Alison Bruce

Biog
I live in a village just outside Cambridge with Jacen who's a musician and our two children Lana and Dean.

I moved to the area in 1998. Cambridge and the surrounding area is a perfect setting for my books and I began a crash course in getting to know the area. As a result of this research I wrote the non-fiction book Cambridgeshire Murders (Sutton Publishing 2005). My second non-fiction book, Billington, Victorian Executioner will be published in 2009.

Cambridge Blue is the first book featuring detective Gary Goodhew and I am currently working on the second. Goodhew is my ideal detective, I'd be pleased to have him on my side if I was in trouble, and pleased to have him around if I wasn't...

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Interview

For the new reader could you give us a 'potted-history' of your career as a writer?

I've done all sorts of jobs. The conventional ones have included admin, finance, IT support and support management.

The less usual have included electroplater, dressmaker, paint sprayer's assistant and taxi driver.

Now I run a B and B and I also DJ at weddings. With two children it's a bit of a juggling act but always interesting.

I never decided that I was going to write a novel, it was a story idea that grabbed me first. It kept bubbling to the surface and in the end I tried to write it down. But I had no idea what I was doing and after many attempts at chapter one I decided it would make a good film instead. I enrolled in a short screenwriting course given by David Yates (Harry Potter / State of Play) with the aim of developing a screenplay. He suggested that my idea work work well as a novel and so I took a course in creative writing.

I wrote various other things like a monthly music slot for local radio and a short stage play.

Every job has giving me invaluable experiences but for me there's nothing as rewarding as writing.

Who were your influences when you started to write?

I've never really thought that I planned to be a writer but I remember writing little plays and inventing an elaborate adventure that involved the hero owning a huge number of horses. I was a horse mad child and my first writing success was having a poem published in Pony Club annual. I think I won one pound and a free copy which, along with the pound, has vanished over the years - oh well! So overall I guess the writing bug was there all along...

I read the Famous Five until I was about ten and Agatha Christie through my teens. And also Monica Dickens who wrote the Follyfoot series and the fantastic House at World's End series of books.

When I was about 14 I fell in love with old thrillers and trashy detective shows - mainly American ones like Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels and something long since forgotten called 'Sword of Justice.' But films were always preferable to TV shows, I remember black and white films were often shown on BBC2 after school and I can clearly remember being gripped, terrified, and totally enamoured with 'The Night of the Hunter', 'Gaslight' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'

I think any influences are valid - they certainly don't have to come in the form of literature. I very often have ideas that come in the form of image rather than word and therefore find film and certain cinemtography styles particularly inspiring - eg Twin Peaks series one, the sense of place in the opening credit - wow!

But music works too and I have written many chapters using a particular song like a muse... Blue Angel by Roy Orbison, Torn by Natalie Imbruglia and Desperado Love by Hot Boogie Chillun to name three... I don't choose the song, it picks me.

What is the best advice you could give to a future writer?

Keep writing.
Look for every chance to improve.
Be adaptable.
Remember authors are just regular people - they all had to learn how to write, rewrite and persevere.
Don't give up!

(See there's a theme going here.)

In summary : KEEP GOING!

What other writers do you admire?

Different writers for different reasons :

Harlan Coben - I've read enough of his books to find the twists a little less surprising now but they're well plotted and make a cracking good read.

Natasha Cooper - The characters motivations and emotional scars ring so true.

Mark Billingham - He seems to have mastered the balance between great personal appearances and publishing top quality thrillers whilst writing kids books and scripts. Has he cloned himself I wonder?

Simon Kernick - Loved Relentless and Business of Dying.

RJ Ellory - A Quiet Belief in Angels is the only book that had ever stopped me in my tracks. I picked it up by accident and read the opening pages whilst standing somewhere really busy. The world around me faded into nothing. I stayed up til 3 am. I didn't want to get to the end... but I had to... you know the feeling?

Which books are you reading at the moment?

RJ Ellory Candlemoth

What makes for an intersting leading character?

The books I read now usually need to have two elements to make them truly satifying - dark deeds and at least one character with a conscience. There are people I know and see every day who are intelligent, caring and quietly valiant. I think those are the types of people who can overcome adversity, and for me, provide the inspiration for characters worth reading about.

Do you have trouble letting go of your characters when you have finished a book?

I sat up until 5 am finishing one book and tears were streaming down my face as the two main characters said goodbye. Really it was me saying goodbye.

Then I couldn't bear to entirely and kept Goodhew. That's the advantage of writing a series - it stops the author getting too bereft.

What are you working on at the moment?

I'm working on the second Goodhew book, thanks to a strange set of circumstances book three is already complete. This makes book two extra thrilling for me because book three can't go anywhere without it!

I'm one of two scriptwriters engaged to produce a horror filmscript and we're halfway through that, also I'm putting the finishing touches to my second non-fiction book which is the biography of James Billington, hangman from 1884 - 1901. It's all a bit dark really...

Forthcoming Titles