I am thrilled to welcome thriller author P.R Black to my blog. From serial killers to the writing process, we cover ALOT of ground. Sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy!
PR Black is the author of several thrillers, including The Runner and The Hunted.
My first question is, what attracted you to the thriller genre? Was that an obvious choice for you?
I’ve always liked whodunnits. I remember when I was about six years old, and getting one of the Cam Jansen mysteries by David A Adler from the school book club. It was about UFOs, which is what caught my attention. Eighties kid, what can I say?
Cam’s got a photographic memory and this helps her find out the facts. I can still see the illustrations. She has a pet cat called Neptune and a best friend called Eric. They all help her solve the mystery.
I’ve always enjoyed Sherlock Holmes – who doesn’t? And let’s not forget Scooby Doo. You come for the monsters and ghosts, but there’s always a mystery (unfailingly solved by Thelma), and someone to be unmasked by Scoob and the gang. Away from all the pesky kids, you go to Poirot and the TV detectives, particularly Taggart and Morse. Horrific elements crept in through the work of Thomas Harris, and that’s always interested me, too. I like a good scary story. All of these things are reflected in my own work.
It’s no secret how much I adored The Runner- I keep having to remind myself that the Woodcutter Killer isn’t real as he felt so vivid! Are you an avid watcher/reader of serial killers and their documentaries/books?
Thank you!
For documentaries and books on serial killers, I have to be honest: no. It’s hard to explain. I can think of any number of horrific people, doing any number of horrific things. But I shy away from the real-life stuff these days - for leisure, anyway.
I do read a lot about awful people and awful events in the context of my day job in the media, which involves reading lots of court copy. I go into the mechanics of evidence and testimony in court. The psychology of crime and criminals can be simultaneously fascinating and utterly repellent.
Serial killers are mercifully rare, but murders, violence, cruelty and scarcely believable bad luck happens every day, to completely innocent people. This haunts me. It could be burnout, it could be that I’m getting older, it could be that I’ve got two young kids and I just want to shut the door on the ugliness that’s out there and keep everyone warm and safe.
And yet. I’ve been blessed (cursed?) with a vivid imagination, and it can go dark as well as light, with every shade in between. I like scary stories. Real-life stuff… not so much.
And that’s before we get into the business of war. How depressing that we can’t break the paradigm of warfare, in this age of instant communication between people and nations? If we could communicate with the dead, what would the people who lived through the first half of the 20th century say about what’s going on in the world today?
My books might be an attempt at catharsis, a way of stopping what I know cannot be stopped. No way to delay that trouble comin’ every day, as Frank Zappa reminds us.
If a book or film or documentary or podcast is brilliant, the worse it is, in this respect. I occasionally read true crime books, but the gaps between them are getting longer. One recommendation is Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me, though I would urge people to approach it with caution. Basically, you won’t sleep. I didn’t.
This is a very long-winded way of saying, “it’s complicated, I don’t read a lot of books on serial killers, the subject scares and appals me, but I do absorb a lot of information about nasty things in life, and I do want to explore these”.
Interesting! How easy was it to portray such a convincing serial killer that’s just as complicated as ‘real’ ones out there?
Serial killers have families. “What is that even like? If you dad was a murderer? If you were one generation removed from ghastly crimes?” That was the basic thrust of The Runner. Freya’s mother dies, and she leaves a letter with a solicitor telling her who her father is – a man in prison for murder. He was convicted of one of the notorious Woodcutter killings, though authorities couldn’t make the other charges stick. By default, though, he’s the Woodcutter.
Of course, she’s curious, so she meets him in prison. While there, he tells her he was framed. Freya isn’t sure she believes him, but she investigates anyway…
To say any more would be a spoiler, but yes – I am fascinated by this complexity in people. We’ve all known kind people who did terrible things, or vice versa. Psychopathy isn’t just the preserve of violent maniacs – life would be unbearable (and short) if this was the norm.
But people can have psychopathic traits. We’ve all known someone who changed completely when the possibility of money entered their lives. Or someone who cannot help but be nosey, to give a more benign example – if there’s a bill or a bank statement lying around, or a computer left logged in somewhere, they are compelled to look at it. It could just be natural curiosity – and maybe that’s helped us evolve as a species. But some people feel no compunction or guilt at all. Same with bullies, in either a friendship group or at school or work. It’s in their nature. And it can cause irreparable damage.
I remember a former acquaintance who once reasonably and insistently asked me for a password that would have given them access to my personal messages. They did have an excuse for this, but it was a flimsy one and my antennae were quivering. I was polite in my refusal at first, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had to say something like: “No, it’s a security breach, and it’s also a privacy breach. You know this. That’s not acceptable. I am not giving you my password for any reason.”
It was a revelation. I saw that person in a different light. I noticed other things, from there. You never can tell.
I wanted to explore this in The Runner. And of course, there’s the key question: is the man in jail telling the truth? Is Freya really a serial killer’s daughter? And if she is… has she inherited traits from him that she’d rather not have? In her pursuit of the truth in the case of The Runner, is she a hunter herself?
In The Runner too, how important was it to you to show that different point of view, the daughter’s perspective? Were you deliberately going for an angle that could surprise as well as explore such a personal connection?
I’ll let you into a secret – the first draft of The Runner was a much darker story, and Freya explored her genetic heritage (or is it?!) in sometimes hair-raising ways.
Ultimately though, I thought it was richer to have Freya as a good, kind-hearted person, who is having to face up to the fact that half of her genes might have come from someone diabolical. That was the key contrast, and from there we root for her. Freya’s a survivor. But she’s also a caring, empathetic person. The opposite of a psychopath. That’s a character worth building.
And of course, you’d be curious – yer da’s yer da, as we say where I come from. How is she like him? How does she diverge? This was a much more compelling line to take, and I think people have responded to that. Freya’s relationship with the man she thinks is her father constantly shifts and evolves.
Families – in-built drama, every day of your life!
Writing this makes me want to read The Runner over again…
Me too! What’s your typical approach to writing when you start a new novel? Do you have a routine? How much detail do you know about your characters and plot before you start writing?
I have to steal the time to write, so I tend to take a battering ram approach to drafting novels. First thing in the morning, last thing at night, even bursts of 15 or 20 minutes in between shifts and school run time. Every second counts. I don’t have time to mess around, but some days I find the time to mess around. Hey, it’s a skill. :-D
Battering out first drafts has its drawbacks. I don’t plan as thoroughly as I should – the stories live and breathe in my head, sometimes for years (even decades). But there’s still an element of making it up as I go along. I’m not alone in this – Ian Rankin is one of many writers who admits that he has a basic idea, then he just lets the story emerge as he writes. Stephen King does this too – he compared storytelling to finding a fossil, getting the outline of it, then finessing the details as he digs and uncovers. He said some of this work is done with dynamite, some with a pick, some with a shovel, some with a fine brush.
I’d love to be one of these people with the cork board and reams of notes and a flowchart and my god the stationery, and lots of lovely logic and every single angle perfectly calculated, but I don’t have the time for that. The good news is, part of the joy in writing is discovery on the part of the writer – and if you surprise yourself, you’re more likely to surprise the reader. This makes writing more of an organic process than a mechanical act.
In the same way, characters live in my head. One of the great joys in writing is making characters unique, the quirks and deviations that make up identities. I remember reading something from Flannery O’Connor, where she admitted that she had a character steal a briefcase in a short story, and she had no idea he was going to do this until she typed the sentence where he does. I love that. It helps us avoid cliché. It makes our work stick out.
So, in terms of plot and character, I have a working model in my mind before I start writing which I might have had cooking for years, but strange and wonderful and unexpected things can happen when I start writing.
Also silly, preposterous, and illogical things, if I’m honest. You can fix anything in post. Let’s raise our glasses to the editors!
Which novel are you most proud of and why?
The Runner and The Long Dark Road are my two favourite books. They’re decent stories with central mysteries that I enjoyed writing. And the main characters had that depth and complexity that I’m always aiming for.
I’m quite proud of a book that might lie on a hard drive forevermore. It’s called Snarl. I started it in my twenties. It’s a political satire about a kaiju-style monster attacking Westminster… I don’t think anyone will ever get to read it. Maybe that’s for the best.
No agents wanted it, but one did write back with this unforgettable line: “I had no idea this was meant to be a comedy.” That’s going in a book somewhere.
But I enjoyed writing Snarl, and it still makes me smile to consider it. Maybe that’s enough.
Sounds intriguing!
What would be your one top tip for someone thinking about writing their first thriller?
Concept is king – “elevator pitch” is a hackneyed phrase but be in no doubt, that’s what agents and editors are looking for. “There’s a murderer on the loose aboard the Orient Express while it is trapped in snow.” Ah, I could get it tighter than that, surely!
Being able to grab someone’s attention with a single line is very important. “It’s Bambi meets The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre”. “It’s Wuthering Heights, but with squirrels.” I would not underestimate the power of a good hook.
Once you’ve sorted that out, get your first three chapters as tight as you can. Edit, edit, edit again, cut it, make it tighter, and make it tighter again. I did this with The Family. I thought I had it honed to a very sharp edge. It did grab the attention, and I did get a book deal.
But here comes the twist: I had to cut the first three chapters between submission and publication by another 50%. That’s how tight we’re talking.
There are always outliers, of course – if you’re aiming to write the next Secret History, then this is bad advice, and you can safely disregard it. “Formulas, rules, rails, cages, this isn’t art!” I understand that.
But that’s how I got in.
Fascinating, thank you for sharing.
What can we expect to see next from you? Are you able to give us a teaser?
I can’t say too much about it just yet, but there is a detective novel coming, featuring a central character I hope you’ll love.
Ooh exciting! Thanks so much for being a part of my blog.
