Rod's Ramblings
A podcast reminiscing about cultural events and how they affected this sixty something. Join me as we travel on a nostalgic journey through the cultural events that have shaped our lives. From classical composers, iconic music moments, rock stars and unforgettable TV shows. Let’s reminisce about how these events have influenced us all. Whether you’re a fellow baby boomer or just love a good story, Rod’s Ramblings offers a heartfelt, informative and entertaining look at the stories behind these great events. Cheers, Rod.
Rod's Ramblings
Authors Under The Spotlight - Mark Edwards
Imagine a world where a psychological thriller is inspired by real-life experiences. That’s exactly what happened with Mark Edwards’ hit novel "The Magpies," which marked my first exploration into the realm of e-books. In this episode of Rod's Ramblings, I share my passion for the tactile joy of paperbacks and the seamless convenience of e-readers and audiobooks, all while celebrating the illustrious career of Mark Edwards. Journey with me through the evolution of reading formats as I delve into Mark’s gripping trilogy, his creative partnership with Louise Voss, and the captivating allure of his storytelling prowess that turns ordinary lives into extraordinary tales.
Join our deep dive into the heart of crime novels and the creation of compelling characters like Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon and Kate Maddox. This episode doesn't just explore the suspenseful plots and relatable personas crafted by Mark Edwards and other celebrated authors like Anne Cleaves but also sheds light on the personal touch Mark brings to his work through social media and literary events. You’ll hear stories of tension and intrigue, the kind that leaves you sleepless with thrill. As a special sneak peek, we unravel the chilling premise of "The Lucky Ones," where victims meet their end with blissful smiles. Get ready for an episode that promises both heart-pounding excitement and a heartfelt appreciation for the art of storytelling.
Hello there and welcome to Rod's Ramblings, a podcast reminiscing about cultural events and how they've affected this 60-something. Up until now, each of my rambles has had some connection to the world of music. However, I thought we'd move away from the norm and go down the route of another interest of mine, that of books, and, in this episode, a particularly favourite author of mine, mark Edwards. You can't beat a good read, can you? Whether it be catching a chapter or two on the commute to work, whilst relaxing at the end of a busy day, or finding out why that cherubic young thing became the nation's most wanted man or woman as your latest crime thriller reaches its conclusion.
Speaker 1:Reading has changed a lot over the years, and we now have the choice of how we do it. There's the good, old-fashioned paper version, being read to by the book's author or via one of the many e-readers that are now available. I'm keen on all three forms, depending on the circumstances I find myself in, with each one having its advantages and disadvantages. My preferred choice has to be the old-fashioned hardback or paperback. The book itself has a unique smell to it, a bit like a new car, but not quite as expensive. The experience of cracking it open for the first time is unique, and you're constantly given visual reminders of how far from the end, you are a vital tool when deciding whether the latest evidence you've been given is a red herring or not.
Speaker 1:An old work colleague of mine, tony Daniels, introduced me to listening books, evangelising how they could free up time to pursue more than one hobby at a time. This was proven to be the case when I used to go for a long run on a Sunday morning listening to the True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth or Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It also distracted me from the extremely steep hill that I would have to negotiate on my way home. The third format is that of e-readers. The ability to store a collection of books almost the size of your local library on a device which easily fits into your pocket has got to go down as one of the most amazing feats of technology of the last century. Having said that, as the book always opens at the most recent page I've read, I can never remember the titles of the books I'm reading. Oh well, a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 1:One of the first e-books that I read was the Magpies by Mark Edwards, the author that we're featuring today. It was classed as a psychological thriller, which happens to be my favourite genre, and the associated blurb told me that he was from Wolverhampton, a mere 13 miles down the road. So I wasn't only helping a new author, I was supporting a local lad. The Magpies is a story of a young couple starting out on their life together, positively planning for the future. They move into an apartment and, despite being initially welcomed by their neighbours, things take a turn for the worse and their new friends soon become the neighbours from hell. I understand that Mark got the original idea as a result of personal experiences when he and his girlfriend were living in their first flat. Without giving anything away, the Magpie series is actually a trilogy, with the sequel, a Murder of Magpies, being a short story set five years on from the end of the Magpies, and the concluding full-length novel, last of the Magpies, being set a further 12 months into the future. Last of the Magpies won the 2019 Dead Good Readers Award for its category, and its protagonist, lucy Newton, won the Cat and Mouse Award for the most elusive villain in the novel the Magpies. All three books are a fantastic introduction to Mark's work and well worth a read. So what do we know about? Our featured author?
Speaker 1:Mark Edwards was born in 1970 and grew up on the south coast of England, quickly demonstrating signs of his future storytelling abilities when he began producing comic strips at primary school. As his love of storytelling grew, so did his love of reading, and in interviews he describes how he fell in love with authors as diverse as Donna Tartt, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2014, ian McEwan, who Times Magazine have listed as one of the top 50 British authors, and Brett Easton Ellis, author of the great novel American Psycho. Before settling down with those great masters of the horror novel, stephen King and James Herbert, his journey has been a long one, balancing his aspirations to be a successful author alongside the need to pay the rent. Over the years, he's lived and worked in Japan, teaching English as a foreign language, worked in a food packing factory, carried out numerous customer services jobs and, as frustrations grew regarding the constant rejection letters from publishing houses, he pursued a career in marketing. His first big break came in 1999, when he was featured in a BBC documentary regarding new and upcoming authors. It was here that he was spotted by another writer, louise Voss, who suggested that they work together, collaborating on psychological thrillers. Despite developing a good working relationship. It was only in 2010, when self-publishing became popular, that Mark and Louise began to achieve the success that they dreamt of. The first book that they had written together, killing Cupid, suddenly became a bestseller, shooting to number two in the Amazon charts for their genre, and their second novel, catch your Death, quickly followed, reaching number one. The experience Mark had gained in the world of marketing was finally paying dividends.
Speaker 1:Before I say any more about Mark and Louise's collaborations, if I asked you what makes a good story, what would you say? A great plot with lots of twists and turns, interesting settings, sharp dialogue, conflict and resolution. These are just a few, but one feature that I'd suggest is in all of your answers is strong characterisation. When Anne Cleaves wrote the Vera novels, we grew to know DCI Vera Stanhope, ds Aidan Healey and DC's Jackie Williams and Kenny Lockhart. In the Shetland novels, we similarly got to know DI Jimmy Perez, ds Alison Tosh McIntosh and DC Sandy Wilson, so much so that we started to think of them as our friends and family.
Speaker 1:Mark and Louise have also done this by introducing us to Detective Inspector Patrick Lennon and former Research Centre volunteer Kate Maddox At the time of this podcast. I think they've written four novels together From the Cradle and the Blissfully Dead, featuring Patrick Lennon, and Catch your Death and All Fall Down, featuring Maddox. Any thoughts that Mark should introduce DI Lennon gently are quickly thrown out of the window. In From the Cradle, when he has to deal with child abduction, a body found in a park and a rapidly ticking clock. In the Blissfully Dead, edwards and Vosch reveal more details of Lennon's life, both privately and professionally, and make us all think twice about social media, as fans of the biggest boy band in the world are targeted. Catch your Death takes us into the dark world of science, with our heroine on the run whilst trying to solve a puzzle from her past, and All Fall Down has her involved in a chase to discover the cure for a devastatingly contagious strain of virus. Is it too soon, bearing in mind the events of the last two years, I hear you ask, as the book was originally published in 2012,. I think that the authors can be forgiven, but in the end, only you can decide.
Speaker 1:Mark has also been successful in his own right, producing 15 books which he describes as being similar to Stephen King, but without the supernatural elements. He likes to start each book with a simple idea or an event which he has personally experienced. When asked about his way of portraying ordinary people in extraordinary situations, he said I'm interested in the way normal people react to difficult situations and the scary things that happen. I like to create characters and make everything go wrong for them. A couple of examples of this are Follow you Home and his latest novel, no Place to Run. Follow you Home was written following an incident in France when Mark was mugged and had to hitchhike back home. The story finds a young couple, daniel and Laura, taking a trip to Europe for what's supposed to be their trip of a lifetime. However, an unnerving encounter with a young couple on a night train forces them to cut their dream trip short and flee home. Once they get back to London, they vow never to talk about what happened that night, but as they try to go about their normal lives, they realise the danger that they try to go about their normal lives. They realise the danger that they're in and that their nightmare has only just begun.
Speaker 1:Mark got the idea for his latest book, no Place to Run, as a result of a road and rail trip to California that he went on in 2019. He describes it as follows I just had a vision of a woman being chased through a forest and someone witnessing it from a train. I don't know where it came from. This happens a lot. Things just pop into my head. It was such an intriguing scene. I don't know who she was or what the story would be, but I thought it was such a great opening for a book.
Speaker 1:Without giving too much away, he continues to describe the plot as follows it's about a British man named Aidan Faith who lives in Seattle and works in the tech industry. His 15-year-old sister, scarlett, goes to stay with him and a few days into the trip she goes missing. Aidan wakes up one morning and she's not there. He can't find her and she's not answering the phone. There's a huge manhunt, but she's never found. Two years later, an elderly woman is travelling by train from Los Angeles to Seattle. Just as dawn breaks and the train is travelling through a forest, the woman looks out of the window and sees a young woman being chased through a forest clearing by a man. The woman is convinced that it's missing girl Scarlett, because it was a big story in Seattle at the time. Her face was on posters and it was all over the news. She contacts Aidan, who's sceptical about whether the woman she's seeing is Scarlett, but as he's got nothing to lose, he goes to Northern Carolina and starts to look for her. Sounds good, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:With these books being translated into more than 12 languages across the globe and sales over four and a half million, mark is clearly a very successful author. However, I like the way that, like the rest of us, he still gets nervous Whilst promoting the release of no Place to Run, he said. I also like the way that he keeps in touch with his readers between books. He regularly hosts Facebook events where he talks about his writing, gives advice about getting started in storytelling, answers readers' questions and gives away prizes His recently promoted appearances at this year's Capital Crime Writing Festival in London and Bloody Scotland in Falkirk and often demonstrates his quirky sense of humour, recently showing off his newly quaff-eared pink hair. As we come to the end of this episode, I'd like to give you a taste of one of Mark's novels. He's kindly given me the okay to read an extract from one of his novels on the podcast, and the one I've chosen is one of my favourites the Lucky Ones, which was published in June 2017.
Speaker 1:The book is described as follows it was the happiest day of her life. Little did she know that it was also the last. When a woman's body is found in the grounds of a ruined priory, detective Imogen Evans realises she is dealing with a serial killer, a killer whose victims appear to die in a state of bliss eyes open, smiles forever frozen on their faces. A few miles away, single dad Ben Hoffland believes his fortunes are changing at last. Forced to move back to the sleepy village where he grew up following the breakdown of his marriage, ben finally finds work. What's more, the bullies who have been terrorising his son, ollie, disappear For the first time in months. Ben feels lucky, but he is unaware that someone is watching him and Ollie, someone who wants nothing but happiness for Ben. Happiness and death here is the prologue.
Speaker 1:As soon as she saw the van parked sideways, blocking the narrow lane ahead of her, fiona knew that she'd made a mistake. She shouldn't have cycled home. She should have accepted the lift, but she could imagine the curtain-twitching old guy next door, the one with all the neighbourhood watch stickers in his window, mentioning to Trevor that a strange younger man had dropped her off. Besides, she'd wanted to ride home, the wind against her body, legs pumping in time with her heart, her new beautiful heart. Gliding through those country lanes, sun low in the just spring sky, empty fields stretching to the horizon in every direction.
Speaker 1:Fiona had felt like a girl again, a teenager riding home from her first boyfriend's house to sneak inside, past her parents' closed bedroom door, to lie on her bed and replay the events of the evening. She thrummed with rediscovered pleasure. Every nerve ending, every hair on her body buzzed with life. The world seemed like it was made for her. The even song of the birds in the trees was the soundtrack to her second act. The faint, acrid sense of a distant bonfire signified the burning of her old, unhappy life.
Speaker 1:Earlier, in his bed, the sheets half ripped from the mattress, his handsome face on the pillow, beside her, an old song playing on the radio, she'd experienced a wave of pleasure unlike any she'd ever known. I want to run naked out onto the street and dance across the lawn, let everyone see how happy I am, she told him. He laughed, tracing a line across her belly with his forefinger why don't you? Because, she said, kissing and pulling him on top of her again. I'm kind of busy right now doing this. She knew it was crazy. She was 49 and he was nearly half that, 20 years younger.
Speaker 1:When they met, when they realised he was flirting with her, she had thought he was just being a tease. But back home a few hours later, she had surprised Trevor by suggesting sex. For the first time in months, she'd closed her eyes while Trevor made love to her in his mechanical way and thought about that face, those strong legs, the muscles in his arms. It was a delicious fantasy. That was all Except now, it wasn't because he thought she was beautiful. He told her age meant nothing. In her most lucid moments, when they weren't in bed, when he wasn't looking at her in that way, she knew it wasn't serious, just fun, an adventure, the most wonderful, thrilling adventure. And today it seemed like that adventure would last forever. Didn't she deserve it? Good luck comes in threes, everybody said, and her beautiful young lover was the third thing. She'd been lost in these thoughts, keen to get home to her bath, reliving the afternoon with a glass of wine among scented bubbles.
Speaker 1:When she'd turned into the lane and seen the van ahead, fiona slowed down, suddenly aware that the birds had stopped singing. The sun was already setting light, bleeding from the sky and the hedgerows crowding the lane that had turned from bright green to dark grey. The lamp on her bicycle cast weak light onto the road ahead and as she slowed down, straining to see through the dark windows of the van in front of her, there wasn't enough room to cycle around it. She would have to get off and push. Why would someone park across the middle of a country lane? Perhaps it crashed, skidded to a halt and was stuck needing help. The person inside could be injured or sick.
Speaker 1:She took the phone out of her pocket, but she had no reception. She was torn. She wanted to turn the bike around, get the hell out of there. But what if the driver was hurt? There was no sign of life from within and it was getting darker by the minute. She couldn't just leave without seeing if the driver needed her help. Somebody had helped her, hadn't they? The universe had bestowed gifts upon her. If she cycled away now, rejecting the chance to be a good Samaritan, the karmic balance in the world might well shift and all the good luck that she'd experienced recently would drain away, sending her back to the darker days, the days before. She wouldn't risk that. Gently, she laid her bike on the ground and took a few steps closer to the van. Hello, she called. There was no response.
Speaker 1:Breathing deeply, her strong new heart pounding inside her chest, fiona strode up to the van and put her nose to the glass. She jumped back as a man's face loomed up in the window. He was shrouded by darkness but she could see his teeth. He was smiling, an odd smile, the kind she'd seen on the faces of born-again Christians, people who knew they were bound for heaven. He didn't appear to be injured or sick.
Speaker 1:Confused, she backed away and he opened the door, gesturing her to come closer. Hello, fiona, he said. She froze, peering closer. The pallid interior light inside the van had come on when the man opened the door, but his face was masked by shadows. Do I know you? She asked.
Speaker 1:With a sudden movement that startled her, he jumped down from the driver's seat and moved towards her. She took another step back. Don't be frightened, he said, still smiling. What are you? Her mouth stopped working when she saw what he was holding. She tried to run, but he was too fast, overtaking her and blocking her way.
Speaker 1:The van was behind her. There was nowhere to go. You really mustn't be afraid, fiona, he said, arms stretched wide like he wanted to give her a hug. Except one hand gripped a shotgun, with its barrel pointed to the darkening sky. I'm a friend, I don't know you, she said. Does anyone truly know anyone else? The oily smile returned and as he came towards her, lowering the gun in front of him and pointing it right at her beautiful new heart, fiona realised that the happiest day of her life would also be her last. That's not bad, is it? Thanks for listening to my rumble about Mark Edwards and I hope you enjoyed hearing the prologue to my ramble about Mark Edwards. And I hope you enjoyed hearing the prologue. I'll be sharing stories from more authors in the future, but in the meantime I'm off to read no Place to Run. So until the next time on Rod's Ramblings, cheers and take care.
