Trevor Wood

Trevor Wood has lived in Newcastle for 25 years and considers himself an adopted Geordie, though he still can’t speak the language. He’s a successful playwright who has also worked as a journalist and spin-doctor for the City Council. Prior to that he served in the Royal Navy for 16 years joining, presciently, as a Writer. Trevor holds an MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) from UEA. His first novel, The Man on the Street, which is set in his home city, will be published by Quercus in Spring 2020

1. To readers of the blog who may not be familiar with you or your writing, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing
   I joined the Royal Navy at 18. When I left 16 years later I retrained as a journalist. One of my fellow journalism students, Ed Waugh, was interested in writing, comedy in particular, and as we car-shared for the whole course we talked about that a lot. Several years later we decided to give it try and wrote a comedy play called ‘Good to Firm’ which did very well. Our next play, ‘Dirty Dusting’, was a huge success. It ended up touring all over the world and is still being produced some seventeen years later. Eleven professionally-produced plays later I decided to take a break from theatre and try to write a crime novel, the genre I had been reading since I was a kid. I signed up for the inaugural MA in Crime Writing at UEA, which was even better than I had hoped it might be, and the novel I developed as part of that course became my debut novel ‘The Man on the Street’.
2. Tell us about your new book called ‘The Man On The Street’
   ‘The Man on the Street’ centres on Jimmy, a homeless veteran, grappling with PTSD, and living on the streets of Newcastle, who witnesses a murder. Initially no-one believes him and even he hopes it’s another one of his vivid hallucinations but then a newspaper headline catches his eye: GIRL IN MISSING DAD PLEA. He believes the missing man might be the victim of the crime he witnessed. It’s time for him to stop hiding from the world. But telling the girl, Carrie, what he saw puts him at risk from enemies, both old and new. Jimmy has one big advantage though; when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.
3. What made you decide crime?
   It’s always been my first love as a reader. Like most people my age I blame Enid Blyton for everything. ‘The Secret Seven’, ‘Famous Five and the Adventure’ series were undoubtedly my gateway drugs to a lifelong love of crime fiction. It’s no coincidence that ‘The Man on the Street’ features a dog. He’s a direct descendant of Timmy.

   Once I’d put on my big boy pants it was difficult to know where to go next YA fiction was barely a thing back in the day. The solution came to me on a terribly dull barge holiday on the Norfolk Broads with my cousin. These days I’d love that kind of holiday a glorified pub crawl on a boat being my kind of thing but for a 14-year-old boy it was stupefyingly boring. The solution was galloping through the shelf full of books on the barge all written by Agatha Christie. From that moment on it was crime all the way and it’s all due to Enid and Agatha (and maybe Scooby Doo)

4. What do you find the most challenging about writing a book?
   The length of time it takes! 90,000 words is huge, especially as I used to write plays which come in at around 25k and I had a co-writer. I know that some writers can breeze through a book in a couple of months but I can’t, something around nine months is optimum for me as I like to edit as I go along and maintaining focus and staying in the right zone to ensure I keep the voice and character consistent for that long is difficult.
5. What’s your favourite opening line from a book?
   “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there” from L.P Hartley’s ‘The Go Between’



6. If you were to start your own book club, what authors would you ask to join?
   How many can I have? Dennis Lehane, because he’s a genius, Dominic Nolan, great writer, funny man and the next big thing; Harriet Tyce, my best writing pal, fellow UEA MA graduate and a font of knowledge on crime writing; Olivia Kiernan, because she never stops talking; and maybe James Ellroy for the touch of madness he would bring to the party.
7. Has there ever been a film that’s been better than the book?
   Yes. Unequivocably. ‘Nocturnal Animals’ is a thousand times better than the book it’s based upon, Tony and Susan. I really didn’t like the book at all and didn’t even finish it. When I saw the movie trailer in the cinema I realised it was from that book but it looked fantastic so I went to see it and it was superb. One of my favourite movies of the last ten years.
8. Who’s your favourite villain or hero?
   I’ve always liked Alex in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (which probably makes me a bad person)
9. If you were stranded on a desert island, which three books would you bring with you to pass the time?
   ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess (again) not only a great book but a lot of it is written in an invented foreign language Nadsat which means you can fill hours working out the words and maybe inventing new ones.

   ‘Different Seasons’ by Stephen King. Bit of a cheat as it’s four novellas in one book but as three of them became excellent movies, ‘Stand By Me’, ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ and ‘Apt Pupil’ it’s well worth reading time and again

   ‘My Absolute Darling by’ Gabriel Tallent not just because it’s a brilliant if brutal book but, from memory, it also includes a lot of survival skills that may prove very useful on the island.

10. What area do you suggest a budding writer should concentrate on to further their abilities?
    Think carefully about the decisions you make about how to tell your story. Whose perspective works best? Highsmith suggested that a single perspective increases intensity which I think is true but it also fences you in as a writer your protagonist has to see everything.

    Concentrate on character how does your protagonist think, talk, interact with other people? What words does he use? Don’t show off by using ten-dollar words if your character wouldn’t use them.

    If you’re trying to write a thriller, focus on pace. Short chapters, short sentences, chapter endings that make the reader keep going. Be careful about too much description – Elmore Leonard’s advice to “leave out the bits people tend to skip” is very sound.

11. When sitting down to write, what is the one item you need beside you?
    A cup of strong, black coffee. Or even better, a whole cafetierre.
12. And finally, do you have any projects or releases on the horizon which you would like to share with the readers of the website?
    ‘The Man on the Street’ is the first in a series of crime novels with the homeless community at the centre. I’m currently working on book 2 in the series which is provisionally called ‘One Way Street’. There’s an outbreak of bizarre drug-related deaths amongst runaway teenagers and, when one of his friends becomes involved, Jimmy is compelled to try and find out what’s really going on.

    Follow Trevor Wood on Twitter and his Facebook Page website for updates.

You can buy ‘The Man on the Street’ from Amazon