Nottingham-based novelist Stephen Booth can consider himself successful. His stories have been translated into 12 languages, he's apparently big in Sweden, is loved by the Americans and his writing is even found in the bookstores of Japan. He's been writing full time for the last five years. Before that he was the editor of the Worksop Guardian. He knew he wanted to be an author after he penned his first book aged 12. His passion is crime writing. Crime writing "I'm not really interested in violence as such. I'm writing crime novels but I'm more interested in the physcology of why these sorts of things happen, what goes on in these people's lives and in the consequences of murder."
 | | Stephen Booth |
It's no suprise to find that his latest book is entitled The Dead Place. "The latest novel tackles the taboo subject which is what happens to the body after you've died, which we don't really like to think about." Stephen says he does a lot of research to make sure his fiction is as close to real life as possible. "I was a newspaper journalist for many years and I was trained to assume that I could go and ask anybody anything. I find that most people are very ready to talk about their jobs and certainly the police are very, very helpful." "British crime writers are tackling social issues, it's one place you can do that, write about the most important contemporary issues but do it in an interesting way." Books vs television Stephen's not a fan of the small screen. "I don't find that writing is dying out. The book itself is a format that will never die as it is so convenient, nothing else compares to a book."
 | | The Dead Place (book cover) |
"I don't watch an awful lot of television. The problem I have with TV is that it kills the imagination in a way because the story is all going on in the corner of the room whereas when you read a book the story is going on in your head and that is much more exciting and it stimulates the imagination." Pen to paper "The writing process is very strange. The two central characters in my series, I've just finished the seventh book about those two, because I know them so well I know exactly what they would say and how they would react in certain circumstances and I can hear them talking to me in my head. There's a very fine line between being an author and being slightly mad." "I don't actually plan my books, when I start out to write one I don't know what's going to happen. It's kind of an organic process for me. I'm discovering the story as I write." "I wrote my first novel when I was 12 years old and I never had any doubt what I wanted to do. But I had enough sense as a child to know that you just can't leave school and become a novelist. Journalism seemed like a way of earning a living by writing."
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