Graeme Cameron | Mason Cross | Emma Kavanagh | Alexandra Sokoloff
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Selected quotes from live Q&As with readers:
Selected quotes from live Q&As with readers:
Alexandra Sokoloff: Of course, you can’t lecture your reader/audience! It has to be emotional and thrilling, not an intellectual discourse.
Mason Cross: My favourite question to ask a native of wherever I'm writing about is: "Tell me something only a local would know". Apart from being very useful, that always gives you some interesting answers.
Graeme Cameron: But really I approached my main character less as a monster with a personality and more as a personality who’s a monster, if that makes sense.
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Notes from round table discussion between authors:
Favourite fictional serial killers:
Alexandra and Emma offer Dexter, alongside infamous Dr. Lecter. Mason chose Andy Robinson's Scorpio in the first Dirty Harry, particularly liking the way he was absolutely ‘batshit insane’, but still able to play the system to his advantage. Graeme chose Buffalo Bill (film version!) - an ‘urban legend incarnate’.
On being a writer:
Alex: “It is the most magical thing to me that I can actually sort of do justice to these amazing characters and worlds - and have readers see them the way I see them living in my head. To have a reader respond”
Emma: “It's one thing to look at the effects of a horrendous crime on a population or an individual, it's another to inflict it wholesale on your reader. But then, I don't tend to read things that are graphic or horrifically violent either. I don't fully understand the point of putting that into my brain! What interests me is what goes on around those things, the causes and effects of them.”
Graeme: “There are actually a lot of things I can't stomach writing about, believe it or not, but there are also a lot of important stories I want to tell, so it's a case of finding a balance between, as Emma said, inflicting the gory details on the reader and conveying the impact of them.”
Alex: “I'm much more interested in the victims, the law enforcement agents, and the potential for first acknowledging and then eradicating these crimes. I don't think the perpetrators deserve much development, honestly. Serial killing in real life is horrific and incredibly, brutally banal. There is nothing artistic or creative or interesting about it. It's just sadism.”
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More about the authors on our website: http://britcrime.com
More about the panels here: http://britcrime.com/panelsat
More about the panels here: http://britcrime.com/panelsat
