Sean Campbell

I was always a bookworm and read pretty much anything I could get my hands on. Inevitably, that was whatever was in the local charity shop. Like many, I loved Lord of the Rings (but somehow managed not to read the Hobbit until much later on). My slightly-more-obscure pick would be Timothy’s Zahn’s Hand Thrawn Duology, a pair of Star Wars novels released when I was 12. It was the scope of having a whole universe that worked so well for me. The threads spanned criminal enterprises in space (Talon Karde, a criminal dealing in information, sticks in my memory) while also dealing with the usual array of interpersonal relationships, life-or-death action scenes, and the staggering detail around places, peoples, species that must’ve been an absolute bugger to edit (especially with an Expanded Universe that runs to hundreds of books by almost as many authors; it’s hard enough keeping 7 or 8 books internally consistent!).

My English teacher was a curmudgeonly old so-and-so who often described having his downstairs loo decorated with decades of rejection notes. For some reason, he’d decided that all the girls were naturally brilliant and English and that his classroom wasn’t the place for boys. Totally daft (especially as he, a man, was head of English, and his “manly” subject of maths had a woman in charge). I have a vivid memory of being told I couldn’t have written a short story I’d turned in for homework. Who’s laughing now, eh?

What have you written to date?

I’ve written about a million words of London-based crime spanning the 8 DCI Morton books (inc 1 seasonal novella), the DI Rafferty series, and my standalone revenge thriller, The Grifter. They’re all high-concept crime novels, each exploring a different idea but with a common set of characters (and a very loose series arc for Morton’s personal life).

Right now I’m working on re-editing one old book (Cleaver Square), tidying it up before I re-release it with a shiny new cover to match the others.

But my main projects are three new books. I’m writing “Damned by the Dead”, my second DI Rafferty novel which follows on from Murdered by the Mob. In this one, the discovery of a cache of weapons in a dead man’s house tie together previously-unlinked cases allowing the Met to get one step closer, finally, to nailing the Bakowski Crime Syndicate once and for all.

My second is a project with Ali Gunn writing about a couple who adopt a child with psychopathic traits (children can’t, by definition, be psychopaths) and he grows up to become a lawyer who exploits a historical scandal for his own ends.

The third is a spec fic novel, my first non-crime story which is in the early plotting stages. It’s high concept so it’s a little early to share right now but watch this space.

I was bet I couldn’t write a book. As people might’ve guessed, I’m always game for a challenge. To up the ante, I set myself a hard time limit of 90 days to write, edit, and publish my debut. 23 days later, Dead on Demand was the result.

Pretty much. Some days it’s not a manuscript. About a third of my time is spent on research. I interview experts, talk to lawyer friends about interesting (anonymised) cases, read up on case reports, scientific journals, and the like. I take a lot of notes most of which never sees the light of day as it’s not always relevant to my current WIP.

Another third of my time goes on marketing and business admin. That’s everything from interviews like this to giveaways (and then posting them; packaging and posting swag takes a lot more time than I’d have ever expected).

Then the last third is bum-in-chair, write the book time. For me writing is often re-writing. Sometimes people think I start with chapter one and just keep going ‘til the end. I wish! Lots gets deleted, rewritten, moved, or otherwise tweaked. Characters and plot lines merge or disappear to keep the focus on the main “A” plot and to ensure the secondary “B” and tertiary “C” plots impact the main plot line as much as possible. I want things to be causative; dominoes falling in a way that feels natural, almost inevitable, rather than having secondary plots and characters act as “loops” to take the reader away from the plot for a bit for the sake of extra words. Some publishers are very keen on set word count ranges which often requires putting in a loop and it’s my big peeve.

No. I have a whole team to deal with developmental editing, authenticity (or verisimilitude at least), and copyediting. Everything gets polished to death: timeline, POV, sentence construction, vocabulary, character arcs (within books and also within the series), as well as the plot, the forensics, the policework etc. My process has improved over time (which is why I’m now going back to apply that process to some of my earlier works to ensure consistency and quality across the backlist).

In a nutshell, yes. I could be all geeky and talk about the numbers involved but the essence of it is simple: if readers don’t like a cover, they’re much less likely to click on it and so much less likely to try the book. I want my covers to convey the tone of the book, that they’re professionally produced, and that they’re in a series. My branding carries across my social media channels, my author swag, website, etc, as well as the books themselves. Some days, I think my “Killer Ted” logo is more popular than I am. There are Ted bookmarks, coasters, t shirts, and the like all, over the world.

Nothing about writing a book is easy. It’s hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of hard work as well as thousands of pounds in upfront investment. It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the weeds and spend forever tweaking tiny things readers rarely notice (like a POV change within a scene; ever spotted a chapter start in one character’s viewpoint and end in another? It’s a massive no-no… but it’s also time-consuming and expensive to completely iron out tiny errors. Decent developmental editors can run from £50/ hour up to far more (and they’ll edit slowly; 2 pages an hour isn’t unheard of for an intense edit). Copyediting and proofreading are chapter, but commercial concerns often come first as while writing is a passion, publishing has to be a business first and foremost. When most books sell very poorly, that makes it a huge gamble so the biggest challenge for any author is keeping a roof over their head while writing.

Usually I have a deal running on at least one of my older books. The best way to see which are on offer is to have a look on your local Amazon store (just search “Sean Campbell” and I should pop straight up!). You might also spot me mentioning them on Promo Monday on the Crime Fiction Addict Facebook group.