Today I'm delighted to welcome
VICTORIA SELMAN
for her Blood for Blood blog tour
to share her BEST OF CRIME ...
... AUTHORS
Thomas Harris. Aside from his complex characters, so real (and often disturbing) they jump of the page and stay with me long after I’ve closed the book, I also love the profiling aspects he weaves so brilliantly through his stories. I’m similarly in awe of his plotting and ability to deliver a sucker punch twist. That knock on the door scene at the end of Silence of the Lambs - wow!
... FILMS/MOVIES
Kramer vs Kramer. I first watched it with a bunch of friends at uni, and have watched it again on my own several times since, always with a large box of Keenex. Starring Dustin Hoffman (who I’m a little bit in love with) it tells the story of a couple’s custody battle and its heartbreaking impact on their young son. Ted Kramer (played by Hoffman) is a workaholic with no time for his family. He races home to tell his wife he’s just landed an amazing new account to which she replies, ‘I’m leaving you’…
... TV DRAMAS
Better Call Saul. I loved Breaking Bad (who didn’t?) but for me, Better Call Saul is even better. It has the same intense character focus, beautiful cinematography and feel of a novel, but it also incorporates a note perfect pathos in the fall of its protagonist.
... FICTIONAL KILLERS
Hannibal Lecter. That was an easy one to answer, he’s everything a villain should be- venal yet not black and white. And he has some killer lines: “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti”. Brilliant!
... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES
Sherlock Holmes. My character calls him the ‘godfather of profiling’ and she’s right! I started reading the short stories when I was thirteen, captivated by his ability to deduce so much about a person just by looking at them.
... MURDER WEAPONS
Well, that would have to be the method used in Behind Her Eyes (so ingenious, and more than a little bit creepy!) though I can’t say more without giving the whole book away…
... DEATH SCENES
The opening of Lullaby in which two children are murdered by their nanny. The description of the little girl dying is shocking but what makes her death even more heartbreaking is the sound of her mother’s scream when she finds her: “She let out a scream, a scream from deep within, the howl of a she-wolf. It made the walls tremble.”
... BLOGS/WEBSITES
Google Earth because you can travel round the world and ‘walk’ the streets your characters roam without leaving your desk chair (useful when you have to factor in school drop-offs and pick-ups).
... WRITING TIPS
Someone once said to me you should never write with your editing hat on. Everyone’s different, but I find it really important not to think too hard about the precision of the words I’m using when penning a first draft, to just let the story flow. Precision comes later and I’m a bit OCD about it, spending hours in the editing stage putting a comma in and then taking it out again.
... WRITING SNACKS
Very important, or so I tell myself. Chocolate, biscuits … because glucose is good for the brain, right? I never had a problem losing my baby weight, but the writer weight…
About VICTORIA SELMAN
Victoria Selman wrote her first novel aged seven: twenty-five years later, her debut has now been sold into territories around the globe. After graduating from Oxford University, Victoria studied Creative Writing at the City Lit and wrote for the Ham & High and Daily Express newspapers. In 2013 she won the Full Stop Short Story Prize and her first novel, Blood For Blood, was shortlisted for the 2017 Debut Dagger Award. Victoria co-hosts the true crime podcast, CRIME GIRL GANG.
Find Victoria Selman on her website and on Twitter - @VictoriaSelman
About BLOOD FOR BLOOD
Publisher's description
Ziba Mackenzie profiles killers. Now one is profiling her.
Rush hour, London. A packed commuter train is torn apart in a collision. Picking through the carnage, ex-special forces profiler Ziba MacKenzie helps a dying woman who passes on a cryptic message: He did it. You have to tell someone.
When a corpse is found bearing the gruesome signature of a serial killer dormant for twenty-five years, Ziba is pulled into the hunt for the perpetrator. As the body count rises it becomes clear he’s on a new spree. But what’s brought the London Lacerator back after such a long hiatus? And does his sudden return have anything to do with the woman on the train?
Ziba scrambles to profile the killer in the hope of predicting his next move. But time is running out. And the closer she gets to uncovering his identity, the closer he gets to destroying hers.
Blood for Blood was published by Thomas & Mercer on 1 February 2019.
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