In the run to tomorrow’s cover reveal, I have visited the renown historical fiction writer, Carol McGrath to talk about the inspiration for book 5 in the DI Marsh series.

“A famous novelist once said that he wasn’t in the business of making things up. Writing fiction is indeed about finding out rather than making up. Fiction writers are passionate researchers. We read up, study, explore, observe and deploy our own life experiences. We often come across as idle because of the amount of introspection and analysing we have to do before we actively put pen to paper and start writing. My daughter calls me lazy because I spend my days “doing nothing”. Sitting down or pacing the length of my kitchen without actually cooking anything doesn’t count as being busy, apparently. What she doesn’t know is that I’m in fact working my socks off – I am thinking, remembering, reflecting, re-living, contemplating and concocting… there are hundreds of active verbs to describe what I am up to. It may take time but I can’t start writing until I’ve uncovered something buried in my head that is worth re-telling: a concept. And a concept won’t come from thin air. It comes from knowing things.

Crime writing isn’t different in that respect to historical fiction. It too requires a good dose of authenticity. If the crime or the motive, or the method are outlandishly improbable then the reader won’t believe us, if they don’t believe us, they won’t read our books.”

Read the whole article: http://carolcmcgrath.co.uk/a-conspiracy-of-silence/