John Dean
Who are your favourite Scottish writers?
Not surprisingly, given what I write, I have chosen from a shortlist of three brilliant crime writers, namely the masterful Peter May with his superb descriptive powers, Ian Rankin with his towering creation Rebus and his evocative depiction of Edinburgh’s tenements, and Edinburgh-born Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As to my choice, every so often the Crime Writers’ Association, of which I am a member, runs a survey to discover its membership’s favourite fictional investigator and I, unwaveringly, name Sherlock Holmes, so my answer to this question has to be Arthur Conan Doyle.
What is your favourite Scottish novel or short story and why?
Given my answer above, I would say any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories but if you were going to force me, I would go for The Adventure of the Speckled Band, which can be found in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes collection. As with the other short stories, Holmes is a masterful creation who dominates the story, John Watson is a beautifully-crafted sidekick, the sense of place is powerful and in the case of The Adventure of the Speckled Band, it has an ingenious plot, as do all the other stories. Pushing it close is The Man with the Twisted Lip, for the same reasons.
I mentioned Peter May and Ian Rankin earlier and readers will enjoy any of their works, but I would suggest for starters The Lewis Man by Peter May, published by Riverrun in 2011, and A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin (Orion 2020).
What piece of writing of yours are you most proud of?
Strange Little Girl, part of the DCI John Blizzard series of crime novels published by The Book Folks, a Joffe Books company. I had had several novels published before this one, and many since and each one I feel is better than the previous one, but I chose Strange Little Girl because it is the first book when I felt like I knew what I was doing.
What is your 274 Miles story about?
A naïve clergyman who falls in love with a prostitute but badly misreads the situation.
Tell us about your writing process.
A few years ago, I ran a creative writing course and, at the beginning of one of the sessions, I asked my fifteen students how they worked. The result was fifteen different answers – one author wrote everything by hand then typed it onto their computer, another wrote it all in note form then linked the notes together, one did not edit anything until everything was completed on the first draft, another never edited anything at all (not to be recommended!), one author wrote in coffee shops like J K Rowling etc. I write on a laptop in my office or in the kitchen (the office can get very cold in winter as it is in the garage, away from the house). I write a chapter then go back and rewrite it, maybe three of four times, before moving onto the next chapter and repeating the slow and steady process. At some stage, with several chapters created in this way, I go back to the beginning and rework the manuscript, editing carefully, asking if every word has the right to be there.
Then with the end of the story looming, I take the brakes off and write fast and loose, not being careful about what I write, not worrying about spelling mistakes etc, just making sure that I have something on the screen, until I type the words ‘The End’.
Then it is back to page one and working carefully again to give myself a draft which will, for the first time, be printed out before being given a final read-through.
It may seem to some people that my way of writing is cumbersome, but it works for me and the key thing is that each writer must use the method that works.
If you have one piece of writing advice, what would it be?
Always write with the reader in mind – is your story easy for them to follow?
What are you working on at the moment?
The latest novel in the Blizzard series.
How can readers connect with you and read your work?
Via my new website.
Buy 274 Miles