Today I'm delighted to welcome
WILL CARVER
for his Good Samaritans blog tour
to share his BEST OF CRIME ...
... AUTHORS
I’m playing catch-up on a lot of the recent crop of crime writers but I loved Simone Buchholtz’s Blue Night. My first toe in the water came from Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley and that has (obviously) been a tough act to follow. I really enjoyed David Jackson’s Callum Doyle series - Pariah, Marked, The Helper. They were wonderfully quirky and funny and smart. I look forward to reading Don’t Make A Sound. But, for me, the best is Sarah Pinborough. I think she probably throws away ideas that are better than most of the things out there. And she can write anything. Crime, horror, erotic fairytales… I enjoy the fact that they are different. Crime plus weird. Behind Her Eyes was a deserved and long overdue hit but if you haven’t read them, you should go back and try The Death House, The Language of Dying and her Dog-Faced Gods trilogy.
... FILMS/MOVIES
When I think of the crime films I like they are very different to the crime that I write. I like American gangster movies like The Godfather or Mean Streets, and any kind of courtroom drama. I don’t think I could write something like that but I love to watch them. For some reason, the first film that came into my head was Primal Fear. And I think it was even better because the first time I watched it, I had no idea about the twist at the end. I would’ve been looking out for that all the way through and it would have tainted the viewing. It was a real sucker punch because I usually guess these things.
... TV DRAMAS
This took me no time to consider. X-Files. Great writing - the best coming from Carter and Spotnitz. People often say that they liked the first season and then it started to get ridiculous. That’s usually when I start swearing at them. That first season was a worldwide phenomenon - and rightly so. It was scary and thought-provoking and funny and tense. It had everything. One-off comedy episodes and procedural episodes. But it was all the mythology episodes that kept me hooked, the governmental conspiracies and just what happened to Samantha Mulder. For six years, each new season was better than the last. I remember watching all of season six in one day, on video. It’s the best one. It has the two-part Dreamland story and the Two Fathers/One Son double-hitter. Amazing. (Think I could name almost every episode off the top of my head.) And the characters were iconic. Mulder. Scully. Deepthroat. X. Lone Gunmen. Cigarette Smoking Man. Krycek. Skinner. Eugene Tooms. Then they bring in John Doggett to replace the missing Mulder in season eight. And you think you’ll hate him and it’s going to be rubbish. But he’s brilliant in a totally different way and you still love the show. And Scully is better, too. I think there’s something for every kind of crime fan in this show and the level of writing never lessens, even if season nine turned out to be a heartbreaking anti-climax. But that is being rectified with the new episodes.
... FICTIONAL KILLERS
It’s hard to decide between my two favourites. Patrick Bateman and Hannibal Lecter. There is something so compelling about a pure psychopath. That complete lack of empathy and guilt. That they have a way of forming a relationship - often adversarial - but you know they would kill that person they seemingly respect without thinking about it. But what I like about these is that they are so unapologetically psychotic but they are also suave and smart and, though you know you shouldn’t, you kind of like them and maybe even want them to get away with it. It messes with your head. That’s why they are the best.
... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES
Part of me doesn’t want to say Sherlock Holmes because it seems too obvious. But I like him for many of the same reasons that I like Bateman or Lecter. He’s the smartest and he knows he is. He can be mean and tactless but you still like him. The books are great, the TV show is great and the films are pretty good, too. It comes from the writing, of course, but it is the character that makes it.
Still, I’d have to put him in second place behind the unforgettable Dale Cooper. He’s intelligent and individual and unorthodox. To stand out as a bit weird in a place like Twin Peaks is not easy. It’s his heart and morals that draw you into the character, though. He’s the outsider, the city guy drawn into a country town with a seedy underbelly. And he embraces the community. He talks to the Log Lady like she’s anybody else in the world. That’s what makes the final minute of the show what it is. It’s Dale Cooper and how much we are all routing for him.
... MURDER WEAPONS
There’s an episode of X-Files called Soft Light. A scientist is caught up in a freak accident while experimenting and anyone who comes into contact with his shadow dematerialises. He doesn’t want to kill anyone but he can’t help it. A unique murder weapon, I’d say.
... DEATH SCENES
The opening of the French film Irreversible is a chaotic spiral of a journey that ends with some guy getting beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. It all looks like it’s done in one shot. But the brutality of the way his face is crushed is just horrifying.
But the scene that lived with me is from American History X. And you don’t even see the victim die. Derek Vinyard - played by Edward Norton, who should’ve won the Oscar that year, despite Roberto Benigni’s excellent performance in Life is Beautiful - catches someone trying to rob his house. He takes him down to the road, at gunpoint, forces him to the floor and instructs him to, ‘Put your fucking teeth on the kerb’. Then you see him lift his foot above the burglar’s head and you hear the burglar’s teeth scraping against the kerb, and then it cuts to black as Vinyard starts to bring his foot down. It will haunt you. Utterly horrifying and angry and brutal. I watched that film six times at the cinema… Nothing has come close to that death scene.
And then I saw Vince Vaughn in Brawl in Cell Block 99 and there are about twelve deaths that are equal to or worse than either of the ones I have mentioned. It was not the film I was expecting at all.
... BLOGS/WEBSITES
A couple of books ago I fell down a rabbit hole when I found a website where you could read police interview transcripts and listen to interview tapes. But now, I use YouTube as one of my main research aids. (When starting a new idea.) It’s great to pick up soundbites and old interviews or news pieces. If you want to know about serial killers, you can get lost in some of the clips they have. What I love most is that you can get hold of things that aren’t on DVD or iTunes or whatever. They might be old or were never popular or were made on a low budget so even back when they were made you had to search for them.
Recently I’ve watched a 9-hour documentary on the siege at Waco. I’ve done a couple of hours delving into the Jonestown massacre. I watched 12 minutes of interviews from former members of Heaven’s Gate. And that’s before you find all the spin-offs. I think it’s a wonderfully varied and accessible way to build up an understanding of something. I’ve been using it to get a feel for my latest book, while developing an idea of the motivation behind the central character.
I wouldn’t suggest writing an entire book based on what you find on YouTube but it’s a valuable online resource when starting out with an idea and you’ll quickly get to know whether you want to pursue it any further.
... WRITING TIPS
Ignore writing tips.
I start writing at midnight. Don’t do that. It’s shit. Unless it works for you because you can’t sleep and the idea of getting up at 6am to hammer out word fills you with dread.
I edit as I go along. Don’t do that. It’s stupid. It breaks up the flow. Unless that works for you because you hate editing a book once it’s written and you want your first draft to be as close as possible to the final draft. I’d rather tidy up 2,000 words of mess at a time than wade through 90,000 words just because I had to get an idea down.
Some writers plot every chapter and some put more focus into character.
Some people think NaNoWriMo is a great idea and others think that style is horse shit.
Find what works for you.
If you look after twins all day and get no respite until 6pm, it doesn’t matter if you’re a morning person, you’ll probably have to become a night writer. Even though you’re shattered.
If you want to smash out a book in a month, you are not going to be an edit-along-the-way kinda writer. So don’t do it. Don’t be half-arsed because it will come across in your writing.
Write what excites you. If it turns you on to write about vampires fucking and sucking each other’s necks, do it. If you love drilling down into the minute procedures of a police investigation, do it. And do it with vigour. Because the reader can (usually) tell.
One tip that I think is worthwhile is don’t ask for feedback from somebody who loves you. It’s so unfair to put that pressure on them. And your parent/sibling/partner is never going to tell you that you’re rubbish and you shouldn’t ask them to. Find someone who will tell you the truth. Stephen King doesn’t type ‘The End’ and the book goes to print, he needs somebody to tell him the parts that are crap. And then he has to fix them.
My parting words, my writing tip: Do something else. If you can. Anything else. Because it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. It’s not what you think. Last year Good Samaritans was getting rejected for being too dark or not literary enough or not having a strong female character(?) and I was sat at home selling my computer on eBay so that I could afford some lentils. Don’t that. It’s crazy.
Unless that works for you. Because you’re not scared by that idea. Then, as Hemingway said, you need to ‘Sit at that typewriter (laptop) and bleed’.
... WRITING SNACKS
I write so late that this isn’t really a thing for me. I can’t have coffee at that time so I tend to have water or whisky. And I’ll try to not eat or only have fruit because I’ve done all my eating for the day. People who stay up late tend to consume 500 more calories per day than those who got to bed at a ‘normal’ time. So be careful if you enjoy cake or biscuits while you are writing, if you’re a night owl. Writer’s arse is a real thing.
About WILL CARVER
Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series (Arrow). He spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age 11, when his sporting career took off. He turned down a professional rugby contract to study theatre and television at King Alfred’s, Winchester, where he set up a successful theatre company.
He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, while working on his next thriller. He lives in Reading with his two children.
Find will Carver on his Facebook page and on Twitter - @will_carver
About GOOD SAMARITANS
Publisher's description
One crossed wire, three dead bodies and six bottles of bleach
Seth Beauman can’t sleep. He stays up late, calling strangers from his
phonebook, hoping to make a connection, while his wife, Maeve, sleeps upstairs. A crossed wire finds a suicidal Hadley Serf on the phone to Seth, thinking she is talking to The Samaritans.
But a seemingly harmless, late-night hobby turns into something more for Seth and for Hadley, and soon their late-night talks are turning into day-time meet-ups. And then this dysfunctional love story turns into something altogether darker, when Seth brings Hadley home... And someone is watching...
Read a snippet of my review
'Good Samaritans is sexy, dark, explicit and graphic in places, so certainly not for the fainthearted. It's twisty and twisted too... I loved this book and will happily shout about it from the rooftops!'
To read the rest of my review, click here.
To read the rest of my review, click here.
Good Samaritans is being published by Orenda Books in paperback on 15 November 2018 - out now in ebook!
Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.
Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.
Follow the Blog Tour!
Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.
Follow the Blog Tour!
Thanks for the Blog Tour support Vicki x
ReplyDelete