New chapter for Rankin – teaching crime writing
REBUS creator Ian Rankin is taking time out from his day job to become a university lecturer.
The best- selling author is to teach creative writing – of crime novels – in September.
The 55-year- old Scot, who has sold more than 30million books, is currently writing his 21st Inspector Rebus novel, to be entitled Rather Be The Devil.
He also plans to travel the world in 2017 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first in his Tartan Noir series.
Rankin’s 39 books have been translated into 36 languages and made into two TV series, one starring John Hannah and the other Ken Stott.
The author, who began writing while a PhD student, said: ‘I am taking up a creative writing post later in the year, so I am starting to think about that. Starting to prep for that – teaching crime fiction.
‘So I am going to be thinking about all these things – “why should you be a crime writer, what does crime fiction do that other forms don’t do?”.’
The Fife-born writer, whose father ran a grocer’s and whose mother was a dinner lady, said there was too much snobbery in literature.
He said: ‘When I was at university and wrote the first Rebus novel, there was a creative writing teacher, and I said to him “Oh, I seem to have written a crime novel by accident”.
‘And he said “well you may never get the literary kudos, but you might make a bit of cash”.
‘As a working class kid, that was important to me.’ He added: ‘A lot of young writers who maybe 20 or 30 years ago would have wanted to be “literary authors” now don’t see it as any lower form to write crime fiction and a thriller, which is great.’
The author, who sponsors the Ian Rankin Scholarship at Fife College, did not specify where the post was or how long it was for. But he has a long association with Edinburgh University, where he studied literature. The university yesterday declined to comment.
Rankin also revealed, in a podcast interview with Audible UK, that there would be a two-year hiatus before the next Rebus novel. He said: ‘Next year we are celebrating 30 years of Rebus.
‘The first Rebus novel came out in 1987, so 2017 is going to be a year of celebration.
‘I ain’t going to write a book. I’m going to take a year off and going to spend a year enjoying myself and hopefully going round the world celebrating the fact that this old curmudgeonly cop with a drink problem, who smokes too much and has never properly taken care of himself, people seem to love him.
‘And that’s fascinating to me, because I don’t exactly know why and I have never done.’
Rankin, who earns more than £250,000 a year, said his next Rebus novel was about a 40- year- old unsolved murder, which mixes sex with high society, with a rock group thrown in.
‘I ain’t going to write a book’