Felix Francis, author of 'Hands Down' - Bestselling writer talks about learning at the fiction factory, taking over from his dad, and challenging himself

Writer's Routine

Dan Simpson

Arts, Books, Hobbies, Leisure

4.9 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we chat to Felix Francis. His new book is the next in the 'Dick Francis Series', it's called 'Hands Down' and features Sid Halley looking into a conspiracy that threatens the heart of horse-racing.

Felix is carrying on the prolific work of his dad, Dick Francis. Dick was an RAF pilot, a champion race jockey, and then a phenomenally bestselling author. Between them they've publish 50 books and sold over 80 million copies. We talk about the transition of him taking the reins (!) of the writing, how he learned from his father and many other authors, and how he's developed his own style.

You can hear how he challenges himself with different styles and viewpoints to keep things fresh, also why writing easy reading isn't a challenge, and how much he thinks about getting new readers.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of writer's routine. This week we're chatting to
0:13.4	Felix Francis. Felix has written 16 books, taking over the reins from his dad, champion
0:20.1	jockey and prolific bestseller,
0:22.4	Dick Francis, which is why that's a brilliant pun. I need to point that out. We talk about how
0:26.9	his style has changed since taking over the writing, also how he mixes things up to keep it fresh,
0:34.6	and why the challenge isn't just writing well once, but keeping it going and going
0:40.3	and going. Anyone could write a thousand words in a day. I mean, on anything, really. A thousand words
0:47.2	is not much. It's two or three pages. Anyone could write a thousand words. The difficulty is
0:53.0	writing a thousand words today and another
0:55.7	thousand tomorrow and another thousand the day after and another thousand the day after that and so on.
1:01.0	And they've all got to link together. That's what's the difficult part. It's not the number
1:06.3	of words you can write down in a day. It's making those words tie together with the words that
1:12.0	are already in the book and the words that are to come. There is more with Felix Francis in this
1:16.5	week's writers routine. Yes, welcome along. It's writers routine where we take a look inside an author's working day
1:29.5	to see how they get things done, to see how they take that idea, they plan their day, their space,
1:35.7	their life around giving them the best chance to be creative. My name is Dan. Thank you for finding us.
1:41.5	Thank you for being there and listening. This week we're with
1:44.7	Felix Francis, crime thriller writer who has just published a new book in the Dick Francis
1:50.9	Canon series, Pantheon, whatever you call it. The book is hands down. Now before we get into it,
1:58.5	the eagle-eared amongst you might remember if you tend to stick right to the end of these shows.
2:06.4	Last week, I said we would have the Nobel Prize winner Abdul Razak Gerner on the show.
2:13.1	The thing is, the recording didn't come out too well at all, which is frustrating for both of us,
	...

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