Ask the Author: Philip Palmer
Answered Questions (10)
Philip Palmer
I love writing, I guess - and I feel like a laggard compared to the likes of Stephen King. My ambition is to fill two shelves...! One day.
London is a city of villages, and I live in a South London village. But the magical bit is by the Thames, in the City of London, the East End - all those bits soaked in history and haunted by ghosts...
London is a city of villages, and I live in a South London village. But the magical bit is by the Thames, in the City of London, the East End - all those bits soaked in history and haunted by ghosts...
Philip Palmer
My agent is talking to publishers about a print edition...it's a big book, 800 pages, and it needs a very stylish print edition, ideally with extra illustrations. For the moment it'll be in digital version only.
Philip Palmer
Just about to go on holiday...with Joyce Carol Oates' Cathage, and James Lovegrove's Sherlock Holmes Chtulhu books. Bought Adam Roberts' BY LIGHT ALONE and read it before going! More to read later this summer...
Philip Palmer
I guess I'm inspired most by my own reading experiences...for instance, books like the HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy and GAME OF THRONES and JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL were a joy to read, and offered me wonderfully rich, immersive reading experiences. And looking back on them all, I thought, hey, I'd like to take a reader to that kind of a place. Though in my own particular way. And that's how HELL ON EARTH came about. A book which blends magic, crime, fantasy - all in what I hope is a rich and immersive world of story.
To put it another way: being inspired inspires me...
To put it another way: being inspired inspires me...
Philip Palmer
My grandfather's life would make a great story. He was born in Ireland and came to Wales as a child off the ferry, on his own, with a piece of cardboard around his neck with his name and an address in South Wales which kind strangers helped him to find.. We were always told his mother was in prison but we don't know any more. What happened back in Ireland? I'd love to find out...
Philip Palmer
I'm currently doing rewrites on a radio drama detective series set in Cold War Hungary, starring Leo Bill, Clare Corbett and Andy Linden. It's called KEEPING THE WOLF OUT, and it's a three part series following on from a two part series last year.
It's an amazing story world - set in a time when people living in the East were just as frightened of the West as we were of them. The Bay of Pigs; the Cuban Missile Crisis; American expansionism - it all made for a tense, paranoid mindset. But at the same time, Hungarians were still ultimately under the control of an authoritarian Soviet leadership. Caught between two stools, between the frying pan and the fire....
The protagonist, Bertalan Lazar, is a police detective investigating crime in 1960s Budapest. And his boss, Tibor, used to torture people in Stalin's day...
The hope is that there'll be a commission to write Series 3 - fingers crossed!
It's an amazing story world - set in a time when people living in the East were just as frightened of the West as we were of them. The Bay of Pigs; the Cuban Missile Crisis; American expansionism - it all made for a tense, paranoid mindset. But at the same time, Hungarians were still ultimately under the control of an authoritarian Soviet leadership. Caught between two stools, between the frying pan and the fire....
The protagonist, Bertalan Lazar, is a police detective investigating crime in 1960s Budapest. And his boss, Tibor, used to torture people in Stalin's day...
The hope is that there'll be a commission to write Series 3 - fingers crossed!
Philip Palmer
I teach aspiring writers and my advice is always: 'Don't do it!' Oddly enough, no one is ever discouraged by that.
What that advice really means is: make sure you have backups and income flows, so you can enjoy your life. And write because you want to, and because you think readers will want to enter your story worlds. And if you earn enough to give up the day job, that's a blessed bonus.
On a more practical note, I know a number of writers who have never done a course in writing - I'm one of them. But creative writing courses at BA and MA writing can be a great way to get professional input in a structured way. I teach part-time on a BA at Goldsmiths College in which a small part of the course is creative writing - and the outcomes are often fantastic. Writers thrive, basically, when they get feedback, and when they share the company of other writers.
What that advice really means is: make sure you have backups and income flows, so you can enjoy your life. And write because you want to, and because you think readers will want to enter your story worlds. And if you earn enough to give up the day job, that's a blessed bonus.
On a more practical note, I know a number of writers who have never done a course in writing - I'm one of them. But creative writing courses at BA and MA writing can be a great way to get professional input in a structured way. I teach part-time on a BA at Goldsmiths College in which a small part of the course is creative writing - and the outcomes are often fantastic. Writers thrive, basically, when they get feedback, and when they share the company of other writers.
Philip Palmer
Writer's block is a curse, and a blessing. Earlier in my career I went through long patches of not being able to write. Since I wasn't being paid to write, it was easy to despair and think about giving up, and taking up my backup career of traffic warden.
But over the years I've learned that the Block can be a way in which the subconscious tells the conscious mind Stop! You're going down the wrong road! Now I trust my instincts, and if it's not 'flowing' I take a break. For days even. I just avoid confronting the blank page and find other stuff to do. Until suddenly it's 'there'.
It makes my life adrenalin-rich because sometimes I let my mind lie fallow for so long I bump up against deadlines. Scary scary deadlines. But so far - touch wood, he says, knocking his own thick cranium - inspiration always hits in the nick of time.
But over the years I've learned that the Block can be a way in which the subconscious tells the conscious mind Stop! You're going down the wrong road! Now I trust my instincts, and if it's not 'flowing' I take a break. For days even. I just avoid confronting the blank page and find other stuff to do. Until suddenly it's 'there'.
It makes my life adrenalin-rich because sometimes I let my mind lie fallow for so long I bump up against deadlines. Scary scary deadlines. But so far - touch wood, he says, knocking his own thick cranium - inspiration always hits in the nick of time.
Philip Palmer
The urgent compelling and irrevocable necessity to walk the dog at least six times a day. It's the only job where thinking time counts as work! Seriously, it's the moment when it stops being agonisingly hard and brain-numbing, and somehow the idea possesses your being and your psyche and types the words. It's a buzz, in other words. Meeting other writers and fans at conventions is a major perk too.
Philip Palmer
I spent almost five years writing crime dramas including THE BILL and spent a lot of time with Murder Squads and other police officers. Which was an extraordinary privilege, and gave me many insights into the darker side of human nature. I am also part-demon (on the Irish side of my family). The combination of these two things created HELL ON EARTH.
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