PRISCILLA MASTERS

Photograph by Oliver Lyon
Oliver Lyon's email: oliverlyon@hotmail.com

Priscilla Masters The Person  Joanna Piercy Series   Martha Gunn Series   Medical Mysteries
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Priscilla lives in near the Shropshire/Staffs border, works part time as a respiratory nurse in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, has two grown up sons and one grandson!

Below is the result of a conversation with Priscilla, the author.

How do I write?

"It's a question which is frequently put to me at literary events. And it's more tricky than you'd imagine to answer.
I chew over an issue which interests me for about a year or so, as well as picturing the characters who will illustrate my point! Then I read around the subject. Often the "reading around" bit is quite obscure. Witchcraft, The Life of Houdini, books on art, psychology and a lot of WI books about the villages in the Staffordshire Moorlands for the Joanna Piercy books. Plus a lot of cycling which is great for stimulating the brain! The Martha Gunn books on the other hand, require reading about Shropshire, jurisprudence, Abba and football! The medical stand-alones mean me dipping my head into the Medical Journals, Pulse, GP, The British Medical Journal and so on. Plus listening very hard to my colleagues’ moans, groans and comments about today’s NHS. Watch out for a novel set around the subject of “Advanced Directives”. It will be quite a problem in the future and lead to some very interesting issues. Great background for murder mysteries! And of course my patients are often keen to share a tale or two with me.

The great thing about writing is that any negative experience can be turned into a novel. A bad day at work, the car being stolen, computer hackers. Nothing is wasted.

And now, how? The mechanics.

First of all I would discuss my ideas for a proposed novel with my literary agent, Juliet Burton. She can often make helpful comments which can save you wasting time. Then, with a dictionary and a Thesaurus by my side, I write straight into the screen, editing bits and pieces, re-writing time after time after time after time . . .  Holding my breath I send it to Juliet who corrects glaring errors and then forwards it to my publisher, Severn House.

The odd thing is that by the time the book actually comes out (roughly a year after I've spent the advance) I'm heavily into the next book so my audience often have to remind me of names, places, events and so on.

So - nothing magical about it except that sometimes ideas flow so fast my fingers can hardly keep up. At other times I clean the house, dig the garden or go to work.

My greatest pleasure is people telling me they've enjoyed reading my books and the camaraderie of the Crime Writers’ Association. I still have to pinch myself when I’m in the company of writers whose work has entertained me for years. The other day I actually met Agatha Christie’s grandson. How about that?

Both reading and writing have given me great pleasure over the years so I'm glad to share my stories."