Back Catalogue Books is my new regular Saturday feature, focusing on books that are not the latest releases. There is going to be a mix of Q&As and also reviews, depending on what I have the space for.
If you are an author wanting to take part in Back Catalogue Books then please do email on gilbster at gmail dot com and I'll whizz the questions over to you.
I hope everyone enjoys this weekly look back at some of the slightly older books that are about but still great, and that I eventually make a dent in my TBRs as a result of it!
Hi my name is Robin Roughley I live in Wigan and I am the author of the DS Lasser crimes series.
The first in the series is entitled The Needle House. I suppose like most writers I have always dabbled with the written word, though I started out writing plays, dark comedies mainly before moving on to the first novel.
The Needle House was never meant to be a crime thriller, it started out as a paranormal novel, and Lasser only appeared part way through as I did not have him tagged as the main character. However, it soon became apparent that the paranormal aspect wasn’t working, so I moved things around a little and suddenly it made sense I had written a crime story. To be honest this was never a genre that I had read, so it felt odd to realise that the book was crammed with crime. The premise is basically a whodunit though to be honest I had no idea who the culprit was until the last quarter of the book.
I have just released number thirteen in the Lasser series and have been writing them for around the three year mark.
If I had to pick a favourite on plot alone then I think I would plump for Crave. Writing is never easy as you are always looking for ways to say things in new ways and not to repeat yourself, but Crave just flowed nice and steady and I was happy with the outcome.
I think the one I am most proud of would be Tethered to the Dead being book three in the series I was finally hitting my stride. I knew the characters and this book tells you more about their lives than the others. The plot is complex and the secondary characters feel real which is always nice. It also allowed me to bring fresh faces into the following books and the readers seem to love catching up with them at different stages in the series.
I would imagine that most writers who work on a long series will have a list of characters that they love to write about. Of course Lasser is always fun to write and he has grown over the series but only in small ways, as I like the core of the man. I suppose a lot of the time we instil things we admire into the characters that way they keep them interesting for the author and hopefully for the reader as well. I also enjoy the team he works with, DCI Bannister is always close to boiling point with a sarcastic tongue. In later books Odette Noble appears and again she is a great partner for Lasser, they spark off one another yet trust each other completely. Finally there is a character called Plymouth who pops up now and again, he is a killer and a complex character and the readers seem to love him no matter what he does.
I never look back at the books as I know there would be something to change on every page, but hindsight can be a bad thing so I avoid looking back and always try to look forward and improve with each book.
I am in the process of changing the covers just to give them a little revamp so at present The Needle House is my favourite though this could change as the others are altered.
Changing genres does interest me and one day I would like to write a horror novel though unfortunately they don’t seem to have much of a market these days. I read a lot of horror when I was younger and it left a mark on me as there is nothing like a great chiller to get the blood flowing.
At present I am working on Lasser fifteen, though I have just completed the first in a new three book crime series for Bloodhound publishing. Again it is a crime novel though this time the lead is a female which has been interesting to write from a different perspective.
Being an indie author means I have little to no time to read other writers work. Though I admire the writer Phil Rickman very much, he set’s the scenes wonderfully well with a cast of great characters and they are all hefty reads, so you always get value for money.
I started out to write a thrilling read and hopefully I have continued to try and keep to that format. For me the character and story are everything, I need to care about what happens to them and that will hopefully leave the readers feeling the same way.
Rob
Thank you Rob for talking to us about your books.
You can find Robin Roughly:
Website - http://www.robinroughley.co.uk/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/robroughley
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/robin.roughley/
Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Robin-Roughley/e/B00CQ15GG4
The first in the series is entitled The Needle House. I suppose like most writers I have always dabbled with the written word, though I started out writing plays, dark comedies mainly before moving on to the first novel.
I have just released number thirteen in the Lasser series and have been writing them for around the three year mark.
If I had to pick a favourite on plot alone then I think I would plump for Crave. Writing is never easy as you are always looking for ways to say things in new ways and not to repeat yourself, but Crave just flowed nice and steady and I was happy with the outcome.
I think the one I am most proud of would be Tethered to the Dead being book three in the series I was finally hitting my stride. I knew the characters and this book tells you more about their lives than the others. The plot is complex and the secondary characters feel real which is always nice. It also allowed me to bring fresh faces into the following books and the readers seem to love catching up with them at different stages in the series.
I never look back at the books as I know there would be something to change on every page, but hindsight can be a bad thing so I avoid looking back and always try to look forward and improve with each book.
I am in the process of changing the covers just to give them a little revamp so at present The Needle House is my favourite though this could change as the others are altered.
Changing genres does interest me and one day I would like to write a horror novel though unfortunately they don’t seem to have much of a market these days. I read a lot of horror when I was younger and it left a mark on me as there is nothing like a great chiller to get the blood flowing.
At present I am working on Lasser fifteen, though I have just completed the first in a new three book crime series for Bloodhound publishing. Again it is a crime novel though this time the lead is a female which has been interesting to write from a different perspective.
Being an indie author means I have little to no time to read other writers work. Though I admire the writer Phil Rickman very much, he set’s the scenes wonderfully well with a cast of great characters and they are all hefty reads, so you always get value for money.
I started out to write a thrilling read and hopefully I have continued to try and keep to that format. For me the character and story are everything, I need to care about what happens to them and that will hopefully leave the readers feeling the same way.
Rob
Thank you Rob for talking to us about your books.
You can find Robin Roughly:
Website - http://www.robinroughley.co.uk/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/robroughley
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/robin.roughley/
Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Robin-Roughley/e/B00CQ15GG4
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