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Interview with Jonathan Whitelaw – S. 11, Ep. 2
My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is journalist and crime writer Jonathan Whitelaw.
Wherein we discuss important topics like treating your writing career like a business. Along with really great topics, like Doctor Who, James Bond, and Terry Pratchett. Just sayin’. 🙂
You can download a PDF of the transcript here.
Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is an award-winning journalist and author. He once worked in Scottish politics, then moved into journalism where he covered a wide variety of topics for major publications. He appears on the Bloody Brothers Podcast and the Bloody Scotland Book Club. His novel, The Concert Hall Killer, was recently shortlisted for the Whodunnit Award for Best Traditional Mystery by the Crime Writers of Canada. Originally from Scotland, from Glasgow, he is now living in Canada in Alberta. It’s my pleasure to have with me Jonathan Whitelaw. Hi, Jonathan. How are you doing?
Jonathan (01:37): Hi there. I’m very well, thank you, Debbi. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Debbi (01:42): Oh, it is a pleasure to have you on, and I love your accent. It is so beautiful and musical.
Jonathan (01:49): Thank you very much. It’s the only one I have.
Debbi (01:51): I love it. I love it. It’s great.
Jonathan (01:54): Very kind.
Debbi (01:55): What was it that took you from Glasgow to Alberta?
Jonathan (02:00): My wife. Short and sweet and simple answer, much like her, except the simple part, obviously far from it, she’s the brains of the operation and I often say that I always like to try to think that I’m the eye candy of the operation, but I’m not even that, so she’s that as well. So yeah, my wife’s a doctor, so a few years ago it was pre-pandemic actually. She was at a conference and she got chatting to an expat doctor who’s working in a place called North Battleford in Saskatchewan, and he was there promoting Western Canada. And him and my wife got chatting and he effectively offered her a job, but of course, with the pandemic and then my wife completing their training and stuff like that, I was having a baby. Everything got kicked into the very, very long grass for a couple of years, and the job was no longer there when we were ready for it. So by that point, we’d really talked ourselves into it and we’d explored all the options and stuff like that about coming over and visas and permanent residency and things and citizenship beyond that. And we found that there was a job opening in Alberta. A place called Grand Prairie, which is about an hour’s flight northwest from Calgary. And that was it. We up sticks and moved wagons west in May 2022, and we haven’t looked back since.
[W]e found that there was a job opening in Alberta. A place called Grand Prairie, which is about an hour’s flight northwest from Calgary. And that was it. We up sticks and moved wagons west in May 2022, and we haven’t looked back since.
Debbi (03:29): Wow. That’s really something.
Jonathan (03:31): Yeah
Debbi (03:32): You can write from anywhere, so that’s cool.
Jonathan (03:35): Exactly right. Well, I was a journalist as your very, very kind intro mentioned there. I was a journalist, but I write full-time now. I’ve been able to go full-time writing since we moved to Canada, so it’s over three years that I’ve been a full-time writer. And it was a mixture of circumstances. It was a mixture of where we were going and what we’re going to be doing and stuff like that, and The Bingo Hall Detectives as a series sort of picking up. So yeah, it’s been a great adventure. We’ve been made to feel very, very welcome here in Alberta and Canada in general.
Debbi (04:13): It’s fantastic.
Jonathan (04:14): And I get to go back to the UK all the time for work. I go back for festivals and stuff like that, and it’s only one flight from Calgary, which is great. So it’s just a red eye there, and then you’re back during the day. So it is good fun, and it’s a wonderful part of the world.
Debbi (04:29): That’s awesome. Yeah, I know as an American, we tend to look upon Canadians as being really nice people. Do you find that they’re very nice?
Jonathan (04:40): Oh, yes. Oh yeah. Very much. Very, very welcoming. And I think a lot of the reasons that we are so comfortable here is that we have been welcomed with open arms everywhere and anywhere we’ve gone. We’ve lived, in the three and a bit years that we’ve been here, we’ve stayed in three major cities in Alberta. Grand Prairie, Edmonton, and now Calgary and everywhere we go, we’ve been welcomed with open arms and been made to feel so at home. And it is home now, right? That’s the thing. When I go back to the UK, if I’m doing work, if I’m doing festivals and events and stuff like that, when I get back on the plane to fly across the Atlantic, I say it and I feel it. That’s me heading home. And we’re all very, very grateful as a family. We’re very, very grateful for that welcoming. And it’s made what has been quite a big life altering transition, so much more easier and so much more pleasant to do. So that’s fantastic. We’re delighted. We’re delighted. We’re delighted to be home.
I think a lot of the reasons that we are so comfortable here is that we have been welcomed with open arms everywhere and anywhere we’ve gone.
Debbi (05:44): Well. You chose the right country on the North American continent.
Jonathan (05:49): Yes.
Debbi (05:49): I think they have their own political problems, but they don’t have a tyrant in control, I think. (Ahem!)
Jonathan (05:55): That’s very, very true. Very, very true.
Debbi (05:57): I’ll try not to say anything more. Things get a little dicey around here.
Jonathan (06:03): Nothing more needed. Nothing more needed. Yeah, absolutely.
Debbi (06:05): No more need be said. Yes, no words. I just read the first chapter of The Garden Club Murders, by the way. And I think your writing is just awesome and can be hilarious at times.
Jonathan (06:18): Thank you very much.
Debbi (06:18): It’s just outright hilarious. Your characters are wonderful. Has anyone ever approached you about making a TV show out of your books?
Jonathan (06:27): Oh, you’re not allowed to ask that one, Debbi. That’s all pretty much on the wraps at the moment. You always ask it, right? You’re allowed to ask it. You should never tell a journalist what questions they can and can’t ask, as I famously did for over a decade, but I’m just not allowed to answer. So there we go. Mum’s the word, mum’s the word. What I will say is that it’s been a very, very exciting last couple of months, and that’s all you’re getting.
Debbi (07:00): Oh, wow. Well, I will look forward to seeing something that you wrote up on the telly.
Jonathan (07:05): Thank you very much.
Debbi (07:06): I certainly hope so. Your books are set in Cumbia.
Jonathan (07:11): Yes.
Debbi (07:12): Now I’ve heard of Cumbia, but I never knew where it was until now. So tell us about Cumbia. What is it like and how does it inform your fiction?
Jonathan (07:21): Yeah, it’s a county in England, northwest England. In fact, it’s the most Northwesterly county in England. It borders Scotland, it’s northern border borders Scotland, and it’s home to the Lake District, which as the name suggests is a huge, big national park filled with, I can never remember the amount of it, but it’s hundreds and hundreds of lakes. Biggest one’s Windermere. Ullswater’s another one, where the action takes place in the first book, and it’s acres and acres and acres, thousands of acres of this kind of unkempt, uninterrupted countryside, rolling hills, mountains, and you’ve got little pockets of humanity in there as well. So you’ve got Carlisle, which is a city, it was a fairly big city, but you’ve also got places like Kendal and Penrith where most of the action series takes place, and they’re all separated by these huge big swathes of open countryside.
So you’ve got Carlisle, which is a city, it was a fairly big city, but you’ve also got places like Kendal and Penrith where most of the action series takes place, and they’re all separated by these huge big swathes of open countryside.
(08:23): And it’s a place, it’s a place I know very, very well. I’d holiday there growing up. And when I was grown up, if you can call me grown up, I don’t know if a lot of people would argue that I’ve never grown up, me being one of them. But when you live in Scotland, when you grow up in Scotland, you live in Scotland, Cumbria as a region is always one of these places that you blink and you miss because you’re on the train. If you’re going down to, say, Manchester, Liverpool, London, or what have you. And it’s strangely underrepresented in fiction, modern fiction anyway. And certainly in crime and mystery fiction where you’ll maybe find fiction. Obviously you’ve got your big, big cities across the world, your Londons, your Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto, all these big, big cities have got dozens and dozens and dozens of crime and mystery novels set in them.
(09:19): But in the UK it tends to be either Scotland as a whole or London. Sometimes you get something in Manchester, Birmingham, sort of Midlands and stuff like that. But in terms of Cumbia as a whole, I think I’m one of maybe two or three mystery writers operating in the moment who use that as their back door, which I always thought before I started writing the first book, I always thought, that’s madness. It’s such a beautiful part of the world, beautiful part of the country, and it’s ready made for mystery. It’s these little pockets of humanity surrounded by endless countryside. And I always say that, I always say, you can always use some countryside when you’re a murder mystery writer because it’s a good place to hide a body.
It’s such a beautiful part of the world, beautiful part of the country, and it’s ready made for mystery. It’s these little pockets of humanity surrounded by endless countryside. And I always say that, I always say, you can always use some countryside when you’re a murder mystery writer because it’s a good place to hide a body.
Debbi (10:08): Yes, yes. Excellent point. I mean, even in film noir, you can see film noir with great big open spaces like The Hitch-hiker.
Jonathan (10:19): Absolutely.
Debbi (10:20): Takes place in absolute bleakness on the road with this crazy guy.
Jonathan (10:27): It adds to the atmosphere, right? It’s this sense of nothingness and I think isolation. Yeah, totally. And what would happen if something goes wrong out here? I think that there’s something very primal about that, that I think we can all experience. We all fear and well, Cumbria might not be necessarily on the scale of The Sahara Desert or something like that, or Death Valley. It’s not quite deserted Arizona or Nevada, but it can be frightening. And when you drive between these villages and towns and in cities at night, the place is completely dark. These are roads that don’t have streetlights on them, and you look out and you think, well, what’s going on over there? Or you don’t want to know what’s going on over there. So that’s the thing about murder mystery, is that there’s always that sinister element to it. Even if you write like me, if you write cozy mysteries, where you don’t necessarily see the knife go in, but the knife’s gone in, and then it’s still murder and all this kind of carry on. So what a rich, fertile playground for a writer to be able to use. And I’m very, very grateful, very, very privileged to do it.
Debbi (11:44): And I’m sure there must be a lot of history there, too.
Jonathan (11:46): Oh yeah. Tons, tons, tons. Yeah. Cumbria, I think maybe has a much more a richer historical literary prowess and legacy. William Wordsworth obviously is one of, if not the biggest name, who was home there and wrote about there and stuff like that. As I wander, softly as the cloud, all that stuff was all conjured up in the Lake District. So yeah, it seemed very, very odd to me that there was 300 years worth of literature and genre fiction that was never ever set there. So the series is very much my homage to there, and I’m always delighted, and I feel very, very lucky when I get compliments from people who do live there and they’ve stayed there and they see places that they know and they live in and they enjoy, and they’re always, Cumbrians are very, very friendly people, and they’re always happy to come and chat to me about it. And that’s a real gift, right? That’s a proper gift. It’s one of the gifts of being a writer is that you get that sort of experience. It’s very special.
Cumbrians are very, very friendly people, and they’re always happy to come and chat to me about it. And that’s a real gift, right? That’s a proper gift. It’s one of the gifts of being a writer is that you get that sort of experience. It’s very special.
Debbi (12:59): Absolutely. Yeah. It’s really nice that you get to showcase this place that most people
Jonathan (13:06): Exactly.
Debbi (13:07): Never get to see because it hasn’t been written about.
Jonathan (13:10): Exactly. Exactly.
Debbi (13:11): I think that’s awesome.
Jonathan (13:11): Awesome. Yeah, it’s really, really cool. In fact, the new one, the new book, The Garden Club Murders, is dedicated to Cumbia and its people. And it was something that I was adamant that I was going to do with the fourth book was a very, very small thank you to the area, a very, very small thank you to the people that have made this series the success that it is. When I collected the first book, won the Lakeland Book of the Year Prize for Fiction, which was a Cumbria award. And I remember when I went to collect the award, I was speechless, unbelievably, I was speechless. I know that is very, very difficult to get your head around, but I was genuinely speechless. And I said in my speech, I said, thank you, thank you for this. It’s not that I’m looking for recognition, it’s not that I ever felt that I needed that sort of validity from the people from Cumbria or the region, but that’s very much how I felt with it when I won that award. And like I say, it’s just really, really cool to be able to have, have an area like that kind of to myself.
Debbi (14:21): Yeah, it’s a nice achievement. Very much an achievement. What’s your writing schedule like?
Jonathan (14:29): Oh dear.
Debbi (14:30): Oh dear?
Jonathan (14:32): Yeah, schedule makes it sound organized. And I’m the least organized person on the face of the Earth. It’s busy. It’s busy. It’s busy, I think is the broad stroke. So I wrote three books last year. I wrote three novels in 2024, and some of that was unexpected, some of it was pre-planned. So I finished off, I did the edits at the beginning of the year for A Concert Hall Killer, which is the third Bingo book. And then I was due to write the fourth one, which I was going to do in the second half of the year. But in between, I had this idea for a puzzle book called Murder in Tinseltown, and I ran the idea past my agent, very, very speculatively. It was my nonfiction agent, and he loved it. He loved the idea of it. And I think we worked this out within 12 days, 10, 12 days of me having the idea and emailing them.
I wrote three novels in 2024, and some of that was unexpected, some of it was pre-planned.
(15:32): We were out in submission with a breakdown of how this was going to work. So it’s one of these, choose your own, choose your own path books from, if you remember, I’m showing my age here, but a certain vintage of readers will remember these types of books where it would be, say you’ve walked down a corridor, turn to page 72. If you take a left turn to page 160 if you want to take a right. And then you would go to the correspondent page and it would maybe move the story forward, or you would be eaten by a troll or something like that. So my wife, like I said, the brains of the operation, she’d been badgering me for years to write a modern up-to-date aimed at an adult readership, one of these for mystery.
(16:23): So I finally got round to doing it, and part of the deal that it was sold to Harper Collins on was that it would be ready for Christmas 2024. So I had maybe about eight, 10 weeks to write it from scratch. So that kind of took up all the summer, and then it pushed the fourth Bingo book into the distance a little bit. So by the time that we ended the calendar year last year, I’d written three books, but I’m a writer. This is what I’m meant to be doing. If I wasn’t to doing that, I’d be out vacuuming the carpet or doing lots and lots of laundry. So yeah, I’m not complaining about it. I’m not complaining about it.
Debbi (17:08): Very good. Very good. What authors have most inspired you to write?
Jonathan (17:14): The good one? I have so many. So many. I used to read a lot of Terry Pratchett when I was younger.
Debbi (17:21): Oh, yeah.
Jonathan (17:23): The late great Sir Terry Pratchett, in fact, much missed. He’s been gone, I think 10 years now. So yeah, I loved sci-fi and fantasy growing up. I still do, and I don’t read it as much or as often as I’d like to. But I always loved Terry Pratchett, I always love Terry Pratchett’s humour, and I loved how you pick up any of the Discworld novels, of which there’s what? Twenty-five, 30 or something like that. And, at its core, it’s a fantasy novel. It’s Dungeons and Dragons and Wizards and all the rest of it, but they’re also hilarious.
Debbi (18:02): Oh, yeah!
Jonathan (18:03): And it’s all an allegory for real life.
Debbi (18:07): Exactly!
Jonathan (18:08): What I always loved about Terry was that his mastery of language and his inherent hatred for authority figures, it all shone through the work. And he was able to compose characters, especially authoritarian characters, so well, and cut them down with just one sentence, with one quip, and bring them back down to size. And I love that, and I love that, and I love that in all media. I love it in TV shows and movies. And Terry Pratchett, for me, was the very, very best to do it. So I think the humor, certainly the humor element of it in my own work and in my own writing probably pays a lot homage to Terry Pratchett. And it is only an homage. I would never ever dream of liking myself to him, far from it. But yeah, lots and lots, lots and lots of writers for very, very different reasons.
What I always loved about Terry [Pratchett] was that his mastery of language and his inherent hatred for authority figures, it all shone through the work.
(19:12): I adored doing Shakespeare at school. I was one of those kids. I was one of those kids, that actually really enjoyed Shakespeare. There’s this whole thing that you’re not really meant to when you’re 12 years old, to enjoy all the language, get all the jokes and stuff. So yeah. Then mystery writers, you’ve got your godfather of mystery is Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes. Weirdly, you mentioned in my introduction there that I do work for the Bloody Scotland Festival and the book club and stuff like that. And I remember one of the first events that I did was the book club, and one of the books that we read was the second Sherlock Holmes novel, or novella, sorry. So it’s The Sign of the Four, I think it is. I’m someone, I’m sure listeners will correct me, which is fine. And I hadn’t read it for years.
(20:08): I hadn’t read it, I think since I was a teenager. And I came to it pretty fresh. And what amazed me was how modern it was, what amazed me in terms of the composition, in terms of how it’s written, in terms of the style. We as mystery writers still use styles and techniques that were on display in 1862 or whenever this novel was first published. And I was so, so amazed at how modern it felt and how fresh it felt, even though it was a hundred and what, 40 years old or something like that, 180 years old. So yeah, I’m in a really, really lucky position as a writer because I still do a lot of review work, so I get to read a lot of very, very fresh, a lot of new stuff, a lot of new writers, a lot of established writers who’ve got new work coming out, and I get to read them early. Some of them ask me to offer a blurb for the cover and the press and stuff like that, which always baffles me because you’re in trouble if you’ve got to ask me. That’s how I always look at it.
(21:13): But I’m always grateful to do it. And it is always lovely to see contemporaries and consider myself contemporary of these wonderful modern writers. I think that’s a very long winded way of saying that. I don’t actually have any favorites. There’s too many to pick. I couldn’t pick one.
Debbi (21:32): Terry Pratchett.
Jonathan (21:33): Terry Pratchett. For ease, we’ll go for Terry Pratchett.
Debbi (21:36): Absolutely. I love Terry Pratchett. Oh my gosh. And I only got to know about him maybe 15 years ago. That’s when I first got exposed to him through a blogger I happened to meet who likes Doctor Who.
Jonathan (21:50): Right. I see. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course. Of course.
Debbi (21:54): We connected over Doctor Who, James Bond, stuff like that. And then I find out about this Terry Pratchett, and I’m like, ooh, this guy’s great.
Jonathan (22:03): Debbi, you’re reading from my resume there. Doctor Who, James Bond, all that stuff. That’s all the good stuff, right?
Debbi (22:10): It’s awesome stuff.
Jonathan (22:12): We could probably fill another show with just talking about those things. Definitely.
Debbi (22:15): Probably. Yeah.
Jonathan (22:17): Yeah, absolutely.
Debbi (22:17): Maybe we should start a podcast about Doctor Who, an American and a Scot.
Jonathan (22:26): Scot. Yeah. A Scot.
Debbi (22:28): A Scot and an American on Doctor Who.
Jonathan (22:30): There we go. There we go. Well, we had an American set Doctor Who, right? We had the American set Doctor Who in 1996, and we’ve had plenty of Scots that played Doctor Who over the 60 plus years. So let’s do it.
Debbi (22:44): My gosh. I could really, I just love talking about Doctor Who because each one was so different, and I won’t comment on where the show is going now. It’s just kind like, what is … what?
Jonathan (22:58): Yeah, it’s different, right? It’s different.
Debbi (23:00): It is different.
Jonathan (23:01): Bring back the wobbly sets and the bubble wrap monsters. That’s what I think.
Debbi (23:05): Yeah, please bring back the terrible special effects. I love those.
Jonathan (23:09): Cheap and cheerful. That’s the way forward, right? Cheap and cheerful.
Debbi (23:11): That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe bring Tom Baker back for a guest appearance again? I love Tom Baker.
Jonathan (23:21): He’s very old. He’s very, very old. But I think he’s still got it though. He’s still got it. He’s still got it.
Debbi (23:25): He’s still got it.
Jonathan (23:26): Absolutely. Yep.
Debbi (23:27): Oh, Tom, hang in there, Tom. We love you.
Jonathan (23:30): Absolutely. He’s in his nineties now, I think. 92 or something like that. 93 years old.
Debbi (23:33): Something like that. Yeah.
Jonathan (23:35): Good. A good Scouser. My dad and my stepmom are from Liverpool, so yeah. Yeah, there you go. It’s that connection, right? It’s the five degrees of Kevin Bacon, but we’ll see Tom Baker this time.
Debbi (23:49): Alright. And Terry Pratchett.
Jonathan (23:52): And Terry Pratchett.
Debbi (23:53): Terry Pratchett and Tom Baker. Two favorites. I won’t even tell you how many Tardises I have in this room alone. It’s a little preposterous, but that’s okay.
Jonathan (24:05): It is. Okay.
Debbi (24:07): Let’s see. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?
Jonathan (24:13): Well, you got to write, okay. I know that sounds glib, and I know that that sounds almost cheeky, but it’s true. It’s true. You got to write. I do a lot of teaching here in Alberta, creative writing, teaching specifically crime and mystery courses as well. And I always open my courses and I always open my classes and workshops with, at the end of the day, if you don’t write it, nobody gets to read it. Alright? And you can’t be a writer with it all just in your head. It doesn’t work that way. You can have the best characters, best plot, best ending. It’s not just crime and mystery. It could be anything, any genre, a literary fiction, anything, nonfiction, biography, you name it. If it stays in your head, nobody gets to enjoy it. Nobody else gets to enjoy it. And the wonderful thing about creative writing and the written word in novel format, short story, poetry, screenplay, whatever, is that it gets to be enjoyed by an audience. And people want to read it, right? People want to read your work. When we get over that hump, when we get over my bluntness, what I always say is remember that this is a professional industry.
You can have the best characters, best plot, best ending. It’s not just crime and mystery. It could be anything, any genre, a literary fiction, anything, nonfiction, biography, you name it. If it stays in your head, nobody gets to enjoy it.
(25:30): It’s a multi-trillion dollar global industry, and you need to be professional. And I always say to my classes, and if anyone is close enough to ask me for advice, I always say, you don’t need to be a professional writer to be professional about your writing.
Debbi (25:48): That’s right.
Jonathan (25:48): And that’s things like if you work on your manuscript and you want to query an agent or query a publisher about maybe getting it published, for example, if that’s the path that you want to go down, do your research. Find the agents and the publishers that publish your work and your type of work. There’s absolutely no point in sending your sci-fi masterpiece to an agent who only specializes in romance because it’s not what they do. And these agents will undo, advertise what they want and what they represent and what they look for. So be professional about your writing, not just from an industry point of view, but for yourself, right? It’s hard work. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of imagination and stuff like that. A lot of dedication. It takes a long time.
(26:41): You owe it to yourself to be professional about your writing and treat it with the respect that it deserves. And you as a writer deserve, I always say it makes me sound and feel a little grubby because at the end of the day, it is an art form and it’s this art versus business, these two loggerheads that go at it forever. But if publication, if the publishing world, the traditional publishing world is the route that you want to go down, just remember that you’ll be working with editors, you’ll be working with salespeople, you’ll be working with cover design people, audio book designers. That’s the thing. My name is on the front of my books, but it takes dozens and dozens of people, some people I’ve never met to get it on the shelf. And that goes to printers, to distributors, to booksellers, to bloggers, to podcast hosts, and remembering that it’s a collaborative effort, but everyone in the industry does it for a job.
(27:43): And if you want to do it as a job that you have to treat it like a job. The earlier you know that, I think the better chance you stand of being successful in this industry. And I wish I knew earlier than I did, right? That this isn’t me sitting in my high horse or sitting in an ivory tour. I learned the hard way. I’m published 10 years in 2025. It’s my 10th anniversary as a published author, but I’ve been writing since I was 17. I’ve been writing since, well, I’ve been writing seriously quote-unquote since I was 17. And it took me the guts of another decade before I was published. And a lot of mistakes that I made when I was younger could very easily have been avoided. And I’m always at pains. I’m always at pains to pass that knowledge on because I don’t want you guys, I don’t want anybody making the same mistakes that I did because it’s needless. So there we go. Lecture over.
Debbi (28:45): What are you currently working on?
Jonathan (28:48): So there are two more Bingo books that are being looked at by my editor. They’re not written, they’re just proposals at the moment. I’m out in submission with my, a time recording went out on submission with my agent for a new standalone Canadian set murder mystery. It’s a little harder, little harder edge than my cozy stuff. And it was a lot of fun to write, a lot of work, a totally different mentality and shift in me as a writer to be able to write that. You always say with these things, gritty or darker, all these sort of platitudes that go into these things, but they’re platitudes because they’re true. Not having to resist the temptation to not have as many gags or as many deliberately or you hope deliberately humorous quips left, right, and center, while still maintaining a lightness to the darkness to try and bounce it out a little bit. So that’s really, really exciting. I’m really, really nervous about that because it’s the first time I’ve been on submission for about seven years and it doesn’t get any easier. You don’t get any more confident with these types of things or I don’t, anyway,
I’m really, really nervous about that because it’s the first time I’ve been on submission for about seven years and it doesn’t get any easier. You don’t get any more confident with these types of things or I don’t, anyway,
Debbi (30:09): I know, know the feeling.
Jonathan (30:11): And yeah. And I’ve got standalone. I’ve got a new standalone coming out. It was meant to be coming out in the UK in July, but it’s actually been pushed back to February 2026.
(30:21): And again, that’s on the cozier scale that’s coming out from Harper Collins called All At Sea. So it’ll be out here in North America, probably in about a year’s time, roundabout now maybe July, August time. And that was a lot of fun to do as well. Brand new characters, completely different setting. Totally different from Cambria. It’s set in the Mediterranean on a luxurious yacht with a celebrity crew, and the captain is found murdered, and two of the celebrities have to team up to catch the killer. So yeah, just a little bit. Talking about James Bond, it feels like my ode to James Bond, because it’s all these glamorous locations with glamorous people and action. And there’s jet skis and there’s police racing through the streets of La Spezia in Italy. So yeah, really, really fun to do because the Bingo Hall Detectives is very homespun. It’s home counties, it’s tea, it’s woolen jumpers, it’s British sensibilities. Whereas this one that went all out the window, it was good to be let loose. So that’s out in February in the UK and it’ll probably be about a year’s time for North America, which I’m very, very excited about. Really excited.
Debbi (31:45): Excellent. Congratulations. That’s wonderful.
Jonathan (31:46): Thank you very much. Thank you.
Debbi (31:47): For all your success.
Jonathan (31:49): Thank you.
Debbi (31:50): Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish up?
Jonathan (31:53): No, not at all. Just that the questioning has been wonderful, and I get very nervous with these things because I used to be a journalist and I was on the other side of the mic for a very, very long time. And I remember what I was like as a journalist, and you’ve been a wonderful, very gracious host, Debbi, so thank you very much.
Debbi (32:14): Oh, it was my pleasure. Believe me. Thank you. It was a pleasure having you on. And to everyone listening, if you’ve enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. Also consider becoming a patron of the show on Patreon. Check out our Patreon page where we have bonus episodes and sample chapters from my work. In fact, I put up whole novels, but you have to be at a certain level of patronage to get to them. So anyway, check us out there. And on that note, I’ll just say thanks for listening. Our next guest will be Harper Kincaid. Until then, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you!
*****
PS: I was accidentally in Taggart – it inspired a crime novel.
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By Debbi Mack
5
55 ratings
My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is journalist and crime writer Jonathan Whitelaw.
Wherein we discuss important topics like treating your writing career like a business. Along with really great topics, like Doctor Who, James Bond, and Terry Pratchett. Just sayin’. 🙂
You can download a PDF of the transcript here.
Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is an award-winning journalist and author. He once worked in Scottish politics, then moved into journalism where he covered a wide variety of topics for major publications. He appears on the Bloody Brothers Podcast and the Bloody Scotland Book Club. His novel, The Concert Hall Killer, was recently shortlisted for the Whodunnit Award for Best Traditional Mystery by the Crime Writers of Canada. Originally from Scotland, from Glasgow, he is now living in Canada in Alberta. It’s my pleasure to have with me Jonathan Whitelaw. Hi, Jonathan. How are you doing?
Jonathan (01:37): Hi there. I’m very well, thank you, Debbi. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Debbi (01:42): Oh, it is a pleasure to have you on, and I love your accent. It is so beautiful and musical.
Jonathan (01:49): Thank you very much. It’s the only one I have.
Debbi (01:51): I love it. I love it. It’s great.
Jonathan (01:54): Very kind.
Debbi (01:55): What was it that took you from Glasgow to Alberta?
Jonathan (02:00): My wife. Short and sweet and simple answer, much like her, except the simple part, obviously far from it, she’s the brains of the operation and I often say that I always like to try to think that I’m the eye candy of the operation, but I’m not even that, so she’s that as well. So yeah, my wife’s a doctor, so a few years ago it was pre-pandemic actually. She was at a conference and she got chatting to an expat doctor who’s working in a place called North Battleford in Saskatchewan, and he was there promoting Western Canada. And him and my wife got chatting and he effectively offered her a job, but of course, with the pandemic and then my wife completing their training and stuff like that, I was having a baby. Everything got kicked into the very, very long grass for a couple of years, and the job was no longer there when we were ready for it. So by that point, we’d really talked ourselves into it and we’d explored all the options and stuff like that about coming over and visas and permanent residency and things and citizenship beyond that. And we found that there was a job opening in Alberta. A place called Grand Prairie, which is about an hour’s flight northwest from Calgary. And that was it. We up sticks and moved wagons west in May 2022, and we haven’t looked back since.
[W]e found that there was a job opening in Alberta. A place called Grand Prairie, which is about an hour’s flight northwest from Calgary. And that was it. We up sticks and moved wagons west in May 2022, and we haven’t looked back since.
Debbi (03:29): Wow. That’s really something.
Jonathan (03:31): Yeah
Debbi (03:32): You can write from anywhere, so that’s cool.
Jonathan (03:35): Exactly right. Well, I was a journalist as your very, very kind intro mentioned there. I was a journalist, but I write full-time now. I’ve been able to go full-time writing since we moved to Canada, so it’s over three years that I’ve been a full-time writer. And it was a mixture of circumstances. It was a mixture of where we were going and what we’re going to be doing and stuff like that, and The Bingo Hall Detectives as a series sort of picking up. So yeah, it’s been a great adventure. We’ve been made to feel very, very welcome here in Alberta and Canada in general.
Debbi (04:13): It’s fantastic.
Jonathan (04:14): And I get to go back to the UK all the time for work. I go back for festivals and stuff like that, and it’s only one flight from Calgary, which is great. So it’s just a red eye there, and then you’re back during the day. So it is good fun, and it’s a wonderful part of the world.
Debbi (04:29): That’s awesome. Yeah, I know as an American, we tend to look upon Canadians as being really nice people. Do you find that they’re very nice?
Jonathan (04:40): Oh, yes. Oh yeah. Very much. Very, very welcoming. And I think a lot of the reasons that we are so comfortable here is that we have been welcomed with open arms everywhere and anywhere we’ve gone. We’ve lived, in the three and a bit years that we’ve been here, we’ve stayed in three major cities in Alberta. Grand Prairie, Edmonton, and now Calgary and everywhere we go, we’ve been welcomed with open arms and been made to feel so at home. And it is home now, right? That’s the thing. When I go back to the UK, if I’m doing work, if I’m doing festivals and events and stuff like that, when I get back on the plane to fly across the Atlantic, I say it and I feel it. That’s me heading home. And we’re all very, very grateful as a family. We’re very, very grateful for that welcoming. And it’s made what has been quite a big life altering transition, so much more easier and so much more pleasant to do. So that’s fantastic. We’re delighted. We’re delighted. We’re delighted to be home.
I think a lot of the reasons that we are so comfortable here is that we have been welcomed with open arms everywhere and anywhere we’ve gone.
Debbi (05:44): Well. You chose the right country on the North American continent.
Jonathan (05:49): Yes.
Debbi (05:49): I think they have their own political problems, but they don’t have a tyrant in control, I think. (Ahem!)
Jonathan (05:55): That’s very, very true. Very, very true.
Debbi (05:57): I’ll try not to say anything more. Things get a little dicey around here.
Jonathan (06:03): Nothing more needed. Nothing more needed. Yeah, absolutely.
Debbi (06:05): No more need be said. Yes, no words. I just read the first chapter of The Garden Club Murders, by the way. And I think your writing is just awesome and can be hilarious at times.
Jonathan (06:18): Thank you very much.
Debbi (06:18): It’s just outright hilarious. Your characters are wonderful. Has anyone ever approached you about making a TV show out of your books?
Jonathan (06:27): Oh, you’re not allowed to ask that one, Debbi. That’s all pretty much on the wraps at the moment. You always ask it, right? You’re allowed to ask it. You should never tell a journalist what questions they can and can’t ask, as I famously did for over a decade, but I’m just not allowed to answer. So there we go. Mum’s the word, mum’s the word. What I will say is that it’s been a very, very exciting last couple of months, and that’s all you’re getting.
Debbi (07:00): Oh, wow. Well, I will look forward to seeing something that you wrote up on the telly.
Jonathan (07:05): Thank you very much.
Debbi (07:06): I certainly hope so. Your books are set in Cumbia.
Jonathan (07:11): Yes.
Debbi (07:12): Now I’ve heard of Cumbia, but I never knew where it was until now. So tell us about Cumbia. What is it like and how does it inform your fiction?
Jonathan (07:21): Yeah, it’s a county in England, northwest England. In fact, it’s the most Northwesterly county in England. It borders Scotland, it’s northern border borders Scotland, and it’s home to the Lake District, which as the name suggests is a huge, big national park filled with, I can never remember the amount of it, but it’s hundreds and hundreds of lakes. Biggest one’s Windermere. Ullswater’s another one, where the action takes place in the first book, and it’s acres and acres and acres, thousands of acres of this kind of unkempt, uninterrupted countryside, rolling hills, mountains, and you’ve got little pockets of humanity in there as well. So you’ve got Carlisle, which is a city, it was a fairly big city, but you’ve also got places like Kendal and Penrith where most of the action series takes place, and they’re all separated by these huge big swathes of open countryside.
So you’ve got Carlisle, which is a city, it was a fairly big city, but you’ve also got places like Kendal and Penrith where most of the action series takes place, and they’re all separated by these huge big swathes of open countryside.
(08:23): And it’s a place, it’s a place I know very, very well. I’d holiday there growing up. And when I was grown up, if you can call me grown up, I don’t know if a lot of people would argue that I’ve never grown up, me being one of them. But when you live in Scotland, when you grow up in Scotland, you live in Scotland, Cumbria as a region is always one of these places that you blink and you miss because you’re on the train. If you’re going down to, say, Manchester, Liverpool, London, or what have you. And it’s strangely underrepresented in fiction, modern fiction anyway. And certainly in crime and mystery fiction where you’ll maybe find fiction. Obviously you’ve got your big, big cities across the world, your Londons, your Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto, all these big, big cities have got dozens and dozens and dozens of crime and mystery novels set in them.
(09:19): But in the UK it tends to be either Scotland as a whole or London. Sometimes you get something in Manchester, Birmingham, sort of Midlands and stuff like that. But in terms of Cumbia as a whole, I think I’m one of maybe two or three mystery writers operating in the moment who use that as their back door, which I always thought before I started writing the first book, I always thought, that’s madness. It’s such a beautiful part of the world, beautiful part of the country, and it’s ready made for mystery. It’s these little pockets of humanity surrounded by endless countryside. And I always say that, I always say, you can always use some countryside when you’re a murder mystery writer because it’s a good place to hide a body.
It’s such a beautiful part of the world, beautiful part of the country, and it’s ready made for mystery. It’s these little pockets of humanity surrounded by endless countryside. And I always say that, I always say, you can always use some countryside when you’re a murder mystery writer because it’s a good place to hide a body.
Debbi (10:08): Yes, yes. Excellent point. I mean, even in film noir, you can see film noir with great big open spaces like The Hitch-hiker.
Jonathan (10:19): Absolutely.
Debbi (10:20): Takes place in absolute bleakness on the road with this crazy guy.
Jonathan (10:27): It adds to the atmosphere, right? It’s this sense of nothingness and I think isolation. Yeah, totally. And what would happen if something goes wrong out here? I think that there’s something very primal about that, that I think we can all experience. We all fear and well, Cumbria might not be necessarily on the scale of The Sahara Desert or something like that, or Death Valley. It’s not quite deserted Arizona or Nevada, but it can be frightening. And when you drive between these villages and towns and in cities at night, the place is completely dark. These are roads that don’t have streetlights on them, and you look out and you think, well, what’s going on over there? Or you don’t want to know what’s going on over there. So that’s the thing about murder mystery, is that there’s always that sinister element to it. Even if you write like me, if you write cozy mysteries, where you don’t necessarily see the knife go in, but the knife’s gone in, and then it’s still murder and all this kind of carry on. So what a rich, fertile playground for a writer to be able to use. And I’m very, very grateful, very, very privileged to do it.
Debbi (11:44): And I’m sure there must be a lot of history there, too.
Jonathan (11:46): Oh yeah. Tons, tons, tons. Yeah. Cumbria, I think maybe has a much more a richer historical literary prowess and legacy. William Wordsworth obviously is one of, if not the biggest name, who was home there and wrote about there and stuff like that. As I wander, softly as the cloud, all that stuff was all conjured up in the Lake District. So yeah, it seemed very, very odd to me that there was 300 years worth of literature and genre fiction that was never ever set there. So the series is very much my homage to there, and I’m always delighted, and I feel very, very lucky when I get compliments from people who do live there and they’ve stayed there and they see places that they know and they live in and they enjoy, and they’re always, Cumbrians are very, very friendly people, and they’re always happy to come and chat to me about it. And that’s a real gift, right? That’s a proper gift. It’s one of the gifts of being a writer is that you get that sort of experience. It’s very special.
Cumbrians are very, very friendly people, and they’re always happy to come and chat to me about it. And that’s a real gift, right? That’s a proper gift. It’s one of the gifts of being a writer is that you get that sort of experience. It’s very special.
Debbi (12:59): Absolutely. Yeah. It’s really nice that you get to showcase this place that most people
Jonathan (13:06): Exactly.
Debbi (13:07): Never get to see because it hasn’t been written about.
Jonathan (13:10): Exactly. Exactly.
Debbi (13:11): I think that’s awesome.
Jonathan (13:11): Awesome. Yeah, it’s really, really cool. In fact, the new one, the new book, The Garden Club Murders, is dedicated to Cumbia and its people. And it was something that I was adamant that I was going to do with the fourth book was a very, very small thank you to the area, a very, very small thank you to the people that have made this series the success that it is. When I collected the first book, won the Lakeland Book of the Year Prize for Fiction, which was a Cumbria award. And I remember when I went to collect the award, I was speechless, unbelievably, I was speechless. I know that is very, very difficult to get your head around, but I was genuinely speechless. And I said in my speech, I said, thank you, thank you for this. It’s not that I’m looking for recognition, it’s not that I ever felt that I needed that sort of validity from the people from Cumbria or the region, but that’s very much how I felt with it when I won that award. And like I say, it’s just really, really cool to be able to have, have an area like that kind of to myself.
Debbi (14:21): Yeah, it’s a nice achievement. Very much an achievement. What’s your writing schedule like?
Jonathan (14:29): Oh dear.
Debbi (14:30): Oh dear?
Jonathan (14:32): Yeah, schedule makes it sound organized. And I’m the least organized person on the face of the Earth. It’s busy. It’s busy. It’s busy, I think is the broad stroke. So I wrote three books last year. I wrote three novels in 2024, and some of that was unexpected, some of it was pre-planned. So I finished off, I did the edits at the beginning of the year for A Concert Hall Killer, which is the third Bingo book. And then I was due to write the fourth one, which I was going to do in the second half of the year. But in between, I had this idea for a puzzle book called Murder in Tinseltown, and I ran the idea past my agent, very, very speculatively. It was my nonfiction agent, and he loved it. He loved the idea of it. And I think we worked this out within 12 days, 10, 12 days of me having the idea and emailing them.
I wrote three novels in 2024, and some of that was unexpected, some of it was pre-planned.
(15:32): We were out in submission with a breakdown of how this was going to work. So it’s one of these, choose your own, choose your own path books from, if you remember, I’m showing my age here, but a certain vintage of readers will remember these types of books where it would be, say you’ve walked down a corridor, turn to page 72. If you take a left turn to page 160 if you want to take a right. And then you would go to the correspondent page and it would maybe move the story forward, or you would be eaten by a troll or something like that. So my wife, like I said, the brains of the operation, she’d been badgering me for years to write a modern up-to-date aimed at an adult readership, one of these for mystery.
(16:23): So I finally got round to doing it, and part of the deal that it was sold to Harper Collins on was that it would be ready for Christmas 2024. So I had maybe about eight, 10 weeks to write it from scratch. So that kind of took up all the summer, and then it pushed the fourth Bingo book into the distance a little bit. So by the time that we ended the calendar year last year, I’d written three books, but I’m a writer. This is what I’m meant to be doing. If I wasn’t to doing that, I’d be out vacuuming the carpet or doing lots and lots of laundry. So yeah, I’m not complaining about it. I’m not complaining about it.
Debbi (17:08): Very good. Very good. What authors have most inspired you to write?
Jonathan (17:14): The good one? I have so many. So many. I used to read a lot of Terry Pratchett when I was younger.
Debbi (17:21): Oh, yeah.
Jonathan (17:23): The late great Sir Terry Pratchett, in fact, much missed. He’s been gone, I think 10 years now. So yeah, I loved sci-fi and fantasy growing up. I still do, and I don’t read it as much or as often as I’d like to. But I always loved Terry Pratchett, I always love Terry Pratchett’s humour, and I loved how you pick up any of the Discworld novels, of which there’s what? Twenty-five, 30 or something like that. And, at its core, it’s a fantasy novel. It’s Dungeons and Dragons and Wizards and all the rest of it, but they’re also hilarious.
Debbi (18:02): Oh, yeah!
Jonathan (18:03): And it’s all an allegory for real life.
Debbi (18:07): Exactly!
Jonathan (18:08): What I always loved about Terry was that his mastery of language and his inherent hatred for authority figures, it all shone through the work. And he was able to compose characters, especially authoritarian characters, so well, and cut them down with just one sentence, with one quip, and bring them back down to size. And I love that, and I love that, and I love that in all media. I love it in TV shows and movies. And Terry Pratchett, for me, was the very, very best to do it. So I think the humor, certainly the humor element of it in my own work and in my own writing probably pays a lot homage to Terry Pratchett. And it is only an homage. I would never ever dream of liking myself to him, far from it. But yeah, lots and lots, lots and lots of writers for very, very different reasons.
What I always loved about Terry [Pratchett] was that his mastery of language and his inherent hatred for authority figures, it all shone through the work.
(19:12): I adored doing Shakespeare at school. I was one of those kids. I was one of those kids, that actually really enjoyed Shakespeare. There’s this whole thing that you’re not really meant to when you’re 12 years old, to enjoy all the language, get all the jokes and stuff. So yeah. Then mystery writers, you’ve got your godfather of mystery is Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes. Weirdly, you mentioned in my introduction there that I do work for the Bloody Scotland Festival and the book club and stuff like that. And I remember one of the first events that I did was the book club, and one of the books that we read was the second Sherlock Holmes novel, or novella, sorry. So it’s The Sign of the Four, I think it is. I’m someone, I’m sure listeners will correct me, which is fine. And I hadn’t read it for years.
(20:08): I hadn’t read it, I think since I was a teenager. And I came to it pretty fresh. And what amazed me was how modern it was, what amazed me in terms of the composition, in terms of how it’s written, in terms of the style. We as mystery writers still use styles and techniques that were on display in 1862 or whenever this novel was first published. And I was so, so amazed at how modern it felt and how fresh it felt, even though it was a hundred and what, 40 years old or something like that, 180 years old. So yeah, I’m in a really, really lucky position as a writer because I still do a lot of review work, so I get to read a lot of very, very fresh, a lot of new stuff, a lot of new writers, a lot of established writers who’ve got new work coming out, and I get to read them early. Some of them ask me to offer a blurb for the cover and the press and stuff like that, which always baffles me because you’re in trouble if you’ve got to ask me. That’s how I always look at it.
(21:13): But I’m always grateful to do it. And it is always lovely to see contemporaries and consider myself contemporary of these wonderful modern writers. I think that’s a very long winded way of saying that. I don’t actually have any favorites. There’s too many to pick. I couldn’t pick one.
Debbi (21:32): Terry Pratchett.
Jonathan (21:33): Terry Pratchett. For ease, we’ll go for Terry Pratchett.
Debbi (21:36): Absolutely. I love Terry Pratchett. Oh my gosh. And I only got to know about him maybe 15 years ago. That’s when I first got exposed to him through a blogger I happened to meet who likes Doctor Who.
Jonathan (21:50): Right. I see. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Of course. Of course.
Debbi (21:54): We connected over Doctor Who, James Bond, stuff like that. And then I find out about this Terry Pratchett, and I’m like, ooh, this guy’s great.
Jonathan (22:03): Debbi, you’re reading from my resume there. Doctor Who, James Bond, all that stuff. That’s all the good stuff, right?
Debbi (22:10): It’s awesome stuff.
Jonathan (22:12): We could probably fill another show with just talking about those things. Definitely.
Debbi (22:15): Probably. Yeah.
Jonathan (22:17): Yeah, absolutely.
Debbi (22:17): Maybe we should start a podcast about Doctor Who, an American and a Scot.
Jonathan (22:26): Scot. Yeah. A Scot.
Debbi (22:28): A Scot and an American on Doctor Who.
Jonathan (22:30): There we go. There we go. Well, we had an American set Doctor Who, right? We had the American set Doctor Who in 1996, and we’ve had plenty of Scots that played Doctor Who over the 60 plus years. So let’s do it.
Debbi (22:44): My gosh. I could really, I just love talking about Doctor Who because each one was so different, and I won’t comment on where the show is going now. It’s just kind like, what is … what?
Jonathan (22:58): Yeah, it’s different, right? It’s different.
Debbi (23:00): It is different.
Jonathan (23:01): Bring back the wobbly sets and the bubble wrap monsters. That’s what I think.
Debbi (23:05): Yeah, please bring back the terrible special effects. I love those.
Jonathan (23:09): Cheap and cheerful. That’s the way forward, right? Cheap and cheerful.
Debbi (23:11): That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe bring Tom Baker back for a guest appearance again? I love Tom Baker.
Jonathan (23:21): He’s very old. He’s very, very old. But I think he’s still got it though. He’s still got it. He’s still got it.
Debbi (23:25): He’s still got it.
Jonathan (23:26): Absolutely. Yep.
Debbi (23:27): Oh, Tom, hang in there, Tom. We love you.
Jonathan (23:30): Absolutely. He’s in his nineties now, I think. 92 or something like that. 93 years old.
Debbi (23:33): Something like that. Yeah.
Jonathan (23:35): Good. A good Scouser. My dad and my stepmom are from Liverpool, so yeah. Yeah, there you go. It’s that connection, right? It’s the five degrees of Kevin Bacon, but we’ll see Tom Baker this time.
Debbi (23:49): Alright. And Terry Pratchett.
Jonathan (23:52): And Terry Pratchett.
Debbi (23:53): Terry Pratchett and Tom Baker. Two favorites. I won’t even tell you how many Tardises I have in this room alone. It’s a little preposterous, but that’s okay.
Jonathan (24:05): It is. Okay.
Debbi (24:07): Let’s see. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in a writing career?
Jonathan (24:13): Well, you got to write, okay. I know that sounds glib, and I know that that sounds almost cheeky, but it’s true. It’s true. You got to write. I do a lot of teaching here in Alberta, creative writing, teaching specifically crime and mystery courses as well. And I always open my courses and I always open my classes and workshops with, at the end of the day, if you don’t write it, nobody gets to read it. Alright? And you can’t be a writer with it all just in your head. It doesn’t work that way. You can have the best characters, best plot, best ending. It’s not just crime and mystery. It could be anything, any genre, a literary fiction, anything, nonfiction, biography, you name it. If it stays in your head, nobody gets to enjoy it. Nobody else gets to enjoy it. And the wonderful thing about creative writing and the written word in novel format, short story, poetry, screenplay, whatever, is that it gets to be enjoyed by an audience. And people want to read it, right? People want to read your work. When we get over that hump, when we get over my bluntness, what I always say is remember that this is a professional industry.
You can have the best characters, best plot, best ending. It’s not just crime and mystery. It could be anything, any genre, a literary fiction, anything, nonfiction, biography, you name it. If it stays in your head, nobody gets to enjoy it.
(25:30): It’s a multi-trillion dollar global industry, and you need to be professional. And I always say to my classes, and if anyone is close enough to ask me for advice, I always say, you don’t need to be a professional writer to be professional about your writing.
Debbi (25:48): That’s right.
Jonathan (25:48): And that’s things like if you work on your manuscript and you want to query an agent or query a publisher about maybe getting it published, for example, if that’s the path that you want to go down, do your research. Find the agents and the publishers that publish your work and your type of work. There’s absolutely no point in sending your sci-fi masterpiece to an agent who only specializes in romance because it’s not what they do. And these agents will undo, advertise what they want and what they represent and what they look for. So be professional about your writing, not just from an industry point of view, but for yourself, right? It’s hard work. It takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of imagination and stuff like that. A lot of dedication. It takes a long time.
(26:41): You owe it to yourself to be professional about your writing and treat it with the respect that it deserves. And you as a writer deserve, I always say it makes me sound and feel a little grubby because at the end of the day, it is an art form and it’s this art versus business, these two loggerheads that go at it forever. But if publication, if the publishing world, the traditional publishing world is the route that you want to go down, just remember that you’ll be working with editors, you’ll be working with salespeople, you’ll be working with cover design people, audio book designers. That’s the thing. My name is on the front of my books, but it takes dozens and dozens of people, some people I’ve never met to get it on the shelf. And that goes to printers, to distributors, to booksellers, to bloggers, to podcast hosts, and remembering that it’s a collaborative effort, but everyone in the industry does it for a job.
(27:43): And if you want to do it as a job that you have to treat it like a job. The earlier you know that, I think the better chance you stand of being successful in this industry. And I wish I knew earlier than I did, right? That this isn’t me sitting in my high horse or sitting in an ivory tour. I learned the hard way. I’m published 10 years in 2025. It’s my 10th anniversary as a published author, but I’ve been writing since I was 17. I’ve been writing since, well, I’ve been writing seriously quote-unquote since I was 17. And it took me the guts of another decade before I was published. And a lot of mistakes that I made when I was younger could very easily have been avoided. And I’m always at pains. I’m always at pains to pass that knowledge on because I don’t want you guys, I don’t want anybody making the same mistakes that I did because it’s needless. So there we go. Lecture over.
Debbi (28:45): What are you currently working on?
Jonathan (28:48): So there are two more Bingo books that are being looked at by my editor. They’re not written, they’re just proposals at the moment. I’m out in submission with my, a time recording went out on submission with my agent for a new standalone Canadian set murder mystery. It’s a little harder, little harder edge than my cozy stuff. And it was a lot of fun to write, a lot of work, a totally different mentality and shift in me as a writer to be able to write that. You always say with these things, gritty or darker, all these sort of platitudes that go into these things, but they’re platitudes because they’re true. Not having to resist the temptation to not have as many gags or as many deliberately or you hope deliberately humorous quips left, right, and center, while still maintaining a lightness to the darkness to try and bounce it out a little bit. So that’s really, really exciting. I’m really, really nervous about that because it’s the first time I’ve been on submission for about seven years and it doesn’t get any easier. You don’t get any more confident with these types of things or I don’t, anyway,
I’m really, really nervous about that because it’s the first time I’ve been on submission for about seven years and it doesn’t get any easier. You don’t get any more confident with these types of things or I don’t, anyway,
Debbi (30:09): I know, know the feeling.
Jonathan (30:11): And yeah. And I’ve got standalone. I’ve got a new standalone coming out. It was meant to be coming out in the UK in July, but it’s actually been pushed back to February 2026.
(30:21): And again, that’s on the cozier scale that’s coming out from Harper Collins called All At Sea. So it’ll be out here in North America, probably in about a year’s time, roundabout now maybe July, August time. And that was a lot of fun to do as well. Brand new characters, completely different setting. Totally different from Cambria. It’s set in the Mediterranean on a luxurious yacht with a celebrity crew, and the captain is found murdered, and two of the celebrities have to team up to catch the killer. So yeah, just a little bit. Talking about James Bond, it feels like my ode to James Bond, because it’s all these glamorous locations with glamorous people and action. And there’s jet skis and there’s police racing through the streets of La Spezia in Italy. So yeah, really, really fun to do because the Bingo Hall Detectives is very homespun. It’s home counties, it’s tea, it’s woolen jumpers, it’s British sensibilities. Whereas this one that went all out the window, it was good to be let loose. So that’s out in February in the UK and it’ll probably be about a year’s time for North America, which I’m very, very excited about. Really excited.
Debbi (31:45): Excellent. Congratulations. That’s wonderful.
Jonathan (31:46): Thank you very much. Thank you.
Debbi (31:47): For all your success.
Jonathan (31:49): Thank you.
Debbi (31:50): Is there anything you’d like to add before we finish up?
Jonathan (31:53): No, not at all. Just that the questioning has been wonderful, and I get very nervous with these things because I used to be a journalist and I was on the other side of the mic for a very, very long time. And I remember what I was like as a journalist, and you’ve been a wonderful, very gracious host, Debbi, so thank you very much.
Debbi (32:14): Oh, it was my pleasure. Believe me. Thank you. It was a pleasure having you on. And to everyone listening, if you’ve enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. Also consider becoming a patron of the show on Patreon. Check out our Patreon page where we have bonus episodes and sample chapters from my work. In fact, I put up whole novels, but you have to be at a certain level of patronage to get to them. So anyway, check us out there. And on that note, I’ll just say thanks for listening. Our next guest will be Harper Kincaid. Until then, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you!
*****
PS: I was accidentally in Taggart – it inspired a crime novel.
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