Spider man (From The Northern Echo)

Spider man

10:52am Monday 30th March 2009

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Prison visiting comes in very useful when you want some insider knowledge, thriller writer Stephen Leather tells Steve Pratt

BESTSELLING thriller writer Stephen Leather had just been released from prison. Hours before we spoke he’d driven out of the gates of HMP Frankland in County Durham.

Now he was in the back of a car on his way to a book signing in Newcastle after one of his regular visits behind bars.

He and Martina Coles are the most read authors in UK prisons. In thanks for this show of support, the journalist turned bestselling author visits prisoners for writing workshops.

Some are avid fans who read his books, others are learning to write them. “They’re not writers’ workshops really. I just meet them and give them advice on books in general,”

he explains.

“It’s really just to encourage them to write. Many of those in a young offenders’ institutions got into trouble because they hadn’t had a decent education.”

He knows other authors, like Anthony Horowitz, who do prison visits and says it’s one of those things that, once you’ve done it once or twice, can be very enjoyable.

“You get something out of it as well,” he says. “The first thing I did was in Belmarsh years ago and that was research for a book I was writing, Hard Landing.

“You sometimes get story ideas. If you get a chance to chat with prisoners, you get advice and they’ll tell you if you’re doing things wrong in your books. In Hard Luck, I had guys using missiles but was told by a former soldier doing life that wouldn’t happen. Sometimes I use their names if they want to be in a book, although I tell them they’ll go in as a villain.”

Live Fire is his 20th book – the story of Dan “Spider” Shepherd, a former SAS operative working as an undercover agent with the Serious Organised Crime Agency. This time he’s after a gang of ex-army Iraq veterans, funding their life in the sun with a life of crime in the UK.

At present, Leather writes a book a year, although his publisher would like him to go to two a year. It’s achievable, he says. The hard bit is researching and getting ideas. Actually writing the book is easy to him.

He writes “when the muse takes me – it sounds prima donna-ish but if I get up and don’t feel like writing, then I don’t force it”, he explains.

“Some writers won’t leave until they’ve done 2,000 words.

“If I’m excited about the book I might do 2,000 to 3,000 words a day; if I’m not enthusiastic, 300 words.

“I’ve always managed to meet my deadline. I write everywhere, not just my office. I work on the same laptop all the time.”

The setting is always the same when he writes. Not for him peace and quiet to collect his thoughts. His requirements are a big screen TV, coffee table and sofa. “I sit on the sofa with the laptop and the TV on.

I worked in a newsroom and can’t write in the quiet. I have to have a certain buzz,” he explains.

THERE are rules about what he can and can’t have on the TV while writing. “I can’t watch comedy because that makes me laugh and breaks whatever mood I’m in. I can’t watch a good movie because you don’t want to miss anything and get backtracked into the story,” he says. “The best thing is a documentary on the Discovery Channel or reality shows – anything you can dip in and out of.”

Having the TV on helps if he needs to name a character. He waits until the end credits of the programme for inspiration. The ads are an aid to choosing cars for his characters and if he needs to describe a woman then he flicks to a soap opera for help.

“Lazy research,” he calls it.

Manchester-raised Leather wrote his first novel, Pay Off, while a journalist on the Daily Mirror. His second, The Fireman, was written while on the South China Morning Post.

He returned to London as a night news editor on The Times before his fourth novel, The Chinaman, gave him an international bestseller and the financial stability to become a full-time writer.

Ask if he misses journalism and “sort of” is his reply. “As a journalist you know what’s behind a story. I miss being in the know, which journalists are. But then I don’t have to ask permission for a holiday or be in the office at eight in the morning”.

He fell into writing thrillers after what he considers failures in the horror and science fiction genres. Those books are available on his website.

Dan Shepherd has been the hero of his last six books, with three more planned. His publishers have suggested coming up with another hero, maybe American, as well.

He’s done some writing for TV, including The Stretch which was filmed for Sky and reunited EastEnders stars Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson. The Bombmaker was also seen on Sky and he’s written for such shows as London’s Burning, The Knock and Murder In Mind.

He divides his time between Thailand, with his wife and daughter, and Dublin. “I spend a lot of time in an airplane,” he says. “But I want my daughter to be truly bilingual. She’ll probably go to university in the UK and then I’ll be more settled.”

■ Live Fire (Hodder, £19.99)

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