The king of spooky, Linwood Barclay, and comedian Mark Watson talk to Steve Pratt on the eve of Durham Book Festival HE’S been dubbed “the king of spooky” but there’s one thing that scares bestselling Canadian thriller writer Linwood Barclay – the thought of having to write three books over the next three years.

He’s signed with publishers Orion to write one a year until 2017. “It’s very scary when you’re booked up for three years,” he says from his vacation home in the country outside Toronto.

“I wish I could think ahead more and say, ‘Here’s ten great ideas, I’m good for a decade’. I really need to start writing another book and I’m still not sure what it’s going to be. Once I’ve done touring, I’ll sit down and think. I’d like to have it worked out by the end of the year.”

Before that he has to promote his latest thriller A Tap On The Window with the publicity tour bringing him to Durham Book Festival this month.

He worked in newspapers for 30 years, starting as a reporter and becoming editor of the Toronto Star as well as writing three humorous columns a week. It was, he says, an agonising decision to quit working for the paper and write full-time. “I had a dental plan,” he jokes.

He also had a big hit in the UK with No Time For Goodbye (a Richard and Judy 2008 Summer Read and number one best-seller) and decided to take a year’s leave to write his next book , having written a book and 135 newspaper columns a year over the previous four years.

“That year, newspapers being what they are I was offered a buy-out. So I left with one-and-a-half years’ salary and started writing books full-time,” he says.

“I find one book fills a year when you add promotional work and travelling.”

The biggest impact working in newspapers has had on him is the sense that writing a book is work. “It’s great work and what I have always wanted to do but it’s a job,” he says.

“If the muse is not striking me to do work, then I won’t work. You can’t do that in newspapers. The difference when you write for a newspaper is what you’ve written you see in print within 24 hours or less. You write a book and wait a year for it to come out. There’s a long gestation period.

“When I’m writing a book ,the first draft usually takes two or three months and I might spend as much time or more on rewrites. I start at 8.30 in the morning and used to go to four or five. In the last year that was just killing me. Now I go to 2.30pm, with lots of wandering around the house and going down for coffee and seeing if there are any cookies left.

“As the books became more popular, I did more rewrites. There are expectations that the next book should be better than the one before. This one is really good, the next needs to be really, really good.”

HE’S happy doing thrillers (“it’s what I like writing”) and reading them too. When I call he has an Ian Rankin novel on the go, with The Shining sequel ready to go. “I read all kind of different things. I do like crime writers who really get into characters and so forth. I love Mark Billingham and Ian Rankin, those kind of writers. There are so many people to read.”

His love of thrillers began “way back” with the Hardy boys mysteries and then Agatha Christie novels. At 15, he discovered “what I call the upper tier – when you start using the conventions of the crime novel to do other things”. Most importantly, he discovered the American-Canadian writer of crime fiction Ross Macdonald.

“He was the one who influenced me most with the Lew Archer novels I was reading in my teens.

I was trying to write novels then and we can all be grateful they weren’t published. They were honouring his kind of style. “His work really imprinted on me. Maybe you take a little bit from this person and from that person. It all blends together at one point.”

So what makes him stand out from a crowded market? “I don’t know. When I write a book I don’t want to get bored myself. If I get bored, the reader gets bored.

“I think my books have really great pacing.

Once you start reading you want to read more.

There’s that large boulder rolling down hill effect and it picks up speed.”

Before he made his name with thrillers, he wrote a series of four books (“comedic thrillers”

they’ve been called) about a science fiction writer and bumbling father named Zach Walker.

He was “really proud” of them, but they didn’t sell.

The pressure started when his first thriller No Time For Goodbye sold, first to a publisher for a six-figure advance and then to the public who bought a million copies in the US and Germany.

“That book was astonishing. It was so easy to write, it came out so fast and needed very little editing. I’ve never had a book that easy again.

Then people asked, what’s he going to do next?

That’s when the pressure started.”

Some of his books have been optioned by movie producers. Trust Your Eyes has reached the first draft of the screenplay, while Never Look Away is being developed for a TV series.

Whether they come to fruition remains to be seen.

  • A Tap On The Window is published by Orion Fiction, £16.99 hardback and ebook £8.99.
  • Linwood Barclay appears at Durham Book Festival with Ann Cleeves in Crime In The Afternoon at Durham Town Hall on Oct 12.

Book tickets at the Gala Theatre on 03000- 266600 and galadurham.co.uk For full festival details visit durhambookfestival.com