Writer's Block with Brian McGilloway - The Gloss Magazine

Writer’s Block with Brian McGilloway

SOPHIE GRENHAM talks to author and teacher BRIAN McGILLOWAY about growing up in Derry, writing crime fiction and becoming a New York Times BESTSELLING AUTHOR

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Derry native Brian McGilloway is the New York Times bestselling author of two critically acclaimed crime series; first with Inspector Benedict Devlin and later Detective Sergeant Lucy Black. When Brian isn’t conjuring up exciting new plot twists and intriguing new characters, he is an English teacher.

Brian’s first novel, Borderlands (2007, Macmillan), was short-listed for the CWA New Blood Dagger and was lauded by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts’. Brian’s fifth book, Little Girl Lost (2011, Macmillan), was his first outing with DS Lucy Black. It became one of his most successful works, winning the University of Ulster’s McCrea Literary Award in 2011 and striking gold with the New York Times, along with bagging the top spot in the UK. Brian is also known for writing drama. In 2014 he picked up BBC NI’s Tony Doyle Award for his screenplay, Little Emperors, leading to the highly prestigious Writer In Residence position with BBC NI. Brian currently has numerous screen projects in development with the network.

Bad Blood, the fourth in the Lucy Black series and Brian’s ninth novel, was published in May this year. Inspired by the days leading up to the Brexit vote, the topical work merges fact and fiction, while expertly observing a highly divisive period in Britain’s recent history.

Brian lives in Strabane with his wife, daughter and three sons. He is currently writing his next novel.

Bad Blood (€15.99 – Little, Brown) is out now and available from all good bookshops.

On home

I grew up in Derry, but live now in Strabane, which is about 20 miles away from Derry and sits on the border. Both places I’ve called home have been marked by a degree of duality: Derry has two names (Derry or Londonderry) depending on your political affiliations and is built on two banks on either side of the River Foyle. Likewise, Strabane nestles next to Lifford on either side of the border. But both places are marked also by a strong sense of community and, despite their size, both retain that sense of everyone knowing everyone else.

I teach English full time in Holy Cross College, a school near where I live, working with pupils aged from 11-18. I did take a few years out to write full time but missed working with students. There is a real joy in talking about literature and introducing young people to great books, seeing that spark of a love for a text that you know will last a lifetime flare for the first time. But it does make life busy; my wife and I have four children too, so life is pretty full on. Then I try to fit some writing into each day as well. It’s becoming a trickier and trickier balancing act!

On roots

I grew up in Prehen Park which is a housing estate on the outskirts of Derry. Prehen is bordered by an ancient woodland at the heart of which is an old stone quarry, used during the second world war to provide stone for the building of the city’s naval docks. When we were children, my brothers and I played in the woods quite a bit and they have remained a place I love and where I now take my own children for walks. It was partly this landscape which inspired Little Girl Lost which is set for much of the action in and around the woodland. Derry itself is defined by bridges for me. When I was young the two sides of the city seemed to turn their back on each other – Protestant and Catholic, East bank and West bank, Londonderry or Derry. About five years ago, though, a new Peace bridge was built which seemed to tap into the fact that the city was finally embracing the river and its two sides with pride. The Peace Bridge, for me, symbolises all that is good in Derry since the peace process began.

On creating

I have an office at home where I work. It was fine when our kids were younger but as they’ve grown up a bit, it’s actually trickier to find free space. We have four children – Ben is 14, Tom is 11, David is 8 and Lucy 7. When they were younger, I wrote whenever they went to bed, but now as they’re growing older that’s just not possible. In fact, more often now, I go out and write in cafés. I find the bustle and noise actually helps me concentrate and once I put on a pair of headphones, I know no-one is going to interrupt me for the hour I need each day to write. It helps that I listen to music when I write – in fact I need music at times to act as a tuning fork for the novels – so I’ve got used to working around background noise. Plus, working full time, I’ve trained myself to make the most of the hour I do manage to grab and get as much writing done as I can during it.

On bookshops

I love No Alibis in Belfast. It opened twenty years ago this week and was the place where I truly discovered my love of crime fiction and ultimately became a crime writer. I remember the first time I went into the place – that sense of hushed secrets inside every book, waiting to be discovered. Dave Torrans, who owns No Alibis, has an encyclopedic knowledge of crime writing and is a tremendous supporter of crime writers – especially in Ireland. That first day, he offered me a coffee and based on the books I’d bought, offered me a freebie as well. It ensured I came back. In fact, it was in No Alibis that I discovered the works of Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly, John Connolly and so many others and, most especially, James Lee Burke. It was from reading crime that I started writing it, so I suppose the day I walked into that shop for the first time, 20 years ago, changed my life. It’s still a source of pride for me each time I do an event in the shop now.

On his nightstand

I’ve been up to my neck with schoolwork, so I have a bit of a backlog of reading at this stage. I’ve just finished Steve Cavanagh’s The Liar, which was as compulsive as I’d expected, and I’m currently reading Stuart Neville’s new one, Here and Gone, which he’s publishing under the name Haylen Beck. Stuart’s one of those writers who makes you jealous of his talent and in awe of it simultaneously. After that I’ve Sinead Crowley’s One Bad Turn. Outside of Irish crime, Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall and M.R. Carey’s The Boy on the Bridge. They are a mixture of writers I admire and books I’ve heard good things about.

On escapes

At home, I go to the cinema to escape for a bit. I love the whole experience, the ritual of going to see a movie so that, while we have Netflix and that at home, I would still want to see something on the big screen first. One of my favourite movie memories was when I was a student in Belfast. I came home one weekend and none of my friends were back so I went to the local cinema by myself. I was the only person there that night, so I had my own personal screening of The Shawshank Redemption, which was the film showing then – there only being one screen in the cinema at the time! In terms of getting away from it all, the whole family loves Lake Garda. It’s the most beautiful place and, in July, warm enough to be enjoyable but not so warm as to be oppressive. Each time we go we spend our evenings in Lazise, walking along the promenade and eating ice cream. It’s a magical place – of all the holidays we’ve taken, it’s the one place to which the kids, Tanya and I keep wanting to return.

On odd characters

I love researching for the books and you do get to meet really interesting people. I do remember one person with whom I had some contact online for The Nameless Dead. The book was about the Disappeared and a sub plot involved cillini and the refusal of burial of unbaptised children in graveyards. In the book, a child’s body is uncovered in a dig and Inspector Devlin is caught between legally not having any powers to investigate the child’s death and his moral obligation to do so. I needed to know whether disposable nappies were in common use in Ireland in 1976. Eventually I found a website that specialised in information about brands and types of nappies in Ireland. Over the course of my communication with the person running it, I realised that he or she was buying old, unused nappies on auction sites and then ‘test-driving’ them for a day themselves, wearing them to work and that, before writing a blog post about their relative comfort/absorbency etc. I never learned the owner’s real name so I keep waiting for them to turn up at an event and say hello.

On what’s next

I’m currently working on a new Inspector Devlin story. I wrote five Devlin novels in total, the final one being The Nameless Dead in 2012. Since then, Devlin’s been a little quiet but I think I’ve found a story that suits his voice and which suits his worldview. I’m enjoying writing from his perspective again. I’m also working on an adaptation of a French television show, which is pretty exciting. The original show was a two parter, so we’re looking at developing it into a longer format. The move away from ‘crime of the week’ type series suits my way of writing; longer format shows resemble novels now in the structuring of their story telling.

@SophieGrenham

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