The genial logical detective returns - interview with Steve Robinson

RELEASED TODAY 'The Lost Empress'

No 1 Bestseller in Historical Thrillers

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Meet Steve Robinson – bestselling author and a man who has confessed here that he shoots from the hip (see interview below). He has also finally appeared in public wearing the infamous 'writer's hat' mentioned in his first appearance on my blog, and again when I last interviewed him. 

Steve Robinson drew upon his own family history for inspiration when he imagined the life and quest of his genealogist-hero, Jefferson Tayte. The talented London-based crime writer, who was first published at age 16, always wondered about his own maternal grandfather - "He was an American GI billeted in England during the Second World War," Robinson says. "A few years after the war ended he went back to America, leaving a young family behind and, to my knowledge, no further contact was made. I traced him to Los Angeles through his 1943 enlistment record and discovered that he was born in Arkansas . . ." Robinson cites crime writing and genealogy as ardent hobbies--a passion that is readily apparent in his work. He can be contacted via his website or his blog 

Welcome back, Steve. I see you're wearing your writer's hat. It's very you :)

The truth about the hat and more photos on Steve's blog

It's a bit embarrassing really. After Kindle Direct Publishing made a mini-documentary about me, a photo of me in the hat appeared on twitter so the hat is really out of the bag.




Since you last visited, you’ve written another two books in the Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Mystery series and, after being a huge self-publishing success, you’ve signed with amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint, bringing out new editions of your backlist alongside matching audio-books. What made you jump ship from self-publishing? 

The short answer is a four book deal with Amazon Publishing’s mystery thriller imprint, Thomas & Mercer, but I don’t really like to think of it in terms of having jumped ship. I still feel ‘indie’, and that will always be a big part of my journey as an author. Signing with Amazon seemed to offer the best of both worlds. I’m still very much involved in the process, from book cover designs and blurbs, and I even got to pick the narrator for the audiobook editions from several samples that were sent to me. Signing with Amazon Publishing has helped me to focus more on my books, and of course it’s great to have editors waiting to help me shape them up for publication. I also felt that Amazon was better placed to help my books reach a wider audience.

Are the amazon waters as infested with sharks as the headlines suggest? 

Not as far as this author is concerned. From my own experience during the year since I signed with Amazon Publishing, I believe they treat their authors very well. 

Sorry about the shipwreck metaphors but I was influenced by your latest book :) The tragic sinking of the Empress of Ireland in 1914 is key to the story that JT is uncovering. How did you discover this event and what made you decide to write about it?

When I set out to find the story for my fourth Jefferson Tayte mystery, I knew it would be released in 2014, and I wanted to find something that tied in with the centenary of the outbreak of WW1. When I came across the tragic sinking of the Empress of Ireland in May that year, I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of it before, and the need to make more people aware of it became very important to me. So many stories are told of the Titanic and the Lusitania, but here was a disaster that had all but been forgotten, and yet, excluding crew members, more passengers lost their lives when the Empress of Ireland sank than on either the Titanic or the Lusitania. I wanted to weave a story around this event, and because it happened before the war broke out, I decided that the backdrop would be the build up to war, rather than the war itself.

As always in your books, there’s a lot of research underlying the historical parts of the narrative and another thread in the novel is the WW1 network of spies. How much of your detail about spies is based on fact?

It’s all based on facts from my research – at least, it’s based on reported facts at the time. There’s a lot of speculation about the scale of spying before WW1. Britain was in a state of paranoia about the threat of a German invasion, with satirical cartoons in the press and on posters showing German spies everywhere. A number of spies were arrested and executed at the outbreak of war, although I think there were far fewer than had been anticipated. Those spies mentioned during JT’s research in the book are real, as are the details of their spying activity and their punishment. I try to keep everything as real as possible.

As a fellow-photographer, I was fascinated by the detail of spy photography in 2014 – very clumsy compared to today’s micro-cameras or even mobile phones. How did you research the details, which I assume are accurate? 

I thought I’d run into a problem when I came to the particular plot hurdle in question, for which I needed a camera that existed in 1914, which would be small enough to conceal. I had no idea whether such a camera was in use then, but was very happy to find the Ur-Leica—a 35mm film camera, built in 1913 by Oscar Barnack at the Ernst Leitz Optische Werke in Wetzlar. It was still in prototype form at the time my story is set, but having been designed and built in Germany made it ideal, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine such a prototype camera in the possession of a German spy. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was also not difficult to imagine that such a small camera for the time was  designed for this very purpose.

Once again, you interweave a woman’s viewpoint from the past, with JT’s, and I certainly found Alice’s perspective and dilemma very convincing. Do you have any tips for writing from the viewpoint of someone in another historical period? Any special considerations regarding gender?

Someone wrote to me a short while ago and asked that very question. It was about the character, Mena, in my second book, To the Grave. How do you get inside the head of teenage girl from 1944 enough to understand her mannerisms and expectations? It’s a tough question to answer because I don’t really know. I don’t even have any children of my own to draw inspiration from. I suppose it must partly come down to the research, and I think when you come to fully understand a character, to the point where they seem quite real to you, then you can better understand how they would feel and how they might react to certain situations, irrespective of gender or the times they live in. 

Your plots must be complicated to write, with 3 different storylines interwoven (the present genealogical case for JT, the past as it happened and JT’s own personal family history and relationships). How do you keep track of it all? Any tips?

The software application, Scrivener, has been invaluable in helping me to keep track of the various plotlines in my stories. I highly recommend it. When I’m faced with two interwoven timelines, I typically write the entire past narrative before I write Jefferson Tayte’s character in the present. This helps to keep me in character and I can focus wholly on one part of the story at a time. I then look at how JT is going to unlock the key elements of the past narrative and I structure what’s going on in the present day around those links to the past. The elements of JT’s own, larger story are usually written into the appropriate places as I go. The key there is not to let them get in the way of the main story. The hard part really comes down to making the often complex mechanics of the story appear transparent to the reader so that the entire narrative as a whole makes sense and it easy to follow. I love it when I see reviews that describe my work as an ‘easy read’. The writing is usually far from easy, but if I’ve managed to make a reader feel it was an easy book to read, then I consider that I’ve done my job as a storyteller well.

Is JT going to make progress with tracing his own ancestry in the next book? Can you give us a teaser for the next JT novel?

Yes he is! I’ve plotted the book and I’ve started writing it. I hope to deliver the first draft to my publisher next summer. As for a teaser, all I’ll say at this point is that Jefferson Tayte is in for quite a shock.

JT’s professional expertise reflects your own in tracking family trees. It seems very sophisticated nowadays, so what tips do you have for readers who want to play sleuth to discover their own ancestors? 

JT faces many genealogical brick walls on his various assignments in my books, and each one has to be worked through to reach a solution that often seems impossible to find. Everyone working on their family history comes across these brick walls from time to time, and typically the answers are difficult to reach because we’re looking in all the tried and tested places, following our regular pattern of research, and sometimes you need a fresh approach. There’s usually more than one way to find what you’re looking for, however wild or unlikely it might seem. You don’t always have to climb that wall, sometimes you can find your way around it.

Do you sometimes feel the urge to abandon JT and write something different?

No, we’ve become good friends over the years, and I want to find our how his life turns out myself. I couldn’t abandon him part way through his own story. It’s a partnership, and he’s relying on me to help him find out who he is. When you create a series character, I think you owe it to that character, and of course to your readers, to see the story through.

What are you doing photography-wise at the moment? 

I recently took a backpack full of photographic equipment to the Dolomites and came back with some mountain photography I’m very pleased with. I’ve posted a blog about it with some of the images I particularly like here

Here are some other images I really like, which I’ve not shared before. 

I shoot with a Canon 5D mk3, and I like to take it into London with my 35mm f1.4L for street photography. I prefer to shoot candid images for street shots as I feel they best capture the realism, which for me is what street photography is all about.

I was walking past this lady, shooting from my hip as I passed so as not to draw attention to myself. Studying the image later on, I became very interested in her story. Her attire and the backpack she’s sitting on don’t appear typical of someone on the street. It makes me wonder about her story. It makes me want to know how this older lady wound up here. Judging from the number of roll-up cigarette ends on the ground in front of her she’s been sitting there a while.

With Coutts bank in the background, I like the juxtaposition it represents. 

I think wet pavements can add interest to a shot, and I like how the image of this man in the doorway turned out. Rainy days are great for shooting London street photography, and are well suited to black and white images.

For obvious reasons, I call this last image ‘The laughing cloud’. I was in Cornwall, having a coffee outside a hotel that overlooks the sea when I took it. It appeared for a moment and was gone again, but I had my camera with me and managed to get the shot.

Thanks, Steve! Your happy cloud looks more like a scared leopard to me but I like the street shots. All the best with the new book. Party time!

You can contact Steve via  his website  on twitter and on Google + 

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My Review of ‘The Lost Empress’

The genial logical detective returns in another page-turner

Fans of this bestselling series, like me, will find much to enjoy and even surprise them in the latest adventure of genealogical detective J.T. As always, it is the unfolding of the story set in the past that I like best. In this case, I discovered the prelude to WW1, with credible spies and a real-life shipwreck. More passengers died when the Empress of Ireland sank than in the Titanic disaster and yet most of us know nothing about it because war news overwhelmed all else. Who was it that pointed out how to bury bad news by timing its release? Caught up in these events is the subject of JT’s investigation, Alice. I found it easy to empathise with Alice and her dilemma as she struggles against threats to her family and pressure to betray her country.

The modern day antics, with murder and chases, are entertaining, well-structured to leave the past narative at cliff-hanger moments, and I believe in J.T. as a character. His sloppy shyness with women is endearing, as is his failure to discover his own family history (so far). It goes with the genre that there are twists and revelations and the reader has to be willing to accept some unlikely behaviour in the interest of plot entertainment. Given the complexity of the three-strand plot (past and present of ‘the case’, plus J.T.’s own life) I think Steve Robinson pulls it off well. 

Until three-quarters of the way through the book, I was completely gripped by Alice’s story; after that, the pace grew faster but the characterisation weaker, in my eyes. Of course, I still wanted to know what happened but I'm always going to prefer it when the writing reaches a higher level. Having said that, the sinking of the Empress is an emotional roller-dipper of a scene and I love the historical detail in the whole book. I trust Steve Robinson's portrayal of clothes, manners and machinery to set the scene. I now know what camera spy might have used in 1914 – fascinating!

Looking for your family history?

You'll also find really helpful advice in this book by author Karen Charlton on how she shook her family tree and a criminal fell out.

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Finding plots in cemeteries - interview with top crime writer Steve Robinson

Having now read two of his bestselling books, I'm very pleased to welcome the Genealogical Detective, Steve Robinson, to my blog. Whether he thinks he's a genealogical detective or not, is one of the questions I put to him...

Steve Robinson's website

About Steve Robinson

Steve Robinson was born in coastal Kent, UK, and now lives near London on the Essex/Hertfordshire border. His passion for writing began at the age of sixteen when he was first published in a computer adventure magazine and he has been writing by way of a creative hobby ever since.  When a career in telecommunications ended in redundancy he began to write full time.  His debut novel In the Blood was the result, with To the Grave following a year later.

Steve says  

I write for the crime, mystery and thriller genres with a family history angle, having become interested in genealogy as a means to tell the story of 'In the Blood' and perhaps because at the time I had no idea who my maternal grandfather was, which is something that has always intrigued me.  He was an American GI billeted in England during the Second World War.  A few years after the war ended, he went back to America, leaving a young family behind, and to my knowledge no further contact was made.  I traced him to Los Angeles through his enlistment record and discovered that he was born in Arkansas, but until recently that was all I knew.  Perhaps this is why my lead character is an American genealogist.  In August 2012, following correspondence with an amateur genealogist in Maine, New England, who wrote to me about my books, I learnt more about my maternal grandfather and my wider American family.  I hope to share that story on my websitesomeday.

Steve's latest book - a Jefferson Tate genealogical mystery

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The story

HISTORY: from the Greek - historia. Knowledge acquired by 'investigation'.

It should have been a quiet weekend in London - a long overdue visit with the only true friend American genealogist Jefferson Tayte ever had. Now his friend lies bleeding in his arms and Tayte must follow his research to understand why, making him the target of a ruthless, politically motivated killer.

Working with historian Professor Jean Summer and New Scotland Yard on what becomes a matter of British national security, Tayte soon finds himself in a race to solve a three-hundred-year-old genealogical puzzle. It takes them all on a deadly, high stakes chase across London as Tayte tries to connect the pieces and work out the motive behind a series of killings that spans twenty years.

In what is Tayte's most personal assignment to date, 'The Last Queen of England' combines historic fact with fiction, challenging British history as we understand it. It uncovers a conspiracy that if proved could ultimately threaten an institution that has lasted more than a thousand years: the British monarchy.

Nullius in Verba: take no one's word for it.

Interview with Steve Robinson

Welcome, Steve! I first heard of your books because my husband had bought and read them all so then I had to read them too. I didn't realise at that stage that I'd be lucky enough to interrogate you on my blog. As far as I know, you invented the genre of genealogical whodunit, which is pretty impressive these days, when everything seems to have been done before. Why do you think so many people are interested in climbing their family tree?

I think it’s part of the human condition to be curious about who we are and where we came from.  Genealogy helps us to answer that question and with so many records now being digitised and being made available online, our ancestry has never been more accessible.  The exploration of our own family connections can also breath life into the past as our ancestor’s stories are uncovered, and then there’s the allure of all those skeletons in the family closet waiting to be found.  I think it’s easy to see the attraction.

Your main character, the likeably paunchy and flawed Jefferson Tate, fondly known as JT, is an American genealogical detective and the details of his work are very precise. Are you a genealogical detective yourself?

Not professionally, although I’ve become something of an amateur genealogist over the years since I started writing my genealogical crime mystery series.  I have to become one to some extent when I’m writing or my books would lack credibility.  I essentially give myself a problem to solve - or rather, a brick wall for JT to climb.  At the time I usually have no idea how he’s going to climb it, so I have to work it out as any genealogist might.  I feel JT’s frustration, too.  There’s a scene in 'To the Grave' when JT is in his hotel room, trying to find someone, and he literally has no clue as to how he’s going to do that.  The records he needs to see either don’t exist or are closed to him.  So he stays up all night and grinds it out - and I remember with great clarity doing that with him.  It wasn’t easy and it took me much longer than it took JT in the book, but we found a way and I think that also helps to keep it real.

How do you research your books?

Once I have a high-level plot worked out, I carry out similarly high-level research, just to make sure everything works and is feasible.  If I’m writing in a particular time period I also research that early on.  Once I’m ready to start writing, I research each chapter as I come to it in greater detail.  I never feel that I can do enough research, but writing with authority in any given subject is as much about what you leave out as what you put in or your writing can become too instructional and seem to lack real confidence that only comes from understanding what you’re writing about.  With historical scenes I feel I have to know enough about the time and place to feel a part of it.  Only then do I feel that I can write those passages in such a way that the reader will be there with the characters when they’re reading about them.

Before this interview, I read ‘In the Blood’, so I could read your books in order, but I really like the look of the second one, based on your own story. J T says, 'If you can’t find this family, how the hell do you expect to be good enough to find your own?' Is that personal search part of your own motivation in writing?

I don’t think it’s why I write, but it’s certainly a part of why I write about a genealogist who has no idea about his own ancestry.  And it’s definitely why I wrote 'To the Grave', perhaps as a way to fill in some of my own unanswered questions with some facts and plenty of fiction.  I’m honestly not sure why I feel the need to write, but the need has always been there, as I suspect it must be with every writer.  I suppose it’s because of those voices in my head that I have no control over - the dialogue snippets that keep coming to life in my mind that I feel compelled to write down,  but I’ve no idea where they come from.

As a British writer, how difficult was it to create an American character and setting?

I wouldn’t say it I found it difficult at all.  Whether it’s people or places, it’s all down to the research and the differences are really very small.  There are language differences to understand and it’s important to get it right.  When JT’s speaking or I show his direct thoughts I endeavour to ensure that what he’s saying sounds authentic without overdoing it, but other than that, he’s just a man with a penchant for tan suits and Hershey’s miniatures.  I also visit the USA and Canada once every year or two, which helps, and if you’ll excuse the pun, being a quarter American on my mother’s side means that it’s in my blood.

Nice pun :) I felt you really knew the Cornwall location in ‘In the Blood’. How important is setting to you?

I’m a frequent visitor to Cornwall and love it for it’s rugged beauty and the escapism it offers.  It felt easy to write about the area because I’ve come to know it so well and because it’s such an evocative place to write about.  One reader paid me a great compliment in a review for 'In the Blood', saying that the scenery came to feel like another character in the book.  Cornwall gets to you like that.

Your route to self-publishing success included 5 years of rejection by traditional publishers. What are your views on self-publishing versus old-fashioned publishing?

I’m for any kind of publishing that helps a writer to be read, and since the advent of the eBook, the opportunities have never been better.  I resisted publishing my work independently for a long time, hoping that the next book and then the next would be the one, but after getting an agent with 'In the Blood', and after getting so many promising rejections from the big publishers, I decided that my work deserved a chance.  Above all, I believed that readers would enjoy it and I’m just so happy that that’s proving to be the case.

It's good to see you having that success and an inspiration to the rest of us treading the independent road. Which services, if any, do you out-source? Jacket design? Print book creation? Formatting?

I suppose I’m about as independent as an independent author can be as I do all those things myself, although I’m fortunate enough to have made a few friends along the way who proof read my books and find the things I miss prior to publication, which is as invaluable as it is appreciated.

What tips would you give authors on making a success of self-publishing?

I’m sure there are many, but I’ll highlight a few things that stand out for me.  It’s not always possible to come up with something new, but looking for a new approach to something that’s already established is the next best thing.  And be realistic about pricing.  You don’t have much choice when it comes to paperbacks, but for eBooks you do.  It’s a very competitive market and if no one knows who you are, you can’t really expect them to pay a high price for your books.  Many eBooks are also free of course and plenty of big-name-author’s eBooks can be bought for under a pound/dollar.  When I started out, I sold my debut book as cheaply as I could in the hope of growing a readership, so once someone had found my book, I didn’t want price to be a barrier.  Also keep in mind that it’s a long-term business and it takes some patience to establish yourself.  And keep writing.  Every book in publication increases the chance that someone will find you.

There are three JT novels now. Do you have ideas and plans to continue with the series?

Yes, I’m planning at least three more books in the Jefferson Tayte Genealogical Crime Mystery series.  After that, who knows?  Maybe another series if the demand is there, and if JT survives of course.  I don’t like to know too much about what’s in store for my characters.  I should think I’ll be plotting like crazy until the summer, and it will be a while before book four is ready, but I’m hoping there will be less of a gap between that and the following books as I’ll have already completed much of the plotting and research for them by then.  The next books in the series will be also more closely linked.

Glad to hear there are more on the way - and I know my husband will be! How long do you take to write a book and what stages does it go through?

The three books I’ve published each took a year to write, but that’s not really all the time that’s gone into them.  They’ve been through extensive rewrites since I first wrote them, so that they would better fit into the series that began when I published 'In the Blood'.  Once I’ve worked out the theme and have the general gist of the story, I’ll do some research and other ideas often come from that.  Then I’ll think about the ending and start plotting in earnest, working towards that end.  This is when I start to weave all the sub-plots in.  I didn’t plot that much with my first book and I ended up with 165,000 words and a lot of headaches, backtracking the plot and then cutting content, so I plot more thoroughly now and try to write a tidy first draft of about 100,000 words or so.  I’ll go through four or five drafts before I’m ready to let anyone else see the book, then my wife reads it.  I’ll then do another draft, set a publication date and send it out to proof readers.  I do a final polishing draft about a week before publication and I publish the eBook first as it’s easy to make corrections to the digital edition.  A month or so later, I set the paperback edition rolling, then I get cracking on the next book, having had a natural break from writing while I’ve been publicising the new release.

It's interesting to hear the detail of your re-writing - so few people realise how much work goes into books as good as yours. What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

I’m sure it’s not particularly interesting, but perhaps it’s quite quirky that I wear an old olive-green bucket hat when I’m writing.  I started wearing it to keep the sun out of my eyes when writing in my kitchen, and then I found that it also helped to focus my attention on the words in front of me as it cuts out my peripheral vision.  In his book, On Writing, Stephen King suggests that you put your desk in a corner of the room, away from the windows.  I suppose my bucket hat has become my way to eliminate undesirable distractions wherever I’m working.

You should have an author photo with the hat! Like Terry Pratchett. What was one of the most surprising things you learned when creating your books?

That would have to be when I learned the whereabouts of my American GI grandfather.  I now know that he was buried in a military cemetery in Los Angeles in 1990.  I didn’t expect to discover that through my writing.  It came about following an email from another writer and amateur genealogist in Maine who initially wrote to me to say that she’d enjoyed reading 'In the Blood'.

Do you hear from your readers much? What do they say?

I get emails most days and feel both flattered and humbled to think that someone has taken the time to write to me.  I love receiving them and they’re typically written to express thanks for the enjoyment my books have given, which is wonderful.  Some readers also share a little of their own family history or talk about one or more of my books in greater detail.  I always reply and I’m surprised at how unexpected that can be.  It seems the least a writer can do in return for the kind words and support, and I hope to be able to continue writing back no matter how many emails I receive.

I noticed that you make your contact details readily available in your books and I've started doing the same, following your lead. 

I believe that you’re a keen photographer. What gear do you have? What do you enjoy about photography? 

I’m just getting back into SLR photography after a break of about twenty years, and as I create my own book covers I thought it was about time I got some decent equipment.  I’ve used Canon digital compacts for years so I stuck with Canon for the DSLR.  On one level I enjoy the creativity, and on another I like seeing the detail in the world around me that I can’t easily see with my own eyes - such as with macro photography and photos of wildlife.  I also enjoy the challenge of getting close to wildlife to get the shot.

What else do you like doing in your spare time?

You’d think a full time, independent author would have plenty of spare time to play with, but I don’t seem to find much lately - or don’t allow myself much between the writing and the marketing and keeping the house and garden tidy.  Not that I’m complaining about anything - I’m really enjoying it - but publishing is a business like any other and you have to put the hours in if you want it to be a success.  When I do switch off, I have a guitar that I started to learn - and now need to pick up more.  I like to play golf and there’s the photography of course, which I’m also hoping will encourage me to take more regular walks.  Spare time activities seem to vary, depending on what part of the writing process I’m at.  When I’m plotting for instance, I often find that I need to just walk away and do something else, particularly if I’m trying to solve a major plot issue - the answers to which invariable come when I’m not actively looking for them.

Thank you, Steve, and what are you doing chatting to me? Get back to writing the next JT novel! Your fans are waiting. My reviews of Steve's first two books will be in my next blog post.

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