Literary Birthday – 13 August – Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Happy Birthday, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, born on 13 August 1948.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Quotes

1. A big part of research for every Bill Slider book involves wandering about the streets of London, finding new places for the action to happen, so I can put the look and feel and atmosphere and smell of them in the books.
2. I know some crime writers like to map everything out before they start, and I suppose that’s the correct way to go about it, but I’ve always been a seat-of-the-pants sort of writer.
3. I start with the corpse, because – well, that’s where it starts, doesn’t it? I generally know something about the deceased, but never everything – their history unfolds to me as to Bill and the team as we go along. Quite often I don’t know, within a few guesses, who the murderer is until the end. It makes it more fun that way. I write my books so I can find out what happened!
4. I don’t see myself as an historical writer or a mystery writer or even both, but simply as a writer. My business is to build with words. Just as an architect can design you a house or a factory or a church, so I can design you a book in any genre. The principles are the same: rounded characters, realistic dialogue, accurate language, and an internal logic holding the action together.
5. There is a detective element in historicals: historical research aims to uncover the truth, to resolve the difference between what people said they did, what other people said they did – and what they actually did, as revealed by physical records. Having researched for historicals certainly helped me when it came to writing mysteries.
6. I spend time with police detectives, getting to know their attitudes, concerns, and language. I read police in-house magazines. I do a certain amount of legal research. And I do a great deal of forensic research, though that’s mainly from books. I walk about Shepherd’s Bush and environs. And I read up the newspaper reports of real crimes.
7. I never have had the least control over any of my characters. Writing for me is like watching a movie and writing down what I see. I sometimes try to exert discipline over my people, but if I try to make them do anything they don’t want to, they just freeze up, and I find myself staring at a blank screen.

Source for quotes 1-3: Joffe Books and quotes 4-7: Trivium Publishing

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is a British writer of historical, romance, and mystery novels. She wrote her first novel while at university and in 1972 won the Young Writers’ Award with The Waiting Game. The birth of the Morland Dynasty series enabled her to become a full-time writer in 1979. The series was originally intended to comprise 12 volumes, but it has proved so popular that it has now been extended to 36. In 1993 she won the RNA Novel of the Year Award with Emily, the third volume of her Kirov Saga, a trilogy set in nineteenth century Russia, and she also writes the internationally acclaimed Bill Slider Mysteries.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson
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