‘Do your research. Talk to an expert in the field. Don’t rely on
Wikipedia. Go to the proper sources. Go to a primary source
and get it correct. Do on-site visitations. I once took Margaret
Atwood on a tour of our morgue – I don’t know if she wanted
it for a specific book.’
Her books are inevitably gruesome, but not for shock value.
‘I only put in what’s necessary to drive the story and make the
setting authentic. I’ll never put in anything for sensationalism,
to make it gory or bloody. But if I’m describing a crime scene
or autopsy I’ll make it authentic.’
Death, trauma and dead bodies are central to her fiction,
and very little is off limits. ‘I tend to be a little more cautious
around children, but I have written about dead babies, based
on an actual case I’d worked on. Not much is off limits, but I
tend to treat some subjects more delicately.’
Not only is Temperance, like her creator, a woman operating
in a world that has traditionally been male-dominated, but
Kathy takes care not to gratuitously add to the body-count of
women as victims of crime in her fiction. ‘There are a lot of
female bodies in crime fiction,’ she says. ‘I actively think about,
who will the victim be in this book. It can’t just be another
dead woman. There has to be a light shone on all different
kinds of crime and victims. I’ve had elderly, young boys,
women. I do constantly think about that – I don’t just want it
to be a woman taking it in the pants.’
Just as Kathy created Temperance as a strong female
character, she also did the same with Tory Brennan, the lead
character in the Virals series for young adults that she writes
with her son, Brendan Reichs. Tory is Temperance’s fictional
great-niece. ‘When I set out, I set out for Temperance to be a
strong female, says Kathy. ‘In Virals, with Tory Brennan, we
wanted her to be a good role model, saying it’s cool to go into
science and maths. They’re both good logical thinkers who
think through the problem – it’s what we want to put out there
for little girls.’
There is surprisingly little difference between writing
for adult crime fans and teenage readers, she says. ‘Your
dialogue has to be cleaner – you can’t have what a fifty-year-
old homicide cop would be saying in a YA book. Kids talk
differently from adults. And their social concerns are different.
But the storylines, at least for YA and middle grade, are just as
complicated. If you condescend, or talk down to them, boy.’
Kathy’s approach to crafting a novel has been honed by long
practice: nineteen Temperance Brennan titles, a standalone,
2017’s Good Nights, six Virals titles and some novellas. ‘I
do some outlining. On my computer I’ll outline 6, 8, 10
chapters so I know where it’s going. I do a character file and
a timeline file. Then I jump in and start writing. I create an
outline retrospectively – as I finish each chapter I put it into
the outline. I’m a linear writer: chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter
3... It is flexible, as I’ll get an idea as I’m writing and go back
and change things. At the end of the book I’ll have a complete
outline. I don’t really do redrafts – I’ll edit constantly as I go.
By the time I finish a first draft, it’s pretty finished.’
Her advice to aspiring writers is characteristically pragmatic.
‘Write. Write something. I don’t believe in writer’s block. Give
yourself a designated block of time to write and don’t give
yourself excuses. Just sit down and write. Even if you don’t like
it you can hit the delete key. If you get in the habit of saying,
today’s not a good day, you’ll never write a book.’“The advantage of writing a
series character is that people know
her and they’re going
to like her. The disadvantage
is that A Conspiracy of Bones
may be the fi rst Temperance
Brennan book that someone
reads, so you’ve got to
reintroduce them – but in
such a way that the reader
who’s on their nineteenth book
in the series doesn’t get bored.”
series character is that people know
STAR INTERVIEW
http://www.writers-online.co.uk APRIL 2020^19