TV HOPES AND WALKING AWAY FROM HIS OLD LIFE
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oppression of the serfs. It’s truly bizarre going to book groups all over the world and hearing readers discussing your work, especially after a few glasses of wine when the truth comes out.
“In Britain, we like our crime writers but in some countries, such as Russia, they treat them like demi- gods, which is both wonderful and scary at the same time.”
His Bloody Project has been optioned for TV by Synchronicity Films. Graeme would love to see James Bond star Ben Whishaw, who is also the voice of Paddington Bear in the hit movies, play Roddy Macrae.
The former Glasgow and St Andrews University student, who used to work as a TV researcher, said: “Synchronicity are busy doing the TV adaption of Helen Fitzgerald’s book The Cry. I’ve worked in TV so I know how long these things take.
“It could be another five years before my book makes it to the big or small screen but, and walk the social history of the 60s. I now know what she would think of Harold Wilson, jazz and The Rolling Stones.
“I’m hoping to have my first draft done by the end of the year and the whole thing finished by the middle of next year but there is no rush. I don’t even know where it is going or how it will end.”
He added: “I don’t write with a plan. I just sit down and write and let the characters’ actions dictate what happens next. I like to be as surprised at what happens as the reader.
“I suppose, in a way, I’m like the conductor of an orchestra and my characters are the musicians. I give them the score and then let them get on with it.”
Graeme, who travelled to Kolkata, India, in February to promote tartan noir with fellow crime writers Val McDermid and Abir Mukherjee, fell in love with writing when he was 15.
He said: “I didn’t come from a particularly
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literary family. My parents read books in bed and that was the height of it.
“But, when I was 15, I read JD Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, which ignited my passion for writing. It was a boom moment and, from then on, I could not read enough.
“French authors Albert Camus and Georges Simenon quickly became favourites and I started to write my own short stories while studying English lit, TV and film studies at Glasgow University.
“After uni, I was a bit of a nomad, teaching English in cities across Europe, including Bordeaux and Prague. I wasn’t writing seriously but was collecting ideas.
“I did an M Lit in international security at St Andrews before becoming a TV researcher for a number of years. When I lost that job, I was able to sit down and write.
“It may have taken 50 years but I’m finally doing what my 15-year- old self always dreamed of doing – I’m a published writer.”