Hi Steve, thank's that you have taking the time to answer a few questions of Elements of Crime. .

Why you have chosen crime as a topic of your writing?

To be honest, it wasn't deliberate! I started out by writing the kind of stories I liked to read, and that was primarily horror, with some 'urban fantasy' and science-fiction mixed in. I've always liked writers who are prepared to blur genre boundaries.

The first book I had accepted for publication was called The Third Person, and that's a very strange book. It has crime elements, but also strong horror, a futuristic setting, and the whole story is very surreal. My UK publisher - Orion - liked it, but there was some debate within the company about what to publish it as. In the end, it fit nicely into a crime promotion they were doing. To build a career, it's important to stick (at least broadly) to one genre. My second book, The Cutting Crew, was equally strange - but also published as crime.
I suppose there's a wider question: why do I write such dark, horrible stuff? I don't know! In real life, I'm very relaxed, happy and easy-going. But I've always been attracted to darker subjects. Also, crime fiction can deal with so many important emotions and themes - love, loss, revenge, redemption, good and evil, etc - that I find I can write almost anything I want within the confines of it.

Do you have a certain ritual before, or if you start with writing?

Not really. The hardest thing for me is to get started - and to keep turning up at the computer, day after day. But I'm very relaxed about my writing process. I try to be disciplined enough to get a certain number of words written each day, but it's often just as important (for me) to let ideas grow in the back of my head. Some days, I'm happy just to come up with a decent idea; others, I would like to get an entire chapter written. The one thing I make sure I do is relax a little. By which I mean, not worry too much. When I'm starting a project, I plan as much as possible, and I accept that it will be rubbish at first and not to get too stressed about it! It takes a lot of energy to write a book, and it takes some of the pressure off to not be worrying about 'how good this sentence is' or whether a plot element is working proeprly or not. My first draft is always like shooting a film without a script!

Your breakthrough came in 2007 with the 50/50 killer. What did you feel?

It felt fantastic. And it was very good timing for me. I was working at Leeds University and was made redundant (the project I was on ran out of funding). I had enough money to last a month, and I thought to myself "well, I'll write for a month and see what I can do". And halfway through that month, The 50/50 Killer started selling to different countries - enough for me to have written full-time ever since. Which is mind-blowing.

It's an odd feeling though, because my books are not at all successful in the UK. I've done well overseas, but I haven't really had a 'breakthrough' in my own country.

The Killer 50/50 was published 2009 in Germany and is very successful. Would you say something to your many german fans?

I'd say the same as I say to all my fans - a massive thank you! It's always nice to know people have read your book and liked it, especially if that person is kind enough to email you and say so. I'm enormously grateful to Droemer for liking the books so much, and to everyone who's bought them. Hopefully, with future books, all that will continue.

What kind of research did you need to do for 50/50 Killer?

Hardly any. I'm very lazy in terms of research, and I think that's one reason why I started out writing science-fiction and horror - more freedom to make stuff up! To me, that's half the pleasure of writing. You're inventing people, places and plots, so why not go even further? I spoke to a friend of mine, a doctor, but only about the basics, but certainly not to the police, or anything like that. All the police procedure in the book is completely invented.

And, in general, I think it's far more important to be believable than accurate. As long as you don't make any terrible mistakes - really obvious ones - then readers are willing to accept the story on its own terms. The exception might be in terms of location. I had a few reviews that questioned whether the woods in 50/50 Killer could really exist in the UK. Again, it's not something I think about. To me, the story is set in 'story-land', and not particularly in the UK (or anywhere else). It's fiction. But it's important that the reader isn't thrown out of the story, so I do tend to think about issues of location more than other aspects. Not make it too implausible!

( Tote Stimmen / Cry for help ) appeared in February, and in September ( Spur ins Dunkel / The Third Person ) will appear in Germany. There are also both individual novels, you are planning a sequel to one of your books? Maybe a trilogy?

Not at the moment. When I wrote Still Bleeding (my fifth English book), I nearly included Mercer from 50/50 as a character. But it just didn't work for the story - and I think that's my problem. I'm not against the idea of writing a series character, and in some ways I would like to, but I tend to conceive the story first, and then create characters that work for the story. So, with 50/50, I wanted to write about love and choices within relationships in a thriller context, and I built the people, location and plot around that. Because the characters are suited to that particular story, they won't necessarily transfer well to a different one. (And, of course, many of them end up dead or deeply traumatised). So I would never say never, but it would depend on finding the right character. I suppose another way to look at it is that the books aren't connected in terms of the same characters or locations, but they are in terms of theme. Cry for Help has some obvious connections to 50/50, in terms of it being about choices, duties, responsibilities, how much we are prepared to suffer for people we care about, and so on. And Still Bleeding shares some themes with the book I'm working on now. So in one sense you can say they are 'companion pieces'.

Why appear ( Spur ins Dunkel / The Third Person) so late in Germany, you wrote it 2003?

Well, this goes back to your first question. The Third Person is a very different type of book. 50/50 was the one that got me attention, and I hope that crime fans who pick up The Third Person are prepared for something a little different! The books I write in the future will be more suited to fans of 50/50, whereas The Third Person is a little more offbeat and might appeal to different people. Hopefully, people will like it. I still like it, even after all this time, and you can tell it's my 'voice', but it's a far less commercial novel. I'm interested to see how people react to it.

Is it hard to exist on such a large market, and captivate the reader with a good story?

It's something to bear in mind, I think. For me it's a case of balancing what I personally want to write about - the story I want to tell - with the necessity of creating something with broad appeal, so that as many people as possible want to read it. The first is the artistic, creative side of it; the second is the commercial one! The first is important to me (and, I imagine, to the vast majority of writers), but the second is equally so if you wish to have a career. My solution is to write what interests me and fashion it as carefully as possible.It needs to have a good story and it needs to be accessible. With that in mind, I try to add extra elements in 'below the surface', so that as well as functioning as a good thriller it has other stuff going on.

In which country do you have the greatest success with your books?

That's difficult to say - I don't really know. It seems ungrateful not to be sure, but the truth is that it's difficult to keep track, and, because of the way different deals are structured. So I know I've done well in Germany, and also in The Netherlands, France and Italy, but I can't say where I've had the most. In some ways, I wouldn't want to. People are people, and it doesn't matter to me where my readers come from. I do know I've 'met' lots of wonderful new people in other countries as a result of my writing, and, to me, that's as good as it gets. :-)