Ask the Author: Helen Barrell
Answered Questions (3)
Helen Barrell
It's possibly because I've read so many Agatha Christies, that I have a fascination with poisons. She worked in a pharmacy during WW1, and that seems to be connected with the fact that so often, her murderers' weapon of choice is poison.
I was transcribing a burial register when I found a note in the margin which said that one of the people had been killed with arsenic, and that their murderer had been hanged. I immediately wanted to find out more about it, and started to read through newspapers from the 1840s which covered the inquests and trials. Partly just out of interest, but as this was north-east Essex, where many of my family are from, there was an outside chance that I was related to them!
I researched some more, and found modern writers who had also written about some of the cases which my book covers - but they'd come at it from different angles, so I felt that it was still worth me writing up what I had researched. As a genealogist, I'd reconstructed the families involved in the cases, and that alone sheds new light on them. For instance, is it true that Mary May killed 16 of her own children? Well, first of all, is it likely that she'd even had 16 children in the first place?!
I was going to put my research online as a series of blog posts, but just as I started to wonder if that was a good idea - there was a lot of information, and I wasn't sure that blog posts was quite the right medium for it - the opportunity arose for me to write a book. So that's what I did.
I was transcribing a burial register when I found a note in the margin which said that one of the people had been killed with arsenic, and that their murderer had been hanged. I immediately wanted to find out more about it, and started to read through newspapers from the 1840s which covered the inquests and trials. Partly just out of interest, but as this was north-east Essex, where many of my family are from, there was an outside chance that I was related to them!
I researched some more, and found modern writers who had also written about some of the cases which my book covers - but they'd come at it from different angles, so I felt that it was still worth me writing up what I had researched. As a genealogist, I'd reconstructed the families involved in the cases, and that alone sheds new light on them. For instance, is it true that Mary May killed 16 of her own children? Well, first of all, is it likely that she'd even had 16 children in the first place?!
I was going to put my research online as a series of blog posts, but just as I started to wonder if that was a good idea - there was a lot of information, and I wasn't sure that blog posts was quite the right medium for it - the opportunity arose for me to write a book. So that's what I did.
Helen Barrell
Go and do something else. Anything else. I sometimes find that if I'm sat at my desk working and suddenly all my words stop, then getting up to make a cup of tea gets them flowing again, or even going out for a walk. That may lead to me walking around the supermarket talking to myself, but that may lead to a eureka moment in the tinned goods aisle.
If the block lasts longer... sometimes you need to change your focus entirely. Forget about writing, forget about the block, read other things, explore hobbies that interest you. You never know where inspiration will strike. My interest in 19th century forensics has come from genealogy - after I found a note in the margin of a burial register about someone's death by arsenic poisoning, and the fate of the person found guilty of their murder.
It's actually a known neurological fact that going to do something else gets the brain working. It's why that chap had his eureka moment in the bath. I get quite a lot of ideas in the shower, or when I'm brushing my teeth, or putting out the bins, or sweeping the stairs, or exercising. Let your brain off its lead and allow it to sniff about in the undergrowth, that's what I say.
If the block lasts longer... sometimes you need to change your focus entirely. Forget about writing, forget about the block, read other things, explore hobbies that interest you. You never know where inspiration will strike. My interest in 19th century forensics has come from genealogy - after I found a note in the margin of a burial register about someone's death by arsenic poisoning, and the fate of the person found guilty of their murder.
It's actually a known neurological fact that going to do something else gets the brain working. It's why that chap had his eureka moment in the bath. I get quite a lot of ideas in the shower, or when I'm brushing my teeth, or putting out the bins, or sweeping the stairs, or exercising. Let your brain off its lead and allow it to sniff about in the undergrowth, that's what I say.
Helen Barrell
I'm currently working on my second book for Pen & Sword - Fatal Evidence: Professor Alfred Swaine Taylor & the Dawn of Forensic Science. This came out of my research for Poison Panic - Taylor was the expert witness in nearly all the trials I came across; he was one of the country's leading toxicological experts. I went off on a tangent, researching Taylor, and became quite obsessed with him! He worked on hundreds of cases in the 19th century - some of the cases are quite famous, too. It wasn't all poisonings, either. His reputation suffered somewhat thanks to the William Palmer and Thomas Smethurst trials, and I think this makes him an interesting figure - he's not perfect, he made mistakes. Fatal Evidence will be published in 2017.
And I'm still plugging away at my 1930s gothic romance, Shadows of the Scar. I don't know if it'll ever be published, but I've always written fiction, so I'm not stopping now.
And I'm still plugging away at my 1930s gothic romance, Shadows of the Scar. I don't know if it'll ever be published, but I've always written fiction, so I'm not stopping now.
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