#YouToo by Candy Denman – it’s sex and crime set in Hastings, out now!

Candy Denman, novelist and tv screenwriter, talks to Angela J. Phillip about Dr Jocasta (Jo) Hughes who drops into Porters Wine Bar and The Stag Inn as she unravels the case of the man with ‘a penchant for erotic auto-asphyxiation’.

Hi Candy, I was delighted to discover your Dr Jocasta Hughes mysteries and enjoyed reading the article Death comes to Hastings by A. Vasudevan when she interviewed you for Dead Pretty, the first in this series. I understand that when you started, you wrote for television. Can you say a little about your early career and what made you decide to switch from tv to writing crime novels?

I was very lucky because I desperately wanted to be a writer but was getting nowhere with novels and short stories when I took a short course on writing scripts and was picked up by The Bill from that course. From there I went on to write for Doctors, Heartbeat, Crossroads and other programmes but felt I wanted more freedom to write my own stories and characters and so started writing novels again. I particularly enjoyed writing the mix of medical and crime on Heartbeat, so I decided to make my novels similar and that is why my protagonist is a female GP and forensic physician.

After you were interviewed last year, A.Vasudevan ran a competition in HOT to choose the name of the dog who was going to feature in the third book #YouToo, which is now out. Can you give us a sneak preview and tell us if Lady M, the dog, appears in this story?

Lady M does indeed appear in this book and is actually a clue, though I am not going to say in what way. She is a very friendly Labrador. It was incredibly helpful to have the competition suggesting names as I am hopeless at thinking them up. I actually use Tucker, the name that came second as well.

In the first of the series, Jo (Dr Jocasta Hughes) had favourite locales. Porters Wine Bar and The Stag Inn come to mind. Does Jo still frequent these places in #YouToo? I wonder if you walk around Hastings and St Leonards in search of credible crime scenes or if they leap out at you? For instance, do you look under the pier and think, ‘Yes, I think there might be a corpse under there.’

Yes, Jo still frequents Porters Wine Bar and The Stag Inn, and other places as well, such as The Land of Green Ginger and The First in Last Out pub. I do often walk around Hastings looking for murder scenes – under the pier sounds like a good one, but I also look out for places for people to live and work as well. I want the location to be as authentic as possible.

When I read Dead Pretty, I was impressed by the wealth of medical detail that you included. According to the blurb, your new book #YouToo features a lawyer with ‘a penchant for erotic auto-asphyxiation’. That sounds both unpleasant and fascinating. Did you need to do a lot of medical and psychological research for this novel?

I spent many years working as a nurse in a doctor’s surgery between writing jobs. It was a great place to get ideas and characters to fit into my stories. I use that as a basis, but run the medical stories past friends who are doctors, just to be sure. However, no one has volunteered to give me any inside information on erotic auto-asphyxiation. I can’t think why. I once had to interview a dominatrix for one of my television scripts, she claimed to have the best-kept dungeon in London! She gave me a lot of information about things I would otherwise have had no knowledge, other than that, I am afraid I had to resort to Google and my imagination!

Your hero, Dr Jocasta (Jo) Hughes is an interesting young woman. She’s easy to relate to, especially with her uneasy home life, difficult love life and work as a GP that forms the background to her activities as a detective. Is she your favourite character and is she at all autobiographical?

I think Jo’s best friend Kate is actually my favourite character, mainly because she doesn’t seem to care a hoot what people think of her and I envy that. There’s a little bit of Jo in me, yes, but I am not nearly so organised! I think that both Jo and Kate are different sides of the person I would like to be, but sadly, am not.

Do you have any further books planned in this series? Or a return to television?

There are two further books in the series planned, the next one is due out in Spring 2020 – so I had better get writing! Plus I have been looking at writing a stand-alone psychological thriller as well.

Thank you so much, Candy. Your books are page turners and it’s a thrill to read a book where the characters go to places that we know personally.

For more information on Candy Denman and links to her books, please see below.
Dead Pretty (Jocasta Hughes Mysteries Book 1)
Body Heat (Jocasta Hughes Mysteries)
#YouToo (Jocasta Hughes Mysteries)
Candy Denman website
Death comes to Hastings by A. Vasudevan

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In the News
Who wants the poet laureate’s job? Does writing poetry to order kill the muse? Carol Ann Duffy has come to the end of her time in office but there is no rush of poets lining up to take her place. Is honesty the lifeblood of art? Of poetry? If so, is it time to abolish the post of poet laureate?

Forthcoming
Book Launch – An Eclection of Fairies by Glyn Carter
Where –The Bookkeeper Bookshop, 1A Kings Road, St Leonards TN37 6DY
When – Friday 10 May 2019 7.30 – 10.30 pm
This is a free event – do come along and sample the thrill of having the author himself read extracts from his book in the warm and friendly atmosphere of The Bookkeeper bookshop.
‘An Eclection of Fairies’ is a collection of stories that ‘delights and surprises; fine storytelling with humour, twists and a hint of dark chocolate, the stuff with chilli in it.’
You can have a look at this book on Amazon but if at all possible, please come and buy it locally from the The Bookkeeper. It’s at the station end of the King’s Road in St Leonards. Hope to see you there on Friday.

Which are your favourite bookshops and favourite cafes for reading and writing?
I am planning two posts for later on and I need help with both of them.
The first one is ‘Best Bookshops in Hastings & St Leonards’.
The second one is ‘Best Cafes for Readers and Writers in Hastings & St Leonards’.

Please let me know which shops and cafes should be included. You can do this either via Comments at the end of the post or by posting in the Facebook group Hastings Bookchat.

Books
I finished reading All My Colors by David Quantick and wrote a brief review. I’m hoping to interview him for this blog post in a couple of weeks time. He’s an Emmy Award-winning writer who has written for shows like In the Thick of It and The Fast Show. And he lives in Hastings! Aren’t we lucky to have so many talented people in our midst?

Blogging and Writing
I was wrong last week when I said that you couldn’t have followers on a Blogger site. You can have both ‘followers’ and a ‘subscribe’ button, but only on certain templates. The template I chose, first of all, didn’t allow me to put those features on so I thought they had been disabled from all Blogger sites. Not so.

The more I investigate Blogger, the more I like it and I particularly love the google analytics that comes with it. You can see all kinds of information. My favourite is to see where the audience is coming from. I’ve got people visiting from not only the USA and the UK but from Finland, Germany, Austria, France, Denmark and Romania. Phew. And Australia, too.

The main downside, people tell me, is that you can’t migrate the site if you want to move your posts to another blog platform. But I haven’t got to that stage yet (and live in hope that it doesn’t happen.)

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That’s it for this week. See you next Tuesday when the feature will be Part 2 of Self-Publishing.

If there are any events you would like me to include, please let me know before midday Monday each week via the Comments at the end of this post or via the Facebook group Hastings Bookchat (see link above).

Go gently.

Angela J. Phillip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also in: Hastings Bookchat

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