Gordon J. Brown, author of 'Six Wounds' - Crime writer discusses pseudonyms, writing anywhere, and words you know will be cut
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2022
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Gordon J. Brown has just published his 9th novel, it's called 'Six Wounds' and is published under the name Morgan Cry. We talk about why he's started writing under a different name, and how a certain ex-Prime Minister played a part in that.
The book was inspired by a conversation in a Spanish pub, investigating how an ex-pat can be in two places at once. You can hear the process of moving that idea into a full book. It's about Daniella Coulstoun, the prime suspect in the murder of a notorious gangster, who must find the real killer fast.
We talk about how Gordon can write anywhere, how Stephen King inspired his writing routine, and how he copes with writing words he know will be cut. You can hear about his confusing filing system, how putting someone on a flight cut almost 40k words, and why he thinks Scotland is so synonymous with crime-writing.
Gordon is a co-founder of 'Bloody Scotland', one of Europe's biggest crime-writing festivals. Find out more at bloodyscotland.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, ahoi, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. This week, we're chatting to Gordon J. Brown. He's got a new crime novel out. It's his ninth. It's a Eurocrime thriller called Six Wounds. Now, it's written |
| 0:23.2 | under the name Morgan Cry for reasons that we'll chat about in the show. We talk about how Stephen |
| 0:28.6 | King inspired quite a main part of his writing routine. Also, how he copes with knowing that he might |
| 0:35.9 | be writing words that will get cut. |
| 0:38.0 | And you can hear how he gains perspective over the story after he's just finished his first |
| 0:43.7 | draft. So one of the things I'll do is as soon as I finish one, I put it away for a while. |
| 0:48.9 | I like to have it away for like a month, maybe, a couple of weeks. I have one read through then I put it away to give it some distance. |
| 0:57.5 | And what I'll do is start the next one. |
| 0:59.9 | Before I finish that one, and the reason I do that is that by the time I go back to the |
| 1:04.8 | one I've written, it's very fresh because I'm now on something else. |
| 1:08.6 | And interestingly, for me, it gives me a bit of perspective on the book because I tend |
| 1:12.6 | to be reading it having not rewritten it five, six, seven times. |
| 1:16.7 | I'm trying to get a fresh view on it. |
| 1:18.1 | There is more on the way with Gordon, Jay Brown, Morgan Cry in this week's writers' routine. |
| 1:33.4 | Yes. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being there for listening, following, streaming, |
| 1:38.7 | downloading. My name's Dan Simpson. This is writer's routine, where we take a look through an author's working day. We find out where they write, when they write, how they write. |
| 1:45.0 | What do they do that gives them the best chance of being as creative as possible to take that idea from their head, get it down onto the page and hopefully sell millions of copies? |
| 1:54.7 | Now, this week we're with Gordon Brown, not that one, Gordon J. Brown. |
| 1:59.4 | He's published nine crime novels under a couple of different names, |
| 2:03.7 | worked in all sorts of jobs, and is the co-founder of Bloody Scotland, one of the biggest crime writing |
| 2:09.4 | festivals around. It's actually happening in Sterling this weekend, and I'll be there chairing two |
| 2:14.9 | sessions, so it's the perfect time to chat about Gordon's |
... |
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