Featured Interview With steve higgs
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m the son of a Royal Navy sailor so I moved about a lot as a child and then joined the army at 17, leaving England and only returning when I had turned 40, so I guess I am mostly not from anywhere. I live in Kent now, in the southeast corner of England in a small village surrounded by orchards and vineyards. There is a 500-year-old pub behind my house which gets all too frequent visits but I blame my three miniature Dachshunds as they drag me in that direction every time we go for a walk. The pub, the village, and the rolling, dark hills around me became a backdrop for my first series of books.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I won my first award for writing when I was just ten years old. At school, I had very little interest in any subject other than creative writing but it wasn’t considered to be a viable career so I joined the army, continuing a family tradition going back many generations. I continued to write though, producing stories that entertained me but were never worthy of public consumption. That changed when a chance observation led me to envisage a new character – a man that is accidentally advertised as a paranormal investigator. In the books there is no paranormal, vampires and ghosts do not exist, but what if lots of people believe they do and want to hire a person to solve their mysterious goings-on? That first book took 5 years to complete, the next just 5 months and then the floodgate opened as story ideas formed an unruly queue in my head demanding to be let out.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I think Stephen King is one of the best story-tellers of our time. I am not a horror fan but his ability to capture the reader and draw them in has always been a skill I tried to emulate. I enjoy fantasy, action, and humorous books most, reading authors like Lee Child, Janet Evanovich, and Jim Butcher when I have time.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
This year I have focused my efforts on a new series of murder mystery books, which as always, have a healthy helping of humor on the side. The central character driving the series is a middle-aged woman called Patricia Fisher. She’s 52, a few pounds overweight and has a worrying gin habit, but when a life-changing event throws her off balance, her reaction is to empty the bank accounts and board a luxury cruise ship. All too soon though, she soon finds herself embroiled in a thirty-year-old jewel theft and accused of murder.
The whole idea came about because of a conversation with the receptionist where I still work a full-time job. She asked how I come up with ideas for my books, so in the following five minutes, I created a character, threw in an event that would act as a catalyst for her humdrum life to suddenly change and then created a complex and perilous adventure to test her. The idea sat in my head for six months, stewing and growing until I absolutely had to write it. Now I am writing book 4 of that series with book 1 – The Missing Sapphire of Zangrabar due out on July 1st.
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