SteveDunne

Hi Athena. I think you will find most crime writers are on a shorter deadline than literary writers. The demand for "product" is relentless so if you want to maintain high quality it is important to treat the writing as a job which it is. For a professional writer that's exactly what it is. And like all jobs, you don't enjoy every minute of every day or even necessarily sit down to write with a feeling of anticipation. It is hard, mentally-draining work and, with a year to write a new novel, I would fail utterly unless I set daily targets. I am particularly lazy and only aim for 1000 words a day, knowing that sometimes I'll be over and sometimes under. I try to keep office hours (which means no weekends until the heat is really on) but writing is such a sedentary occupation that I'll often go for a walk or a swim in the afternoon. However, to do so, I must reach my target, as once I break off that tends to be it for the day. It's the classic dilemma for the self-employed. Although you are master of your own time, you have to supply the self-discipline to keep up with the work.

Hi Chrissy. My novels contain the after effects of violence and whilst I don't shy away from it, nor do I want to put scenes of violence and torture on the page. That is a qualm drawn not just from my scruples but from my belief that what lies unsaid is best filled in by the imagination of the reader and the mind is the scariest weapon at my disposal. For that reason, any gore in my novels is almost always post mortem and the subject of my Detective Inspector's crime scene analysis.

I write British serial killer thrillers, my favourite genre, and I don't shy away from describing the gore of a crime scene because I believe the effects of violence should be shown. However, I DO shrink from live on-the-page violence or torture. The majority of my gore is crime-scene discovered.

Hello everyone. I'm a thriller writer based in Derby which is where I set my DI Damen Brook novels. I write intense and occasionally violent (though all serious violence is off camera) serial killer thrillers which I hope have a probing moral centre. I am working on my 5th DI Brook novel for Headline entitled A Killing Moon, having already written The Reaper, The Disciple, Deity and The Unquiet Grave.

Nice to see Wallander still picking up admirers. The series contains several outstanding novels. The Stieg Larsson trilogy also captured my interest (as it did millions of others) though the first of the trilogy is the stand out. I've tried other Scandi writers with mixed results. Sarah Hilary's Someone Else's Skin is set to be a huge international bestseller and I hear good things about Dead Gone by Luca Veste and Long Way Home by Eva Dolan.