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Readers of this blog may know that I write psychological thrillers involving the dead (victims of murder, victims of social neglect, sudden heart attacks, dramatic suicides). They are commercial but serious in tone - at least that was my intention when I wrote them. I'm now flattered to see my new publishers (Endeavour Press) comparing me with Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs in the Amazon publicity.
What I want to say to anyone reading this post who may be having cancer treatment or just had a new diagnosis, is that my books are most definitely not inspired by cancer but by my long career as a flaneur - a term defined by the French poet Baudelaire as someone who wanders the streets of a great city, constantly observing the crowds who pass by and inventing stories about them. I started doing this when I first lived in Paris as a teenager and sat for hours in cafes watching 'le grand spectacle' of people walking up and down the boulevards, and listening in to their conversations - often startling and always disjointed and surreal because, as an eavesdropper, I only ever caught the gist of what was going on. I slid easily into the psychological thriller genre perhaps because it seemed to develop naturally from my observations of big city life. All my novels are set in London, where I lived and worked for nearly twenty years and which continues to inspire me every time I go up there, which is often, because I always find something new. London is the focus of my inspiration and Cornwall is my writing base. I find it difficult to write stories about Cornwall because it has never presented me with any tensions - apart from my hospital treatments. And therein lies the single link my fiction-writing has with cancer. When I was recovering from chemo, neurosurgery et al, I was unable to write at all and lay staring the oak outside my window, dreaming up dark tales...
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