1. Tell us about your new novel and why you chose to write it now?
TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE is a coming-of-age story and a love story and a mystery and a tragedy set in a small country town in Australia. Officially it’s my 20th novel, but it is also my very first because I began writing it when I was 22 years old.
Much of the story is autobiographical. It is set in the small Australian town where I spent my childhood, although I’ve given it a different name.
For forty years, this forgotten manuscript has remained in my bottom drawer, referred to occasionally, mockingly, as the ‘greatest ever Australian unpublished novel.’ Well, that all changes now. It has been rewritten and reimagined by an author, who is older, wiser, and hopefully a better writer for it.
I hope you enjoy TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE. It was my first love.
2. What do you hope readers take away or feel after reading your book?
I want readers fall in love with the characters, particularly Arlo and his younger brother Luke who have grown up in this small outback town. Arlo becomes a good man and Luke a gentle giant, who is slow to anger, easily teased, but kind to all creatures.
You will also meet Saxon, a teenage tearaway, who is wise and naïve and heartbreakingly beautiful. She is lover of weird facts and trivia, which is where title comes from. TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE. Did you know for example, that Mozart kept a fart diary, or that in Africa they paint eyes on cow’s bottoms to stop them being eaten by lions?
3. Will there be any more Philomena McCarthy novels?
I am working with Philomena now on a new story. It doesn’t have a title, but she is again trying to walk the tightrope between her career as a trainee detective and having a father and uncles who are notorious London gangsters.
4. Will there be any more Evie Cormac and Cyrus Haven novels?
That will depend upon whether I come up with the right story for them to tell. I like the circular nature of the four books in the series, although I have left some loose ends that I could return to later.
5. Where did the character of Philomena Mccarthy come from?
Phil first appears in the opening chapter of WHEN YOU ARE MINE, which is among my favourite openings of any of my novels.
I was thirteen years old when I saw my future. I was standing near the middle doors of a double-decker and a bus when a bomb exploded on the upper deck, peeling off the roof like a giant had taken a tin-opener to a can of peaches. One moment, I was holding onto a strap handle and the next I lay on the pavement, surrounded by shattered glass and body parts. I remember looking up and wondering what I’d been doing on a London sightseeing bus because that’s what it looked like without a roof.
In the aftermath of the bus bombing, Phil is comforted by a young police officer, who moves between the wounded offering water and words of kindness. That is the moment Phil decides to become a police officer. She wants to help people and to make a difference.
I then decided to complicate her life, but giving her a family that wouldn’t appreciate her chosen career. Having spent years working as a journalist in London, I had met my share of old school East End hustlers and geezers and petty crims. I had also immersed myself in stories of the Kray Twins, the Richardson Gang and Mad Frankie Fraser, who were legendary figures in the East End.
The juxtaposition of the two seemed perfect for storytelling with endless possibilities of conflict and divided loyalties.
6. There have been four books in the evie Cormac and Cyrus Haven series. Will there be any more?
When I first introduced Evie Cormac in GOOD GIRL, BAD GIRL, I created an enigma. She was the girl without a name or a past, found hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death.
At the end of that first novel, readers knew some of the answers about Evie, but she was still a mystery. With each book in the series, I revealed a little more.
Despite what readers may think, I didn’t have a grand plan or overarching narrative plotted out. Evie was as big a mystery to me as everybody else. With each book, I set about exploring her background and what it must be like to navigate life as a human lie detector.
With the fourth book in the series STORM CHILD, I gave readers most of the answers, and also an ending that I saw as hopeful and uplifting. Will there be another book? I’m not sure. I have left some loose ends that I could tug upon and follow. Maybe after in a year or two, Evie will come calling, dragging me back into her world.
7. It has been twenty years since your first novel, the suspect, was published, has writing become any easier?
The financial pressures have gone, but the writing doesn’t get any easier. Because I don’t plot my books in advance, I am always the explorer, hacking my way through a jungle of words, looking for the lost city of gold. Sometimes, I fear that I’m lost and there is no way out. At other times, I manage to climb a tree and glimpse a possible ending, but then I have to descend back into the jungle and hope I can remember the way.
Despite these difficulties, it is still exciting. I approach the blank screen or the white page, with enormous hope and ambition and a willingness to fail many times before I succeed.
8. What made you decide to write psychological thrillers?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I didn’t actually set out to be a crime writer. It might sound naive, but I just thought I was writing an interesting story. It came as quite a shock when the label was applied. The reason I created Joseph O’Loughlin was due to my fascination with the human mind. Everything we do and say; and everything that has ever happened or will happen in the future comes down to that few pounds of porridge we call a brain. When Mozart wrote his symphonies, when Hitler ordered the Final Solution, when a serial killer murders young girls, or when a teenage mother abandons her baby in a rubbish bin – it all comes back to some aspect of human behaviour.
9. Your plots are often quite clever and have readers guessing right until the end. Do you map them out beforehand or do they come naturally?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: Some writers create a group of interesting characters and let the story unfold naturally but this is very hard when it comes to writing thrillers. At some point you have to steer the plot in the right direction. I love creating characters and their back-stories. Plotting is the bit I find hardest. Writing a thriller is like taking a journey. You know where you’re going to start and finish but you never map it out too carefully, otherwise you might miss that side trip along the road less traveled.
10. You often take minor characters in your books and make them the main character in the following book. Why is this?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I love having the luxury of being able to look at the world through a completely fresh set of eyes every time I sit down to write. This helps me to stay fresh. I don’t get tired of my characters. Each book normally features new voices or new perspective on the world.
11. Is it true that you have ghostwritten some autobiographies of very famous people?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I’ve been lucky to work with some remarkable, mercurial, difficult, insanely funny, manic and exceptional people. Many of these traits helped make them famous. Some of them I can’t mention but others have acknowledged my help. I’ve worked with the likes of Ricky Tomlinson (Ricky), Lulu (I Don’t Want to Fight), Geri Halliwell (If Only), Tony Bullimore (Saved) and Margaret Humphreys (Empty Cradles/Oranges and Sunshine).
12. Can you tell us a secret about them?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: A big part of being a ghostwriter is winning people’s trust. You learn things that even their families, wives, partners and best friends don’t know. Sometimes there are tears and tantrums but hopefully, in the end, we have the truth. That’s why I keep their secrets.
13. Did ghostwriting help or hinder you as a novelist?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: Ghostwriting did more than pay the bills. It allowed me to see if I had the discipline and wherewithal to write 100,000 words; to sit alone in a room for month after month on a single project. It may seem odd, but I approach my novels in the same way as I approached my ghosting projects. My characters are as real to me as any real person I have worked with. I approach each book as if I’m writing their life story. At the same time, I occasionally get annoyed when I’m introduced as ‘Geri Halliwell’s former ghostwriter’. That was almost 20 years ago.
14. Ghostwriting non-fiction is very different to writing a fictional thriller. Did you have to create a completely different mindset? How did you approach it?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I have wanted to be a novelist since I was about twelve and always saw journalism and ghostwriting as being stepping stones. Writing fiction is a lot harder than I expected. Instead of having a wealth of material at my fingertips – the interviews and research about someone’s life – I have to start from scratch, inventing everything. There are few things more terrifying than a blank white computer screen. I love the freedom of writing fiction but sometimes it feels like I’m standing naked on a high wire above Niagara Falls with everything hanging out in the breeze.
15. How much pre-planning goes into each book?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I don’t plot my books in advance. Instead I come up with an idea, create a group of characters and let the story unfold organically. Stephen King once described it as like discovering a bone sticking out of the ground. You begin brushing the dirt away, unsure if you’re uncovering some rare fossil, or a dog bone. Hopefully, it’s the rare fossil.
16. Do you have a set routine for your writing day?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: Graham Greene once said that putting words on paper is the final part of the writing process. The most important part is done almost subconsciously. That’s why my wife has learned to understand that when I’m sitting, staring out the window (or sleeping on the couch) I’m actually working. In truth, I start work after breakfast, break for lunch, and work until late afternoon. It’s not all writing. I have emails to answer, books to edit and research to do. I work weekends and holidays. I try to write every day – even if just for a few hours.
17. Do you believe successful writing can be taught?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I think writing can be taught, just as tennis can be taught, or golf or painting, but showing someone the theory won’t make them a great writer. Nobody else can put words on a page for you. It takes practice. It takes perseverance. Most of all it takes passion. If you’re writing for fame or fortune or posterity, prepare to be disappointed. If you’re writing because you’re passionate about it, prepare for a life long love affair.
18. How do you manage to sustain the tension? It was a real nail biter and I was guessing right up to the end.
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I think the tension is sustained because it builds up so slowly. The story is like a slow-burning fuse where there’s plenty of time to meet the characters and learn about them. The fuse burns faster and faster and explodes in the last third of the book. By this stage, hopefully readers will really care about what happens.
19. You often write in the first person and the present tense. This is somewhat unusual, as most writers choose the third-person and the past tense. Is there a particular reason why you use this?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: First-person present-tense is definitely challenging, but I think it creates a sense of immediacy and pace which grabs the reader and makes them feel as though they are literally being drawn into an adventure that is unfolding in real time.
20. Do you have any advice for would-be writers?
MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: Write, write and when you’re sick of writing, write some more. It’s the only way to get better.
Read everything you can – not just the very best writers because some of them are so brilliant you will consider giving up because your prose might never match theirs. Read the lesser writers, the mere mortals, and ask yourself how each book could be improved. Take it apart like you would an old alarm clock. Why does it work? Why it doesn’t it work? Learn. (With the truly great book, you won’t be able to take it apart because you won’t be able to find the joins.)