a crime writer, yes, but they don't want
• 13:29
  to sit down for six hours a day and bang out a load of words
• 13:32
  that have to go in the bin and you save maybe 2 words.
• 13:35
  It's a. It's a slog.
• 13:37
  It is, it is a hard, you know, it's not kind of, you know, who
• 13:42
  is it who lays on the chaise long in the comedy show and
• 13:45
  she's having peeled grapes and etcetera, etcetera.
• 13:48
  On the chaise lounge. On the chaise lounge.
• 13:50
  You've got. That's wet leg, right?
• 13:54
  Yeah. So.
• 13:56
  But The thing is, did you know that you wanted to be a mystery
• 14:00
  writer? Yeah.
• 14:01
  OK, actually I did write historical fiction novel and I
• 14:06
  quite fancied a little bit of that kind of being.
• 14:11
  This one was set in Mussolini, Italy.
• 14:15
  That's a good. And basically what I did was
• 14:17
  loads and loads of research about art and Italy and then
• 14:21
  just back dumped it into the book and before this is okay,
• 14:26
  but really, is this a story? It's not a story is.
• 14:30
  It no. But The thing is, everyone's
• 14:31
  focused so much on Hitler. Yeah.
• 14:34
  So it's Mussolini has his due now.
• 14:38
  So I did a bit of that, and I wanted to be slightly more
• 14:41
  academic with it. But right, that was a no.
• 14:44
  It was my husband who eventually said, you know how you read all
• 14:47
  these mystery novels all the time and you're a criminal
• 14:50
  barrister, why don't you write a crime?
• 14:52
  Do what you love, right? Exactly.
• 14:55
  Well you know, I find this happens a lot is people are
• 14:58
  really good at something or have a avid interest, they don't make
• 15:03
  the connection until later that oh I should do this for a
• 15:07
  living. Exactly.
• 15:08
  Because I love this you somehow you sort of put it aside like,
• 15:12
  oh, I wouldn't do that. No.
• 15:14
  And you kind of think work has to be the painful bit, yes?
• 15:17
  And that you can't merge the two and have fun and do the thing
• 15:21
  you love. So this is what makes it fun for
• 15:23
  you? Yeah.
• 15:24
  Yeah. So you did the short stories.
• 15:27
  When did you do your first novel?
• 15:29
  And what was the novel? That was 2017 and that was the.
• 15:34
  That's only. Eight years ago, yeah, yeah, it
• 15:37
  took. It must have taken years to
• 15:39
  write it, though, because you know when you do your first one,
• 15:43
  you have years to write it. You're polishing every word.
• 15:46
  Whereas now you know it's got to be 9 months.
• 15:49
  Plus, you're probably thinking, my first one's got to make an
• 15:53
  impact. I know, and it's always the
• 15:54
  worst one. It is.
• 15:57
  I mean, I've got some in the bottom drawer that are terrible,
• 15:59
  but. But it's good that you get that
• 16:01
  one out of the way. There was one about Dick Turpin
• 16:04
  that hopefully I've burnt every coffee.
• 16:07
  Really, it was. Terrible.
• 16:09
  Why? Oh my God.
• 16:11
  He robbed people on the highway. It was farcical.
• 16:15
  It was called interviews with Mistress Turpin and it was about
• 16:19
  because he did pass a wedding ring to somebody when he was
• 16:22
  being executed, when he was being executed.
• 16:25
  So he may have been married in some way and this was all about
• 16:30
  this woman and it was just terrible.
• 16:32
  Did you see the Dick Turpin show on Apple?
• 16:35
  I did. I loved that.
• 16:36
  I'm in that I. Know, yeah.
• 16:41
  Oh boy, it's all fun, isn't? It yeah, it was brilliant.
• 16:46
  It's all good fun. So were you kind of searching
• 16:49
  for your style as well? Very much.
• 16:51
  You kind of there's a little bit of humour.
• 16:54
  Yeah, there was no here. Well, when I wrote my first
• 16:57
  crime book and and, you know, got a publisher and it went but.
• 17:01
  You got a publisher before you wrote.
• 17:03
  It no, no, I wrote it and and I wrote it, sent it in and then
• 17:07
  they rang and said, you know, we want to offer you this deal and
• 17:09
  it was brilliant. And then I started to get
• 17:11
  reviews coming in and also the put on the blurb comedy writer.
• 17:17
  And I'm like, I'm not. It wasn't meant to be funny.
• 17:20
  Oh, see, then they'll look at it from the view that essentially,
• 17:23
  I'm gonna laugh at this. Yeah, it was.
• 17:26
  This is. Gonna be hilarious.
• 17:28
  Yeah, I suppose in some ways it was.
• 17:31
  It wasn't meant to be. But so you got published very
• 17:38
  quickly. Well done you.
• 17:40
  Not so quickly. I think it's other people, but
• 17:43
  you do have to. It's hard.
• 17:44
  It's hard to get a publisher these days.
• 17:46
  Yeah, because how did it work? I'm just curious because I'm
• 17:51
  kind of doing stuff, but do you write it first and then go to
• 17:58
  the? I did publisher.
• 18:00
  Some people don't. I did.
• 18:02
  I did it all completely the wrong way around as well.
• 18:04
  I didn't have an agent. That's OK.
• 18:07
  I'd seen this publisher and I thought, I think these guys
• 18:11
  would like this. You know, I'd sent it to a
• 18:13
  couple of others as well who'd just gone.
• 18:15
  No. And I'd sent, you know, the
• 18:18
  Italian Mussolini one out. Everyone was like, really?
• 18:21
  No. Well, you're bound to get Nos at
• 18:23
  first. Definitely and I think you know
• 18:25
  if you don't, you don't realise what the industry is going to
• 18:28
  do. So yeah, they were, they were
• 18:32
  very keen, but I did it before I had an agent and that was a four
• 18:36
  book deal that they gave me. And then you went to the agent.
• 18:40
  Yeah, because they said to me when I went with one book, they
• 18:43
  said. And is it a series?
• 18:45
  Yes, it can be. Because that's what they're
• 18:49
  looking for, aren't they? Yeah.
• 18:50
  A lot of the time. If you can get on a series.
• 18:53
  Yeah, but then you then all you want to do after like book four
• 18:56
  and five is like get off the. Scene And So what was this book?
• 19:00
  What was this book? This was the smart woman's guide
• 19:03
  to murder. Yes, which is a series.
• 19:06
  It is a series. There are five books started.
• 19:10
  Have you ended the series or is it still?
• 19:12
  Gone. It's still there, it's still, I
• 19:14
  wanted to do other things and I have done a historical crime
• 19:17
  book now 'cause I did want to get a little bit of history in
• 19:21
  there. And it's really difficult in the
• 19:22
  modern era to isolate people, you know, So minor amateur
• 19:28
  sleuths. With technology.
• 19:30
  And you know the first thing you would do if a crime happened in
• 19:32
  your house is pick up the phone or get on the Internet.
• 19:35
  You know I have to get the. Drones.
• 19:37
  I have to get them away from Wi-Fi, telephones, anything.
• 19:41
  Imagine a one page mystery. The drone says you did it.
• 19:44
  Yeah, we're in because I talked about this on another podcast.
• 19:49
  There's this show out now where you're, like being chased like
• 19:54
  that. They have to find you, right?
• 19:57
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they have all these TV
• 19:59
  cameras. It's like they could, yes, they
• 20:02
  could find you at any time. I just don't buy it.
• 20:05
  Yeah. I I think I could hide if you
• 20:08
  just like, hid in your wardrobe or something and there's no TV
• 20:10
  character. Well, because people escape from
• 20:12
  prison still and they are able to hide.
• 20:16
  Yeah, but they usually they're like in the woods for a while
• 20:19
  and then they wait to come out. And the minute they come out,
• 20:22
  it's like you stink. It's like you're trying to buy a
• 20:27
  hot dog at the 711. You've obviously escaped from
• 20:30
  prison. Paper suit, all that jazz.
• 20:33
  Yes, but what was I talking about?
• 20:39
  How to isolate? But why?
• 20:40
  Did I move to isolate? Because, you know, they're just
• 20:44
  five women in the modern day, in the smart women, they're called.
• 20:47
  These are all smart. That's their surname.
• 20:50
  They're not very smart at all. But are they a group that's
• 20:53
  Yeah, they're. All related.
• 20:54
  OK. So they're mother daughter,
• 20:56
  you've got that kind of dynamic going.
• 20:58
  On and daughter. Aunt.
• 21:00
  Aunt Charlotte. Housemaid.
• 21:02
  Yeah, no, no, they're not posh. And you know, when I you, you
• 21:07
  just, you've had a flood, they've snowed in.
• 21:10
  They're on an island. I was running out of house.
• 21:13
  These are controlled environment, yeah, it's.
• 21:16
  Closed circle they call. It that's what it's called
• 21:19
  closed circle people. Close Circle mystery, which is
• 21:23
  fun because you can get that kind of intensity of the country
• 21:26
  house. Because there was 1 you wrote
• 21:28
  that was around a lake. Yeah, that's the last one.
• 21:31
  Yeah, that one's set in Finland and I wanted to do a locked lake
• 21:35
  mystery. So there are locked room
• 21:37
  mysteries where obviously. Lakes are so cool.
• 21:41
  Yeah, and creepy. Is this meant to be really?
• 21:43
  You know what's really creepy about some lakes?
• 21:46
  I don't know why is some of them are really deep.
• 21:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't know how deep they
• 21:51
  are. I find that very scary.
• 21:53
  There's a quarry on Dartmoor where you can go and swim.
• 21:57
  It's it's abandoned, you know, I don't remember the whole Tim.
• 22:00
  And they can't find the bottom of it.
• 22:02
  And I went and it was just horrible, horrible, horrible.
• 22:05
  It just goes down and down and down.
• 22:06
  You know, I've been stuck down there.
• 22:08
  What is down there? What about underwater cave
• 22:11
  diving? You like that doing that?
• 22:13
  No, not that I. Saw the one where they rescued
• 22:16
  the Thai kids. Oh gosh, and they showed you the
• 22:19
  diagrams of how they were doing. It was so frightening.
• 22:23
  No, I can't do anything like that.
• 22:24
  I'm going to pot holing of thing.
• 22:27
  None of that. I get what I yeah, should
• 22:29
  sustain books, that sort of thing.
• 22:32
  So did you OK, after you came up with this idea for the Smart,
• 22:37
  did you know that was going to be the series or well.
• 22:40
  When they said, is it a series? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:43
  I'll write some more. Yeah.
• 22:44
  OK, so you expanded on these characters.
• 22:47
  Yeah, yeah. And it's quite good doing a
• 22:49
  series because you don't have to put everything about them in one
• 22:53
  book. You know, they kind of develop
• 22:55
  over the course of the arc, which is quite nice.
• 22:58
  And you can, you know, bring in different aspects because they
• 23:02
  have one who's just a friend, Bridget, who's the annoying ex.
• 23:05
  Bridget is annoying. Isn't it?
• 23:08
  And she has a different animal every time and nobody really
• 23:12
  knows where her animals are going.
• 23:14
  Just she happened to have a dog and I thought, I'm really tired
• 23:16
  of it. And the dog was called Mr
• 23:18
  Bojangles, and she's annoying and the dog's annoying and you
• 23:22
  can't kill the dog. Basically, you can't get they
• 23:24
  just disappear. So I put Mr Bojangles went off
• 23:30
  to be an emotional support dog for Richard Maidley.
• 23:32
  And it was just a throwaway line.
• 23:35
  And the publishers, you can't say that.
• 23:37
  You can't say that he's going to sue.
• 23:39
  He's going to sue. Have somebody made-up like Kris
• 23:42
  Kristofferson? Oh, you always have.
• 23:44
  He's not made-up. He died, though.
• 23:48
  He's dead now. Yeah.
• 23:51
  Have you ever had a animal die off in one of your books?
• 23:55
  Have I? No, I don't think so.
• 23:58
  Oh, no, I just saw something. I think it was a Somebody's
• 24:04
  Guide to Murder where a dog died.
• 24:07
  And I was like, wow. No, no, you can't care.
• 24:11
  I did have a short story A Cat Dies because I we.
• 24:16
  Want to do? Well, we, they, the whole thing
• 24:19
  is don't kill the cat. It's, you know, the whole thing
• 24:22
  about writing. Everywhere so you can't kill the
• 24:24
  cat. You can't kill the cat, so I
• 24:25
  thought there might be a good way of killing the cat and I
• 24:28
  found a way to do it. Oh, good, good.
• 24:31
  That is part of the story. Because the cat's a ghost now.
• 24:35
  Sort. Of hovering it's.
• 24:36
  Stuffed. OK, you start with the end
• 24:40
  first, or do you go? I'm going to write about a lake
• 24:45
  and then go from there. Or how?
• 24:47
  Basically, I start with what I kind of think of as the trick at
• 24:51
  the middle of the book. I think of it as like a trick.
• 24:53
  So the locked Lake mysteries, basically they're going to
• 24:56
  Finland and they're going for a wedding and and there they have.
• 25:00
  You been the fin have. Yeah, and the ice builds over
• 25:03
  weeks and weeks and weeks and gets really, really thick.
• 25:06
  So what I wanted to do was put the body under the ice that's
• 25:09
  been building for weeks and weeks and weeks.
• 25:11
  But this is one of the people who's just travelled out there
• 25:14
  with them. How does that happen?
• 25:15
  How does that happen? That's the trick, and that's
• 25:17
  where I start with any book. What is the tell us?
• 25:23
  No, I'm just kidding. I'm.
• 25:24
  Kidding. So there's no entry points, no
• 25:26
  exit points, there's no way on or out.
• 25:28
  How has this person got all the way?
• 25:30
  And then I kind of, I use kind of my murder boards basically
• 25:33
  with lots and lots of pictures, plans, maps that have the red
• 25:38
  string. Yeah, there's red string.
• 25:40
  What is the yarn for? Why do they always have yarn?
• 25:43
  Because I kind of do it as 2/3 and then a third and down this
• 25:48
  third. Are the plot points just
• 25:50
  fractions? These are, yeah, there's plot
• 25:53
  points down here, right? Right.
• 25:55
  And where I want to seed them into the story, I take the red
• 25:58
  string from there to the point. So they're not all in one
• 26:02
  chapter or one end of the book, They're throughout.
• 26:05
  But when they have detectives on shows, why do they have yarns?
• 26:09
  They're not doing plot points. No, maybe not.
• 26:13
  But it's like, I'm just wondering if that was just a
• 26:16
  thing somebody did once and they go, let's just keep the yarn and
• 26:20
  that's really cool. My matches my notebook, so the
• 26:25
  board matches my notebook, so I sit 2.
• 26:27
  You've got a whole fashion thing going on, yeah.
• 26:29
  This is all from being embarrassed to say I've got the
• 26:31
  plot points which would have been evidence down this side
• 26:34
  that follows what's happening on the board, and then I do it
• 26:37
  chapter by chapter chapter and plan out each one.
• 26:39
  So go ahead. And then but I did one where
• 26:44
  basically they were, it was called the Supper Club murders,
• 26:48
  and they went supper club. Yeah.
• 26:51
  You know what that is? Yeah.
• 26:52
  OK, so. You have a club.
• 26:55
  No, it's basically where. You have a supper.
• 27:00
  Yeah, unless everybody dies, but we did it in Devon with some
• 27:05
  people we knew and I'd never done this before and it was
• 27:08
  pitch black. You basically all the village go
• 27:11
  together from house to house for a course so.
• 27:15
  It's like a pub crawl. Yeah.
• 27:17
  Only with food. And it's dark.
• 27:19
  And if people kept disappearing and then reappearing and I just,
• 27:22
  you don't really know where everybody is at each point in
• 27:27
  the evening. So that this is brilliant
• 27:29
  because you're always looking for misdirection, you know,
• 27:32
  everywhere. So I started writing the book
• 27:34
  and I thought, this is great, this is great.
• 27:35
  And then I kept losing where people were in the book and
• 27:38
  thinking, Oh no, that person wouldn't have heard that because
• 27:41
  they left 5. Minutes now is this an enclosed
• 27:44
  community? Like a gated?
• 27:45
  Community. Yeah, well, cannot.
• 27:46
  Yeah, just a little isolated because.
• 27:48
  I knew somebody that their parents lived on a golf course.
• 27:52
  No. And they would go to each
• 27:53
  other's houses and drink and drive the golf cart.
• 27:57
  They get so messed up. I bet, Yeah.
• 28:00
  Anyway, go ahead. Fast those.
• 28:02
  Things, Yeah, yeah, I know. Golf carts, brilliant.
• 28:05
  But you can buy golf carts now to drive like regular cars.
• 28:09
  Yeah, I want one actually, if you're driving around to the
• 28:12
  beach and stuff that'd. Be really cool.
• 28:14
  The philosophy is you don't drive that much in the course of
• 28:19
  a day, maybe 10 miles. So why not have something like a
• 28:22
  golf cart? Because then everybody would
• 28:24
  drive around drunk. This.
• 28:25
  Podcast is brought to you by Golf Carts.
• 28:30
  Anyway. Sorry, go ahead, supper club.
• 28:32
  So yeah, I kept losing where they were in the book, and
• 28:35
  that's no good. I need to know what everybody
• 28:36
  is. And this was during lockdown
• 28:38
  that I was writing this one and my son was really into Lego and
• 28:43
  he built the whole village out of Lego for me and.
• 28:46
  What did you pay him? No, don't you?
• 28:48
  Need to pay him. But every character had a little
• 28:52
  minifigure, so when they moved in the book, I moved them around
• 28:57
  in the book so I knew exactly where everybody.
• 28:58
  Was so good. Lego.
• 29:00
  It's the way I had. Lego.
• 29:02
  And I'd still use it now for I've got one that I'm writing at
• 29:06
  the moment where they're all in a big castle and you need to
• 29:11
  know where everybody is so that you know who's heard what, who's
• 29:14
  seen what, who could die and where and where their bodies.
• 29:18
  And I'd still use the little mini figures in that.
• 29:21
  Because you need to visualise that totally.
• 29:24
  Now, did your son build like a lake?
• 29:28
  Lego No. No, he should have done that,
• 29:31
  shouldn't he? He should have done that for me.
• 29:33
  But it's funny you said that, you know, you find out the
• 29:37
  middle Yeah thing because I had a magician on Pete Heat.
• 29:43
  Do you know Pete Heat? Yeah.
• 29:44
  Really is I watched your show. Oh.
• 29:47
  OK, all right. Well, he said when he devises a
• 29:50
  magic trick, he thinks of the ending 1st and then he works
• 29:56
  backwards. It's like reverse engineering.
• 29:58
  Is that kind of what you do? Like I want a body under a
• 30:02
  frozen lake. How do I do that?
• 30:04
  Yeah. Oh, it takes a while to.
• 30:06
  Can a sort that out? And how can?
• 30:09
  You Has it ever been like you? You think of one of these things
• 30:12
  that you go, oh, you can't do it or it's not.
• 30:16
  Really. No, because it's fiction.
• 30:17
  You can pretty much get them to do anything.
• 30:19
  You want really? I wanted somebody hit on the
• 30:21
  head by a cannonball and they're inside a port colours.
• 30:26
  So how did the cannonball drop out of nowhere onto the head?
• 30:30
  And I I spent a long time looking at I do yeah looking at
• 30:34
  cannibals. No YouTube and magicians.
• 30:38
  I do, I watch a lot of magicians.
• 30:40
  So you have an affiliation with Magicians?
• 30:43
  Sort of. I'd be terrible at it though,
• 30:45
  right? Right A.
• 30:47
  Lot of it is misdirection, which is what you do.
• 30:50
  Yeah, and I used a magic trick in one of the books to sort of
• 30:55
  foreshadow what was going to happen.
• 30:57
  So it's about a ring on a table and.
• 31:01
  So if you OK like say this lake thing, right, so you figure out
• 31:05
  all the steps to it, how do you work in the misdirection and all
• 31:10
  that? Often the comedy helps.
• 31:13
  So now now I have been kind of labelled like that.
• 31:15
  So I'll do something like. You're busy laughing.
• 31:18
  Yeah, but I will have put a little clue in there somewhere
• 31:22
  or scaring people. So a little bit of supernatural
• 31:27
  is this. So I've got the Northern Lights
• 31:29
  that are happening and they're very important because they're.
• 31:31
  Changing. Yeah, they're changing
• 31:33
  everybody's perception, particularly of things like
• 31:36
  colour, which is really, really important in in the book.
• 31:40
  So yeah, making people think. I love how Agatha Christie does
• 31:44
  that with she almost. No, no.
• 31:47
  She almost gets you believing that witches have cursed people
• 31:52
  and that's why they're dead. Well, you know, rationally that
• 31:54
  can't possibly have happened. And Agatha would never believe
• 31:57
  in Yeah. So you know, but she gets you
• 32:00
  thinking like so you're looking all the way you're looking here.
• 32:03
  But actually the clue is over here but.
• 32:04
  Can I say this Agatha is a good name for a witch?
• 32:07
  I know, isn't it? It is.
• 32:10
  It's a good name. Is it short for anything?
• 32:12
  No. No, it's not.
• 32:15
  OK, Agatha Christie, maybe. So these misdirections, once you
• 32:21
  have those, how do you lay out the book?
• 32:24
  Do you just go? I want to figure out how it
• 32:27
  begins. Yeah.
• 32:28
  So basically I went from there and it's too nerdy.
• 32:33
  No, no, OK. And you kind of I work from
• 32:35
  there and think how do we get to that point?
• 32:37
  So obviously they've got to get to Finland.
• 32:40
  They why are? They show them packing for the
• 32:42
  trip, yeah. Yeah, stuff like that.
• 32:45
  Filler, not killer. Is that what they say?
• 32:49
  No. Oh, OK, that's pretty good
• 32:51
  though. Phill and not Killer.
• 32:53
  You've got to get 80,000 words out.
• 32:55
  I don't need to. Be vanilla but I need Phillip
• 32:57
  for my killer. Although I've written my one
• 33:00
  that I'm working on now as a stand alone, it's not either of
• 33:03
  the series and that is just Bang Bang Bang Bang bang death,
• 33:06
  death, death, death death. That's classic.
• 33:09
  I love that. But here's the here's my beef
• 33:12
  with a lot of mostly TV shows and books is that now when
• 33:19
  they're not all equal characters, you're thinking, OK,
• 33:24
  it's not going to be the main characters because that would be
• 33:27
  kind of obvious. I'm looking for like a little
• 33:30
  character early on that could be the killer.
• 33:35
  They usually winds up that person like oh it's the guy that
• 33:39
  fixes the garage. Although if you watch something
• 33:42
  like Midsummer Murders, it's the most famous person.
• 33:45
  So you know how they get get in a famous person every.
• 33:48
  So Martin Mccutchen got killed by a wheel of cheese.
• 33:51
  I loved that. I loved that so much.
• 33:53
  But then you're looking around who's super famous in it.
• 33:56
  You know it's definitely going to be them because it'll be
• 33:59
  their contract. I must be the killer, but you.
• 34:01
  Don't have them in that much. You have them in the beginning,
• 34:04
  maybe at a party. Yeah.
• 34:06
  So you make note of that person and you go, OK, that's a suspect
• 34:10
  right away. Yeah, so if you look at
• 34:12
  something like the mirror cracked, you know you've got
• 34:15
  Elizabeth Taylor in the in the cast, who's going to be the
• 34:18
  killer. She's.
• 34:19
  Got to be a yeah. Maybe it's not her if you
• 34:21
  haven't watched that particular film.
• 34:24
  But what about like, so Agatha Christie?
• 34:28
  Her first big book was that And Then There Were None.
• 34:32
  No, that didn't come till much later.
• 34:34
  Her first book was The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
• 34:37
  which was, you know, she was pretty big.
• 34:39
  She sold quite a few, and then she had a few more.
• 34:42
  But in 1926, it was the murder of Roger Ackroyd.
• 34:46
  Oh OK, catapulted her to fame. But my point is, in that book,
• 34:50
  and then There were none, all of the characters were equally.
• 34:54
  They could have done it. I love.
• 34:55
  Isn't that the true test of a good mystery?
• 34:59
  It's it's probably one of my favourites.
• 35:01
  And then it but that she didn't write that till 1939.
• 35:04
  But she's at the height of her power.
• 35:06
  Totally. And it's just what I love about
• 35:08
  it as well, is that they're on the eve of war and everything is
• 35:12
  about that Second World War. Yeah, a lot of our viewers have
• 35:16
  never heard of the Second World War.
• 35:18
  OK. And and you've got people like
• 35:21
  the judge is called Justice Wargrave, and everybody has, you
• 35:25
  know, you've got a you've got a Colonel.
• 35:27
  Everybody has a tiny little collection, Yeah, a little
• 35:30
  connection to to conflict or soldiers.
• 35:34
  And it is like, you know, you've got this.
• 35:36
  We're on the brink of. I like it when you find out
• 35:38
  their connection. Yeah, I love that.
• 35:41
  I love that. But what I mean is, I think
• 35:43
  it's, is it easier? Like a lot of these mysteries on
• 35:47
  TV, you couldn't really figure them out.
• 35:52
  It's just something they pull out of their anus.
• 35:55
  You see, that's not good, is it? It's got to be fair play.
• 35:58
  I think you've got to have. Figure it out.
• 36:00
  So I'm writing all about the rules of detective fiction,
• 36:03
  which a chap did, right? A man called Ronald Knox wrote
• 36:07
  the rules of Ronald Knox. He was a reverend.
• 36:10
  He wrote the rules of detective fiction.
• 36:12
  He did? Yeah, in the 20s.
• 36:15
  And they're kind of tongue in cheek, but they are things like
• 36:19
  like, you know, it can't be the narrator, it can't, it can't be
• 36:24
  the detective. You can only have I think 2:00.
• 36:27
  Yeah, but there's a famous one where it's the detective.
• 36:30
  I can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:32
  So it was a lot of it was in response to the fact that people
• 36:36
  were saying Agatha was breaking the rules.
• 36:40
  Is she bending them? She tells you in the book you're
• 36:44
  talking about. She does.
• 36:46
  She puts it right in front of the reader.
• 36:49
  It is there. If you go back, do.
• 36:51
  You think she read Knox's rules? Probably.
• 36:54
  So you need to know the rules before you break them.
• 36:57
  I think so, and she was bending them, I'd say.
• 37:00
  She's a Bender. She.
• 37:03
  I'm going to quote you on that. Agatha Christie is a Bender.
• 37:07
  She. Bent the rules.
• 37:09
  Well, you know what I mean. You know what I mean?
• 37:13
  Yeah, that'll be a clip. Oh my.
• 37:20
  God, God, you were just telling me before the show there's a big
• 37:24
  Agatha Christie festival. There is, yeah.
• 37:28
  Where everybody, they get a big Agatha Christie doll and Make
• 37:33
  Love to it. It's not.
• 37:36
  True at all. They're but they all kind of
• 37:39
  worship her. Yeah, and, and lots of people
• 37:42
  love Agatha Christie a lot, obviously.
• 37:44
  She's really, really popular. And this festival is amazing.
• 37:47
  It's so everybody's so lovely. Is she still the biggest mystery
• 37:52
  rider? I would say so, yeah.
• 37:54
  She's one of the biggest writers of all time.
• 37:56
  Yeah, yeah. And she still outsells most
• 37:59
  people. You know, it's amazing.
• 38:01
  She. Wrote so many books. 66.
• 38:05
  What does that mean? It looks that's like 1 number
• 38:09
  short of the devil, right? Oh.
• 38:14
  But. We're going on a bad Ave.
• 38:16
  Right, right. Sorry, sorry, but who would be
• 38:20
  the Agatha Christie of today if you had to pick one person?
• 38:25
  Gosh, I don't know. I think I don't think there
• 38:28
  would be 1 like her now. Nowadays I think people take
• 38:32
  kind of aspects of it or have moved on to different things.
• 38:37
  It works very differently now I think.
• 38:40
  But I was listening to Richard Osmond the other day and he
• 38:46
  wrote Thursday Murder Club. No, you know I do.
• 38:50
  Of course you do. But he's saying that now there's
• 38:55
  a lot of pressure to write a lot quicker.
• 38:58
  But she wrote very quick. She would often have two books a
• 39:01
  year. But I mean there was a period
• 39:04
  though in say the 70s. Or these are just normal
• 39:08
  authors. I guess they could write a book
• 39:11
  a year, maybe 2 years, then another book.
• 39:15
  But now there seems to be this You know you finished the book.
• 39:19
  I want to read another Victoria Dowd book.
• 39:22
  I think maybe some of that comes from Kindle because when they
• 39:25
  get to the end you can Click to buy the next book.
• 39:28
  Damn Kindle. It's useful sometimes, I
• 39:32
  suppose. Do you read by Kindle?
• 39:34
  No, I don't because my eyesight's not very good, so I
• 39:37
  end up with kind of having to scroll all the time.
• 39:39
  There's like 3 words on the screen like moving along, moving
• 39:43
  along. So how do you what?
• 39:45
  What is the ideal reading situation for you upside down?
• 39:49
  You. No, I would say in my nice
• 39:52
  chair, by the fire glass of wine, peace and quiet.
• 39:57
  See, that's what I need to do is get like a big chair.
• 40:00
  You need a big chair. You got to be comfy.
• 40:03
  Oh, this is what I was going to ask you.
• 40:05
  So no, this may be AUS thing, but do you go to these writers
• 40:12
  retreats to write? I don't.
• 40:14
  I don't. I know a lot of people who do
• 40:16
  and they love them. I just use earplugs.
• 40:20
  It's a bit. To drown out there, yeah, yeah.
• 40:23
  Yeah, because there's always somebody doing some sort of
• 40:25
  noise. So you're saying these other
• 40:26
  people don't have discipline like?
• 40:28
  You. I think they do.
• 40:30
  I think that they. You know, people I know who do
• 40:32
  it, they love it and they like being around other authors when
• 40:35
  they're writing. Yeah.
• 40:37
  And they kind of bounce ideas off each other and, and it gives
• 40:41
  them more discipline to, you know.
• 40:42
  Is that part of the retreat you bounce ideas.
• 40:45
  Some people do, yeah. I've never done once that would.
• 40:47
  Be a good idea for a murder I would not take place.
• 40:51
  I would just not do any of the writing.
• 40:53
  I'd be like, this is brilliant, this is like a holiday, I'm just
• 40:56
  going to sit here. This is why I say that.
• 40:58
  Have you ever seen Spalding Grey?
• 41:02
  No. Do you know Spalding Grey?
• 41:04
  No. He's a monologuist and an
• 41:06
  author. He he died a while back.
• 41:10
  He committed suicide. But he has this monologue about
• 41:14
  monsters in a box. OK?
• 41:16
  It's called and he, he talks about going to this writer's
• 41:20
  retreat with all the best intentions.
• 41:23
  And he goes, I write in my room, and I write, and I write and I
• 41:26
  write and I write, and I go out into this area and I eat and I
• 41:30
  drink and I write and I write and I drink and I write and I
• 41:34
  drink and I write and I drink, and it gradually it became all
• 41:37
  drinking. Yeah, you see, that's what's
• 41:39
  going to happen, isn't that? Yeah, it's no good.
• 41:41
  That's there was a really good. I think Mitchell and Webb have
• 41:44
  got a new show on and he's one of the one of them where he's EM
• 41:49
  Forster and he's dressed up, you know, as a Victorian gentleman
• 41:53
  and he goes to a modern day writers thing.
• 41:56
  Yeah. And they start saying so EM
• 41:58
  Forster this about the bookcase collapsing.
• 42:00
  We don't think that works. It's always great, fantastic
• 42:07
  books that they that doesn't work at all.
• 42:09
  That doesn't work at all. No, what you need to do is like
• 42:12
  you know. Hey, who says?
• 42:13
  That just the people in the writers group modern day.
• 42:15
  Writers. Oh.
• 42:16
  Oh, really? You need to meditate.
• 42:18
  Maury M Forster. It's brilliant.
• 42:21
  It's absolutely. And it is like writers groups,
• 42:24
  you know, it kind of, I don't think I, I find it very helpful.
• 42:27
  Do you have somebody when you're writing to bad ideas off of your
• 42:32
  husband? A little bit.
• 42:34
  I do a little bit with her or I'll explain the plot to my
• 42:38
  daughter's very good, she's very useful because she will just say
• 42:41
  no, that's rubbish. So your husband's not good.
• 42:43
  He's good, he's good, he's good. But he'll often say, yeah, it's
• 42:46
  great, yeah, it's great. And I look back at those books
• 42:50
  from years ago. It wasn't great.
• 42:52
  So he's just being supportive. He is very supportive, Yeah, he
• 42:56
  has to be. I think that is the one thing
• 42:58
  you definitely need is somebody who's very supportive because
• 43:02
  it's an unusual profession to just lock yourself in a room for
• 43:05
  six hours a day. And sometimes you have no sense
• 43:09
  because you're so alone. You don't know until somebody
• 43:13
  reads it. Yeah.
• 43:14
  Is this any good? Yeah, you do need somebody else
• 43:18
  to. So do you work with the same
• 43:20
  editors and stuff? Generally, yeah.
• 43:22
  So with my smart women's books, I had the same editor all the
• 43:26
  way through, and I've got the same editor on these books that
• 43:30
  are different publishers. So yeah, generally because you.
• 43:35
  Have to trust your. Editor to very much that, but
• 43:38
  you have different layers of edits as well.
• 43:42
  So the first layer will be structural edits where you're
• 43:45
  moving, moving big chunks of the book around, which is really
• 43:49
  scary. That is tough, especially when
• 43:51
  you kind of linked everything in.
• 43:54
  But the beginning at the end. Yeah, that sort of thing.
• 43:57
  And and then you have a line at it, which is literally every
• 44:00
  single line of the book they go through and say that's crap,
• 44:03
  that's crap. That's crap.
• 44:04
  Every every time you submit there's less edit.
• 44:08
  Yeah, right. No in.
• 44:10
  An ideal world. And it is a bit like panning for
• 44:14
  gold. You've got the sort of big sieve
• 44:16
  at the top, then the medium, and then you get to the sort of the
• 44:19
  proof layer where it should all be OK, and they'll do little
• 44:24
  things like formatting. But I noticed in this book,
• 44:29
  actually I got the proof and the proofreader said to me right at
• 44:36
  the very end, who is Aunt Charlotte?
• 44:40
  And this had been through years of me writing it long, round,
• 44:43
  round. So it's an obvious question.
• 44:45
  Who is Aunt Charlotte? She pops up at the end.
• 44:48
  Yeah, Aunt Charlotte's from the other series.
• 44:51
  I saw Parachute. Thank God she spotted that by.
• 44:56
  Mistake. Oh my God.
• 44:58
  I. Got the wrong.
• 45:00
  Who is Balthazar, this Byzantine God?
• 45:04
  Yeah. So listen, this is your latest
• 45:06
  book, Death in the Aviary. Shiny.
• 45:09
  It's very shiny. How do you say aviary?
• 45:11
  Aviary. Aviary Now I like to do this.
• 45:16
  I don't know about you but I love to smell but.
• 45:19
  Oh yeah, What does it smell of that's been?
• 45:22
  Pulp. Yeah, I know.
• 45:24
  It's good. It's a good smell.
• 45:26
  It's got a bookmark as well. Do you prove of the print and
• 45:29
  everything? Yeah, it's lovely.
• 45:31
  I want Helvetica, I told you 13 points.
• 45:37
  And they've done a nice thing where they put the because it's
• 45:39
  got a lift in it. This is a locked lift mystery.
• 45:42
  You can see. There's a theme to it all.
• 45:44
  Oh I love it. Short chapters are long
• 45:47
  chapters. Shortish.
• 45:48
  Shorter than you know. I love short chapters.
• 45:51
  Yeah. Because you go.
• 45:51
  I'm. I'm going to end this soon.
• 45:53
  I'm going to go to bed. Yeah.
• 45:55
  How many more pages in this chapter?
• 45:57
  Yeah. And then you go.
• 46:00
  Oh, God, no. And then you wake up and I say,
• 46:02
  yeah, well, what's that? And if it's on an audio book,
• 46:05
  it's just been playing all night.
• 46:07
  You know what I hate is when you start a book, right, and you
• 46:11
  don't get into it as much, and then you have to keep rereading
• 46:18
  until you get into the book. Yeah, this one's got a map.
• 46:23
  Wow, you have words in it. And words.
• 46:25
  Maps. Oh wow, this is almost 400
• 46:29
  pages. It's long.
• 46:31
  This is actually it is. It's one of the longer ones,
• 46:34
  yeah. And when you write it, do you
• 46:36
  go? I want this to be a certain
• 46:38
  amount of pages. I want it to be 80,000 words,
• 46:42
  that's what I'm kind of aiming for.
• 46:44
  So 250 on each page. Pretty much, yeah.
• 46:47
  And so, you know, it's without filler, hopefully, and you're
• 46:51
  just watching the little number at the side.
• 46:53
  And I had once where I just kept writing, but I've been writing
• 46:57
  for sort of two weeks. And why the hell is the number
• 46:59
  never going up? And then all of a sudden in one
• 47:02
  day it all went up to where it was.
• 47:04
  It was one of the best days ever.
• 47:06
  Like probably 25,000 words hadn't been counting them
• 47:10
  properly. So oh.
• 47:13
  Joyous. How great is?
• 47:15
  That, I mean, it was pretty crappy for two weeks.
• 47:19
  It was crappy for two weeks. So I'm going, where are the
• 47:21
  words going? I'm typing.
• 47:24
  So you had figured it out wrong? Yeah.
• 47:27
  Maths is not my. Strongest.
• 47:28
  You're not a maths person? No, no.
• 47:31
  So do you think you've gotten better at writing?
• 47:36
  Yes, it couldn't go worse. No, but I mean, are you faster?
• 47:39
  More efficient. Yeah, very much so.
• 47:42
  And I know just lots of little things like, you know, they're
• 47:46
  going to say if I describe the fog for 2 pages, they'll say cut
• 47:50
  the fog. There was fog was.
• 47:53
  Foggy. Fog was here.
• 47:55
  So I do try to be a little bit more disciplined.
• 47:58
  Twas a foggy day. Yeah, you.
• 48:00
  See, I've got murder. I.
• 48:01
  Love all that you know it was dark and stormy.
• 48:04
  Because it's good, but part of that is because you know what's
• 48:08
  going to happen. So the setup you can sort.
• 48:10
  Of. Yeah, but really, no cat, Yeah.
• 48:13
  Why have you got another page of fog?
• 48:17
  Well, like Churchill said, if I had more time I would have
• 48:21
  written a shorter letter. Yeah, it is hard honing it
• 48:25
  right. So I got some edits back
• 48:27
  recently and it was mostly the first chapter.
• 48:29
  She was saying it's set in a a publishing house and I've got
• 48:33
  loads of kind of in jokey sort of things in there publishing.
• 48:37
  Yeah. And she said much as this is
• 48:39
  really good fun to read, we're not moving the story on at all
• 48:43
  here. And it's the first chapter.
• 48:44
  Get to it, you know, get to it because especially issue with
• 48:47
  crime readers, they want right? Where's the death?
• 48:51
  You know, I often my agent will say you've not had a death in
• 48:54
  the first third of the book. That's rubbish.
• 48:57
  Is it like Chekhov's gun? Yeah, you've got to got to have
• 49:01
  that death. Get a death end.
• 49:03
  Get a death. It might not even be relevant.
• 49:05
  Someone has to die. Yeah.
• 49:07
  Have you ever had fans that sort of critique your work?
• 49:11
  All the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:13
  They're very they're kind of they go through and they bend
• 49:15
  down all the pages where they think the clues are or they put
• 49:18
  post it notes in 284 the page where the chest is opened.
• 49:25
  That's it. And they go through it and then
• 49:27
  they'll show little videos of them doing it and going and this
• 49:30
  bit leads this bit. I think probably the best slash
• 49:35
  worst review I have was for my first book where it just said
• 49:40
  this was a fiction book one star and it's called the Smart
• 49:45
  Woman's Guide to Murder. They they were hoping for an
• 49:50
  actual. Guy Well, that's their problem.
• 49:53
  That's like reviews of products. They think it's something else.
• 49:56
  It's like I couldn't fly with my towel.
• 50:01
  So one star. It's like deluded.
• 50:06
  Or or some people would one star the audio wouldn't play.
• 50:10
  They tried. I shoved it in the tape player.
• 50:16
  Now listen, there is a segment in the show I always do.
• 50:19
  It's called fill in the blank. Oh, gold.
• 50:21
  Right. So I just wanted to throw these
• 50:24
  out. They don't have to be funny or
• 50:25
  anything, OK? Just come into your head.
• 50:28
  This can be edited. As you're in a blank, you blank.
• 50:31
  Yeah. This is not like that.
• 50:33
  OK, cool. Great.
• 50:36
  The scariest part of the day, The scariest time of the day is
• 50:40
  blank. 4:00. Why?
• 50:43
  Because I'm looking at it, it's going dark now, obviously, and
• 50:47
  I've been writing all day and I'm thinking it's at least two
• 50:50
  hours till I can have a grass of wine.
• 50:52
  How am I gonna last it's. 4:00 somewhere.
• 50:56
  How am I gonna last this out? And I can't get any more words
• 51:00
  out and it's just. Well, you know when to quit
• 51:03
  sometimes, right? Yeah, it just is not coming.
• 51:06
  No, and you just have to go no, no more.
• 51:09
  I often resort to blank if I've got writer's block.
• 51:14
  I don't get writer's block, ever.
• 51:16
  What? Because I just write some crap
• 51:19
  down. Well, I've.
• 51:20
  Always just write. To writing.
• 51:22
  So something might come, it might be totally wasted, but
• 51:26
  I've written something. It's probably some more fog, you
• 51:28
  know, But so writing, I always do you.
• 51:32
  Write a bunch of pages. You might get 3 sentences.
• 51:35
  Yeah, loads if it gets binned. I mean, I'd say really, each
• 51:38
  book is probably three times bigger than it ever ends up
• 51:42
  being. Do you write initially longhand
• 51:45
  or? I used to, that is what
• 51:47
  something that's really changed because I have had to speed up.
• 51:49
  I used to have whole, you know, the black and red notebooks, the
• 51:52
  big. I used to write longhand the
• 51:54
  whole book like that. Most of our audience members
• 51:57
  don't know how to write longhand, no.
• 52:00
  Yeah, don't. Believe that blank is the best
• 52:04
  thing I've seen in the last year.
• 52:07
  OK, so like a film, anything I'm.
• 52:11
  Leaving it up to you the. Best thing I've seen in the last
• 52:15
  year it. Could be a Vista, it could be
• 52:19
  ATV show. I'm going to say the Paris to
• 52:24
  Milan train. Really.
• 52:27
  Yeah, so I took the Paris to Milan train with my daughter and
• 52:32
  it was brilliant. It was just 7 hours sitting on a
• 52:35
  train staring out the window and and it just, it was beautiful
• 52:40
  how it all changed. It was wonderful.
• 52:41
  And we flew back from Milan and it's only an hour and a half
• 52:47
  flying, but you have all that waiting around at the airport.
• 52:49
  Take your shoe, trains much, take your belt off.
• 52:52
  It was brilliant. I mean, I do want to go on the
• 52:53
  Orient Express, obviously, but I'm saving my pen.
• 52:56
  There's something. About train travel or it makes
• 53:02
  your ideas flow. It was absolutely brilliant and
• 53:05
  you can sit and read and go, stand up, walk around, go to the
• 53:08
  bar, all nice. Commit a murder.
• 53:11
  Commit a murder in a tunnel, throw them under them.
• 53:14
  Yeah, anything. In one adjective, I would
• 53:18
  describe myself as blank. Silly.
• 53:21
  Silly. OK, Yeah.
• 53:23
  I write imaginary things. Yeah, just you have to be silly.
• 53:29
  Imaginary is kind of silly. It is really.
• 53:32
  I mean, it's the thing I used to do when I was a child writing
• 53:37
  silly stories, and I'm still doing that.
• 53:39
  And I'm, you know. Because a mystery is in some
• 53:43
  ways like a horror movie. It's a it's a little bit like
• 53:47
  comedy in that it's a surprise. Yeah, like a punchline is a
• 53:52
  surprise. Yeah, and it's, it's fun.
• 53:54
  You know, it's meant to be fun. I know it's a murder mystery,
• 53:57
  but I think once you start taking yourself with a book too
• 54:00
  seriously, that's the end. You know it's it's going to be
• 54:04
  not fun for you and not fun for anybody else.
• 54:06
  What do you mean too seriously like?
• 54:09
  I think make me reading greater meaning into it all and that
• 54:14
  these books can heal people and help people and do things.
• 54:18
  They're just silly murder. And you're not willing to change
• 54:20
  any of. No, it's fun, isn't it?
• 54:23
  You know it's fun. Fun murder blank killed Kennedy.
• 54:31
  Do you think it was a? Bullet.
• 54:35
  Do you think it was a conspiracy or a lone gunman?
• 54:40
  My husband went to a school called the JFK and so they had
• 54:45
  the. Government.
• 54:46
  No school. School like children's school.
• 54:49
  It was called JFK. Oh, OK.
• 54:51
  And he was told me that the library was called the Book
• 54:54
  Depository. And the hill where they went to
• 54:57
  play sports was the grassy Knoll.
• 54:59
  No way. And their mascot was the sniper.
• 55:03
  So much so, so relevant for children.
• 55:06
  Yeah. I don't know.
• 55:07
  I think I think it probably was a bit of a conspiracy actually.
• 55:11
  I. Mean there was more than one
• 55:13
  Hola. Yeah, A.
• 55:15
  Lot of our audience members are conspiracists.
• 55:18
  Are they? Yeah, well, like I said, the
• 55:20
  right thing then, haven't I? There we go.
• 55:22
  Who goes jumping out the back of a car like that as well in a
• 55:26
  pink suit? I mean, that's just crazy.
• 55:28
  I've said pink. You mean was it pink?
• 55:30
  I don't. Know.
• 55:31
  Yeah, I've assumed it was pink. Well, I think one of the
• 55:35
  theories is she was actually trying to get his brain.
• 55:38
  Yeah, yeah. Would you do that?
• 55:42
  I don't know, I don't know. Is that a natural?
• 55:44
  Response. I have no idea what went on, but
• 55:46
  no. Yeah, Well, OK, that's a whole
• 55:49
  other show. Yeah.
• 55:51
  So you've wrote, you've written this book.
• 55:54
  Are you touring the book? Are you?
• 55:56
  So tough in my own way. I kind of randomly do libraries
• 56:01
  and book shops which is fun, and festivals.
• 56:05
  And you do these festivals. What's the next big murder
• 56:09
  festival? Because I think a lot of our
• 56:12
  audience would love murder. Bloody.
• 56:15
  Barns. Bloody barns.
• 56:17
  Southwest London. It's happening in February and
• 56:21
  we have got all sorts of brilliant authors coming along.
• 56:24
  We've got Sophie Hannah, who writes the new Poirot books.
• 56:28
  We've got Mark Billingham, who's, you know, big, super
• 56:30
  famous. I've been reading a lot of
• 56:32
  Horowitz recently. Have you?
• 56:34
  Yeah, he was going to come, but he said he'll come next year.
• 56:37
  Dick. What a Dick, I don't think.
• 56:41
  So no. No, he's great.
• 56:44
  He's universally thought it was nice.
• 56:45
  He's. Great.
• 56:46
  He's great. I love his magpie murders.
• 56:49
  Magpie Murders Did you like the TVI?
• 56:52
  Did I like the Lady Leslie and Bill?
• 56:55
  Is it? I think.
• 56:56
  No Leslie Magpie. That's.
• 56:58
  It. That's it.
• 57:00
  Or anything else you'd like to mention before we?
• 57:04
  Gosh, well, these excellent mugs are for sale.
• 57:08
  Thank you, I'll get your 20 for. You save one for yourself
• 57:13
  though, because you know if you give them.
• 57:15
  All I have to leave this here so.
• 57:17
  Do you? Yeah.
• 57:18
  You can't take it home. No, You want to get ones as
• 57:20
  well. When you put the heat in them
• 57:23
  the the hot watering that like it appears.
• 57:27
  What does that mean? That the picture will appear.
• 57:29
  That's what they did when you know you have a nude woman.
• 57:33
  Yeah, maybe you could have you getting dressed.
• 57:38
  I'm nude Kenny, why aren't you on top of this?
• 57:43
  We've sorted the merch, that's done.
• 57:46
  All right, Victoria, thank you so much for coming and may
• 57:50
  murder always be with you. Thank you so much.
• 57:56
  Agatha, Agatha the witch. Wasn't she great?
• 58:03
  And listen, this is her latest book.
• 58:05
  Order it, I think we might put it the stuff in the description
• 58:11
  and check her out because she's really good.
• 58:15
  Reading is fun, guys. You ought to try it.
• 58:19
  I mean, I assume that you know how to read.
• 58:22
  I was just kidding. Anyway, I'm also doing some
• 58:25
  gigs. I'm doing November 10th at the
• 58:29
  Bill Murray. It's a work in progress.
• 58:32
  Don't expect much, but the Moth Club, December 3rd, 3rd of
• 58:38
  December, it's in Hackney. It's going to be happening.
• 58:41
  So please get tickets. They're both in the description.
• 58:46
  And finally we have a question. OK, I'm going to answer at
• 58:51
  Disneyland. Pimp asks who smells better,
• 58:57
  Noel or Julian? Well I have in case you didn't
• 59:01
  know. I have nasal problems so I can't
• 59:04
  smell very well so I need to do it up close and personal.
• 59:10
  So please tell them to go on the show and I will smell both of
• 59:16
  them live and give you my opinion.
• 59:19
  Disneyland Pimp. But I'm assuming Noel's going to
• 59:22
  smell better. But, you know, let let the nose
• 59:26
  decide.