“A LADY at a book club once said to me, ‘you’re a nice person, how on earth do you write these books?’ ” said Wokingham author David Palin.
David, it has to be said, is drawn to the darker corners of the human psyche in his books, which are best described as brooding psychological thrillers.
“They allow me to explore, and to try to understand what drives people to do the things they do,” he explained.
“It’s important to understand dark places, but that’s not always easy or comfortable.
“In my books people can dive into a story that deals with scary areas of life, before closing the cover and returning to the real world.”
David’s latest novel, Your Call… Where There is Crime There is Punishment, is due for publication in November, and he has just signed a contract for another due to come out in the Spring.
“I’m limited in what I can say about next year’s publication,” he said, “But it’s a dark adventure covering many years, stretching from the UK to Somalia and the Southern Ocean.”
David’s appetite for the dark and mysterious was probably first whetted by the Grimm’s Fairy Tales he read as a child, he says, and by the exotic tales his parents told him about their own childhoods in India.
But before becoming a writer, David spent a number of years working for a chemical company in Frankfurt.
It was during the Cold War, and an experience that heightened his awareness of co-existing worlds, a theme he often returns to in his books.
“I’m struck by the different worlds of the darkness of the past, and the shadows of the present and the future living alongside each other,” he said.
Writing as a career came later, kick-started during a car journey.
“I had written some angst-ridden poems as a teenager, as well as a Bronte-esk novel in my early 20s, which I had long since abandoned,” he said.
“But it wasn’t until 25 years later, on a work trip, that a colleague of mine discovered this and insisted I dig the novel out and do something with it.
“She gave me just a week to rescue the story, and from then on, writing quickly became a place to escape to at the end of the day.”
David keeps notebooks around the house, and beside his bed, to capture ideas.
“You always think, ‘I’ll remember that in the morning,’ but you never do, so a handy notepad is essential,” he explained.
And he likes to allow novels to percolate slowly during long walks, recording ideas into his phone to be written up and expanded on his return.
On the process of writing, he continues: “A good editor is a writer’s best friend.
“You need to let others look at what you’ve written, work on it, and correct things, without being defensive.
“Editing can be a lengthy and intense period, but however perfect you think your book is, working and reworking it is essential.”
David’s published novels, The Wife Before Last, Let The Game Commence, The Armistice Killer, This Changed Everything, The Half-Torn Page, and Parallels, can be found online and in major book stores.
His most recent novel, Your Call, is both a sequel and a prequel to two other books in his mystery series about enigmatic police officer DCI Logan, who struggles to control and hide an inability to recognise faces.
The paperback will be published by Nine Elms Books, on Wednesday, November 13, priced £9.99.
David lives and writes in Wokingham, and is a member of Wokingham Writers Group.
His compact story, Echoes Of The Past, was recently selected by award-winning writer of short stories and historical fiction, Alice Fowler, as the winner of a 300 words story competition, and was published in Wokingham.Today.
For more information about his work and publications, visit: davidpalinauthor.com
