An Interview With Peter May (3/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3)

A fair few years back you worked on the Scottish TV drama 'Take The High Road'. What exactly did that involve, and how on earth did that 'gig' come about? Take The High Road was great fun, and I earned a lot of money doing it. It came along at just the right time for me in 1980. I had chucked my job as a journalist just a few months earlier to try to make a living as a writer. I had already sold a TV series to the BBC and had two books published, so it wasn't exactly a leap in the dark. But it's really tough trying to make a full-time living at it.

So when I was offered a couple of scripts for this new Scottish TV soap opera, I jumped at it. A couple of scripts, in the end, turned into several hundred, and during the height of the show's success in the eighties - it was No 1 in Scotland, and got six million afternoon viewers on the ITV network - I was variously script editor and story editor. I loved every minute of it, and in those days the money it earned me subsidised my book writing. Given the well received book tours that you do in the US, have you ever toured the UK in promotion of your work?

I have done various promotional appearances in London and Scotland. The bookstore scene in the UK is pretty haphazard and verging on the moribund. There is no accepted 'tour route'. Most of the independent bookstores have gone to the wall, and the big chains are limited in their events. Unlike the US, where a network of thriving independent bookstores specialising in crime provide an ideal 'tour route' for the thriller writer out promoting his new book. Last year I did twenty cities in thirty days, an awesome experience. France is different again.

There are book fairs and festivals all year round, and a fantastic variety of independent bookstores. My promotional calendar for the summer is already full up.

Do you find that you write every single day? Is the act of writing and conjuring up compelling stories that much of a necessity to you? The gestation period of most of my books roughly coincides with a nine-month pregnancy. The fun part's at the beginning, and then it gets progressively tougher. Generally I start with a germ of an idea. I do some research and let it grow organically, making notes most days on thoughts I've had. As the idea develops I do more research, which in turns feeds back into the idea. Eventually I brainstorm a twenty thousand word story outline in about five days.

Then I can look at the whole thing to see how it's working. When I'm happy with it, I go and do my location research. I take lots of digital video which I then edit on my computer. When I finally sit down to write, I do three thousand words a day and usually finish in around eight weeks. The writing bit, like giving birth, is usually the most painful, and you don't try to do it again until the memory of the last time starts to fade.

Finally, do you have any idea whatsoever how the final book of the current series of seven books that you are working on might end, or will you cross that bridge when it gets a little nearer...? I know exactly how it will end. It was planned from the beginning, and will be a major shock for those readers who follow the series. So look out for it. Extraordinary People will be out in November. www.petermay.co.uk

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