HIT THE NORTH! STEVE MOSBY INTERVIEW....

                             HIT THE NORTH!

   

STEVE MOSBY INTERVIEW

Steve Mosby lives in Leeds and is the author of

• STILL BLEEDING
• CRY FOR HELP
• THE 50/50 KILLER
• THE CUTTING CREW
• THE THIRD PERSON

We had a natter.

Q1: The Cutting Crew is a chilling dystopian view of the world. What inspired it?

A few different things came together on that one. The most obvious is probably a love for Archer’s Goon by Diana Wynne Jones, which is a children’s book based around a vaguely similar theme: a family that control various aspects of city life. 

I’ve always liked that as a central metaphor – the idea you can take certain social roles or functions and distill them down into an individual character. So in The Cutting Crew you have eight mythical brothers who run different aspects of the city: one controls law and order; another, crime; and so on. You can then use the relationship between those characters to explore, very simply, the relationship between the social functions.

The book’s not quite as grand as that, though. The main idea that motivated it was the city as a family, with various members pulling in different directions, either working together for the good of the whole or else undermining the others for selfish reasons even though that will ultimately destroy everything. 

That’s the myth that keeps repeating through the city’s history: a fatal flaw that leads to self-destruction. I didn’t quite nail it, I don’t think, but the idea was to have that occur on various scales, so you’d also have Martin, the main character, whose life has fallen apart due to his own weakness.

Finally – again, perhaps obviously – the book was very much inspired by the city of Siena. I spent some time there many years ago, and it’s a wonderful place. It’s divided into districts named after animals, each with different colours and decorations in the street, and every year they have the palio: the horse race around the central square. In the book, I changed it to a boxing match, but the city is very much based on Siena.

Q2: Are you a political writer?

No, not at all. Or not deliberately anyway. I’d go even further than that and say I’m not even a social writer, and I don’t try to produce realistic fiction. It’s a trend you see quite often at the moment – or maybe I’ve just noticed it more – to make crime fiction grim, gritty, close to life, authentic. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, there’s a lot right with it. But I kind of take it in the other direction. 

Rather than using a crime to comment on society as a whole, I often use it to comment on an aspect of a character’s personal life. It’s fairly obvious that the serial killer in The 50/50 Killer is totally unrealistic; it’s not intended to be a commentary on real life murderers. But the method he uses allowed me to write about relationships, which is what the book is about underneath the torture and gore.

Q3: Has fatherhood mellowed your writing?

It’s blurred it through tiredness! To be honest, I’m not sure, as I’ve been working on the same project since before my son was born, and the plot was more or less set in stone. So I’ll have to see.

In general, I see myself mellowing as I’ve grown older. I certainly think about violence a lot more these days; as a crime writer – someone who exploits death and sexual violence in their fiction – it would be weird not to think about it. I can see my approach has changed slightly, and there’s stuff in The Cutting Crew that I’d, well, cut out if I was writing it again now. I’m also less skeptical of happy endings than I used to be. A part of me increasingly thinks “why not?”

Q4: What film interest has their been in your books?

Bits, here and there. At the moment, The 50/50 Killer and Cry For Help have been optioned by two separate production companies in France. The books have done quite well over there, so there was quite a bit of interest. I’m not sure quite where the process is at: I think a second-draft script of 50/50 is nearly due. It’s like every writer says – you sign the options away and then forget about it, really; believe the film will happen when you see it listed in the paper. But I can say the companies involved were very enthusiastic and had vision for the books, which was important in getting me to sign.

Q5: Are you a member of the Groucho Club?

Ha! No. I’m not a member of anywhere like that. I make it down to London for about ten minutes every year.

Q6: Do you get a lot of inspiration from living in Leeds?

I guess I must. It’s a nice city in many ways, as it’s so mixed. There’s a decent city centre, and yet five miles down the road you’re in the countryside. Vibrant nightlife. Lovely people. All that kind of business.

A fair few places from Leeds have found their way into the books, and it’s usually pubs and bars! A lot of pubs in The Cutting Crew are either named after or based on real bars in Leeds. Other locations too. None of the books are set anywhere in particular, but they obviously draw from places I’ve been, and I spend most of my time in Leeds so it’s inevitable parts of the city get filtered through my head and used as and where they’re needed for the plot.

Q7: What are you working on at the moment?

I’m between books right now, which is always scary because until you get going on a new one it might turn out to be ‘after books’ instead. But I’ve just finished a draft of my sixth book, Black Flowers, which is due out next April. It’s about a kind of cursed novel, and the relationship fiction, especially violent fiction, can have with real life. On the surface it’s a serial killer novel, really, but there’s a lot going on below that hopefully makes it more interesting.

So I’m waiting to hear back about that while kicking some new ideas back and forth in my head. Waiting for one of them to kick me back…

Thanks Steve.

STEVE MOSBY'S website- THE LEFT ROOM is HERE