Thriller Women

TW: Liz, earlier this year you released your tenth novel, Dark Memories, the third book in the DS Nikita Parekh series. Ten books in five years is quite an achievement, congratulations! What continues to draw you to writing crime fiction?

LM: Crime fiction is my chosen genre to read and so it was a logical progression to write in that genre too... well, that’s the official line. The unofficial line is that my mind takes me to dark places and I love to explore the human stories that lead people to do dark deeds. I write crime fiction because I feel it is redemptive. Where there is darkness there is also light and much as my stories are about evil actions, they are also about the goodness in humanity. I suppose my detectives, Nikki Parekh in my second series and gus McGuire in my first series represent good triumphing over evil.

TW: How did you get your first novel published and did you have to endure much rejection before your writing career took flight?

LM: For years I tried to go down the route of finding an agent but to no avail. It seemed that although the agent liked my writing the competition was too high, so I gave it a rest for a while. I kept writing when I could, but when my mental health became debilitating I was all set to give up completely. However, I was lucky enough to have a GP who recognised that I was on the wrong medication and that it was exacerbating my symptoms, so with the help of him and an excellent dynamic psycotherapist, I gradually came back to the land of the living. At this point I decided I needed something to challenge me and give me a reason to write and so (with real trepidation) I made the best decision ever and enrolled for the MA in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University, where with the support of my fellow students and excellent tutors I managed to finsh Unquiet Souls (it had been about 15 years in the making) and decided to brave the world of agent finding again. After numerous rejections I was having a bit of a moan about never managing to get published when Besty Reavley from Bloodhound Books commented that they were open for submissions.

I submitted and within months my first ever novel was published ... still can’t believe it. I then went on to publish four more books with BHB before writing the first of my second series which I submitted to Harper Collins HQ Digital and was accepted. I now am a hybruid author – I self publish all my Gus books and traditionally publish through HQ my Nikki Parekh books. I still don’t have an agent and fell that this works for me.

TW: What was the inspiration behind both DS Nikki Parekh and your other series detective, DI Gus McGuire?

LM: I live in Bradford and I became aware that much of the crime fiction I read seemed to reflect a very narrow section of society and I wanted to widen that. I chose to write my Gus series to reflect the richness of the society in which I live. My own kids are of dual heritage and that was a major decision in making Gus of dual heritage. Of course, because I’m Scottish there had to be a Scottish link. Whilst my husband is Indian British and my kids are of Indian /Scottish descent I chose to make Gus’s mum Jamaican. This was because I had a storyline involving Gus’s mum in mind which had elements of my experiences in a largely mono cultural Scottish rural village in the 1960s & 70s. I finally wrote this storyline in Unbound Ties, book seven of the Gus series.

Nikki Parekh is a product of my daughter’s experiences as a woman of dual heritage, but many of her experiences have been inspired by my own experiences as a teacher in inner city Bradford. I wanted Nikki to be working class, tough, mixed race and yet damaged. She’s all of that and more and as a character I love her. I never quite know where she will take me next.

TW: There is a sense of gritty realism to all your stories. Why did you choose to set them all in Bradford and how has the location shaped your ideas?

LM: I often describe Bradford as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’ and it is all that. Bradford has bad press, yet I find it one of the friendliest, most culturally varied places to live. Like any major city it has its challenges, yet it has a huge heart. It has a wealth of cultural heritage and I want to celebrate that. Apart from that, Bradford has a fascinating range of inner city, leafy suburbs and wild and wonderful moors and countryside surrounding it. It is ferocious, beautiful and gentle, yet it has a dark and gritty underbelly that makes it a fascinating place to write about.