New interview with mystery author Peter Rowlands

A big welcome back to mystery author Peter Rowlands. We’re catching up today and chatting about his newest thriller novel, The Concrete Ceiling.

Peter was a guest when he debuted his first novel. You can read that interview here.

Bio:

Peter Rowlands has published five mystery thrillers. The first, Alternative Outcome, has attracted over a hundred positive reader reviews worldwide, and has been compared in style and content to the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith (the pen-name of JK Rowling). According to Peter, “The most flattering review I’ve ever received for any of my books is from a reader who said she wished the story would go on forever.”

Peter was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England, but has spent most of his adult life in London, and has travelled widely in Europe and America. His mysteries tend to feature ordinary people thrust into challenging situations, and they usually have a strong romantic thread. “But they’re by no means romances as such,” he says. “My characters have their feet firmly on the ground.”

For many years Peter published, edited and contributed to UK business magazines. He was one of the first editors to cover the mechanics of home shopping deliveries during the e-commerce revolution. “I haven’t featured that theme in my books yet,” he comments, “but watch this space!”

Welcome back to Reviews and Interviews, Peter, what inspired you to write this book?

That’s an easy question to answer. For my own writing I chose the self-publishing route, and I quickly learned just how difficult it is it get noticed in such a crowded market. So in The Concrete Ceiling I decided to build a plot round the challenge faced by writers like me. The leading character has self-published his own mystery thriller, and he pays a book promotion specialist much more than he can afford to get it some exposure. Things start to go very wrong from there. His love life is pulling him in several directions at once, and he’s accused of a serious crime he didn’t commit. And he hasn’t even sold any more books!

Excerpt from chapter 16 of The Concrete Ceiling:

Mike meets the book promoter

I took the Tube to Angel station, then set off on foot along Upper Street, the broad bustling heart of Islington’s commercial centre.

The walk took fifteen minutes. As I arrived at the short flight of steps up to the front door it was snatched open and a girl appeared. She had shortish dark hair and a slightly shiny complexion, and looked about fifteen, but could have been younger. She was wearing studiedly scruffy jeans with splits and tears at the knees, and was tapping urgently on a mobile phone. The white wires from her ear buds dangled over her shoulders. She slammed the door behind her, then glanced at me and gave me a hostile stare. “What are you looking at?” The accent sounded American.

“Nothing. I’m trying to find Rob Openshaw. Is this the right place?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Mike.”

“Is that right?” She continued to stare malevolently at me. I tried to meet her gaze without flinching, and after a moment she said, “Right.” She turned back to the house, gave an exaggerated press on the large bell push, then swivelled round and trotted down the steps. “Knock yourself out, Mike.” She gave my name sarcastic emphasis. She almost barged against me as she headed off airily down the street.

There was a long pause, then the door opened again and a man looked out warily at me. He was slim in build and quite tall, and had a narrow face and soft mid-brown hair. His black jeans and smart loose-fitting grey linen jacket gave him a youthful aura that probably belied his age.

“Can I help you?”

“Rob Openshaw? I’m here about The Magic Bookseller.”

“What?” He stared at me with what I could only read as shock. After a moment he said, “Who are you?”

“I’m a client – an author. I’m wondering when my promotional campaign is going to run.”

“A client?” He continued to stare at me as if he could scarcely comprehend what I was saying. Finally he shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry you’ve wasted your trip, but this isn’t an office. We don’t meet clients here. We’re a virtual operation …”

I could almost hear the thought processes whirring in his head. He wanted to close the door on the conversation, but he could see that this wouldn’t make me disappear, or prevent me from knowing where he lived.

Before he could come to any conclusion I said, “All I want to know is when my campaign is going to start. I’ve paid up-front and you’ve had my money, but I haven’t seen any evidence of any promotional activity.”

He was shaking his head. “How on earth did you find me here? We don’t publish a UK address. We operate from California.”

“I know that, but you don’t answer messages, so what else was I to do?”

“All the same …” Abruptly he switched to another tack. “Can I ask who you are?”

“My name is Mike Stanhope.

What’s the next writing project?

I have two possible ideas – another book in the series about Mike Stanhope, in which he finds himself doing some genuine detecting, and a stand-alone thriller about a man who thinks he’s bumped into his ideal woman in a shopping mall. I haven’t decided yet which I’ll work on first.

What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book?

I guess the biggest challenge for me with every book is sorting out the detail of the plot. I don’t mind coincidences in stories, but I hate implausible developments, or people acting out of character, so I spend ages checking that whatever happens, it seems convincing and believable, and fits in logically with everything that comes before and after.

If your novels require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?

I try to write within areas that I already know, so mostly I only have to brush up my knowledge, not start from scratch. If there are key plot points that I’m not familiar with (a type of injury, for instance), I research it before building the plot round it, but if it’s more of an incidental point (US visa requirements, for instance), I sometimes just check the details when the issue arises.

What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.

I usually work in the south-facing front room of my apartment, which often has lots of sunlight to give me a positive outlook. But so long as I’m in front of my keyboard, I’m happy. I connect my laptop to a big monitor with a really clear resolution, and use an add-on keyboard with laptop-type keys that have a nice springiness to them. I find that details like this really can help speed up the writing process.

What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?

I love CJ Box’s series about Joe Pickett, the game warden in Wyoming, and I’ve become an even bigger fan of Paul Doiron, who also writes about a game warden, but in New England. Recently I’ve become a particular fan of the Strike series by JK Rowling (writing as Robert Galbraith), which features a downbeat private eye working in central London. My all-time favourite thriller writer was Dick Francis in his prime. I love his confident, economical prose.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?

Mike, the leading character in my new book, is right about the challenges facing self-published authors. It can be a hard and lonely road. What we writers crave most (apart from sales!) is reviews – even if they’re just a line long. They really do help attract other readers … as well as giving us a sense of validation! Another challenge is deciding whether books should form part of a series or be stand-alone. I’ve mostly chosen the series approach (except for my fourth book, Never Going to Happen, which I wrote under the pen-name Anders Teller). But I try to make each book work as a self-contained story, so that it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the history. It’s a constant juggling act!

Thank you for coming back to Reviews and Interviews!

Interview with debut mystery novelist Peter Rowlands

My special guest today is Peter Rowlands. He’s chatting with me about his debut novel, Alternative Outcome. It’s a mystery drama with a romantic thread.

Bio:

Peter Rowlands was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, but has lived nearly all his adult life in London. He spent many years editing and contributing to UK business magazines covering logistics, transport and home delivery, but novel writing was always where he wanted to be, and he finally published his first novel, the mystery drama Alternative Outcome, in 2016.

Peter is an avid reader of mystery dramas and thrillers, and always planned to write books that distilled what he considers the most appealing aspects of such works: vivid characters, naturalistic dialogue, plenty of pace, and intricate but coherent plots.

Welcome, Peter. Please tell us about Alternative Outcome.

What if you self-published a novel based on real events and people, and some of those people and events started to intrude into your life? Alternative Outcome starts with that premise, partly turning the mirror on itself.

Mike Stanhope, unfulfilled by his job as a freelance journalist working in London and depressed following his divorce, hopes that publishing a book will help him re-focus his life, but when friends urge him to track down one of the real-life characters he has hijacked for it, a girl he knew long ago as a teenager, disturbing events follow: a website hack, a theft, a kidnap attempt.

Mike’s search takes him to Cornwall, where a new relationship beckons, but fact and fiction become increasingly entangled as he struggles to work out what really happened in the story behind his book. The pressure mounts as he deals with increasingly aggressive confrontations with people who seem convinced he has information they need.

What inspired you to write this book?

Getting a book published is a big challenge (that’s an understatement if ever there was one), so in Alternative Outcome I decided to work some of my own experience of this into the plot line. I was also fascinated by the power of the internet to track down people who previously might have found it much easier to stay hidden; and I was intrigued by the parallels and contrasts between remembered experience and the hard evidence that is now so often preserved online. Combining these ingredients offered a rich mix, presenting opportunities for a multi-layered drama.

Beyond all this, I also wanted to celebrate the joys and setbacks of an emerging relationship played out in difficult circumstances. I wanted to create a convincing world populated by vivid, three-dimensional characters – everyday people facing unexpected challenges.

Excerpt from Alternative Outcome:

We progressed to a restaurant down the street. I ended up sitting diagonally opposite Ashley, facing a Londoner called Joe who proceeded to spend an inordinately long time telling me about the delights of surfing. “That’s why I moved to Cornwall,” he told me. “Fantastic to have it all there on tap. Lovely lifestyle, too. I’d never come back here to London now.”

The meal ran its course. I couldn’t easily converse with Ashley on her own, but I was strongly aware of her voice and personality, and this evening she seemed more animated than I remembered. I was aware of her colleagues teasing her from time to time, but I could tell it  was teasing borne out of respect, and she parried it with self-deprecating grace.

Eventually Joe disappeared to the men’s room, and Ashley shuffled into his place opposite me and leaned forward. Though we’d had so little direct conversation, in a strange way it felt as if we’d spent the entire evening in unspoken dialogue.

“Michael.”

“Ashley.”

She grinned at me. “Is that what people call you? Michael?”

“Not really. When I’m good I’m just Mike.”

She nodded to herself several times.

“Michael, I have intelligence for you. Brought to you courtesy of Patrick.” Unthinking, she took a sip of Joe’s beer. “Aarrggh! What’s this stuff?” She thrust it down, reached over for her own glass and took a sip from that. “Patrick is my older brother.”

“OK.”

“Thing is, I was telling him about you.” She broke off. “Not that I want you to get the impression that I was thinking about you. No way.”

“Right.”

“But somehow you came up in conversation. And he remembered Trina Markham quite well. I think he probably fancied her, stupid prat. He always fancied all the girls at the Fairmile.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, and he says she was from Altrincham. Her father was an accountant or something, and they had a posh house up there.” She looked at me in triumph. “What do you think of that?”

“Is that it?”

She smiled at me with her eyes. “That’s gold-plated information there! Normally I charge for this kind of thing.”

“It’s greatly valued, I assure you.”

“Yes, I believe you.”

We continued to smile at each other for a moment, perhaps unsure where to take the conversation next.

“How’s Jack?” I asked finally. I hated myself for bringing him into the conversation, but somehow couldn’t help myself.

“Jack is fine, thank you.” She looked away from me for a moment, then back. “We’ve known each other forever.” She took another sip of beer.

“When are you planning on getting married?”

“Oh, no date yet. Probably next year.” An airy shake of the head. “It’s a moveable feast.” She pondered this for a moment. “It’s a virtual engagement – that’s what it is. Virtual.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

Prior to writing my first published mystery drama, I wrote an earlier one, Escape Sequence, in which memory loss was one of the main themes. This a well-trodden path, but for good reasons in my view; it opens up so many dramatic possibilities. That book also drew on my own long experience of working with people in the world of public relations.

I felt that the earlier book wasn’t quite ready for publication, but now I’m revising and paring it down, and I think it will make a convincing follow-up to Alternative Outcome. I also have ideas for my third novel, which again will have a logistics / business publishing background, and will include photo editing as one of its themes. I aim to write this during 2016.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I was already inventing story extracts and typing them out on my father’s pre-war Remington portable typewriter when I was about ten. Did I think I was a writer? Well, I wanted to be! Then I spent a career in business journalism, which of course involved writing of a kind, but all along I knew I could write compelling fiction too. So I guess I’ve always considered myself a writer – but I’ve taken a very long time to demonstrate it to the world.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I still have to pay bills, so I can’t afford to write fiction full-time, though I spend as much time on it as I can. The rest of the time I write journalistic stuff about logistics and computing, including some promotional material; I write about and photograph buses (yes, including London’s red double-deckers); and I build web sites. But increasingly I’m forcing these day jobs to the side to ensure that the fiction doesn’t get neglected.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I wouldn’t say it’s a quirk exactly, but I’m fanatical about the way presentation can influence the way readers take in the rhythm and flow of prose, especially when direct speech is involved. For instance, a new line for a new speaker might be enough to indicate the pace of a conversation, but sometimes you might have to be more explicit by breaking a quote mid-way with “He hesitated” or some such device. But not too often! I’m also pretty fanatical about getting the punctuation right – and the grammar, of course. When you’ve been a journalist, a sub-editor and an editor yourself, you realize that when it comes to the fine detail, the buck stops somewhere. I feel strongly that I need to take that responsibility on myself.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was about seven, I told my parents I wanted to be a BBC producer. They were amazed that I even knew what this meant. For the record, a BBC producer was then the equivalent of a director in the film world, and that’s what I had in mind. I loved the idea of managing a cast of characters and developing a story. In a way, that’s what I’ve finally been able to do with my fiction – but I don’t have to rely on actors, set-builders, sound staff and a lighting crew. I can do it on my own!

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

For every writer you hear about and consider reading, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, who are toiling in isolation, struggling to make their voices heard. The internet revolution has opened the door for anyone to jump on the publishing ladder, but it’s a steep ascent, and from the bottom it can appear that most of the rungs are missing. So when you do find a writer you like, share your good fortune – tell your friends and the world! It might seem a small thing, but it can give an enormous boost to the author. Self-published writers are especially reliant readers to celebrate their successes; they have no promotional machine to keep them in the public eye.

Links:

Website | Amazon | Amazon UK | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Thanks, Peter. Happy writing!