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Jill McGown - Author
Jill is crime and mystery writer & has written many successful novels. Born in Campbeltown, Argyll, she was a Brownie."Your best won't always be good enough, but if you have done all you can, you should have nothing with which to reproach yourself."
My childhood holidays were spent in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, and everything was special. We stayed in a holiday cottage in Ardbeg, which was totally different from our second floor two-storey flat in Campbeltown.
It was tiny, and the stairs to the bedroom were as steep as a ladder. The summer evenings seemed endless - if the adults forgot about us, we children could play in the garden until after ten, which seemed very daring and wicked.
Other holidays were in Glasgow - and my favourites there were the tram and subway, and my Aunt Flora's mince and potatoes, which remain easily the best mince and potatoes ever. I think her secret was to use rump steak!
I think it's probably The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, in which her detective Alan Grant, confined to hospital, 'investigates' the murder of the Princes in the Tower, 'proving', by use of contemporary documents, that Richard III was innocent of the crime. The daughter of time is the truth, but Alan Grant discovers that the truth is sometimes less potent than that which people choose to believe.
Not really. I've never based any character on someone I've met, at least not consciously. And
Lloyd came about by a process of elimination. I wanted him to be a Celt, but I felt that if
I made him Scottish, I might pigeonhole myself as a Scottish writer. (Ian Rankin's success shows
you just how awful that would have been.)
I thought of making him Irish, but the Troubles were at their height when I began writing, and
I didn't really want him to have to have an opinion about them. So he became Welsh. His habits
and characteristics tend to be mine, or the opposite of mine.
I read the comments by readers on the Amazon site, and I read any reviews that I happen to get. If a criticism seems justified, I do try to ensure that I don't continue to do whatever it is that irritates people.
I start with a character, almost always. I then rummage in my mental plot drawer for a plot
that might fit this character. My 'plots', if you can call them that, are minimalist to say
the least, so that bit isn't difficult. With Redemption, for instance, it was simply a joke
someone told me.
The character of the vicar came into my mind one night, complete with a daughter
who had an abusive husband. I thought about the vicar and his family for a little while, and
then saw how they could fit my 'joke' plot.
The complexity comes as I write, and is dictated by the characters as they are revealed to me. The plot will always give way to the characters, so even I don't always know how the story will end.
The title usually emerges during the writing, but sometimes it's the very last thing I think about. And it often has to be changed.
The Lloyd and Hill novels are, of course, each complete in themselves, but there is a continuing
story and the characters develop through each novel, so I would recommend starting with A Perfect
Match, being the first one.
This is not, however, essential - the back-story is sketched in each time. That in itself is
quite a challenge - finding new ways to explain the set-up to readers requires some ingenuity!
I think perhaps the most important part of Guiding is the philosophy of 'do your best'. Your best won't always be good enough, but if you have done all you can, you should have nothing with which to reproach yourself. I think that's worth taking through life, even if I can't claim always to live up to it!
I think there are two answers to this. It seems to me that in the 'page-turner' category, men
tend to write action novels, and women tend to write novels of emotion. There are, of course,
exceptions, but I think that's a fair assessment, broadly speaking.
In the non-blockbuster world, I think there is very little difference between male and female
writers, certainly in genre fiction. I think it would be difficult to guess the sex of the author
of a science fiction novel, for instance. I suppose that at the 'literary' end of the scale,
men and women perhaps have slightly different agendas, but the quality of the writing is, I
believe, indistinguishable.
Being able, without embarrassment, to ask men to remove spiders from her vicinity.
I respect and admire many authors, but the one that has emerged top of the list (as she has so many lists) is J K Rowling.
I wouldn't have believed it possible to turn an entire generation of children reared on TV and computer games back to the joy of reading books, but J K Rowling, did it. I admire her for that, and for the way in which she has dealt with her incredible fame and fortune.
And yes, I read and very much enjoy Harry Potter. She doesn't in any way talk down to her readers - on the contrary, she gives them serious questions to consider along with a great story, and does it all with a delicious sense of humour.
To find out more about Jill please see www.jillmcgown.com
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