Featured Interview With Keith Redfern
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in the English town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch and raised in South Derbyshire. My home is now in Suffolk near the English east coast.
I am married with three children and five grandchildren – retired twice and kept busy with my writing, long walks, choral singing, history studies and other things.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My first experience of having my writing appreciated was in Primary School. I have always read books and used to frequent my local library before I was ten.
After my two professional careers I turned to writing for my third, and have enjoyed the challenge and the stimulus, but not the frustration, of novel writing.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have had different favourite authors at different times. I’ve read all of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, some novels several times. I love the stories of John Steinbeck and the sagas by James Michener, but I also get pleasure from modern authors like John Grisham, Robert Goddard and Lee Child. What fascinates and attracts me most to books is their plot construction and characterisations.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My book arose from a fascination with three things: an incident from WW2, the search by adopted children for their birth mothers and the possibility of creating a modern day Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. I managed to combine all three elements in Apportionment of Blame. Its plot begins with a botched kidnap, develops through the investigation of a mysterious death and causes our new, young detective to wonder if he has taken the right career move. Faced with the confusion of a lost inheritance and suspects who all seem so believable, Greg struggles from clue to clue until the answer suddenly becomes clear.
I first wrote the opening sequence for a novella in the early 90s which never reached publication, and liked it so much I kept it to use again. Once I started writing, the basic novel came together quite quickly, but as always, the editing and checking took much longer. I finished it in 2011 and it was finally published this year (2014).
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