Featured Interview With Charlie Garratt
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I now live in beautiful Donegal, Ireland, though was born in Manchester, England and spent most of my adult life in Warwickshire and Leicestershire. We owned a cat (does one own a cat or just tend to its every need?) until she was killed by a car quite recently.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
When I as around eight years old someone remarked that I ‘would read brown paper’ and though it had out be explained she meant I’d read anything I guess she was right. I always had my nose stuck in a book. Encouraged by my mother, I suppose, who was an avid reader and gave me the gift of a library ticket as soon as I was old enough to have one of my own.
I wrote a number of non-fiction books as part of my work, which required frequent reports, research, surveys, etc and from time to time this took me into skirmishes with creative writing. However, I didn’t start seriously until I moved to Ireland and joined a writers’ group, which required material to be produced for sharing and critique on a weekly basis – highly recommended for anyone considering writing.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I guess my favourite genres are crime and occasional science fiction, though I read Dickens, Hemingway, Graham Greene, James Joyce, Steinbeck, etc for the quality of their writing. My current favourite crime author is Lawrence Block and my favourite book of all time, I think, has to be The Grapes of Wrath.
The inspiration for my writing tends to be whoever I’m reading at the moment because I’m still learning. I find that every writer offers me ideas about how to say something, or how to structure a scene, or how to build a character, and so on. Sometimes, of course, they’ll show me the reverse, how not to say something, how not to structure a scene, because the writing is poor, though this is still useful.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
A Shadowed Livery is a crime novel set in rural Warwickshire in the year leading up to the Second World War. Having just witnessed the hanging of a Jewish shopkeeper’s murderer, Inspector James Given is called in to investigate a triple death at a country house and suspects all is not as it seems.
James is a tenacious investigator and harbours a hidden heritage which resonates against the rise of Nazi Germany.
The novel started from a series of pieces I was writing for my writers’ group and took a distinct leap forward when I was told of a murder and double suicide which took place in a quiet setting a few miles from where I now live. It gave me the opportunity to ask ‘what if that’s not really what happened’ and A Shadowed Livery was born. It probably took around five years from writing the first few lines to finding its way to the bookshelves, including quite some time trying to find a publisher then the serious redrafting and editing which followed.
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Just finishes ‘A Shadowed Livery’ and loved it. Looking forward to the next one!
Thank you Carolann. Working on the next but slowly!