A Moment with… Colin Garrow

I am pleased to be welcoming Colin Garrow to Novel Kicks. He’s here with the blog tour for his novel, Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow – book 3 in the Rosie Robson series.

A dead body. A hoard of forged banknotes. A gangster out for blood.

Newcastle, December 1955. Returning home after a weekend away, singer and amateur sleuth Rosie Robson discovers a man lying on a baggage trolley with his throat cut. After the police get involved, an attack on Rosie and her boss prompts Inspector Vic Walton to find a safe house for the pair. But the bad guys seem to be one step ahead of them and Rosie is forced to track down a possible witness to the murder in a bid to learn the truth. Can the canny crooner solve the mystery before a Newcastle gang boss catches up with her? 

Set on Tyneside, Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow is book #3 in the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries series.

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Without further ado, it’s over to Colin who is chatting about creating a book series. 

I assume that other authors, like me, create a series of books (ie a sequence featuring the same characters or setting/location) so the expectation that whatever readers loved about the first book will prompt them to read the others. But do we do it simply to have the same group of characters ready and waiting, therefore making the writing of additional books (in theory, at least) a bit easier? Or might it be to cash in on something that proves popular with readers? In my case, I have to be interested in what happens to my characters to keep me interested. Once I begin to lose that interest, there’s no point continuing.

With my Blood on the Tyne series, I originally started out with the idea of a character who would be a sort of British version of some of those American classics, like Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer. Aside from the fact that these are all male characters written by male authors, I wanted to write something that had that same sense of noir (dark themes and equally dark subject matter).

But when I tried to come up with a kind of English private eye with Chandleresque witticisms and classic one-liners, it just didn’t feel right. Also, I already had Terry Bell (from the Terry Bell Mysteries series) who kind of fitted that role, albeit in a more laidback and naïve way.

Ideally, what I wanted had to make sense without seeming contrived, so instead of a male PI, I came up with an amateur detective but made her female. Making Rosie Robson an unwilling investigator, who just happens to be in the wrong place when the poop hits the ceiling fan, I came up with a woman who works as a nightclub singer and is forced to come back to her hometown of Newcastle for her mother’s funeral. In doing so, she gets embroiled in a murder hunt and meets a potential partner in the shape of Detective Inspector Vic Walton.

I also wanted her to be strong as well as a bit vulnerable, so popped her in the mid-1950s so she’d have to deal with the kind of sexist and misogynistic attitudes that were commonplace at the time, as well as countering ideas about women’s roles in the home and workplace.

Having finished the first book – Blood on the Tyne: Body Parts – I wasn’t certain I could sustain the character through further books. For one thing, Rosie’s original plan is to go back to London to resume her job in a Soho nightclub. So, giving her a possible boyfriend and a reason to consider staying in Newcastle, book two finds her moving in with a shop worker, who turns out to have dodgy relatives. When a friend of Rosie’s sister dies mysteriously, Rosie visits the girl’s family and is pressured into investigating the death.

So far, so good. But with the third book – Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow – I had the feeling that continuing the series would begin to seem artificial, so considered knocking off at least one of the major characters as a means of prompting Rosie to make up her mind about her future. In the end, things turned out a little differently (though that’s not to say no-one dies), and I surprised myself with a denouement that not only gave her a future in Newcastle but could equally lead to her leaving the city for good.

At the moment, it feels right to end the series with this third book. To continue would push Rosie in another direction and bring about a change in her mindset. If another book does emerge at some point, I expect it would still involve some poor soul getting knocked off in a gruesome manner and also necessitate including a reason why Rosie might want to get involved in the case.

With two book series based in the Newcastle area, maybe it’s time to shift my perspective. But then again, maybe it isn’t.

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About Colin Garrow:

True-born Geordie Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland and has worked in a plethora of professions including taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor.

He has also occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. Colin’s published books include the Watson Letters series, the Terry Bell Mysteries and the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries.

His short stories have appeared in several literary mags, including: SN Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Grind, A3 Review, Inkapture and Scribble Magazine.

These days he lives in a humble cottage in Northeast Scotland.

Say hello to Colin via his website, Amazon Author Page, Twitter, Smashwords, Facebook and Bookbub. If you’d like to know more about his book for children and YA, click here.

Click here to buy Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow on Amazon UK. 

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Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.